The Colorado College
(familiarly known as CC) is a private liberal arts
college in Colorado
Springs
, Colorado
. It
was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell.
The college enrolls
approximately 2,000 undergraduates at
its 90 acre (36 ha) campus, 70 miles
(100 km) south of Denver
in Colorado
Springs, with a view of the Rocky
Mountains to the west.
Colorado College is known for its non-conventional "block plan,"
which divides the year into eight
academic
terms, called "blocks"; a single class is taken during each
block.
Colorado College is affiliated with the
Associated Colleges of the
Midwest. Most of CC's sports teams are in the
NCAA Division III, with the exception of nationally
competitive Division I teams in men's hockey and women's soccer.
The
current President of the college is Richard Celeste, former Governor of Ohio
, ambassador to India
, and
Director of the Peace
Corps.
History
Founded in 1874 on land designated by U.S.
Civil War veteran
General William Jackson
Palmer — the founder of the Denver and Rio Grande
Railroad and of Colorado Springs — Colorado College was
instituted as a liberal arts college which would foster Christian outreach by its graduates and faculty
in the New
England
tradition. Like many U.S. colleges and
universities that have endured from the 19th century it now is
secular in outlook, though it retains its liberal arts focus.
The college's first building, Cutler Hall, was occupied in 1880;
the first bachelor's degrees were conferred in 1882.
Phi Beta Kappa was chartered in 1904. Under
President William F. Slocum, who served from 1888 to 1917, the
campus took the shape it held until the 1950s. During this time,
the college significantly expanded and improved the library’s
holdings and attracted leading scholars in a number of fields. In
1930 Shove Chapel was erected by Mr. John Gray, to meet the
religious needs of the students (though Colorado College is not
religiously affiliated).
Academics

Russell T.
Tutt Science Center at Colorado College
The college offers more than 80 majors, minors, and specialized
programs including: Southwest studies,
women’s studies,
Asian studies,
biochemistry,
environmental science,
neuroscience,
Latin American studies, Russian and
Eurasian studies, and American cultural studies, as well as an
across-the-curriculum writing program. In addition to its
undergraduate programs, the college offers a
Master of Arts in Teaching
(MAT) degree. Tutt Library has approximately half a million bound
volumes.
Block Plan
Colorado College follows a "block plan"; students study only one
subject for three and a half weeks, which advocates say allows for
more lab time, for research and study in the field, more intensive
learning experiences and fewer distractions. Blocks are only three
weeks long in summer school, during which there are also graduate
blocks of differing lengths. In parallel with the students,
professors teach only one block at a time. Classes are generally
capped at 25 (32 for two professors) to encourage a more
personalized academic experience.
Rankings and admissions
Colorado College perennially ranks in the top tier of liberal arts
colleges in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, most
recently ranging from a high of 19th in 1999 to a low of 33rd in
2005. In a January 2004 ranking of all colleges and universities by
Kiplingers magazine, it placed 31st. In the 2009 U.S. News rankings
it was 24th among liberal arts colleges, and 13th place in Best
Values among all national colleges.
Colorado College has one of the highest retention rates of any
college or university in the country at 96 percent. Colorado
College also has one of the nation's lowest acceptance rates, at 24
percent, with a very high yield at 48 percent. The median ACT of
the class of 2012 is a 31, and one-fourth of the class graduated in
the top 1 percent of their high school class.
Sustainability
In 2009, Colorado College developed a sustainability plan and
implemented the “aCClimate 14” conservation campaign. The campus
saved $100,000 in utility costs and cut greenhouse gas emissions by
378 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent during the campaign.
Other sustainability initiatives at CC include: a 25-kilowatt solar
PV array, composting of kitchen and dining waste, and a
singlestream recycling program.
Campus

Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts
Center at Colorado College
Since the mid-1950s, new facilities include three large residence
halls, Worner Campus Center, Tutt Library, Olin Hall of Science and
the Barnes Science Center, Honnen Ice Rink, Boettcher Health
Center, Schlessman Pool, Armstrong Hall of Humanities, Palmer Hall,
El Pomar Sports Center, and Packard Hall of Music and Art. Bemis,
Cossitt, Cutler, Montgomery, and Palmer Halls are some of the
remaining turn-of-the-century structures on the
National Register of
Historic Places, along with the William I. Spencer
Center.
The face of campus changed again at the beginning of the 21st
century with construction of the Western Ridge Housing Complex,
which offers apartment-style living for upper-division students and
completion of the Russell T.
Tutt Science
Center. The east campus has been expanded, and is now home to the
Greek Quad and several small residence halls known as “theme
houses.”
Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center
Colorado College’s
Edith Kinney
Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center, completed in 2008 and located
at the intersection of a performing arts corridor in Colorado
Springs, was designed to foster creativity and interdisciplinary
collaboration. It is home to the college’s film, drama and dance
departments and contains a large theater, several smaller
performance spaces, a screening room, the I.D.E.A Space gallery,
and classrooms, among other rooms. Architect
Antoine Predock designed the building with
input from professors and students.
Athletics
The school's sports teams are nicknamed
Tigers, though in
1994 a student referendum to change the name to the
Cutthroats (Trout) narrowly failed. Colorado College
competes at the
NCAA Division III level in all sports except men's
hockey, in which it participates in the
NCAA Division I Western Collegiate Hockey
Association, and women's
soccer, where it
competes as an NCAA Division I team in
Conference USA. CC dropped its
intercollegiate athletic programs in football, softball, and
women's water polo following the 2008-09 academic year.
The Colorado College men's ice hockey program is a powerhouse for
such a small school. The Tigers won the NCAA Division I
championship twice (1950, 1957), were runners up three times (1952,
1955, 1996) and have made the NCAA Tournament eighteen times,
including every year since 1995 except 2000, 2004, 2007 and 2009..
In 2005, CC played in the
Frozen Four.
Fifty-five CC Tigers have been named All-Americans. NHL Hall of
Fame coach Bob Johnson coached the Tigers from 1963 - 1966. Despite
the minuscule size of the school, the hockey team is often ranked
quite highly nationally, although it has been over 50 years since
the Tigers last won an NCAA title. Their current coach is Scott
Owens, who played for Colorado College and graduated from the
school in 1979.
Notable people
Several CC alumni are engaged in political careers. Its graduates
include
Lynne Cheney, wife of former
U.S. Vice President
Dick Cheney, and
their two daughters, as well as U.S. Secretary of the Interior
Ken Salazar, and Representative
Diana DeGette.
Other well-known government figures, such as former CIA Director
James Woolsey and White House Chief
Economic Advisor
Martin Neil
Baily, have seen their children graduate from CC in recent
years. The school is regarded to have a distinguished faculty,
noted for outstanding teaching and a closeness to students in an
environment where no class exceeds 25, and an end-of-block
breakfast or dinner at a professor's home is a common gathering.
The college also owns a nearbycabin to convene classes, as well as
a more expansive mountain campus known as the "Baca," located in
Crestone, Colorado.
While the focus at Colorado College is primarily on teaching, and
its academics involve a high level of rigor and intensity on the
block plan, a significant number of faculty are widely published
and renowned in their fields.
Professor Dennis Showalter, the 2005
recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for Lifetime
Achievement in Military History, is a leading expert on World War
II, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at West Point
and the United States Air Force
Academy, Reviewer for the History Book Club, and author of
Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, the 1992 winner of the
prestigious Paul Birdsall Prize of the American Historical
Association. In 2005, he published the first single volume
dual military biography of Patton and Rommel,
Men of
War.
Notable music and arts representatives include Susan Grace, a
pianist with appearances at Carnegie Hall,
Stephen Scott, a
neo-classical composer, and
Ofer Ben-Amots, an Israeli composer.
Professors
- Andrew Price-Smith, political
scientist, author on health security, environmental security,
pandemic influenza
- David Mason, poet
- Robert Loevy, political scientist
- Tomi-Ann Roberts, social psychologist, feminist
- Thomas Cronin, political scientist
and author
- Steven Hayward, Canadian poet and
author
- Stephen Scott, neo-classical
composer
- Dennis Showalter, military
historian
- Christine Smith Siddoway, geologist, Antarctica researcher
- Carol Neel, medieval historian
- Ofer Ben-Amots, classical
Israeli-American composer
Graduating professionals
- Harris Sherman, U.S. Dept. of
Agriculture under secretary for natural resources and
environment
- Marcia McNutt, geophysicist,
director of U.S. Geological Survey, science advisor to U.S.
secretary of the interior
- Lori Garver, deputy NASA
administrator
- Jane Lubchenco, marine ecologist
and environmental scientist, NOAA Administrator
- Abigail Washburn, clawhammer
banjo player and singer
- Sebastian Suhl, chief operating officer, Prada S.p.A.
- Marc Webb, music video, short film and
motion picture director (" Days of
Summer")
- Mabel Barbee Lee, writer
- Neal Baer, television producer/writer
and pediatrician
- Timothy J. Sexton, Academy Award nominated screenwriter for
film ("Children of Men") and
television
- Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of
Dick Cheney
- Mary Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney
- Lynne Cheney, wife of the former
Vice President of the United States, novelist, conservative
scholar, and former talk-show host
- Diana DeGette, politician
- Gregg Easterbrook, writer
- Randall Edwards,
State treasurer of Oregon
- James Heckman, class of '65,
winner of 2000 Nobel Prize for
Economics
- Glenna Goodacre, class of '61,
designer of Sacagawea on the U.S. golden dollar coin
- Ted Morton, politician
- Philip Perry, politician
- Ann Royer, painter, sculptor
- Ken Salazar, United States Secretary
of the Interior, Former United States Senator
- Liang Shih-chiu, academic
- Richard H. Stallings, politician
- Dee Bradley Baker, voice
actor
Athletes
KRCC
Colorado College operates
National
Public Radio Member Station KRCC-FM.
In 1944, KRCC
began as a
two-room public address system in the basement of Bemis
Hall. Professor Woodson "Chief" Tyree, Director of Radio and
Drama Department at Colorado College was the founder and
inspirational force in the program that one day became KRCC-FM. In
1946, KRCC moved to South Hall (where Packard Hall now stands) on
campus where two students, Charles "Bud" Edmonds '51, and Margaret
Merle-Smith '51, were instrumental in securing a war surplus FM
transmitter. KRCC began over the air broadcasting in April 1951 as
the first non-commercial educational FM radio station in the state
of Colorado.
Today, KRCC broadcasts through a series of eleven transmitters and
translators throughout southern Colorado and a portion of northern
New Mexico.
KRCC's main transmitter, atop Cheyenne
Mountain
, broadcasts three separate HD multi-cast channels,
including a channel run completely by Colorado College students
called the SOCC (Sounds of Colorado College).
See also
References
External links