Welcome to our digital release of the 7th Edition of West Colfax Lately! If you missed it in our prior newsletter, you can see the Cover HERE. We will be releasing the magazine content through this blog up until our print release in early October. Stay tuned for more! And please support our ADVERTISERS. They make our magazine possible!

What’s Next?

This pandemic era challenged us all . . . the social and economic impacts of this time affected organizations both large and small. As our community turns our collective attention to renewal, reconnections, and recovery, we look to our community leaders to chart a course to a brighter future. This group of leaders—from elected policy makers to civic-minded business influencers to nonprofit leaders—all play a role in shaping West Colfax corridor’s future. We asked them to share their thoughts on what is on the horizon in this round-up of “What’s Next?” for Lakewood’s West Colfax Corridor.

Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design – Brent Fitch, President
As Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design prepares for our fall semester, the first time we welcome students back since March of 2020, our leadership team is focused on four near-term priorities.

Returning students back to our historic campus. First and foremost, we are thrilled to welcome students back to campus. Our team of dedicated faculty and staff have been preparing for this return since summer and we are excited to welcome students to our campus this fall. To better support on-campus students, we are creating a support center for excellence, which will help our students find support for their non-classroom activity needs.

Enhancing our employee and faculty experience. We are leveraging the lessons learned from the pandemic to create a robust hybrid workplace. We have faculty and staff located in multiple states, so we are ensuring our technology infrastructure is well suited for a productive hybrid work environment. In addition, we continue to invest in our campus including current remodels to several administrative areas-- always mindful of the historic character of our campus that is listed in the U.S. National Registry of Historic Places. By learning from our past and appreciating our post-pandemic journey, we move toward the future with hope and excitement.

Enhancing our online student experience. Many may not know that we have a number of our students who study online. We continuously seek to empower our online students with the best resources by enhancing online tools and support services. To bolster students’ online academic experience, we are testing something new this fall: digital textbooks that are fully integrated in the course outline from our student portal. This eliminates the inconvenience of physical textbooks. We will evaluate this pilot program later this year.

Expanding our brand and programs to support our student population. We believe RMCAD is on a positive trajectory, and we are working to showcase our unique learning experience and historic campus, as we continue to invest in both to support our students.

That investment includes launching a new academic program later this year: an online BFA program in Music Production. This new program will showcase the creativity of our faculty and students in new ways. We have been working on this for a few years and are excited to add this to our other eleven degree programs.

Additionally, we continue to support student interest in our mainstay academic programs, including our Interior Design degree program—one of only two such programs in the United States, accredited by the Council of Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA).

These four priority areas are a subset of the goals we are putting in place in our updated five-year strategic plan. We are proud to invest in improvements which support our students, employees, and faculty.

When I accepted this position more than a year ago, I was delighted to find this historic campus as the setting and a growing creative district as our neighbor. I am grateful for the very warm welcome I received from the RMCAD team, Mayor Paul and the Lakewood staff, and the entire 40 West Arts creative community. The level of engagement and commitment of the RMCAD team has never been higher. We look forward to our path forward together in the Lakewood community and to our mutually beneficial future.