Permaculture Design Courses
Professor Tina Evans gathered around students from the Permaculture Design Course 1 in the Bear Park Permaculture Center dome, Steamboat Springs Campus, June 2025.
Permaculture Design Courses for All
If you want to see the soul of our sustainability program, look no further than our Permaculture track. This isn't a theory class, but more like a movement. Permaculture (permanent + agriculture) is an ethical design system that asks us humans to work with nature, not against it. In these courses, students (and the public) get joyously, productively dirty.
Participants aren't solely reading about food systems- they are actively interacting with and building them. They work closely with flora, fauna, and the living soil, designing pollinator gardens, medicinal guilds, studying food forests, learning to capture rainwater, and composting waste back into vitality. We learn the core principles of Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share, not just from a textbook, but from the feedback of dedicated professors and the land itself.
PDC 1 students building a cardboard mulch bed at Bear Park Permaculture Center, Steamboat Springs Campus, June 2025.
Nestled in Sustainability
At Colorado Mountain College, we don’t treat sustainability like a minor footnote or a singular degree program tucked into a catalog. Instead, we treat Sustainability as the operating system for a well-rounded education. We are deliberately weaving it into every facet, every degree program, and every institutional decision we make. Because the high-alpine deserts and headwaters we call home aren't just scenic backdrops. They are living classrooms. For our students, this means their education has tangible weight. For our faculty, it means teaching with real-world stakes. And for our mountain communities, it means we are producing graduates who don’t just understand resilience...they know how to build it with their own two hands.
"Sustainability" can feel like an overused buzzword. But at CMC, we strip it down to its bones. We teach that a truly sustainable future isn’t just about planting trees (though we do that). It’s about balancing three deeply interconnected pillars: environmental health, social equity, and economic viability.
Professor John Saunders with PDC 1 students teaching them to make salve from calendula flowers at Bear Park Permaculture Center, June 2025.
Our Invitation to You
We know that hope without action is simply wishful thinking. That’s why our beacon of hope is the feeling of alpine soil crumbling through your fingers, and testing it to understand it more fully. We believe the most profound learning happens when students stop discussing ecosystems and start participating in them. Our campus sits at the crossroads of some of the most sensitive, spectacular ecosystems on the planet. So, we commune with them. Through the Permaculture Design Courses, students are testing soils, measuring the runoff, and presenting their findings to local property owners and community stakeholders. These courses are applied, boots-on-the-ground experience that builds confidence, competence, and a fierce sense of place.
We don't pretend to have all the answers. But we are absolutely certain of this: a well-rounded education in the 21st century must be rooted in the realities of the earth beneath us. At CMC, we are embedding sustainability into our DNA because the health of our environment, our people, and our local economies depends on it.
Former Sustainability student showing the International Permaculture students around the Spring Valley Campus Permaculture Center, June 2025.
Whether you are a prospective student looking for a career with meaning, a faculty member seeking to push the boundaries of applied research, or a community member who wants to see this region thrive for decades to come- you have a place at this table. The future isn't a distant horizon. It’s right here, right now, waiting for us to dig in. Join us for the next Permaculture courses (SUS 2500 and SUS 2510).