Imagine a New Life, Then Create It: CNM Powers Brighter Futures
Learn how CNM’s Skilled Trades & Arts programs—backed by New Mexico’s Opportunity Scholarship—are helping students build hands‑on skills and launch rewarding new careers in lucrative, high‑demand fields.
By Kai Warrior
Feel stuck in a career that isn't as promising as when you earned your degree? Unsure what you want to spend the rest of your life doing? Maybe your next chapter starts far from home—working on a small farm in the English countryside, where you build a new life helping others, find unexpected purpose, and unexpectedly inherit billions.
If that sort of adventure isn’t written in the stars for you, and your income is hardly keeping you afloat—like so many New Mexicans—the Opportunity Scholarship that’s now available to state residents and the various Skilled Trades & Arts (STA) programs at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) could be the first step on your path to a fulfilling, lucrative future.
Thriving As Work and Technology Evolve
As the world rapidly changes around us and aspects of our lives and work are reimagined by or even replaced with technology, it's imperative that we also reimagine ourselves, so as to not get left behind. In order to excel in a technologically evolving world, we need knowledge and experience.
CNM broke ground on its new skilled trades facility in June 2023. The 61,000-square-foot facility is slated to open before CNM's fall 2025 term. The building will host classroom and lab space for CNM’s Carpentry, Electrical, Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC), Plumbing and Gas Fitting, Welding, and Industrial Technology (Mechatronics) programs.
Break It Down, Build It Up
If you’re naturally inclined toward building things and understanding how they work, you might be well suited for CNM’s Skilled Trades and Design Technologies programs of study, which include Architecture, Aviation Maintenance, Carpentry and Construction, Electric Vehicle Technology, Environmental Science, Geographic Information Technology, HVAC, Plumbing, and Welding.
Are you interested in working in New Mexico’s burgeoning film industry? Or maybe you’re leaning more toward a career in the medical field? Perhaps your good taste and creativity find you drawn elsewhere—like learning to brew beer and manage a brewery or toward Culinary Arts, Cosmetology, or Video Game Design. In the way of Fine Arts, CNM offers Film & Digital Media, Fine Arts, and even Theatre studies.
What’s Your New Future?
Whatever you can imagine for your future, CNM prides itself on promoting hands-on learning within its programs, even providing apprenticeships throughout and industry credentials upon graduation, depending on the program, certificate, or degree. Learn more about CNM’s programs, certificates and degrees at cnm.edu and dream your new future into being. The application deadline for CNM’s fall semester is Aug. 6, 2025.