Colorado Mesa University

Attending the University of Wyoming College of Law was the biggest mistake of my life. I graduated, but I cannot adequately describe how awful the experience was for me.

For years, I experienced repeated unwanted questioning about intensely personal matters, public humiliation, sexualized insinuations, and attempts to characterize ordinary things I said and did as suggesting criminal wrongdoing.

Much of this occurred openly in law-school settings, sometimes in front of students, faculty, and visiting... Read More members of the legal community.

I repeatedly told people to stop. I said no. I asked to be left alone. Those were not ambiguous statements, and I should never have had to repeat them.

The conduct continued.

I did not feel safe.

On one occasion during this period, I told an attorney, "I don't feel safe."

The response was, "Good."

I remember that exchange because it captures something deeply disturbing about my experience. I was expressing genuine concern for my safety, and that was the response I received from a member of the legal profession.

I also repeatedly told people that I had PTSD. Some of those disclosures were met with laughter, and unwanted conduct continued. I was trying to communicate that I was experiencing serious distress and needed people to stop.

I found this degrading, humiliating, and profoundly upsetting. I came to law school to obtain an education, not to have my private life repeatedly scrutinized or to spend years asking people to respect my boundaries.

My experiences also extended into professional recruiting activities. I experienced interactions I considered harassment involving multiple military Judge Advocate General (JAG) recruiters. One of those recruiters also appeared at the College of Law as a guest lecturer.

I do not know what the College knew about every interaction involving outside legal professionals, and I am not alleging that the institution directed their conduct. These encounters nevertheless formed part of my experience while pursuing my education.

I also did not feel that I had anyone I could safely approach for assistance.

I recognize that the university had reporting mechanisms addressing discrimination and harassment. But I had little confidence that I could obtain independent, effective assistance, particularly when some of the people whose conduct concerned me occupied positions of authority within the legal profession.

The availability of a procedure on paper did not make me feel safe.

What makes this experience particularly disturbing is that it occurred at an institution dedicated to teaching law, professional responsibility, and individual rights.

I was not asking for special treatment. I wanted to be treated with basic dignity, allowed to maintain my privacy, and left alone when I explicitly said that interactions were unwanted.

For me, the environment was miserable. Instead of remembering law school primarily for the education I received, I remember years of humiliation, distress, and repeated attempts to make unwanted conduct stop.

I completed my degree, but graduation did not erase those experiences.

I strongly encourage prospective students to investigate how the College of Law handles student concerns about harassment, disability-related mistreatment, faculty conduct, visiting legal professionals, and retaliation. Ask whether students can raise serious concerns through a genuinely independent process, and speak privately with former students about their experiences.

I would never choose to attend this law school again.

I wish I had never enrolled.

A surprisingly left-leaning institution in a very conservative community. I was part of the Education major for the first 3 years of my schooling, switched to Nursing for one semester, then landed on Writing until I graduated. Most of the faculty in the department are wonderful and very knowledgeable; if not obsessive sometimes. The Nursing students are all very competitive, as the program limits the amount of people they license; when I was there, I was told only 20 would be moving forward. The... Read More Creative Writing courses were probably the only area I experienced which needed vast improvements. If you are a Writing major, hopefully they restructured the workshops so its no longer, as one student put it, "a playground for the Machiavellians." My class was subject to flash fiction, and very little information on how to even reach out to publishers or agents, let alone how to properly write a book.

The so called teachers in the nursing program are not willing to help students nor do they teach. It's like they are trying to prive they are better than everyone. One talks about her past job and teachers like she us still there. On more than 1 occasion, it was brought to her attention what she taught wasn't what the book said. The instructors were too busy looking down their noses to help out at clinical. They waited an entire semester to inform someone they had done something wrong when if fact,... Read More if it were true they should have said something right away. Overall, the nursing program is a joke and any nurses that come from there are badly taught.

This review is specifically for the Montrose campus. I can't speak for the Grand Junction campus. I did the welding certificate program. If you plan on taking this course, then I must employ you to look else ware. The program is nothing more than an afterthought and, a weak attempt at robbing hard working families. When I arrived, the tiny shop was way out of code. I counted at least six different OSHA violations. When I brought these issues up, I was met with strong opposition and discourse. Most... Read More of these issues have been fixed, but students were forced to occupy that building during this process. The students were exposed to potential shock/electrocution fires, burns, explosions, respiratory issues, dehydration, and embarrassment. Here is what to expect. Twenty plus year old welders. One Pocket sized band saw (that is shared with 7 plus students. It takes at least five minutes to cut a piece of metal, so you must elbow your way in. Or waste countless hours waiting in line (over the length of the course). You'll have to share a single vise, good luck grinding down your metal. You will share the shop with high school students, so prepare to spend countless hours cleaning your station before you can even think about welding. You will also spend countless hours packing in metal to cut, because the high schoolers waste all the metal you packed in. You'll get very little material to work with sometimes non. If you have a basic understanding of welding, then you'll be even more disappointed. They mislead you with the certificate. It's NOT an AWS certificate. It's merely a piece of paper made up by the college that holds no value in the real world. In fact, the instructor isn't even AWS certified. Good luck, they’ll tell you for an additional $200.00+ dollars they'll send the guy from grand junction to certify you. The course costs a little over 7k, which oddly enough is the exact same price as grand junction. Yet you get ancient equipment and they get state of the art. The Sturm Family donated 200k to this program, to which grand junction got it all. Then CMU sent all their junk to Montrose, so they could rob good hard-working folks. It only gets worse from there. Don't take my word for it. Waste 7k and find out for yourself. If I were the Sturm family, I would be extremely embarrassed to have my name any were near this building.

Colorado Mesa University is a phenomenal education institution. During my three years at CMU, I had vast educational and extracurricular opportunities. The school provides substantial amounts of financial aid (both federal and institutional). Since my freshman year, I was honored both merit scholarships and work-study. CMU is extremely engaged in their students' lives and providing the best opportunities and experiences; for example, while the school does not have unlimited work-study or federal... Read More funding, they offer Mav Works (similar to work study but solely from CMU) so all students have the opportunity to gain work experience on-campus. Education-wise, CMU has top-of-the line programs and instructors. During my studies, the Business Department allowed me to customize my traditional business minor as a marketing minor. CMU is located in a friendly community that offers a plethora of organizations that provide experience and networking, both on and off campus. Attending Colorado Mesa University has been one of best experiences and decisions of my life, I could not image getting my Bachelor's at any other institution.

The campus and facilities are great and so are the town and surrounding areas. I studied Mass Communications with a goal of becoming a broadcast journalist. We learned some practical editing skills but when I tried to interview with several television stations the news directors said I did not know even the most basic skills necessary to get a reporting job. I worked so hard, earned a 4.0 and paid a great deal of money to get my degree only to find out it was completely inadequate in helping me to... Read More get a job in my chosen field. My professors had some newspaper experience but no hands on experience in broadcast newsrooms at all. I didn't know any of the terms I was asked about in interviews. The campus "tv station" according to a local news director (and this is a tiny market)is pretty worthless and operates nothing like a real newsroom. Not even close. The news director at the station I interned for in town did not care at all about the interns or giving us an opportunity to learn anything at all. The local stations told me they almost never hire CMU grads because they have no reporting skills. The college has no protocol for this because they have no one there who knows what the CMU program, much less the TV news internship should provide. I was encouraged by advisors to take a P.R. job instead! The English prof. over the department makes it clear he has no respect for journalists or journalism, even though he has never worked in the field. This is all sad because I think the University president has worked hard to make CMU a nicer institution. If you have any aspirations to be a broadcast journalist or even a great print or social media journalist, I personally would choose a school known for its broadcast journalism programs. I felt my basic education in biology and math were good and I made very good friends here. Also, I think the school is more affordable than most, which is why I chose CMU. A friend of mine is in the CMU engineering program--a partnership with CU, and it's great. The English classes though,even at the highest level in my experience were not challenging. I'm pretty sure my 15 year old brother would ace them. I had more challenging high school classes. Again, if you want an English degree go to a university well regarded for its program. CMU does have some PHD's in the Mass Comm. Dept. but very few people with real work experience. CMU Mass Comm Dept. has a lot of work to do to earn respect for this program in which it is charging students to earn degrees. I wish the department and future students better luck in the years ahead. I'm making my own way but unfortunately it is in spite of instead of with the help of a Mass Comm. degree from CMU. I have several friends who just gave up on their goals and are going into other fields. It just doesn't seem right. I hope CMU will reconsider and reconstruct their entire Mass Comm. program. If they can't give students a viable degree in Mass Communications, they probably really just shouldn't offer it.

I put a lot into my time at CMU. I worked multiple on campus jobs with admissions, the business department, the bookstore and even the on campus daycare. The best position was working with the business department because it allowed me to really get to know all of the business professors, whether I had them in class or not. That was definitely invaluable networking I would recommend to anyone! I really enjoyed the courses and professors - there's a good variety between teaching styles and course work.... Read More I would recommend CMU to anyone looking for a great university in Colorado.

Graduate school has been nothing but a blessing for me. Since I am attending the graduate school that I earned my undergraduate degree from, I am able to utilize the information that I learned previously and connect it to the courses I am taking now. I enjoy that our graduate classes are all offered in the evening which means I can still have a full time job and attend school without accommodating my job. I am also grateful that my professors are available for me to have meetings with or go over... Read More some contents that I did not quite understand in class. The only con that I'd say about our graduate classes are that sometimes that hours of class are so long that we drag on a topic just so that we can meet the required time needed for each class. Other than that I enjoy my graduate classes and will work hard to obtain my masters degree.