General information about
the Center of Southwest Studies
Use the following index to jump to that section of this page:
The following are
some links to other pages on the Center of Southwest Studies website.
Historical pages:
Tools:
About the Center:
Fort Lewis College has a distinctive history in the field of
public education and, in particular, Indian education. For over
one hundred years, it has been a first-string player in helping educate Native
Americans. Qualified Native Americans from anywhere in the U.S. attend tuition-free
(this is funded by Colorado taxpayers). The Center of
Southwest Studies was established in 1964 to serve as a museum and a research
facility and to develop an interdisciplinary Southwest curriculum. The
Southwest curriculum draws from courses in Anthropology, Art, Literature,
History, and Sociology.
The Center's holdings, which focus on the Four Corners region, include over 8,000 artifacts, 16,000 volumes and numerous periodicals, and 500 special collections dating from prehistory to the present. These include approximately two linear miles of manuscripts, unbound printed materials and other collection materials, 8,400 rolls of microfilm (including 2,600 rolls of historic Southwest region newspapers), over 600 oral histories, and more than 158,000 photographs. Strengths of the Robert Delaney Southwest Research Library (named in honor of the Center's first director) include environmental and archaeological collections, and historical and contemporary works on Native American topics of the Southwest. Most of the collections are cataloged in the College's online catalog at http://opac.fortlewis.edu/.
In 1989, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education selected Southwest Studies as one of five programs of excellence in state funded higher education. As a result of the special legislative appropriation that funded this award, the Center employed an archivist in 1991; the curator and librarian joined the Center's staff in 2001 and 2002. The Center's collection of Southwestern artifacts and historical records and its large collection of books and other printed materials, many of them rare, addressing every aspect of the Southwest, are a resource for every member of the community and beyond. The Center's mission is to identify, preserve, and make accessible this resource for all who are interested in the history of the Four Corners region. Click here for more information on the Center's programs.
The Southwest Studies Center at Fort Lewis College connects individuals and communities with opportunities to explore, study, and experience the Southwest's dynamic heritage.
(This statement was developed and approved by the Center of Southwest Studies Advisory Board on May 12, 2006. Members of the Advisory Board at that time were: John Ninnemann, Chair; Rod Barker; Rita Cordalis; Ken Francis; Art Gomez; Linda MacCannell; Larry Nordby; Beverly Rich; La Titia Taylor; Jenny Trujillo; and Rick Wheelock.)
Guiding principles:
Revised by the Center of Southwest Studies Advisory Board and Interim Director, November 2006
Advisory Board: (three-year terms of office; member names are grouped here by year of current appointment expiration)
December 2007: Jenny Trujillo, Rick Wheelock, LaTitia Taylor, (vacancy). To listen to a 23-minute oral history interview with Dr. Trujillo by a Fort Lewis College student on October 18, 21, go to http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/MP3/FLCu004638.mp3
December 2008: Art Gomez, Chuck Riggs, John Ninnemann, Linda MacCannell
December 2009: Beverly Rich, Ken Francis, Larry Nordby, Rod Barker
Name
Title
Office address
Phone
970-Email address
Dr. Kevin Britz
Director (incoming, effective 7/1/2008)
(account is not yet activated)
Interim Director (through 6/30/08) &
Curator of Collections/ Public ProgramsSouthwest 136 247-7494* Julie Tapley-Booth
Events Coordinator & Office Manager
Southwest 130 247-7456* Nik Kendziorski
Assistant College Archivist
Southwest 170 247-7126* Southwest Reference Librarian & Associate Professor
Southwest 174
382-6951*
Laura Elliff
Assistant Curator Southwest 111 382-6980* elliff_l@fortlewis.edu Patrick Cruz
Assistant Curator
Southwest 130 247-7030* Susana Jones
Curatorial Assistant Southwest 130 247-7030* jones_s@fortlewis.edu Venaya Yazzie
Assistant Librarian Delaney Library 382-6982* yazzie_v@fortlewis.edu Renee Morgan
Archives Intern Delaney Library 382-6982* morgan_r@fortlewis.edu Archives archives@fortlewis.edu * Please leave your email address if leaving a message long-distance for purposes of conducting research in the collections. The Center does not have a budget to return researchers' long distance phone calls, but we will try to respond promptly by email.
Volunteers are an important aspect of the Center of Southwest Studies team. If you are interested in considering volunteering at the Center, please click here. Read about volunteers and donors who have been honored with the Center's Archival Booster Award. See the archival project possibilities.
How to reach other departments that are also housed in the Center of Southwest Studies building:
Department(s) Contact Person's Name & Title Office address
Phone 970- Email address Anthropology and (academic department) Southwest and American Indian Studies
Marge Gomez, Admin. Assistant Southwest 274 382-6923 Gomez_M@fortlewis.edu Marcella Mosher, Project Assistant Southwest 260 247-7333 Mosher_M@fortlewis.edu
We invite you to visit the Center of Southwest Studies! These are our hours:
The Exhibition Galleries are open from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday through Friday and until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. Galleries continue on these hours through the summer. Please contact the curator ahead of time to arrange for a visit during closed times.
The Robert Delaney Southwest Research Library is on its regular hours: Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. The Library is open from 1 to 4 during the College's Spring Break the week of March 2nd. Summer hours (April 28 through August 15, 2008) are 1 to 4, Monday through Friday. Please contact the librarian or archivist in advance to ask about the possibility of arranging for a visit during closed times.
Currently, permits are required for parking anywhere on campus Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. when classes are in session. Click here for information on paying for parking on campus. The meters in the several spaces along the the north wall of the Center are 25 cents per hour, and there are two handicapped-accessible spaces there.
For additional hours or when planning a research visit from afar, please phone or (much preferred by us->) email ahead to schedule an appointment. We will try to accommodate your research needs, if you schedule ahead. The Center does not have a budget for outgoing long-distance phone calls to answer reference requests, so if you do not provide an email address for our response you will need to be willing to accept a collect call from the Center.
Advance notification of expected use of special collections is welcomed. If you anticipate using collections other than the books (which are on shelves available for you to browse, but not to check out), feel free to email or otherwise contact the Archival Assistant, Nik Kendziorski, ahead of time to schedule your visit and to arrange for our staff to pull the records you are wanting to see. Likewise, feel free to contact the Librarian, Elayne Silversmith, for help with using the books and periodicals at the Delaney Southwest Research Library.
Directions to the Center/ parking:
TO REACH THE CENTER OF SOUTHWEST STUDIES (once
you're in Durango):
The Center's building, at an elevation of 6,871.48 feet, is
adjacent to the Fort Lewis College Community Concert Hall, at the north end of
campus. The building is surrounded by ample parking. The entrance
faces the round central plaza, looking southward down a large concrete walk that
leads to Reed Library.
PARKING: During the fall and winter trimesters, visitors must either pay to park in a metered space (50 cents per hour -- several spaces are at the north end of the Center) or obtain a parking permit ($2 for all day -- from a yellow metal box at the base of Sage Hall, just south of the Center -- as noted in the following paragraph) or your vehicle will be ticketed ($25 to $50 fine). Parking permits are required through late April. They are not required before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m. weekdays, or at any time on weekends, or during the school holidays at Thanksgiving and the last week of the year, or during the summer months (starting approx. 4/23/08). Parking permits are not required on campus from mid-December 11 until early January; during that period you may park in any designated parking space without charge (except, you must pay if parking in a metered space).
If you are visiting during the weekday between early September and late April, you may obtain a day pass from the Police and Parking Services Dept., Room 534 in Berndt Hall. Permits are also dispensed from the yellow permit machines located in Lot D (north of the football stadium), and Lot L (downhill from Noble and Sage Halls). The cost is $.50 for one hour, $1 for two hours, or $2 for a full day. Again, you need not pay to park on campus on weekends, before 8 a.m. any day, after 5 p.m. any day, and between late April and early September.
For further information regarding
parking, please contact the Fort Lewis College Police and Parking Services
Department at 247-7491, or phone the 24-hour Non-Emergency Police number at
247-7123.
Click here to view a map of the Fort Lewis College campus. You will need Adobe Acrobat to download the map. If you do not already have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC, click here and follow the instructions for downloading, opening, and installing Adobe Acrobat Reader (it's free), then return to this page.
A brief history of the Center of Southwest Studies
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Richard Ellis and Duane Smith |
It is dangerous to lose the knowledge of one's past; the role of the Center of Southwest Studies is to keep this from happening. The Center's founding in 1964 was envisaged by Fort Lewis College President John Reed, funded by Arthur and Morley Ballantine with a supplemental contribution from Mr. A. M. Camp, and facilitated by Fort Lewis College's contribution of space and staffing. The Ballantine family was eager to have primary research materials of the Southwest located at the Fort Lewis College Center. The Center's first Director, the late Fort Lewis College history professor Robert W. Delaney, served for twenty-two years, dividing his time between the Center and other College commitments including teaching and (from 1971 to 1984) directing the affirmative action program on campus. Staffing--the Director, a Secretary (part-time for the first twenty odd years) and limited student help--grew to include an archivist in August of 1991. A local advisory committee was active by 1965, assisting with development and with such projects as Southwest Days, an annual cultural affair sponsored by the College. Faculty members from the History, Anthropology, Art, Southwest Studies and Spanish departments assisted as adjunct personnel. History professor Duane Smith contributed much in the area of archives and manuscripts collections development. After Dr. Delaney's retirement in 1985, Dr. Smith was employed as a temporary replacement until Dr. Richard Ellis was hired as the second director of the Center in 1987. In 1995, Professor Smith and (subsequently, in addition to Smith) Dr. Philip Duke replaced Ellis as acting co-directors of the Center. After a nationwide search in 1999-2000, Dr. Andrew Gulliford was hired as director effective July of 2000, serving through March of 2005. President Bartel appointed Jeanne Brako as the Interim Director effective April of 2005. After another nationwide search in 2007-08, Dr. Kevin Britz was selected as the next director, effective July 1, 2008. Britz, currently an Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, previously served as the Vice President for Programs and Senior Curator at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon and the Deputy Director of the Stearns County Historical Society in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
According to Dr. Delaney (in his "Observations on the Center of Southwest Studies" dated June 1985 from which much of this history is drawn), "the original and stated purpose of the Center was `to collect, collate, and have ready for use by qualified users, all aspects of the history of the Southwest.'" This scope was broadened to include a museum aspect after the termination of the services of College Museum curator Homer Root in 1969-70. At that time, all of the College-owned artifacts became the responsibility of the Center. This reinforced the original intent, as noted in the College President's semi-annual report to the State Board of Agriculture in December of 1964, that the Center would be the "crown jewel of Fort Lewis College," a nucleus around which many facets of the curriculum would cluster, a unit for preserving historically significant objects and materials, a focus for better understanding the Southwest, and an instrument for attracting gifts to the College and for "abundantly enriching the experiences of many students and faculty members at the College."
The Center's first home was a temporary lean-to attached to the northern side of the Academic Building (Berndt Hall) which then housed the general library. According to an editorial in the Durango Herald on 25 September 1964, the Center was in operation there for the fall 1964 trimester. It boasted "an enormous circular desk which should give Dr. Robert Delaney, the director, ample space upon which to store the material he acquires." The Center outgrew those quarters almost immediately, but fortunately a two-story library building (later named Reed Library) was being designed. The College added a third floor to the building plans and designed the space "up there"--the highest point on campus--for the Center. It was to be (in Delaney's words) "a unit juxtaposed to the Library spatially but discrete from it functionally." The Center moved to the top of Reed Library in 1967. Its space included two offices (one for the Director, the other for the part-time Secretary), a workroom/laboratory, a large conference room, built-in wooden storage cabinets for printed materials and other documentary-type holdings, wooden shelving at both ends for library holdings, and a central display/research area called the Southwest Room. A huge ceramic tile mosaic map of the Southwest (designed by Delaney and library building architect James M. Hunter, with research assistance by College Library staff member Marguerite Norton who worked at the Center for several years and by Danny LaVarta of the Reed Library Periodicals Department) dominates the north wall in the center of this room. The decorative tile floor is from Monterey, Mexico; the blown glass/wrought-iron wall lamps are typical of a Spanish hacienda, and the conference room paneling was from the hundred-year old farm of Ward Gilmore, a local rancher. In May of 1980, the research/exhibit room on the top of Reed Library was renamed the Arthur Ballantine Southwest Research Room in honor of the late publisher of the Durango Herald who supported the college before and after its move to the Durango mesa from Hesperus.
By 1985, the Center had run out of space on the top of Reed Library. It had acquired an impressive collection of documentary materials for research, and more artifacts than could be displayed or stored on the third floor. A federal grant of $107,000 in 1967 provided for substantial collection development--including the purchase of hundreds of rolls of historical National Archives documents and regional newspapers on microfilm. The central area had become a maximally utilized exhibition area for Navajo weavings and a variety of other artifacts. A cage in the basement of the library building was filled with artifacts and research materials; a storage vault in the basement contained other collections; cabinets ringing the Ballantine Room were filled with additional collections; the work room/laboratory was given over to collections storage; institutional archives of the College were in file cabinets in a former janitor's closet under a stairway in the basement; microfilm was housed on open shelving in the same storage area as Library Periodicals in the basement--and until 1991 few of the materials were stored or described to current archival or museum standards. Few of today's standards for environmental control and archival housing of collections were commonly understood in this country as recently as the 1980s.
Nonetheless, the Center was soon recognized far and wide as a repository whose collections are actually and potentially invaluable for understanding the origins and development of the Southwestern U.S. and especially Durango and the Four Corners region. From the start--as acknowledged by the State Board of Agriculture minutes from the mid-1960s in which donations to the Center were itemized--not only primary but also secondary source materials on the Southwest were located within the Center itself rather than with the general library collection downstairs. Library Director Richard Gobble noted in 1975 (Library and Museum Committee minutes, April 4, 1975) "that the integrity of the Southwest Collection depended on maintaining in a single location all materials related to the Southwest." A guide to archival/ manuscript/ microfilm holdings, Opportunities for Research, was published in April of 1969, with revisions issued in February of 1972 and November of 1979. Delaney's plans in 1985 for a new Guide to the Manuscript Collections were not effectuated until the issuance of the guide you are reading. The first "occasional paper," a history of early Southern Ute land policy, was published in the summer of 1972; the Center has published several additional pamphlets of historical writing based on primary research since then. Today, hundreds of researchers and many more visitors draw from the historical riches of the Center's collections.
In 1989, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education recognized the importance of the Southwest Studies Center, selecting it from hundreds of applicants as one of five programs of excellence in state funded higher education. The honor came with five years of special appropriations, part of which were utilized for collection development, purchase of proper storage supplies and equipment, and the first two years of salary for the Center's archivist. In recent years the staff of the Center have established the solid foundations of a historical and cultural repository that will serve the needs of the broader College community for decades to come. In 2001 the institution moved into its purpose-designed facility that joins the Fort Lewis College Community Concert Hall as part of the Southwest cultural complex on the north end of campus. The new building includes collections exhibit, storage, conservation and research areas, along with classrooms and offices of the academic departments of Southwest Studies and Anthropology and the Office of Community Services.
In 2003 the Center was awarded a multi-year $1.6M Congressional Earmark for Native American internships and further development of the technological and collections storage infrastructure. The overall concept of the Center's earmark is to identify and recruit Native Americans who are headed into careers of Archives, Libraries, Museums, and/or Public History, provide them with the education and work experience they will need in order to practice that discipline in their own tribal areas, and improve the infrastructure of the Center of Southwest Studies in order to facilitate their on-the-job learning. The infrastructure includes the collections, the systems for housing and storing the collections, and the staff to process and make available those collections. Click here to view a poster, Sharing Native American Culture with the World, that was produced and presented at the Fall 2007 Colorado Association of Libraries conference by Becky Corning, Susan Doak, Julie Boyle, Sue Keefer and Andrea Gubser, Global Information Infrastructure class library school students of Emporia State University. (You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this poster, which is in pdf file format.)
On September 21, 2004 the Center opened "The Jewelry of Ben Nighthorse"-- the only non-NMAI-funded exhibit for the grand opening of the Smithsonian Institution's newest museum, the National Museum of the American Indian at the base of the U.S. Capitol building on the Mall in Washington, D.C. The Southern Ute Tribe funded this exhibit in the new museum in the memory of longtime tribal leader Leonard C. Burch. The Center's staff, students, and contractors produced the 1,500 square foot exhibit. This exhibit opening on the Mall was described as the most important national event that the College had ever accomplished.
A New Center for the New
Millennium:
By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is
established;
by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and
pleasant riches. (Proverbs 24:3-4)
In 2001 the collections, staff, and users of the Center of Southwest Studies moved into Fort Lewis College's $7.5 million 49,825 SF Center of Southwest Studies. Click here to read the transcription of the groundbreaking ceremony held on May 7, 1999. The State of Colorado funded $3.875 million of the construction costs; private and federal funding covered $3.625 million of the costs. Come view the new donor recognize murals--replicas of two of the Center's actual Navajo weavings--in the central foyer of the new building!
The Center includes a museum, an archival repository, a special collections library, the Office of Community Services, and classrooms, labs, and offices for the College's Anthropology and Southwest Studies academic degree programs. The groundbreaking ceremony on May 7, 1999 was followed by a fifteen-month-plus period of construction and then a period of adjustment and off-gassing before the building's use by the people and the collections in the spring of 2001. The primary architectural firm for the project was Klipp Colussy Jenks DuBois of Denver. The associate/ local architect was R. Michael Bell & Associates of Durango.
About Fort Lewis College's past:
Fort Lewis history: chronology of historical events relating to Fort Lewis College, Colorado
Historical markers walking tour of the Fort Lewis College campus
Documentation of the land and property rights of Fort Lewis at Hesperus and Durango, Colo.
Old news: comprehensive index of Fort Lewis College press releases, 1971-nearly the present
Employee awards: Fort Lewis College faculty/staff/community awards since 1973
Student awards: Fort Lewis College student awards since 1941
Graduation speakers: Fort Lewis College commencement speakers since 1914
Student government: Fort Lewis College student government officers since 1953
Website about the Old Fort Lewis campus near Hesperus, Colorado
Note regarding the history of this site: The Center of Southwest Studies' web site was originally developed for the Center of Southwest Studies by David Gilford in the summer of 1997 (it came online on September 8, 1997), using 100% federal funding provided by the Library Services & Construction Act (CFDA # 84.035) administered by the Colorado State Library. Todd Ellison drafted the architectural for the site, with input from Paul Landrum and others. Hundreds of hours of subsequent work on the site have been contributed by Debra Lehl (1999-2001), Paul Beckler (2000-01), Andrew Van Atta (2001-02), and other Fort Lewis College student workers at the Center of Southwest Studies, assisting Ellison. Major work included correcting thousands of links within the site in 2000-2001 when the URL was changed from http://www.fortlewis.edu/acad-aff/swcenter/ (which was cut off on November 21, 2001) to the simpler http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/ (debuted on August 25, 2000). Student assistant Victor Pascual redesigned the home page and the site index in the Spring and Summer of 2003 (debuted on 8/5/03) using Java Script and Macromedia Flash. The site was maintained by Todd Ellison from its inception until March of 2008.
Page revised: March 05, 2008
Center of
Southwest Studies