Posts Tagged ‘SUS – News’

Lauran Garcia had a successful and demanding career in the restaurant business. The birth of her son inspired her to return to college and pursue work more rooted in her values and community.

Lauran looked to CMC. “I wanted something accessible and local and affordable,” she reflects.

Her studies at CMC afforded her two internships: a research-focused one with the Aspen Global Change Institute and a governmental-focused one with the City of Aspen.
Read more: Lauran Garcia: The Intersection of Interests

Zac Sutherland is a systems thinker. It’s an approach he explored in CMC’s Integrated Sustainability Program.

Previous to his study, Zac noticed a tendency to view economics, environmental issues, and social equity through separate lenses. “It never really sat right with me,” he says. “And it wasn’t until I started taking these courses that it all just clicked. There are all these interconnections between them. If you put too much pressure on one system, everything else is going to feel it in in some way, shape, or form,” he describes. Read more: Zac Sutherland: Interconnections

When it came time to consider going back to school, Colorado Mountain College’s Integrated Sustainability program was the perfect fit.

During the program, Christina and her fellow students put a close eye on CMC itself as a case study project. She collected data on water usage across the college. She began to see the potential of sharing data and the changes it could bring. Read more: Christina Matzl: When Art Meets Sustainability

Having lived in the Roaring Fork Valley for most of his life, he‘d always known about CMC and decided to give it a try. That choice eventually earned him a bachelor’s degree in Sustainability Studies from CMC. “I still have a bunch of debt I’m paying off from my last university and I didn’t even graduate from there. I didn’t take out any debt to attend CMC,” Johnson said. Read more: Rory Johnson: Second Chances