Colorado Springs

    Founded as a health resort because of its refreshing climate, Colorado Springs is known as a center of electronics and aerospace industries, military installations, and amateur sports. It is located at the junction of the High Plains and the Rocky Mountains at an altitude of 6,035 feet. Its location in the southwest and its civic and cultural amenities contribute to a quality of life attractive to a broad spectrum of people. Currently the population of Colorado Springs is approximately 300,000 in a metropolitan area of 400,000.
 

The Colorado College

    The college is a four-year undergraduate liberal arts institution founded in 1874, two years before Colorado became a state. Located on a 79-acre campus adjacent to the business section of Colorado Springs, it has easy access to both the downtown area and the nearby mountains which provide a spectacular backdrop and a vast natural laboratory. Of the approximately 2,000 students enrolled, one-third come from Colorado and the remainder represent the other 49 states and several foreign countries. The faculty of 150 professors is active in research and scholarship, with a common commitment to placing quality undergraduate teaching as its first priority.

    The Colorado College Block Plan is a unique format that encourages seminar style teaching, permits extensive field work in a subject, and enables the college to engage as visiting teachers individuals who would not be available for a conventional semester-long course. The Block Plan divides the academic year into eight three-and-one-half week segments or blocks. During a block students take, and faculty teach, only one full-time course covering approximately the same amount of material addressed in a semester-long course under the traditional semester system. Class size is normally limited to 25, while the average class size is closer to 16, providing an intimate and intense learning environment. An extended course format allows students limited opportunities to extend the study of a subject over a semester or entire academic year.
 

Economics and Business Department

    A full range of courses covering major aspects of economics and business is offered in the department. Students meeting individual course prerequisites are encouraged to take these courses as past of their liberal arts education regardless of the academic major they select. The thirteen faculty members in the Department also support an Economics major and, in association with the Political Science Department, two Political Economy majors. Each year approximately 20 percent of the graduates leave the Colorado College with a major from the Department. Approximately 75 percent of all Colorado College students take at least the introductory Principles of Economics course.

    The Perspectives Program is designed to supplement faculty efforts and to bring to campus role models and expertise related to the business world.

The Perspectives Program

    The Perspectives on Business in a Changing World Program is a continuing program of visiting faculty, executives-in-residence, lectures, symposia, and other activities designed to discuss and evaluate business as an institution in our society. The particular visitors, speakers and activities in any given academic year are intended to broaden the campus discussion of business to include a variety of fields and points of view. Faculty and students from different disciplines come together with visitors experienced in operating and observing business. Together, they explore, from a liberal arts perspective, the social, political, ethical, and technological dimensions associated with the varied and rapidly changing role of business in the world.

Intended as a flexible "umbrella" over these activities, the Perspectives Program is designed to accommodate other programs and change as student needs and the critical dimensions of the business world evolve.

Schlessman Visiting Executives-in-Residence Program

    A generous endowment by the Schlessman Family Foundation of Denver allows the Economics and Business Department to invite several mid-level and senior executives to campus each year for prolonged periods of time (a week up to a full 3 1/2 week block) during which they examine the role of business in society. This program bridges the gap between abstract knowledge about, and practical involvement in, the business world. Individuals are brought to campus who can provide a record of active leadership in and a solid contemplation of business in America and the world. They help teach a departmental course, serve as a visiting lecturer in other courses, meet with students both individually and in groups, talk to gatherings within the Pikes Peak region, and enjoy time for their own reading, discussion, and contemplation. Often it is mutually desirable for a prospective Visiting Executive to come to campus initially as a department visitor and experience the rapid pace of the Block Plan.
 

Schlessman Distinguished Visiting Professor

    This program brings a business scholar to campus for a block of teaching. It gives us yet another opportunity to keep the study of business alive by offering special elective courses to our students while also exposing departmental faculty to noted scholars in the field of business.

Schlessman Distinguished Visiting Alumnus

    This program is designed to give students exposure to more recent graduates who have met with early success and promise to attain executives status in the course of their careers.

Departmental Visitors Program

    This program brings to the Colorado College campus a broad range of individuals active in business. While many of these people cannot commit to the time involved in a prolonged stay at Colorado College, they can for a few days share with students and faculty their expertise and insight. The Visitors Program is designed to take advantage of such expertise to provide each visitor with an opportunity to participate in a class, meet with smaller groups of students, and talk with faculty on campus.

    Visitors coming to campus each year under this program can combine their visit with business in the region. Often informal invitations are made for individuals to visit campus next time they have business close to Colorado Springs or know that they will be traveling through the region.

Food for Thought Program

    Begun informally as an opportunity to let the students have Visiting Executives all to themselves for a time, the Food for Thought program has become one of the most active aspects of the Perspectives Program. As least once per block, visitors, faculty members and sometimes students involved in independent research, gather with other majors and some departmental faculty in a classroom with soft drinks and fast food to carry on a free-wheeling discussion of topics of particular interest to students.

Pikes Peak Area Business Roundtable

    The Economics and Business Department sponsors a series of meetings each academic year providing a forum for speakers who can stimulate thought and discussion about topics of relevance to business. Local alumni and friends of The Colorado College active in business are invited to join faculty and students at these meetings. The Roundtable also allows students and faculty to meet and become acquainted with business leaders from the community.

    Some of the speakers at the Roundtable sessions are drawn from the visiting executives and departmental visitors programs. Other speakers are individuals from the Rocky Mountain region who are asked to spend a day at the college to address a roundtable session as well as meet with faculty and students.
 

H. Chase Stone Endowed Lecture

    H. Chase Stone served as eighth President of the First National Bank in Colorado Springs and enjoyed a distinguished career in banking. Always active in community affairs, he served with distinction many institutions, including the Colorado College as a trustee. In his honor, the H. Chase Stone Memorial Lecture has been established by a generous  gift from the First National Bank, allowing the Colorado College to bring distinguished members of the banking and financial community to campus and the community an individual uniquely qualified to provide insight and provocative perspectives to key elements of banking and financial institutions.

    Though not formally a part of the Perspectives Program, the H. Chase Stone Endowed Lecture provides the occasional opportunity to take advantage of a noted speaker's presence on campus to continue the discussion of business.
 
 

For additional information about any of the programs mentioned on this site please send inquires to:
Professor Larry Stimpert
Director of the Perspectives Program
Economics and Business Department
Colorado College
14 East Cache La Poudre
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80903
                       (719) 389-6418