Colorado Mountain College students gathered over the weekend at the school’s campuses throughout the college’s 12,000-square-mile district to collect degrees, certificates and diplomas.

“This year we have more than 1,360 graduates across all 11 CMC campuses,” said Dr. Carrie Besnette Hauser, CMC president and CEO, in a news release. “This fact should offer all of us hope and encouragement, because every one of these graduates has an enormous opportunity — and now the skills and education — to shape the future of our beloved mountain communities.”

Graduates from summer and fall 2021, and spring 2022 persevered through the pandemic as they prepared to become nurses, sustainability innovators, EMTs, teachers, firefighters, outdoor industry experts, law enforcement officers, business leaders and other professions.

According to the college, more than 80% of CMC’s students are from the college’s 10-county district, which includes Routt County.

More than 140 students graduated from CMC’s Steamboat Springs campus this weekend, and Kathryn Redhorse, executive director of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, served as the graduation ceremony’s key note speaker Saturday, May 7, at the Steamboat Grand Hotel.

Sharing the stage with Redhorse was Brittany Ahlgrim, a CMC student who earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at the Steamboat campus, participated in CMC Steamboat Springs’s nurse pinning graduation ceremony on Friday, May 6, and was the bachelor’s degree student speaker at the main ceremony on Saturday.

Ahlgrim is from Manitou Springs and graduated from high school in 2001. Before earning her degree in nursing at CMC, she obtained a bachelor’s degree in health and exercise science with a sports medicine concentration at Colorado State University and an associate degree in nursing from Front Range Community College in 2009.

As a registered nurse with Northwest Colorado Health, Ahlgrim has worked as a home health and hospice nurse since 2010 where she is currently the director of home services.

Selected as the associate degree commencement speaker, Adam Wulf also took his own unique path to graduation.

After graduating from high school in 2014 in Parker, Wulf took time away from academics, going on road trips around the country and working odd jobs to fund his travels.

Five years later, Wulf found himself looking for more and applied to the Steamboat campus. At CMC, Wulf was a member of Phi Theta Kappa academic honor society and was elected as the student body president.

When not studying, Wulf spent his time backpacking, snowboarding, learning to ski and working at the Routt County Humane Society. After graduation, Wulf plans to continue his journey in higher education while continuing to work with animals.