Colorado College, or CC, may be best known for its Block Plan, a curriculum that involves taking just one class at a time. Blocks run three-and-a-half weeks; students take eight blocks a year and need 32 to graduate. It was this arrangement plus the beautiful location at the foothills of 14,115-foot Pikes Peak and “the undergrad cadaver lab” that drew Ellen Gilbertson, a senior from Wellington, Colorado, majoring in biochemistry.
“We tend to get students who are passionate about things,” says Regula Meyer Evitt, associate dean and associate professor of English. Those who do well, she says, “are students who love an intensive experience and who like to go deep.”
One day here “equals one week in a regular semester,” says Alison Bemis, a history major and senior from Honolulu. Literature students, for example, devour “Beowulf” in two days.
[Check out other colleges and universities in Colorado.]
CC students are “known for being artsy and out there,” adds Esther Chan, a 2016 graduate from California who, like dozens of other CC students, designed her own major — visual media and social change. Skiers and outdoor enthusiasts also are attracted to the campus.
The novel calendar also allows ample opportunity for field-based study. Bemis, for example, spent her first block of junior year in Paris, taking an art and cultural history class focused on the 19th century. Other field-based experiences entail studying the ecology of Patagonia in Chile and reading Homer’s “The Odyssey” in the Greek Isles.
“In every geology class, we spend up to a week in Wyoming or Texas or some other place,” notes Cody Duckworth, a 2016 graduate in geology from Black Mountain, North Carolina.
The 90-acre campus features a hodgepodge of architecture. “It’s a mix of 1960s cubism and turn-of-the-century Gothic,” says Laurie Laker, a 2012 grad who works as a writer at the school. But 16 buildings are on the state or national historical registries, and the location offers beautiful mountain views.
The food, heavy on the healthy and organic, gets rave reviews. “It’s so good!” says Cora Lubchenco, a senior from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, studying sociology and premed.
Students allow that the intense schedule can be stressful, and some feel a bit isolated. “We’re in a bubble in Colorado Springs,” says Gilbertson.
[See which top colleges and universities are in the Centennial State.]
There are opportunities to broaden perspectives, however. CC’s Innovation Institute helps students bring their tech or business or socially conscious ideas to fruition, for instance. The annual Big Idea competition has teams of students vying for $50,000 of seed funding to pull off projects such as saving and collecting edible food on and off campus that otherwise would have been tossed and delivering it to food pantries. Venture Grants from the school allow students to pursue individual research on campus or around the world.
Lubchenco has twice been awarded $1,000 to travel to the Dominican Republic to interpret for doctors who didn’t speak Spanish. Other grants have helped students investigate food security in India, study the psychology of climate change denial and build a renewable energy market for African entrepreneurs.
Colorado College is a Division III school whose men’s ice hockey and women’s soccer teams play in Division I. The women’s soccer team played as Team USA at the World University Games in South Korea in 2015. Three-quarters of students participate in intramurals, and plenty of other activities keep them busy, too, from working in the organic garden and doing community service to skiing and snowboarding.
Colorado College Road Trips:
— University of Colorado–Boulder
— University of Denver
— Colorado School of Mines
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2017” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
More from U.S. News
College Road Trip: Colorado School of Mines
College Road Trip: University of Colorado–Boulder
Colorado College Road Trip: University of Denver
College Road Trip: Colorado College originally appeared on usnews.com
