Eastern Plains
Aims Community College started as a Weld education push
A Porch Note from Colorado Porch — plain-English local details for all 64 Colorado counties.
The college on the west side of Greeley began as an idea, not a building. A suggestion from Kirby Hart of Greeley set the whole thing in motion, leading to a feasibility committee that studied whether northern Colorado would support a two-year college of its own.
The answer came at the ballot box. In 1967, voters in 11 of Weld County’s 12 public school districts approved creating the community college district. The first classes had no campus to call home, so they met in leased rooms at Lincoln Elementary School in Greeley. Only later did the district buy the permanent site on the western edge of town that the college grew into.
That arc fits how much of Weld County took shape: institutions stitched together to serve a lot of ground, from scattered farm towns to a city that kept growing. Aims was built so that a young person or a working adult could reach higher education without leaving the county for it.
The path from one man’s suggestion to a chartered district to a campus is a reminder that a college can start as a vote among neighbors. Weld County’s Aims Community College history page lays out the full timeline for anyone who wants the dates in order.
Sources
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