TEDxCU Student Voices Competition

Student Voices is an annual TEDxCU competition for CU Boulder students to share unique ideas, improve public speaking skills, and compete for a spot on the TEDxCU stage in Spring 2027.

Come hear CU students take the stage to share the topics they are most passionate about! On Nov. 17, come watch CU students compete in TEDxCU’s Student Voices competition as they share moments in a TEDx Talk style of when they "caught air". Join us for a free evening of insightful perspectives and unexpected discoveries from student voices in the Chancellor's Hall in CASE Auditorium from 6–8 p.m.

Theme: Catching Air

Fifteen years ago, TEDxCU took its first leap. We've been catching air ever since.

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Athletes talk about the moment when the work stops feeling like work. Gravity lets go. The body lifts. For one second, you're completely airborne. Then you land. And nothing is quite the same. Skaters call it catching air. But the feeling isn't exclusive to sport. It belongs to every field and every person who has pushed long enough to feel unstoppable.

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“Catching Air” is the theme for people who know what the grind feels like and what it feels like when it pays off. Catching air isn't luck, it's what lift feels like when preparation and momentum finally meet. The researcher who runs the experiment and learns from each iteration. The musician who plays the passage until it's muscle memory. The engineer who rebuilds from scratch. The dancer who lands it after ten thousand attempts. The founder who watches an idea leave the ground. The teacher whose student finally gets it.

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Every discipline has its grind and its moment of liftoff.

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For TEDxCU's 15th anniversary, “Catching Air” celebrates that moment. The repetition. The doubt. The refinement. The return. The win. Whether you work in code or clay, biology or business, performance or policy, this stage is yours. Because the first time you catch air, something changes. You stop asking if it's possible and start asking how much higher.

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What did you have to build before your idea could fly? And now that you're airborne, where could this idea take us next?

What is TEDxCU?

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxCU, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxCU event, TED Talks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

Read more about TEDxCU at TEDxCU.com

Please direct questions to [email protected]

TEDxCU is a project of the College of Media, Communication, Design, and Information and the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder.