Colorado Mountain College has confirmed it will lease the Salida school district’s administration building at Ninth and D streets, and to offer courses there. The college will be able to offer concurrent enrollment classes for high school students, plus noncredit classes and up to 29 credit-hours of credit classes to the general public.
“Based on what we understand from our accrediting body, we can only offer to the general public a limited number of credits in a location that those accreditors have not approved as an official college location,” said Dr. Brad Tyndall, senior vice president for academic affairs at the college. The college has 11 locations as defined by its accreditors, including the Chaffee County Academic Center in Buena Vista and a residential campus in Leadville.
The college’s interim president, Dr. Charles R. Dassance, spoke this week with Salida School District R-32-J Superintendent Darryl Webb about continuing the lease. Earlier in the week there had been a misunderstanding that the lease was canceled, but both the college and the school district are on track for planning fall courses.
College staff are working through the details about specific courses to be offered. Among the credit classes the college expects to offer to the general public this fall are Introduction to Business, Public Speaking, Creative Writing, History, Human Geography, Science of Biology, Yoga, Psychology, Art History and English Composition, as well as noncredit English as a Second Language and GED courses.
The full schedule of courses, and the locations where they’ll be offered, will be available soon on the college’s website and in the class schedule to be distributed in Lake and Chaffee counties.
“We want to be able to meet the learning needs of the residents in our service area in Chaffee County, and are exploring the best ways to do that in accordance with the requirements of our accreditation,” said Dassance. “We’re pleased to be partnering with the Salida school district to help meet the learning needs of residents in that part of the county.”