A Colorado Mountain College (CMC) faculty member’s trip to Bhutan two years ago has morphed into a new opportunity for the college to go global. CMC recently became a member of the Mountain Partnership.

 

In 2016 Lorraine Miller, an English as a second language instructor and developmental education faculty at MC in Aspen, Colorado, United States of America, took her sabbatical in the mountainous kingdom of Bhutan. Through an arrangement with the Aspen International Mountain Foundation (AIMF), a member of the Mountain Partnership and representative on the Mountain Partnership Steering Committee, Miller was immersed in a language learning programme. It gave her a taste of what it was like for her own students. “I’m a language teacher,” she said. “In Bhutan I walked in the shoes of a language learner. I didn’t know the language or the alphabet.”

 

Two years later, the AIMF was invited to attend Bhutan’s seventh international Gross National Happiness (GNH) conference, “GNH of Business”, and CMC – represented by Miller and Mercedes Quesada-Embid, professor of sustainability studies – was invited to attend.

 

Rooted in Buddhist philosophy, the concept of GNH holds that government should measure its success by the happiness of its people, not just through tangible economic advancement. Equally important is the spiritual and cultural growth of the population and environmental protection. Bhutan is governed by all four principles.

 

The focus of the GNH of Business conference was to promote those values in business practices in which society’s well-being is valued alongside profit and companies commit to responsible behaviour.

 

As a result of CMC’s presence at the conference and its relationship with AIMF, the college applied for and was granted membership in the Mountain Partnership. “It’s an honour,” Miller said. “Only a few colleges are members.”

 

There is a strong synergy between the visions of both CMC and the Mountain Partnership. “We use nearly identical words in terms of our commitment to our mountain communities,” said Kathryn Regjo, vice president and campus dean of CMC Vail Valley in Edwards. Those words and phrases include thoughtful and sustainable development, and economic and social vitality, she said.

 

Sustainability is a core value of CMC. The college is one of only nine postsecondary institutions in the United States of America and the only institution in Colorado to receive the 2017 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools Postsecondary Sustainability award. In addition to offering a bachelor’s degree in sustainability studies, CMC is a 2009 signatory of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, and through its sustainability action plan has set a goal to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

 

The new relationship with the United Nations alliance is set to cast the college onto an even broader stage. Through a connection with the Bhutan Trust for Environmental Conservation, its relationship with AIMF and its membership in the Mountain Partnership, CMC is working to develop an exchange programme with Bhutan that will advance education for forest rangers in the country in mountain and wilderness medical response, high-altitude rescue and backcountry navigation.

 

Through the Mountain Partnership, CMC hopes to bring this programming to other countries as well, Miller said. “We learn so much when we broaden our cultural horizons, when we get out of our own countries and see the forest for the trees,” she said.