By Carrie Click
Leah Frink, a Colorado Mountain College Rifle business student, is achieving “firsts” in her field of study even before she graduates next May.
Frink is on track to earn an associate degree in business and a Bachelor of Science in business administration with an accounting emphasis, and she’s doing it with support of a scholarship no CMC student has received before.
Already on CMC’s President’s and Dean’s lists, Frink learned in August she received a Colorado Society of Certified Public Accountants’ Educational Foundation scholarship. The society supports Colorado-based students who are on the path to a CPA career. The award of $2,500 was granted to 40 students in late summer based on essays, transcripts and resumes.
All other recipients are from 13 Colorado private and public four-year colleges and universities such as Colorado State University, the University of Colorado and the University of Denver.
In 2013, CMC began awarding bachelor’s degrees, in addition to associate degrees and certificates of proficiency. Today, besides the bachelor’s in business administration, four other bachelor’s degrees are offered.
“This is exciting because we have a large number of students – in the double digits – enrolled in classwork that will lead them to qualify to take the CPA exam, and therefore become a licensed CPA in Colorado,” said Perry Ninger, an associate professor of business at Colorado Mountain College Steamboat Springs. Frink has taken accounting classes remotely from Ninger through CMC’s interactive video system classroom program.
Students must attend a four-year program in order to complete the academic requirements to qualify to take the CPA exam, Ninger explained. Depending on where a student lives, a combination of online, video-linked and in-person courses allow Colorado Mountain College to offer a full track on the way to becoming a CPA as part of the college’s Bachelor of Science in business administration.