Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/Colorado College

Last February, CC announced The Clement Challenge — A unique giving opportunity that invited supporters to cast a vote with their donation in how we would allocate $2 million dollars of the extraordinary unrestricted bequest received from the late CC alum William “Bill” Clement ’42. And the CC community rose to the challenge!

With the help of over 2,000 generous supporters, we achieved our goal of raising $2 million by the end of 2024. Each dollar was matched with an allocation from Clement’s high-impact gift for a cumulative impact of $4 million across the annual fund areas designated by our supporters. The majority of donations, 91%, were made to the general annual fund to support programs that enhance the CC experience on the Block Plan, student scholarships, and faculty resources for teaching and research.

Each and every gift helps CC fulfill its mission and we extend our sincere gratitude to all our wonderful supporters. Read more about the campaign.

CC will be hosting the families of our students for Family Weekend, Feb. 21-23. While the weekend’s schedule of events is specifically for students and their families, everyone’s role in creating a welcoming atmosphere on campus is appreciated. A warm greeting or helpful directions can make all the difference for visiting families.

Thank you for helping us showcase the spirit of CC and making our guests feel at home!

STUDENTS: Visit the 2025 Family Weekend Event website for more information or to register. (Deadline Sunday, Feb. 9)

Carissa Sherman ’21 in her home office, where a Navajo rug made by her grandmother hangs. Photo provided by Sherman

By Julia Fennell ’21

As a proud member of the Navajo Nation, Carissa Sherman ’21 is using her Diné heritage and passion for helping people to combine Indigenous knowledge with Western science. While some may think that the best way to pursue a career in a STEM field is to attend a research-focused large university, Sherman, a former Molecular Biology major, has shown that a small liberal arts college like CC prepares students just as well as larger universities.

Sherman is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Human Medical Genetics and Genomics Program (HMGGP) at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (CU-AMC). She is examining population-level pharmacogenetic variation and doing community-based participatory research on perspectives of genetics research. By looking at the ethical, cultural, legal, and social implications of genetic research, Sherman is attempting to find possible ways to advance equity in public health medicine.

READ THE FULL STORY »

Photo provided by Melanie Auguste ’09

By Megan Clancy ’07

As a student-athlete at CC, Melanie Auguste ’09 was an All-American basketball player, setting record after record and earning the National Player of the Year Jostens Award in her senior year. After graduation, Auguste, an Economics major, began to climb the corporate ladder at Nike – a perfect fit for the woman whose dorm rooms at CC always featured a raised bed to accommodate her ever-growing collection of Nike sneakers. Last year, she became Nike’s Global VP & GM of Women’s Sports.

“I structure my approach to work a lot like the Block Plan,” Auguste says. “I do deep dives with my team or identify specific projects that will be the focus for the week. Approaching our projects in this way enables us to analyze opportunities, research possibilities, and build strategies faster and more efficiently than if we let it draw out over short meetings week over week.”

READ THE FULL STORY »

By Teddy Doggett ’28

If you have never used handmade pottery, you are probably part of a very small group in your bloodline. Long before humans invented the wheel six-thousand years ago, people began shaping and firing clay to create pottery. Modern day archeologists have found pottery dating back to twenty-eight thousand years ago. Jump ahead several thousand years, and there is a strikingly widespread use of pottery as both functional and decorative across distant cultures. Odds are, your distant ancestors lived in a community that used pottery as vessels for water, food, and valuable materials, often boasting culturally significant artwork. Anthropologist Prudence M. Rice specializes in studying behavior and culture through pottery. In the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Rice prefaces her article by revealing how Anthropologists widely believe that pottery “represents a sophisticated merging of previously separate domains of human knowledge and experience: resources, technological processes, and needs” (Rice, 1999). Today the craft of pottery is far less valued. The brand Mainstay offers a ‘Glazed White Stoneware 12-Ounces Mug’ at Walmart for the incredibly attractive price of $1.12. From a practical standpoint, spending a couple hours to create a mug is beyond senseless. At federal minimum wage, a full work day would earn you enough cash to buy fifty-one Mainstay mugs. Still, countless students at Colorado College spend several hours a week attending Clay Club Open Sessions. Why do students move in herds to the studio instead of working out, studying, partying, or maybe even getting a job—don’t they know about the Walmart mugs?

READ THE FULL STORY »

Monica Indrebo, Rachel Deon, and Caryn Lawler from the President’s Office volunteer at Habitat for Humanity during the 2025 Week of Action on Thursday, Jan. 16. Photo by Jamie Cotten