Help me out Colorado people and those who know Colorado! My son is a big outdoorsman – rock climbing, hiking, camping, rafting, etc. (He also may try to pole vault in college, but that’s not really relevant here.) He has applied to Colorado, Boulder and Colorado State (and others, such as Appalachian State and Virginia Tech). While obviously he could pursue his passions as hobbies while at CU, he is considering majoring in a field such as Natural Resources Recreation and Tourism or Outdoor Experiential Education, etc., and CU surprisingly does not appear to have any such “outdoorsy” majors (despite its perfect location for such majors). Did I miss something? What gives…?
Some of those majors you are describing are more likely to be found in Land Grant institutions. In Colorado, Colorado State is the land grant university.
CU Boulder offers environmental studies:
http://www.colorado.edu/envs/
CU Boulder School of Education offers leadership minors and education majors, and is one of the better education programs in state along with U of Northern Colorado Greeley:
http://www.colorado.edu/education/majors-minors
The School of Geologic sciences is very outdoorsy for the science minded student:
http://www.colorado.edu/geolsci/geologymajors.htm
Colorado State offers forestry:
http://warnercnr.colostate.edu/frs-home/116-frs-undergraduate-study/327-forestry-degrees
All the resource management degrees are at Colorado State. This is because the state of Colorado does not have money to duplicate programs although there is some overlap between CSU and CU Boulder.
Boulder offers slightly stronger math and sciences, especially physics and chemistry, and more PhD programs in the humanities. Colorado State is not allowed to offer PhD programs in some subjects such as History, because of duplication worries and the difficulty of attracting good history faculty to the state of Colorado.
Colorado State offers a large agricultural program and natural resources management and very close ties
to the National Forest service, and the National Park Service, especially Rocky Mountain National Park.
For engineering, both schools offer civil engineering, which is very outdoor oriented.
Colorado State offers Civil and Environmental Engineering:
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/ce/
At CU Boulder its Civil, Environmental and architectural, or construction management:
http://www.colorado.edu/ceae/
So its about duplication mostly, as to why Boulder is not offering practical outdoor education options or resource management.
However an education degree from Boulder could lead to an outdoor education career. Avid for Adventure was started in Boulder, for instance.
It may be best to look more closely at both universities, if he gets into both, to determine which program is the best fit for your son.
While transfers between colleges at Boulder is possible, your son does need to pick the college he wants to apply to, so need to look at that carefully to determine if the College of Education is the right choice, or say the Environmental studies department. Ditto for CSU, although again, he could change his mind after he gets here.
Environmental Engineering is the one caveat, thats harder to transfer into later, unless one does all the math needed.
The perfect school for this is Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO. Check out the Adventure Education program, the Student Outdoor Leadership program for a job while in school, and the Adventure House dorm as a place to live. For ECs there is climbing, mountain biking, track and field, and ski and snowboard club sports.
Not that he won’t find his people at CU and CSU, but the majority of students at Ft. Lewis are this type.
The cost is much lower than CU and CSU plus there is merit for even average students.
Thanks for the feedback. Son has been accepted to Colorado State in the Natural Resources Tourism major, and we visited Colorado State, and CU Boulder, and he liked them both. We’ve looked at the majors at CU Boulder, and pretty much decided on needing to go a different route (e.g., Marketing), with his outdoors stuff being more of a hobby, if he gets accepted there. I can already see that if he ends up having the choice, it will be a very tough choice…
Well, it makes more sense to not choose the “outdoorsy” major. Your son can have an outdoorsy job without that major, but its more difficult to get a non outdoorsy job with that type of major. Considering “things change” is an understatement with teens, it’s a good idea to diversify in the major.
Thanks SuzyQ7. I guess that could be debated – if son indeed wants to work in that field, and perhaps have his own business someday, then majoring in that field, in a location where it should be fertile for such jobs, should provide the “better” opportunity to land a starting job in the field and is not necessarily a bad approach. Of course, if he changes his mind and wants to have a different career, then so be it. Many kids have to deal with the situation of their “career” ending up being different than their selected major. But one good thing about the Colorado State program is that he would couple the Natural Resource Tourism major with a minor in Business Administration – to both help him prepare to have his own business someday, and to have a “broader” business background in case he decides to go after a different career path.
He could study Biz at Ft Lewis… best of both worlds.