Looking for direction, Noelle Brigden found it at Colorado Mountain College.

Noelle was recently out of the army and recovering from a severe back injury. She hadn’t done well in high school but received a California Proficiency Exam Diploma, so she decided to give college a try with her veteran’s benefits.

“CMC helped me find my way by giving me confidence,” explains Noelle, who went on from Colorado Mountain College Steamboat to earn a Ph.D. from Cornell, Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University and a Fulbright Award.

Noelle says that CMC helped her “find direction through the advising and support of professors that encouraged me to reach for higher goals.”

But more importantly, the California native stresses, CMC helped make learning fun again. She describes CMC as a supportive environment where “I was never turned away from a professor’s office.”

“And the fact that the professors were so enthusiastic really inspired me,” she says.

Noelle now brings that same type of enthusiasm to the students in her classroom at Marquette University.

“It was the right decision for me,” Noelle says of attending CMC. “And I would encourage others to choose CMC, particularly for non-traditional students that might be a little apprehensive about returning to the classroom.”

Noelle adds that CMC provided an excellent foundation for future study by allowing her to take a wide range of courses like economics and Spanish. She even got to reflect on her time in the military during speech class.

“All of these things opened up a lot of different worlds to me that I wasn’t aware of,” she recalls.

That eagerness to learn new ideas continued throughout her academic career. Noelle’s doctoral research focused on the violence and uncertainty that confronts Central American migrants. She conducted two years of fieldwork at a Catholic migrant shelter, and rode a train along illegal migrant routes in El Salvador, Mexico and the United States.

Her research has led to countless journal articles and she is in the process of writing a book. Noelle was also recently awarded a highly competitive invitation to be Visiting Associate Research Scholar at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).

“Where would I be without CMC? I don’t know,” says Noelle. All of this might not have been possible if she had not found Colorado Mountain College.

Professional commercial and editorial outdoor photographer Sean Kerrick Sullivan fondly remembers the time he spent in Steamboat Springs more than a decade ago earning his associate degree from Colorado Mountain College.

Sean was still on campus when he sold his first photograph commercially. Big Agnes, at that time a local outdoor start up, bought his shot of a friend enjoying the outdoors. They paid him with some money and a tent and “something kind of clicked right then and there,” Sean says. “I always knew photography was my calling, and the support of Big Agnes was the final push I needed. A lot of times the hardest part of any journey is those first couple of steps.”

Sean graduated from CMC in 2006 and went on to earn a BFA in photography from the University of Utah where he won the student art show.

In the decade since leaving CMC, Sullivan has gone on to become an accomplished photographer in his field. His work has landed him an illustrious list of clients including Orvis, Snowboarder Magazine, Warren Miller Entertainment, ESPN, Volcom, Transworld Snowboarding, Ski Utah, and more.

Every circle ends where it starts, and in 2016 Sullivan returned to Steamboat Springs as the commencement speaker for CMC’s graduation. "Steamboat really feels like home, and coming back feels like I've never left,” he says. “CMC is a cornerstone in the foundation of a dream that I'm still building, and the inspiration I found in the campus and community that surrounds it will always be in my blood, no matter how far I travel."

Maegan Carney maintained impressive academic and athletic records while a student at Colorado Mountain College Steamboat Springs. She was the National Collegiate Ski Association slalom and overall ski champion in 1988 and 1989, and was named the national student athlete of the year both years, with a 4.0 GPA.

Maegan says her days at Colorado Mountain College were foundational. “A lot of people see CMC as a stepping stone to greater projects, which is wonderful,” she says, “but I also want to remind people that it is an incredible experience in and of itself. When I was a student, CMC was full of brilliant professors who truly cultivated our minds, but more importantly, I knew that they really cared about us. My teachers nurtured me as a whole person and my time at CMC was clearly the best years of my formal education.”

After graduating from CMC, Carney transferred to the University of Colorado, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, with honors. She then went on to earn a master’s in counseling psychology from Naropa University. She continued to excel at skiing, becoming the world extreme skiing champion in 2001 and 2002. She also spent 21 years as an instructor and course director with the Colorado Outward Bound School, carrying forward lessons learned from caring faculty at Colorado Mountain College.

After earning her master’s degree, Carney went into private practice as a therapist, now residing in Canada.