Monday marks the 150th anniversary of the first classes at Colorado College. The small liberal arts college in Colorado Springs has been operating successfully for a century and a half.

The college has grown in enrollment. Sometimes having less than 100 students when it was first started, today it has a student body of more than 2,000 women and men.

The campus has grown, as well. When the original grant of land provided by Colorado Springs founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer was filled with buildings, the college began acquiring large Victorian homes and other properties adjacent to it. The principal area of growth lately has been east of North Nevada Avenue over to North Weber Street.

The many former private homes proved to be particularly useful for faculty and student activities. They made good “theme houses” for the students. Some of the early theme houses were Interfaith House, the Debate House, the Student Cultural Center, Civic Engagement and the Ahlberg Outdoor Education Center.

Another important new facility east of Nevada Avenue is the Children’s Center, an on-campus child care facility for faculty and administrators’ children.

But as it has done throughout its history, Colorado College continues to add major buildings to its campus. Four important ones in the 21st century have been Tutt Science Center, Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Art Center (a performing arts center that includes a large theater), expansion and repurposing of Tutt Library, and the new Ed Robson Arena, which hosts college and citywide events as well as permitting Colorado College men’s ice hockey team to play its home games on campus.

Several student residence halls also have been built in recent decades.

For many years now, the campus has had a 300-acre wilderness campus with a conference center and lodging located in Crestone in the San Luis Valley. This is used by several courses for a week of off-campus study and for field research and related conferences.

Another important recent change at the college has been the narrowing of North Cascade Avenue from two lanes of traffic in each direction to only one lane of traffic in each direction. That traffic alteration, which extends from downtown to Jackson Street at Penrose Hospital, has greatly increased the safety of the Colorado College community.

The college’s sports program has evolved over the past 50 years. There has been a steady increase in the emphasis on women’s sports. Men’s and women’s lacrosse are currently very popular. At the same time, the college has dropped such sports as men’s skiing and football, women’s softball and women’s water polo.

But the big sports news is that, to maintain equal status with men’s ice hockey, Colorado College now has a top-level women’s soccer team supported with major athletic scholarships.

The role of women has steadily increased at Colorado College over the past half-century. Now more than half of the student body is women. Women have steadily increased their numbers on the faculty and in the college administration. Recently, the college has had three female presidents: Kathryn Mohrman, Jill Tiefenthaler and L. Song Richardson.

It is easy to record recent changes, but one thing has never changed in 150 years: Colorado College has remained a small liberal arts college of the American style, and steadfastly emphasizes the teaching of undergraduate students rather than devoting itself to the heavy emphasis on research and publication found at large universities.

The relationship between the teaching professor and the individual student in the classroom is what has always been a priority at Colorado College. CC and the liberal arts tradition are rooted in the ancient Greek and Roman curriculum, first focused on reading, writing, and speaking persuasively. Next, the Greek and Roman tradition emphasizes mathematical arts of arithmetic, geometry, harmonics and astronomy. Students are prepared for logical thinking, reasoning and observation.

The liberal arts tradition is an educational philosophy more than a body of knowledge. It is especially concerned with learning how to learn. This approach views learning as a verb more than as a noun. It is as an ongoing process of questioning, probing, searching, and exploring.

Liberal arts learning recognizes there is a difference between knowledge and understanding.

And that brings us to a distinctive teaching innovation in Colorado College’s 150-year-old crown: the Block Plan.

In 1969-1970, Colorado College decided to review its academic program. Students took four or five courses each semester, mixing physics or chemistry or history or economics or English (whatever the student wanted and needed to take) into a semester’s work.

Under the leadership of political science professor Glenn Brooks, the old semester system was dropped completely. In its place was the Block Plan, where students would take only one course for 3½ weeks, and professors would teach only one course for 3½ weeks. The academic year would consist of nine of these blocks. That number was later reduced to eight blocks per year.

The Block Plan is, indeed, unusual and challenging, but the faculty voted to adopt it, and it has worked remarkably well. The development of the Block Plan has been a contribution of Colorado College to higher education in the United States and has helped expand the college’s reputation in the academic world.

Adopted for pedagogical reasons, the Block Plan surprised its inventors when it turned out to be a marketing tool, as well. Students began selecting Colorado College specifically because they wanted the concentration on one subject at a time and the close faculty-student relationships that were integral to the Block Plan. A related and rewarding feature of the CC Block Plan has been limiting class size to 25 students.

CC is proud of educating thousands of students who have become business and professional leaders. Illustrious graduates include William Spencer, a former president of Citibank; Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman; former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar (currently U.S. ambassador to Mexico); longtime El Pomar Foundation Chairman Bill Hybl; former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney; U.S. Rep. Diana Degette; 10th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court Chief Judge Tim Tymkovich; real estate entrepreneurs Buck Blessing and Ian Griffis; Fort Collins Mayor Jeni Arndt; and Colorado Springs Gazette Editor and author Vince Bzdek.

Colorado College will graduate more than 500 students at this year’s graduation, which will be held May 19.