In its ongoing quest to increase revenues, Fort Lewis College is going to begin investing some of its assets in the stock market.

On Wednesday, the college’s Board of Trustees selected Public Financial Management Group to handle its transactions, although a contract probably won’t be signed until the end of the year, FLC spokesman Mitch Davis said. Actual investing isn’t expected to begin until early 2016.

“They had really good experience with higher education,” said Steve Schwartz, vice president for finance and administration for FLC, “and that was one of the deciding factors. We’re just putting our toe in the water and learning how to do it.”

The college particularly liked PFM, Schwartz said, because it didn’t just want to invest the college’s money, it made recommendations on how to tweak policies and approaches.

The school plans to begin with an investment of $6 million, which is about 20 percent of its assets. The remainder will stay with the state treasurer.

“The Board of Trustees acknowledges they are accepting added risk,” he said. “But Colorado and other states are disinvesting in higher ed, and it behooves us to see how we might expand revenues to make up for that.”

The Colorado Futures Center at Colorado State University recently did a sustainability study regarding how the state will pay for all the programs currently covered by the General Fund.

“The study said everything will be unfunded by 2020 except prisons, Medicaid and K-12 education,” Schwartz said. “That’s really scary and means that Fort Lewis will be quasi-private, with the state still owning the buildings and grounds but not providing operating money. We would be state-located, but not state-supported.”

Until a few years ago, all of Colorado’s state schools except for the University of Colorado were required by law to invest all funds with the Colorado state treasurer.

“His investments, as you can imagine, are quite conservative, so the return was pretty low,” Schwartz said. “Then Colorado Mesa University and CSU approached the Legislature for permission to invest their own funds and got it.”

In 2013, FLC followed their example, partnering with the Colorado School of Mines to ask the General Assembly for the same authority, and they also received it.

Over the last few years, students and faculty at colleges and universities across the nation have questioned their institutions’ investing philosophies in terms of social justice and environmental considerations. Last week, the University of California sold off $200 million in investments in coal and tar sands, considered a success by a student-led group, Fossil Free UC. The UC system spokesman told Mother Jones, the school divested because of concerns about sustainability of those fossil fuels, but retained its $10 billion in stocks of oil-and-gas firms.

The UC system has, however, established a set of standards that include environmental issues such as climate change and social issues such as human rights and ethics. What will Fort Lewis do in this regard?

“The board has not decided on an investment philosophy yet but will later in the fall,” Davis said. “They’re planning to have conversations with faculty, staff and students to determine what that philosophy should be.”

The decision to enter the stock market represents one of many ways the college is working on the income side of the ledger, which includes improving or getting better amenities on campus by collaborating with other entities such as the Smith Complex with the city of Durango.

“It’s hard because we’re not a technology-transfer institution, not a research institution,” Schwartz said. “We’re looking at things we can do with the (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines that can be profit centers and renting space on our lights for cell towers, but those are all really small things.”

The biggest revenue increase will come from increasing enrollment across all disciplines, he said.

The college is beginning a 15-month strategic planning process next week that will include different sectors of the campus as well as members of the community.

abutler@durangoherald.com