There is a difference of perspective between an older professor that has been here since 1985 to a new professor who joined the faculty this January.
Dr. Monte Atkison a professor of music and director of CMU choirs was here long before Colorado Mesa was deemed a university, whereas Dr. Nikki Williams, an assistant professor of physician assistant studies, just walked onto the staff on January 8 of this year.
“I came here in 1985 an applied for the first-ever full-time CMU [choir director] position,” Atkinson said.
Atkinson came from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he was a visiting choir professor for a couple years.
“I always did music,” Atkinson said. “I grew up in a family of six kids and my mother got us all on the piano bench at age five.”
Atkinson recalled playing string base and sticking with music all the way through, never wavering. He didn’t, however, always know for certain that music would be the career he ended up with. Atkinson double majored at first.
“I wanted to be a forest ranger and play Smokey the Bear, and I wanted to do music,” Atkinson said.
After a while, he was urged to pick a major, since the two didn’t go hand in hand, so he chose music and “never looked back.”
“When I came, it was Mesa College,” Atkinson said.
It later became Mesa State College, and finally, in 2011, Colorado Mesa University, as it is known today. Atkinson was on the board of trustees at the time the school was promoted to the university level. There’s a photograph in his office in which he and a small group of people are standing alongside President Foster at the ceremony.
Atkinson was also on the committee that developed and built the Moss Performing Arts Center and his choirs have been invited to Carnegie Hall in New York four times. This spring, Dr. Atkinson will be retiring after 33 years of teaching at CMU. There will be a retirement concert on May 4 and 5.
On the flip side, the newest professor has shown great excitement in becoming a part of one of CMU’s newest programs.
Dr. Nikki Williams, P.A., is from Gunnison, where she practiced for ten years at Western State Colorado University. According to Williams, she ran the student health center there and was the soul provider for the campus.
The Master of Physician Assistant Studies program is a new program coming to the school, with the first cohort of sixteen students coming in next January, pending provisional accreditation approval by HLC and ARC-PA.
“When this opportunity opened up, I was really excited to be able to educate new providers that can provide good patient care, which is my passion, really,” Williams said.
Williams is working with program director Dr. Amy Bronson to give the brand new program a strong start.
“We’re trying to develop our program to increase the quality and access of care on the Western Slope of Colorado and to help develop students, providers, [and] practitioners that are well equipped, passionate, qualified providers.”
According to Williams, the program will be rigorous, but the result will be worth it. She said that she and Bronson always say, “The patient always comes first,” a motto that will mold the program into something great.
“It’s pretty exciting to be on the ground roots of a new program and to try to give back to Western Colorado and the medical community, so that all kind of meshes with my passions,” Williams said.
Whether on campus for 33 years or just 13 weeks, all are CMU Mavericks.
Disclaimer from Nikki Williams, “The CMU MPAS Program will not commence unless and until both the Accreditation Review Commision on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) have approved the program
Colorado Mesa University has applied for Accreditation – Provisional from the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA). CMU anticipates matriculating its first class in January 2019, pending achieving Accreditation – Provisional status at the September 2018 ARC-PA meeting. Accreditation – Provisional is an accreditation status granted when the plans and resource allocation, if fully implemented as planned, of a proposed program that has not yet enrolled students appear to demonstrate the program’s ability to meet the ARC-PA Standards or when a program holding accreditation-provisional status appears to demonstrate continued progress in complying with the Standards as it prepares for the graduation of the first class (cohort) of students. The program will not commence in the event that provisional accreditation is not received.”
