Fort Lewis College introduced three new deans this academic year. The college brought in Dr. Jesse Peters from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke to head the School of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Steven Elias from New Mexico State University to head the School of Business Administration, and it promoted Dr. Richard Fulton from within the Teacher Education Department to be the new dean of the School of Education. The Independent sat down with each of them to learn more about their history and their visions for Fort Lewis College.
Editor’s Note: The following interviews have been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.
Dr. Jesse Peters
Dean of Arts and Sciences
Q: What drew you to teaching and higher education?
A: “I always liked academics. I did well in high school, I was the valedictorian and decided to go to college. My parents were both very supportive of that. They really liked education and thought that it was the key to success, so there was never any doubt about whether or not I could go, but you know finances and location are a factor so, to shorten the story, I ended up getting some scholarships and ended up attending Emory University.”
Q: What did you study while attending Emory?
A: “I thought I would major in business - that’s how I started out. And then I switched to literature because I had a very dynamic faculty member; and I thought reading literature and thinking about ideas and discussing those ideas was a really worth while thing to do, so I majored in English. I minored in Sociology.”
Q: How did you become involved with Native American literature?
A: “I was going to do Southern literature, but I ended up taking a Native American literature course, and I ended up really identifying with that literature.”
Q: What do you plan on bringing to this position from your work at UNC at Pembroke?
A: “Most of what we do at a college or university comes down to creating a strong community that helps students choose their educational paths, so I feel like I can help to facilitate that community.”
Q: How will you use your background in Native American literature to engage with our Native American student population?
A: “I think we should really do all we can to leverage the history of this institution and its connection with indigenous communities. We have over 30 percent Native American student population, and I think we need to look for all the ways we can, to let those voices and experiences inform who we are as an institution”
Dr. Steven Elias
Dean of the School of Business Administration
Q: What drew you to higher education?
A: “I never set out to be an administrator. I was getting a master’s degree and gave a guest lecture in a class and really loved it. Then I started teaching my own classes, loved it, and realized I need to get a Ph.D., so I was teaching through that process and then just decided I was going to be an academic.”
Q: What do you bring from working at New Mexico State University in terms of fundraising?
A: “That was grant work, so that was different. That’s not to say we can’t apply for grants, but there, I was the principal investigator on a grant that was multi-year grant that was over 4 million dollars. Here I'm doing infinitely less of that and more fundraising at a more traditional sense in terms of basically finding donors that want to invest in the college.”
Q: What is your goal when you travel on behalf of Fort Lewis College in your capacity as dean of the School of Business Administration?
A: “There’s several goals. The big one, the big one is fundraising, sure. Another is reconnecting the alumni with the college. A lot of them are connected but haven’t had folks coming out to the Front Range much over the past several years, so we made a point to do that. So, building those relationships is really important.”
Q: Is there anything you want the students to know that we didn’t cover?
A: “The School of Business, we as a whole, the faculty and I are going to get together and talk about the strategic direction for SOBA, but it's pretty clear to me that we're going to put an emphasis on small business development and entrepreneurship. That's something Durango needs.”
Dr. Richard Fulton
Dean of the School of Education
Q: How did you get into teaching and higher education yourself?
A: “It’s been a long time coming. When I was in college, I used to work up at Colvig Silver Camps which is just up the road here, Florida, on Florida Road, up towards Lemon. As a camp counselor, I always thought it was fun working with kids, and in that case it was more high school-aged kids doing outdoor adventures and stuff. I thought: wouldn’t it be cool to have some version of camp together with traditional school and have a teaching career in something that allowed young people to have some of the experiences you get during summer camp but at school during the year. I ended up being in, working in, environmental outdoor education for school districts for a number of years and then I got my teaching certificate, and then started working in schools that were more alternative schools for at-risk kids that had more flexibility you might say, to be able to have some outdoor experiences intertwined with their regular school experience.”
Q: How did your own education affect how you taught as a teacher and also how you run the Teacher Education Program at Fort Lewis College now?
A: “Probably like a lot of young people going through middle school, well particularly high school, I wasn't always super engaged with school, for probably a lot of different reasons. I always wished it was more active and relevant and meaningful, and I think you might find that in a number of teachers. At the time, I thought I was pretty neat, but later I realized a lot of people have that same experience, and then they turn that around as a motivator to become an educator and try and make school experience for the next generation more interesting, more relevant, more engaging, and let people get more fired up, you know during their high school years. I think that probably was part of my motivation I guess to not only like be that kind of teacher, but then eventually help start schools that had a more experiential approach to them.”
Q: What expertise do you bring from being a faculty member to your new position as an administrator?
A:”If you look at any faculty, they all have some passion about wanting to do, everyone has their own expertise, and therefore sort of their own passion in this place, in their discipline, so it’s really like encouraging people who want to do that.”
Q: What is your vision for creating the teachers of tomorrow?
A: “It’s keep that passion, that, and that idealism cause that's the light that will take you through the inevitable challenges that make you think it’s not worth doing.”