校友 Spotlight – Caleb Hiatt

Caleb Hiatt, AA Outdoor Leadership, 2011 and Wilderness First Responder Certificate, 2010, attributes much of his success to the skills he gained while attending CWC. Caleb is currently a Scholarship Counselor at the University of Alabama and shared the following about his time at CWC.

I am very grateful for the education I received at Central Wyoming College. I arrived in the fall of 2009. My first class was the Wind River wilderness expedition with Darran Wells and Jake Urban. We had planned on summitting Gannett peak, we ended up having some emergencies and didn’t even get that close. It was beautiful and yet so challenging. That experience made me fall in love with Wyoming. Part of my heart will always be in central Wyoming.

Many of my experiences revolve around the friendships I made at CWC. I am still good friends with two of the people I first met at CWC. We got together a few years back and went camping like we did back in 2009. However, this time it was different. We all brought our now wives and kids for a good old college reunion. Another experience I had was with Todd Gunther when I took his anthropology course. We got talking about Stub Farlow and the origins of the Wyoming cowboy. I ended up traveling to my home state of Idaho to do research on Stub as the picture taken was at the War Bonnet Roundup in Bonneville County. As a result of my research, I was able to get a college credit. I am grateful that flexibility in learning was allowed, encouraging a wide range of exploration.

Some of the biggest lessons I learned at CWC were not learned in the classroom; they were learned by the experiences I had. The biggest lesson I learned was accountability and responsibility. Through my interactions at CWC I learned to be the captain of my ship and I can do anything I set my mind to. Since my time at CWC I went on to get a bachelor’s degree in recreation management. I completed an internship at a community college in south Mississippi. This made me fall in love with higher education and helping students the same way I had been helped throughout my educational journey.

After getting married, my family relocated to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I decided I wanted to work at the University of Alabama. It took 47 applications, 14 interviews, and almost a year, however, I finally achieved that goal. I credit that success to the lessons I learned at CWC. I am currently in a master’s program for higher education administration and hope to continue to help guide students along their educational journey.