The college was chartered as a Normal School for the preparation of teachers in 1901. The education program continues to be an important part of the school and Western graduates are teaching young students around the country and the world. Over the years, however, Western's role has evolved and the quality of programs such as Business, Accounting and Economics is bringing more and more students to Gunnison. Meanwhile, graduates are carrying the word about Western and Gunnison to the far corners of the world. For example, former students from Western's program in Communication Arts, Languages and Literature hold key media positions, write best-selling novels and teach in prestigious institutions of higher education.
Many Western graduates choose to stay in the area and make their lives here.
Others are found around the world, many in prestigious positions. An Even Longer History While Western has been in Gunnison for nearly a century, the history of the human and animal population of the area goes back literally thousands of years. Dr. Mark Stiger, Professor of Anthropology, conducts tours of a site barely two miles south of town at the base of Tenderfoot Mountain, where a group of hunter-gatherers lived about 8,000 years ago. This site, developed by Stiger and his students, indicates that the Gunnison basin was once covered by a forest of Pinon Pine. Later, as the trees began to disappear, early visitors boasted they could walk across the entire valley by stepping from one beaver dam to another.