Fort Lewis College plans to build a humanities lab in the Center of Southwest Studies that will serve as a collaborative space for student workshops, mentorships and research opportunities. (Durango Herald file)
Fort Lewis College plans to build a humanities lab in the Center of Southwest Studies that will serve as a collaborative space for student workshops, mentorships and research opportunities. (Durango Herald file)

Fort Lewis College has announced plans to build a humanities lab in the Center of Southwest Studies using a $1.35 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The lab will be “a collaborative space where students can participate in workshops, receive mentorship, pursue research opportunities, and engage with visiting scholars and community knowledge holders,” a news release by the college said Tuesday.

The college described the project as reinforcing Fort Lewis College’s role as Colorado’s only Native American-serving public liberal arts college and supporting the college’s goals surrounding community engagement, reconciliation and inclusive education.

“Humanistic methods are not just about studying human history and culture in isolation, they also help us better understand our relationships with non-human others and the places we inhabit and steward,” said Cory Pillen, a principal investigator of the grant and a professor of Art History in the Department of Art & Design and an affiliated faculty member in the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. “We hope to create transformative educational experiences that prepare students to think critically, collaboratively, and ethically about the present, past, and future.”

The grant will also go toward the development of new Liberal Arts core learning modules, the creation of co-taught upper-division courses, student fellowships, peer mentors, teaching assistants, faculty development workshops, guest speakers and undergraduate research projects.

The project intends to expand interdisciplinary research opportunities that will connect students and faculty across disciplines like Native American and Indigenous studies, environmental studies, anthropology, art and social sciences.

Tirakuna: The FLC Hub for Humanistic Engagement, an open-access online education resource, will also be launched through the project.

“Tirakuna,” a Quechua term, means ”earth beings,” or “mountains and hills,” which Inca traditions viewed as living and sentient.

Project leads in addition to Pillen are Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies Megan Alvarado-Saggese, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability Michael Drake, Assistant Professor of Native American & Indigenous Studies Ryan Rhadigan and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Christopher Webb.

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