The Fort Lewis College Life-Long Learning Lecture Program welcomes you back to live presentations!
The Life-Long Learning Lecture Series has been active on campus for the past 23 years. Co-sponsored by the President’s Office and the Professional Associates of Fort Lewis College, LLL Series aims to enrich the intellectual life of the College and community by offering free presentations on a wide variety of subjects.
These Thursday evening programs are free and run from 7–8:30 p.m. The first presentation on January 19th will be in the Roshong Recital Room in Jones Hall, and all subsequent talks will be back in Room 130 Noble Hall.
For additional information on the LLL series, please contact Professional Associate Gary Rottman at gsorcer@hotmail.com.
January 19* A Short History of Ragtime and Early Jazz
Join professional pianist Adam Swanson in Roshong Recital Hall to uncover the genesis of all American popular music. Swanson will include a slideshow with antique sheet-music covers, photographs of composers and bands. Learn about your favorite composers from Scott Joplin to George Gershwin and hear examples played live with a spirited Q&A to follow – all in Roshong Recital Hall, Jones Building.
January 26 Community Sustainability: Framing, Planning, and Action
City of Durango Sustainability Manager, Marty Pool, will give an overview of the fundamental principles which guide sustainability work and then discuss how these principles are specifically applied to local sustainability planning and action. He will also review the City of Durango Sustainability Plan, recently updated in the summer of 2022.
February 2 Regeneratively Managed Livestock and the Future
First-generation bison rancher Sarah Gleason will discuss why regeneratively managed livestock is good for the environment and essential for healthy soil and thriving ecosystems, Gleason will also examine how looming problems such as climate change, world hunger, water scarcity, and struggling rural economies impact the relationship between grazing animals and healthy ecosystems.
February 9 Blackjacks and Yellowbellies: A Saunter in a Ponderosa Pine Forest
Join retired biology professor Syl Allred for a walk through a Ponderosa Forest and smell vanilla and butterscotch, explore fire and lightning-strike scars, examine female and male pine cones, distinguish blackjacks from yellowbellies, and recognize parasitic mistletoe infections, and see witches’ brooms. Allred will help you see why the charismatic Abert squirrel is integral to our Colorado ecosystem.
February 16 The History and Magic of Motown Records
Take a musical journey with former Los Angeles radio broadcaster, VP, GM, and performer Bob Griffith through Motown’s musical and business models. Motown provided America with artists and music that still is vibrant today. Griffith will look at Berry Gordy and his stable of legendary artists. Griffith, a former Detroiter, will provide first-hand experience and behind-the-scenes perspective of an era that lives on from its beginnings in the late 1950s to today.
CANCELED - February 23 ‘Chaos in 14 Lines:’ The Ever-Evolving Sonnet
“The sonnet is an endlessly fluid, re-imagined form,” says Diane Seuss, winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. “It has been hushed, lushed, fragmented, fogged, elated, flipped, and freaked.” FLC English Professor Candace Nadon will explore the changeable, ever-evolving, ever-adaptable form of the sonnet, from Shakespeare, Donne, Keats, Frost, Millay, to Hayes, Seuss, and beyond. Attendees will leave with exercises to create their own “little world (s) made cunningly.”
March 2 Rain Gardens: The Ultimate Water-wise Landscape
Landscape designer and owner of Columbine Landscapes, Eva Montane, will talk about native plants and water-wise landscape design. Learning how to deeply hydrate your landscape not only nourishes your plants, but also conserves water in a warming climate. She will discuss how to passively harvest water with simple rain garden techniques to make your landscape more lush, low-maintenance, and fire and erosion resistant.
March 9 Russia-Ukraine: Past, Present, Prospects
Retired State Department official Tom Huffaker worked on Russian policy for almost half of his 24 years as a US Diplomat including five years in Moscow. He will discuss the historical context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of both countries, survey current developments and offer thoughts on how the conflict could play out in the months and years ahead.
March 16 Reading the Geologic Landscape of Durango
Retired research geologist and adjunct professor Bob Krantz will discuss how the rocks and landforms around Durango provide evidence for a geologic history that goes back more than a billion years, revealing a story that includes ancient shorelines, powerful volcanos, and massive glaciers. We can all learn to interpret this evidence using some basic concepts and methods which will be illustrated.
March 23 – Spring break, no program
March 30 ACTivate Shakespeare
Artistic Director and Producer of Durango PlayFest and FLC Associate Professor of Theater Felicia Lansbury Meyer asks: What do you think when you consider Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’? Since we all have our own ideas, Meyer plans to discuss the themes that still resonate today. She will analyze one scene and consider various interpretations. And since Shakespeare’s plays were written to be performed, she promises to explore the text with us – on our feet!
April 6 The Incredible, Edible Honeypot Ant
Retired professor of biology John R. Conway will discuss the biology and ecology of the unusual honeypot ant, Myrmecocystus mexicanus, based on his extensive research in the Garden of the Gods, Colorado and the Southwestern Research Station in Arizona. Conway taught for 40 years and retired in 2016 after leading research trips with students to the Caribbean and Hawaii, and having traveled extensively throughout the world
April 13 The Invention of the Novel: Who, Where, When and Why?
FLC Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Cheryl Nixon will explore the beginnings of the novel in Western literature. England in the 1700’s witnessed the rise of literacy accompanied by the newspaper, magazine and the novel. The early novel took surprisingly experimental shapes with reader-enticing topics, ranging from politics to romance to fantastical stories. This will be Nixon’s farewell as she has been named the 10th and first woman President of Berea College in Kentucky.
April 20 Motivationnel Environments and Psychological Responses
The concept ‘personal best’ has come into being in our time and has changed perceptions of sport competition and classroom performance. Academics have studied it extensively, renaming it as achievement goal perspective theory. Susumu Iwasaki joined the FLC faculty in 2016 in the Department of Health and Human Performance, (exercise science). He will discuss the importance of self-perception as a factor in achievement in both sport and the classroom.
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