Retired Fort Lewis College professor Jim Fitzgerald and his wife, Terry Fitzgerald, recently died in a house fire in Bayfield. Married more than 62 years, they built a life rooted in education, community and care for the land.
Jim Fitzgerald spent more than 30 years at Fort Lewis College, first as a professor of Spanish and later as a professor of sociology and human services. His approach to teaching, shaped by early service in the Peace Corps, emphasized learning rooted in community, lived experience, and the knowledge of local people.
Fitzgerald and his wife served as Peace Corps volunteers in Chile in the 1960s and later worked in Puerto Rico and Ecuador. Those experiences informed his belief that education should empower communities and help students understand their responsibilities to one another and the places they inhabit.
“Long before experiential or community-based learning had names, my dad believed you couldn’t truly educate students unless they were living and working in community,” said his daughter, Janine Fitzgerald.
After joining the FLC faculty in 1970, Fitzgerald taught Spanish before moving into sociology and developed programs that placed students directly in communities. Among those was the Mexico program, which he later co-led with Janine Fitzgerald for 17 years. Through the program, Fort Lewis College students lived with host families in rural Mexican communities, taught English in middle schools, and learned firsthand about migration, poverty, and what it means to leave — and return — home.
The program emphasized relationship-building, reflection, and shared responsibility and profoundly shaped the lives of students, Janine Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald was also a fierce advocate for bilingual education and the preservation of Indigenous and regional languages. A sociolinguist by training, he challenged elitist ideas about “proper” language and championed Spanish as it was spoken across the Southwest, as well as Indigenous languages that had long been marginalized in formal education.
In the 1970s, he worked closely with Northern Ute educator Annie Batini and advocated for teaching approaches that honored language, culture and community knowledge. Family members and colleagues said his commitment to language justice influenced generations of students and helped shape Fort Lewis College’s broader engagement with bilingual and Indigenous education.
Among Fitzgerald’s most enduring contributions at Fort Lewis College was the creation of the Social Ecology Field School, an immersive summer program that brought students into communities across the Southwest to learn sociology, ecology and social theory through hands-on work and shared living. Colleagues say the program’s influence continues to ripple through generations of alumni, many of whom have gone on to careers in education, community-based work, agriculture and public service.
“Jim and Terry graciously shared with thousands of students their love and skills of living in relationship to land and community,” said Becky Clausen, chair and professor of sociology and human services at Fort Lewis College. “Thousands is not an exaggeration.”
Clausen said Fitzgerald developed the Field School to teach in deep relation with the world, embedding learning in place, community and collective labor. After Fitzgerald retired in 2009, Clausen carried on the Field School, continuing the tradition he established.
“He was deeply committed to praxis — the relationship between theory, action and reflection as essential to a vibrant and liberatory educational system,” Clausen said. “Students became new people who saw their role in the world in more hopeful ways.”
Fitzgerald also played a central role in creating the Sociology Block Program, an immersive, semester-long experience that places students in community-based work while engaging in academic reflection. The program is now required for all sociology majors and remains one of the department’s most enduring educational models.
Jim and Terry Fitzgerald often taught alongside one another, and even in retirement they remained deeply engaged educators. From 2009 to 2018, Field School students spent multiple nights each summer camping in the Fitzgeralds’ hay barn, learning practical skills while sharing stories, meals and laughter.
Mornings often began with Jim teaching students how to milk a cow, followed by hands-on practice. Terry welcomed students into the home to teach cheesemaking and other homesteading skills, emphasizing patience, care and shared responsibility. Their daughters, Gretchen and Janine, frequently contributed knowledge related to forestry, ecology, language and poetry. Shared, collective knowledge — not simply individual expertise — was central to the Fitzgeralds’ approach to teaching.
Janine Fitzgerald also served Fort Lewis College as a professor for 30 years before retiring in 2024.
“They gave us a home, a community and a sense that we are here to make the world a better place,” Janine Fitzgerald said.
Former student Willie Ablao said Fitzgerald’s teaching continues to guide how he sees the world.
“Jim taught me that the lenses we use to view the world matter,” Ablao said. “That lesson still guides how I understand where I am and what I’m doing.”
Ablao said Fitzgerald’s approach to experiential learning and his stories about service influenced his decision to join the Peace Corps after graduating from Fort Lewis College.
Fort Lewis College President Heather Shotton, Ph.D., said the Fitzgeralds’ legacy continues to inform the institution’s values and approach to education.
“Jim and Terry lived their values every day and invited students into that way of being,” Shotton said. “They showed us what education rooted in care, community, and place can look like, and their legacy lives on through the countless students whose lives they helped shape.”
Faculty colleagues say the Fitzgeralds’ influence is inseparable from Fort Lewis College’s commitment to experiential learning, sustainability, community engagement, and lives on through the students who carry those lessons forward.