Starting next year, aspiring Air Force officers will have a new, closer option to complete their training.

The University of Colorado Colorado Springs announced Thursday that it will host its own Air Force ROTC detachment in August 2026.

The incoming ROTC detachment will be housed in the UCCS College of Education and will be able to accept 75-100 ROTC students in the first year

The development follows advocacy from UCCS leadership and Colorado lawmakers, who last year penned a letter to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Air Force requesting a detachment.

While UCCS has offered Air Force ROTC for years, the University of Colorado Boulder campus houses its detachment. Students enrolled in the program must drive to Boulder for their physical training and other coursework while taking academic courses in Colorado Springs.

“Today’s announcement removes an unnecessary burden imposed on Air Force ROTC students studying at southern Colorado schools, who for years traveled 100 miles and two-plus hours to attend their ROTC classes at University of Colorado Boulder,” Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and Reps. Joe Neguse, Diana DeGette, Jason Crow and Brittany Pettersen said in a joint statement.

The long drive violated the Air Force’s own 90-minute commute rule and limited the number of students in the program to 39, lawmakers said last year in the joint letter.

“This new detachment in the Springs will better serve students already committed to serving their country as Air or Space Force officers, and will help with future recruitment,” they said.

Shortly after her appointment in 2023, UCCS Chancellor Jennifer Sobanet said she was approached by members of the university’s student affairs team to support their years-long efforts towards establishing their own detachment.

She met with CU President Todd Saliman and Colorado’s congressional delegation to advocate for the new program before eight members of the delegation sent their joint letter.

Rep. Jeff Crank, who currently serves on the House Armed Services Committee, helped get the detachment “over the finish line” and CU Boulder’s Air Force ROTC Detachment Commander Col. Rebecca Lange later guided them through the process, Sobanet said.

“Twenty eight percent of our students are military-affiliated on this campus and we serve a community with five (military) installations. And it makes sense, especially with all the Air Force and Space Force work going on in our community, and we already have Army ROTC on campus,” Sobanet said. “So, this was the natural next step.”

The school hosted an extension of Boulder’s Air Force ROTC Detachment 105 from the fall of 2017 through the spring of 2019 when it was closed over “manpower constraints” within the Air Force, UCCS’ student paper The Scribe reported at the time. The program hosted 83 students when the extension unit closed and cadets had to start driving to Boulder for class.

The extension unit was meant to be a stop-gap measure ahead of UCCS getting its own dedicated program, The Scribe reported.

Nationally, ROTC programs were responsible for about 39% of commissioned Air Force officers in 2020, the largest source of second lieutenants, according to the Office of People Analytics. Officers can also commission through the Air Force Academy, Officer Candidate School and direct appointment.

The Gazette’s Mary Shinn contributed to this report.