The Red Mountain campus occupies 98 acres of beautiful Sonoran Desert in northeast Mesa. Opened in 2001, this comprehensive campus offers an intimate college environment with advanced classrooms, wireless technology, and outdoor teaching spaces. Course offerings at Red Mountain focus on university transfer programs.

The campus is home to the iconic saguaro cacti, 800-year-old ironwood trees, ocotillo, ephedra, jojoba, creosote bush and many other remarkable trees, bushes, perennials and annuals. Roadrunners, quail, rattlesnakes, desert cottontails and coyotes also reside on campus.

Professors, inspired by these surroundings, bring that inspiration into the classroom. The outdoor laboratory and teaching space allows them to integrate the ecology and beauty of the desert, plants and animals into a wide range of college disciplines. English classes incorporate sustainability and environmental issues into their curriculum, assigning compositions on these subjects. Art students sketch the plants and scenery, gaining an appreciation for the beauty of the desert. Geography students use scientific instruments to search for different microclimates on campus. Every semester, future geographers are seen searching campus for the hottest and coldest locations, measuring wind speeds and humidity.

Yoga students learn to stay present walking the two-mile trail around the perimeter of campus. The desert environment lends itself particularly well to biology courses. Labs are taught on identifying Sonoran Desert plants, natural history, plant adaptations, soil ecology, leaf morphology, plant anatomy, vegetation analysis, floral morphology and pollination.

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