Founded in 1883, the Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection serves as a regional center for botanic research. It is open to all patrons, and with its 91,298 specimens it is broadly used for plant identification. Donations to the Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection helps ensure the long-term vitality of the herbarium as well as supporting undergraduate and graduate student research.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection at Colorado State University is to facilitate botanical research, teaching, and public service. It is especially concerned with encouraging student success by providing positive research and internship mentorship opportunities, creating and participating in outreach opportunities that increase engagement with the public, providing digitized specimen images and data online, and encouraging collaborations within scientific communities at Colorado State University as well as other professional herbarium users (e.g., Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland, Bureau of Land Management, Colorado Natural Heritage Program, and National Laboratory for Genetic Resource Preservation).
Vision Statement
The Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection at Colorado State University will support the College of Natural Science’s “Discovery Begins Here” vision of educating and inspiring the next generation of scholars, researchers, and professional leaders by becoming a prominent center for biodiversity research and citizen science in Colorado. The herbarium will provide external funding for research, continue to document Colorado’s vascular flora, and ultimately benefit the citizens of Colorado and the world by supporting core activities that enhance our understanding of the diversity and distribution of plants in the southern Rocky Mountain region.
Strategy Statement
As permanent records of the past, the botanical specimens housed at the Charles Maurer Herbarium Collection at Colorado State University provide invaluable and irreplaceable resources for protecting our future and engaging with students, researchers, and citizens in activities that further biodiversity research, resource management, and conservation in the Rocky Mountains.
