Colorado Mountain College (CMC) is a network of seven junior college campuses in western Colorado. Three of the campuses are residential campuses with student residence halls and cafeterias, and are located in Steamboat Springs, Leadville and Glenwood Springs. The residential campuses are essentially Colorado state junior colleges operated on a small college model, and are designed to send graduates on to successful enrollment and completion of 4-year degrees at the state's four-year institutions of higher learning. CMC also offers numerous courses transmitted across the district via live interactive video, allowing students at one location to hear and speak with their teachers at other college sites. CMC offers many of the same introductory courses in arts and sciences found at most four-year colleges, but it also has strong outdoor education and wilderness studies courses. Numerous professional certifications, and custom workforce training, are also offered.

Other heavily enrolled programs include ski business, which incorporates ski tuning, boot fitting, retail shop management, marketing; ski area operations, which offers hands-on courses in slope maintenance and grooming, and ski lift maintenance and operations; veterinary technology; and nursing. Courses in hotel and resort management are also offered, and graduates of these courses help to sustain the winter, and summer, tourism driven economies of Colorado.

The Roaring Fork (at Spring Valley), and Timberline (at Chaffee County) campuses offer programs for training police officers. These programs include legal instruction as well as courses in arrest techniques and gun combat. Courses are taught by local prosecutors and law enforcement officers. The college also offers criminal justice classes for other students as well.

Many Colorado Mountain College instructors are local professionals that teach at the college part time. They draw on their own professional experience as well as academic sources when teaching classes, giving Colorado Mountain College courses a "real world" emphasis. Some instructors are also students, as the college allows instructors to take a tuition free course for every course they teach (in addition to salary and benefits). Thus it is not uncommon to see someone teaching a class one day and taking one the next.

In addition to providing many different recreational and educational activities through student clubs, Steamboat Springs campus has an alpine ski team that races in USCSA sanctioned races that culminate in national championships.

Photography Program

The Spring Valley Campus, just outside of Glenwood Springs, CO, offers an AAS (associates applied science) degree in Professional Photography. Buck Mills, program director and instructor, spearheads the technical program. Mills, along with other full and part-time faculty, teach small classes of photography students a variety of skills ranging from basic exposure to advanced Photoshop editing.

The Spring Valley Campus offers multiple computer labs, including Mac labs outfitted with regularly-updated Apple desktops, Imacon and Nikon scanners, and profiling hardware and software. The program also utilizes a photography studio which is attached to the photo labs and includes multiple lighting kits and backdrops. The program offers a strong foundation in technical skills but also encourages creative work with electives and field trips to places such as Yellowstone and the U.S. Southwest.

The Spring Valley Campus is located between Glenwood Springs and Carbondale, Colorado just off Highway 82. The campus offers dorm and dining facilities with easy access to nearby mountains and cities, including: Carbondale, Aspen, and Marble.

Notable graduates of the CMC photography program include: Gabe Rogel, Carr Clifton, Rick Souders, and Pat Davison.

External links

• Official website
• CMC Photography Program Website