The marketable future of Fort Lewis College was discussed in a strategic meeting Jan. 21, 2016, in the Colorado Room on campus.

The meeting was facilitated by Ann Duffield, founding principal of Ann Duffield and Colleagues LLC, and it was open to a mix of faculty, staff and students.

The first half of the meeting focused on the importance of technology to the future of FLC Evan Wick, FLC student body vice president, said.

Although the school has great online resources for students, the school is disadvantaged because it does not currently offer full online courses for students, Wick said.

Online course offerings would be huge in terms of marketing, Wick said. Students could benefit from online courses if they live far away or have to work during typical school hours.

“If we’re looking to increase enrollment, or at least stop the decline, you have to look at opportunities like this,” Wick said.

There are online course discussions in action, and there will hopefully be more options for future students in this area, he said

In developing online courses, a teaching and learning center would help teachers create effective courses, Patrick Fredricks, leadership programs coordinator for FLC’s leadership center, said.

The second topic of discussion in the forum asked the question: What is FLC’s future as a public liberal arts college? A debate ensued about how FLC defines liberal arts and what direction the school ought to take with this issue and marketing the school.

The discussion of liberal arts at the forum showed that defining the liberal arts debate is challenging.

Wick said the debate about liberal arts is really a debate about majors, but this may not be the right angle.

“They identify liberal arts as certain majors when personally I feel that what it should be about is a liberal arts education no matter what your major,” said Wick.

Fredricks said he thinks the idea of a liberal arts education is very important in terms of creating critical thinkers across multiple fields, but agrees that it is not needed as the only marketing strategy.

Wick said the school must be seen as both an education system as well as a business, so the school must choose the most financially viable direction for marketing the college.

“There is no argument, more students are going toward STEM than the humanities,” Wick said.

The school has the potential to market both STEM and the tradition of liberal arts at FLC, but the school needs to do a better job at marketing science based departments which are excelling, he said.

Official changes to the school will be implemented starting in 2017, and the decision making process is going to be long, Wick said.

This is FLC’s vision for the next 5 years, but there will be more meetings open in the future, he said

Fredricks said he appreciates the participants in the strategy meetings and their ongoing concern with student success and personal attention, and Wick said he wishes for more student attendance in future meetings to provide more student perspectives on these issues.