{"id":22274,"date":"2025-05-12T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-opportunity-to-succeed-fort-lewis-colleges-new-president-outlines-bold-vision\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:12:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:12:50","slug":"the-opportunity-to-succeed-fort-lewis-colleges-new-president-outlines-bold-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-opportunity-to-succeed-fort-lewis-colleges-new-president-outlines-bold-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The opportunity to succeed\u2019: Fort Lewis College\u2019s new president outlines bold vision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Heather
Heather Shotton will take over as president of Fort Lewis College on July 1. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Nobody has shied away from calling Heather Shotton\u2019s ascension to the Fort Lewis College presidency historic.<\/p>\n

When she steps into the president\u2019s office on July 1, Shotton will become the first Indigenous president of a college she says is truly unique. And yes, she knows all colleges claim that \u2013 but she stands by it.<\/p>\n

FLC is a designated Native American-Serving Nontribal Institution. About 39% of its students are Indigenous, and it\u2019s in the process of reconciling the harms inflicted upon Native American students at the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School, which operated from 1892 to 1909.<\/p>\n

Shotton, a citizen of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and a descendant of Kiowa and Cheyenne peoples, is also the descendant of federal boarding school survivors. She is also a first-generation college graduate. Reconciliation work is personal to her. She is connected to it not only by her ancestry, but by her academic interest as well. She holds a Ph. D. in educational leadership and policy studies, and her research focuses on Indigenous higher education.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy story is reflective of those of our students,\u201d she said. \u201cI understand those students because I am them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recently adopted five-year strategic plan <\/a>lays out some ambitious goals for FLC through 2030, presumably to be executed under Shotton\u2019s leadership. The college plans to increase retention rates, which historically range from 50% to 60%<\/a>, to 70%, and ensure every student has access to resources addressing housing and food insecurity.<\/p>\n

The road ahead is one Shotton is ready to travel because, as a key developer of the plan, she helped pave it.<\/p>\n

But her sights extend beyond FLC\u2019s mesa-top campus, and it\u2019s not because she\u2019s the first Indigenous president that she hopes to put FLC on a national stage.<\/p>\n

Shotton sees FLC as a regional and community resource. Housing and child care, she notes, are shared concerns for both the college and the Durango community \u2013 issues that might be addressed through collaboration.<\/p>\n

\"Incoming
Incoming Fort Lewis College President Heather Shotton takes a selfie with graduates behind her on May 3 during the commencement ceremony in Whalen Gym. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The college\u2019s work can be a model, Shotton hopes, not just for former boarding schools, but to colleges nationwide navigating the rugged landscape of higher education, and those that have an interest in addressing their histories of harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hope and our desire is that we can take the lessons that we are learning in our process and provide frameworks and models for how you can engage with this work in responsible ways and in respectful ways, and share that with other institutions who have a desire to do reconciliation of some sort,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an opportunity to show how \u201cinstitutions can get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s headed to the president\u2019s office after a three-year stint as the vice president of diversity affairs. That\u2019s the kind of position that some institutions are eliminating or renaming in light of President Donald Trump\u2019s executive order proscribing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.<\/p>\n

Shotton wrote at length in her cover letter about her commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, and has no intention of leaving that mission behind now. The position she is vacating will stay, she said, title and all, and her intent is to deepen those efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talk about equity gaps, that\u2019s important for any student that we serve, that all of our students have the opportunity to succeed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The college should explore and address the unmet needs of any group of students that isn\u2019t succeeding at the overall rate of the student body \u2013 that\u2019s the pragmatic way the new president views DEI.<\/p>\n

As for federal blow back, Shotton\u2019s answer is curt: \u201cWe continue to ensure that we\u2019re complying with state and federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t confuse Shotton\u2019s commitment to closing equity gaps with a lack of commitment to academic freedom and diversity.<\/p>\n

She is not anxious to play Monday morning quarterback on the Jackson Clark controversy. The current interim president canceled a talk set to be delivered<\/a> by the Durango business owner titled \u201cSaving Navajo Weaving\u201d after some Indigenous organizers found the premise \u2013 that white traders rescued the art form from the precipice of extinction \u2013 to be offensive, and threatened to protest.<\/p>\n

But Shotton does stand firmly behind key pillars of the academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that it\u2019s helpful to say what I would\u2019ve done,\u201d Shotton said. \u201cWhat I can tell you, as president, in those situations, my approach is always to uphold full academic freedom and freedom of speech and to provide a safe space for us to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a sentimentally decorated office \u2013 not yet moved into the executive workspace \u2013 Shotton has an air of excitement about her as she mulls a presidency set to begin in just over seven weeks, and the challenges she will face.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident in the people that are here,\u201d she said with a smile.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this story included imprecise wording when it referred to Jackson Clark as a contentious businessman. Rather, it is his defense of \u201cThe Chief\u201d \u2013 a statue of a cartoonish Native American figure that stands in front of his business \u2013 that has been perceived as controversial<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heather Shotton to take over July 1 as first Indigenous president of FLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[155,132,28,1097,561],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-education","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines","tag-indigenous-people","tag-native-american"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77643,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22274\/revisions\/77643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22274"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}