Stories
Lorene Martinez: From Unsure to a PhD
Leadville local Lorene Martinez was unsure about college. But she took one class at Colorado Mountain College. Then another. With encouragement from faculty, this single mom realized she could succeed. And she did, all the way to a PhD in microbiology from Colorado State University. “CMC is one of the best choices I ever made,”…
Read MoreLorena Martinez: Finishing What She Started
As a single mother of two kids and with a full-time job, Lorena Martinez had little time for college classes. As a teenager, she had dropped out of Battle Mountain High School, but then completed her GED at Colorado Mountain College. She continued at CMC and was slowly chipping away at a nursing degree, completing…
Read MoreRachel Mayoral: Love of Storytelling
Rachel Mayoral’s journey to Colorado Mountain College could have been lifted from the page of a movie script. “When I got here the campus was just breathtakingly beautiful,” Mayoral says. “It just seemed like a really great fit. I just had this feeling that this is where I’m supposed to be.” During her visit, the…
Read MoreBob Hartzell: Best Eight Jobs I’ve Ever Had
As Bob Hartzell tells it, he came to Leadville in 1970 “mainly to ski,” but what he ended up finding was a fulfilling 25-year career at Colorado Mountain College. “I think I have the type of personality where I never thought I’d hold a job longer than three to five years,” explains Hartzell. “When I…
Read MoreRobyn Kent: Huge Value to Me
Robyn Kent was worried about the gap on her resume. Although she had been a licensed psychiatric technician for the State of Colorado for five years, she had taken time off to raise her two kids until they reached kindergarten. “I hadn’t worked since 2005,” she says. At that point, she was living in New…
Read MoreKendra Gros: Education, Just Because
When Kendra Gros is not styling a bride’s or celebrity’s hair, she might be ripping up a motocross track, training a horse, riding a polo pony, teaching salsa or tango, or posing for photos at a special event. Even with all this nonstop activity, however, the Aspen native says something was missing. She’d graduated…
Read MoreEdith Gonzalez – Sky’s the Limit
Business administration student Edith Gonzalez readily admits that working and going to school is not easy. But she credits Colorado Mountain College with giving her the necessary financial and emotional support to make her dream of earning a degree possible. “I love this place and there is no other place I would want to be…
Read MoreLeah Bouchard-Lundberg: Seeing CMC Thrive
I was married to Rolland “Rolly” Bouchard, one of the first faculty members at the Colorado Mountain College Campus in Spring Valley. After attaining his master’s degree from Colorado State University, Rolly taught at Rifle High School, hoping that an opportunity would open up to teach at CMC. He was promoted after three years to…
Read MoreJoshua Loubek: The Perfect Place for Me
As a 19-year-old freestyle skier from Seattle, Washington, Joshua Loubek could not imagine a magical place where he could ski world-famous powder in the morning and attend college classes in the afternoon. But that is exactly what he found when he enrolled at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat Springs. It was an environment where he…
Read MoreLucas Turner: Past, Present and Future of RadioCMC
Listen to “Past, Present and Future of RadioCMC”, first broadcast on College Radio Day 2016. Programmed and managed by students, RadioCMC is the voice of Colorado Mountain College. Its vision is to serve as a creative and educational springboard and professional training ground for students by offering substantive, thoughtful and creative content made by students…
Read More