Training Mountain Communities | The Rise Report | Issue 12

April is Community College Month. Last week, we profiled the Community College of Aurora and its partnership with BuildStrong Academy — the first of three deeper looks at Boundless Opportunity Scholarship (BOS) community college partners. This week, we head to the mountains. Colorado Mountain College is training nurses, paramedics, firefighters, law enforcement officers, and dental hygienists across an eight-county service area where staffing shortages aren’t abstract.

The Stakes: Rapid population growth, booming construction, and skyrocketing housing costs across Colorado’s mountain communities have created a perfect storm for emergency services and healthcare providers. Call volumes are rising. Housing is pushing workers out. Recruiting and retaining qualified first responders and healthcare professionals has become one of the region’s most pressing workforce challenges.

Chief Rob Goodwin of the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District puts it plainly: “Recruiting and retaining highly qualified firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs has become a very hard thing to do.” But CMC, he says, has changed the equation: “Our partnership with CMC has been a game changer for our fire district and, more importantly, the people that we serve. Virtually every emergency service organization in this region is not only involved with CMC’s programs at some level — we are hiring graduates regularly.”

What BOS Is Supporting: Colorado Mountain College received a grant from the Boundless Opportunity Scholarship (BOS) program to support 16 scholars pursuing credentials in nursing, paramedic training, fire science, law enforcement, and dental hygiene — every one of them tied to a documented regional staffing shortage. All 16 scholarships have been allocated, all 16 scholars are enrolled, and the college has secured a 100% financial match through the Colorado Mountain Promise Program, the Prosperity Denver Fund, and corporate and philanthropic partners.

The scholars themselves reflect what CMC serves: working adults, many with families, balancing school with jobs and caregiving in communities where the cost of living is among the highest in the state. One BOS scholar, a nursing student in Breckenridge and a mother of three, described the scholarship as allowing her to focus on her studies and clinical training while still supporting her family. She is completing a paid internship in the labor and delivery unit at her local hospital and plans to stay and work in the same community after graduation.

Another, a firefighter and EMT with Roaring Fork Fire Rescue, is pursuing a paramedic associate’s degree to deepen his ability to serve his community. A third came to nursing through an unexpected path — ski patrolling at Keystone — and described the moment he realized that the critical thinking and calm under pressure he had developed on the mountain could translate into a career that would finally let him rise above living paycheck to paycheck.

Their stories share a common thread: these are Coloradans already embedded in their communities, already serving in some capacity, using the BOS scholarship to formalize their skills, earn a credential, and commit to staying.

Why It Matters: The BOS investment aligns with a broader institutional strategy at CMC. President Matt Gianneschi wrote in the Vail Daily earlier this year that student demand for CMC’s workforce programs is outpacing the college’s capacity to serve them — and announced a new Office of Work-Based Learning to grow apprenticeship, paid internships, and other earn-and-learn models across CMC’s 11 campuses and 7,500-square-mile service area.

CMC was recently highlighted in Washington Monthly as an institution actively designing program offerings around regional labor market outcomes. The BOS scholars are a direct expression of that approach — every funded program was chosen because the region’s employers are hiring in that field right now.

With historical employment rates of 80% and graduate earnings ranging from roughly $37,000 to nearly $75,000 depending on the credential, CMC’s workforce programs are producing the outcomes that quantify the investment. Completion and employment data for the current BOS cohort will be available later in the grant period — but if the scholars’ own words are any indication, many of them will be working in the same mountain communities where they trained.

As one BOS scholar put it: “I hope to show my boys that it is never too late to change their life for the better and give back to their community.”

Looking Ahead: CMC has committed to an 80% completion rate and 80% employment rate through its BOS Letter of Agreement, with strong earnings outcomes projected for graduates within five years. The new Office of Work-Based Learning will formalize employer partnerships and outcomes tracking across CMC's sprawling footprint — building the infrastructure to scale what is already working.

Next week, we close our community college series with a profile of Red Rocks Community College and its work to address one of the region's most overlooked workforce shortages: early childhood education.

The 2025 Boundless Opportunity Scholarship was seeded by $1 million from the Daniels Fund and is administered by FutureRise. In 2025, BOS supported 14 organizations awarding more than 525 scholarships to non-traditional students pursuing workforce credentials in high-demand fields.

The Stronger Workforce for America Act cleared the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce and was reported to the full House H.R. 8210 is a bill that would reauthorize and reshape significant portions of the federal workforce system. The legislation aligns adult education with job training and employer needs, expands on-the-job and employer-led training, and adds accountability requirements tied to worker outcomes. The markup also absorbed ten related Republican bills — including proposals on prior learning assessment (Allen), employer-directed skills (Stefanik), workforce data quality (Baumgartner), and a consolidated “One Door to Work” service model (Owens) — giving the package a broader footprint than the underlying bill alone. 

Accountability Rule Open for Public Comment: On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education announced it will officially publish proposed regulations on institutional accountability and Title IV eligibility. The rule emerges from the AHEAD (Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell) negotiated rulemaking and would condition institutional participation in Title IV on the earnings outcomes of enrolled students. Additional coverage from Inside Higher Ed.

Accreditation Reform: The Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) Committee closed out the first of two scheduled negotiation weeks on ED’s draft accreditation reform proposals. The agenda covered the history of accreditation, broad issue framing, and line-by-line discussion of draft language touching transfer-of-credit standards, institutional compliance with federal and state law, and the addition of program-level student success metrics to accreditation standards. The Committee will reconvene the week of May 18 to attempt consensus. If a final rule is issued before November 1, 2026, the regulations would take effect July 1, 2027 — otherwise the provisions will not go into effect until 2028. Related: The Chronicle of Higher Education on how the Administration’s accreditation overhaul could reshape program-level review, and Inside Higher Ed on concerns raised during last week’s negotiations.

The Rise Report welcomes updates from our colleagues across Colorado. Think of this as your one-stop-shop for conference updates, new research + reports, job postings, and career moves.

Book Launch: Too Precious to Lose: A new memoir from friend and colleague Jason Green will be the topic of conversation on Wednesday, April 29 at 6pm MT at the Denver Book Society. Jason’s memoir traces his family through a century of life in rural Maryland — from newly freed ancestors who built a house of worship to the merger of three segregated churches in the wake of Dr. King's assassination. A timely story about belonging and choosing community across differences. Register here.

Workforce Pell and SCC6 Round 6: With the Strengthening Community College Grant application deadline approaching on May 20, Jobs for the Future will convene U.S. Department of Labor leadership and national workforce leaders to discuss how community colleges can build the capacity to implement and scale Workforce Pell opportunities. The virtual event will be held on Friday, May 1 at 12pm MT. Register here.

Transforming Higher Education: Reflections on Lumina's Credential Attainment Goals: In an event hosted by Rutgers University Education and Employment Research Center, Lumina Foundation President Jamie Merisotis reflects on the Foundation's original 60-by-2025 goal and its new 75-by-2040 goal for credentials of value. The virtual event will take place on Thursday, May 7 at 11am MT. Register here.

Future of Work: From Data Signals to Strategy: The Colorado Business Roundtable Future of Work convening will take place on Tuesday, May 19 from 1pm – 4pm MT at Empower Field Mile High. The event brings Colorado's business, policy, and education leaders together to profile how employers are using workforce data to navigate AI disruption, demographic shifts, and talent gaps. Register here.

The Power of Governors. A new Manhattan Institute brief by Andy Smarick finds that 87% of undergraduates at four-year public institutions attend schools whose boards are controlled by gubernatorial appointees, and that governors in 45 states control at least one public IHE board. Smarick's argument: governors, not the federal government or private trustees, are the highest-leverage reform vector in American higher education.

Degree Completers are Getting Younger. A new National Student Clearinghouse Research Center report finds that students ages 18 to 20 now make up the largest share of first-time associate degree earners — a notable shift in a space long dominated by returning adults.

Rockefeller makes a $100M bet on good jobs. The Rockefeller Foundation announced a three-year, $100 million "Good Jobs for America" strategy targeting communities most exposed to AI-driven disruption, with a goal of 1.6 million additional good jobs across 250 distressed places. The initiative focuses on four sectors: healthcare and the care economy, energy transition, food systems, and AI-enabled industries.

HB 26-1317 heads to the Senate. Colorado’s bipartisan bill to create a unified postsecondary talent development system passed the Colorado House 51–12 on April 21. With sine die on May 13, the Senate has roughly three weeks to consider the legislation. The bill would create a 27-member Transition Advisory Committee to draft the structural blueprint for a consolidated department by November 1 — a potential capstone to the Polis administration’s workforce-alignment work.

AHEAD accountability rule comment window open. The U.S. Department of Education’s proposed rule tying Title IV eligibility to student earnings outcomes was published in the Federal Register on April 20; public comments are due May 20. A meaningful window for institutions and state systems to weigh in.

And for fun – Mile High Asian Food Week runs April 26 through May 3 — seventy-three AAPI-owned restaurants, food trucks, and pop-ups from Aurora to Colorado Springs offering secret menu items and specials all week. A very good reason to try something new!

Until next week,

Alison