Fort Lewis College Paper Format & Writing Requirements

Fort Lewis College at a glance

A public liberal arts college on a mesa overlooking Durango in the San Juan Mountains, descended from a 1911 agricultural school on deeded army-fort land, known for tuition-free education for enrolled members of federally recognized tribes, an adventure-education major that uses the mountains as a classroom, and one of the more diverse student bodies among Colorado four-year schools.

The campus sits in Durango, Colorado, operates as a public (liberal arts) institution, and enrolls about 4,000 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1911 with an acceptance rate around 81%, FLC pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles Fort Lewis College actually requires

FLC courses predominantly require MLA 9 or APA 7. That is not a trivial preference: it decides your title page, heading levels, in-text punctuation and reference format on every graded document.

• MLA 9: used across humanities and writing-sequence courses
• APA 7: used across social science, nursing and business courses

Verify against the specific course syllabus anyway — instructors can override departmental defaults, and the first paper is where they enforce it.

The writing requirement, decoded

The liberal-arts core builds writing through composition sequences and upper-division writing-intensive courses across the majors, and the campus Writing Center tutors every discipline.

Plan the sequence early: composition requirements compound, and students who defer them discover the advanced seminars — where the writing-intensity lives — conflict with major courses later. The registrar's degree audit shows exactly which flags remain; check it each semester.

Three things about Fort Lewis College papers that surprise new students

• The campus traces to 1911, when the old Fort Lewis army-post land at Hesperus was deeded to Colorado for an agricultural school, and it completed its move to the Durango mesa in 1956.
• Colorado waives tuition for enrolled members of federally recognized tribes who attend Fort Lewis, a benefit long tied to the school's fort-era land grant, and Native American students make up a large share of enrollment.
• The Adventure Education major, one of a handful of undergraduate programs of its kind in the country, sends classes onto the San Juans' rivers, peaks and canyons as part of the regular curriculum.

None of these appear in the course description. All of them appear in the rubric. Students who learn them in week one report smoother first-semesters than students who meet them at the deadline.

Assignments Fort Lewis College students face most

• Essay — most frequently assigned across FLC's programs
• Research Paper — most frequently assigned across FLC's programs
• Coursework — most frequently assigned across FLC's programs

Popular programs at FLC include environmental science, business administration, psychology — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.