By Elise Marie Knable ’09

Pro­fes­sor of Art Lon Fluman believes his per­sonal work phi­los­o­phy has held true in his nearly 50-year career at Wes­ley Col­lege. He reflects on his pro­fes­sional and per­sonal expe­ri­ences dur­ing his tenure, as well as his plans for the future.

Fluman works in his art stu­dio, cre­at­ing a Japan­ese inspired painting.

Dur­ing his tenure at Wes­ley, he has moved through five dif­fer­ent office loca­tions on cam­pus and has expe­ri­enced the ups and downs of a chang­ing insti­tu­tion over the years, learn­ing to “take the good with the bad.” Now in his cur­rent stu­dio, located on the upper level of the Wes­ley Chapel, he reflects on the expe­ri­ences that have made his long-standing employ­ment at Wes­ley so special.

Fluman holds a bachelor’s degree from Lycoming Col­lege and received his Ed.M. from Tem­ple Uni­ver­sity. After work­ing at a pub­lic school and decid­ing it was not for him because of too many papers and reports, he began teach­ing at Wes­ley in 1964. He did not know much about the insti­tu­tion when he was first hired, despite the fact that at that time, Wes­ley had a solid rep­u­ta­tion as a top two-year col­lege in the area. “To me, it was just an inter­est­ing school. Old Main was a gigan­tic Vic­to­rian build­ing and I still wanted to be able to teach because I love kids,” he commented.

Teach­ing a wide spec­trum of art related sub­jects at Wes­ley as well as a vast array of stu­dents has not only given Fluman incred­i­ble pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence in his field but also allowed him to share many mem­o­ries with oth­ers. He takes pride in his abil­ity to teach every stu­dent as an indi­vid­ual, some­thing he deems impor­tant as an educator.

Stu­dents that he has taught often remem­ber him for his indi­vid­u­al­ized teach­ing style as well as his unique per­son­al­ity and sense of humor. A 1986 grad­u­ate named Wendy, who took sev­eral semes­ters of art with Fluman, recalled, “Back then, he was a pos­i­tive, play­ful teacher who made the class the ‘fun’ one to show up for. He paid atten­tion to detail in my art and taught me some tech­niques that I use to this day, and the art col­lec­tion I pro­duced in his classes I still have. What I cre­ated was beyond my imag­i­na­tion sim­ply due to his ter­rific teach­ing style and vision. In fact, just recently I got in touch with Wes­ley so I could call him and thank him all these years later…and I did,” she said.

Dr. Jef­fery Mask, pro­fes­sor of reli­gion and phi­los­o­phy at Wes­ley, has been for­tu­nate to work with Fluman and wit­ness his teach­ing first­hand as a stu­dent in his class. Mask said, “Lon has gen­er­ously allowed me to sit in on water­color classes for the last eight or ten years, and his gen­eros­ity has only been excelled by the hon­esty — not to say the bru­tal­ity — of his cri­tiques of my paint­ing. I have had the priv­i­lege of watch­ing him teach for awhile now. He can find some­thing affirm­ing to say about the most ‘ele­men­tary’ piece that a stu­dent has done, while still inspir­ing any stu­dent who is will­ing to make an effort to do bet­ter work.” Mask also feels grate­ful for the deep and last­ing friend­ship he has devel­oped with his col­league. “In some ways, Lon is an acquired taste. He cul­ti­vates a crusty exte­rior, but a truly sweet soul resides within. I count my friend­ship with Lon as one of the very best things to have come from my eigh­teen years at Wes­ley,” he said.

Fluman looks back with fond­ness at many mem­o­rable and com­i­cal moments through­out his career. He recalls his first year at the Col­lege when the fac­ulty and the Board of Trustees were invited to din­ner with Bishop Lord. “Some­one said to me, ‘We are hav­ing din­ner with the Lord.’ As a new pro­fes­sor, I didn’t know that was the Bishop’s last name so I couldn’t help but imag­ine din­ner with angels and a light show,” Fluman said with a chuckle.

Rem­i­nisc­ing about other expe­ri­ences, he recalled one evening in the late 60s when he chap­er­oned a Hal­loween dance. “I was there to make sure stu­dents weren’t drink­ing because of the strict alco­hol pol­icy.” He began to notice that very few stu­dents were leav­ing the dance and then observed drunken behav­ior from a grow­ing num­ber of them. “They were drink­ing an awful lot of cider,” he said, “so I walked over and asked the server for a glass. I took one sip and it made me take a step back!” Fluman dis­cov­ered that the cider was fer­mented “hard cider” which had been pur­chased from a farmer who most likely didn’t real­ize the pur­pose for which it would be used. “I look back on these things and think they were pretty funny now that they are in the past,” he noted.

Fluman describes one of the most inter­est­ing aspects of work­ing for the Col­lege through­out the decades as the oppor­tu­nity to teach fam­i­lies. By hav­ing a sec­ond gen­er­a­tion stu­dent in his class­room, he has an imme­di­ate con­nec­tion with the stu­dent because of his or her par­ent. “How many pro­fes­sors can say they taught some­one and now have that person’s child in the class? I think that is pretty fun,” he stated.

Fluman con­sid­ers one of Wesley’s strengths to be its lib­eral arts cur­ricu­lum. Ref­er­enc­ing the Greek belief of edu­ca­tion for all aspects of one’s self — the body, mind and soul — he pointed out that “art, music and phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion are really impor­tant for a stu­dent to have.” He believes that con­cen­trat­ing on only one field can be unhealthy and lead to becom­ing a nar­row minded indi­vid­ual, and that Wes­ley does a good job in edu­cat­ing the whole per­son. “Wes­ley helps stu­dents find other out­lets to keep their minds open and learn new things,” he said.

Fluman, circa 1970s, guides stu­dents through an art exercise.

Now enter­ing his 47th year of teach­ing at Wes­ley, Fluman has seen a num­ber of pro­fes­sors come and go, along with thou­sands of stu­dents who have grad­u­ated. What has remained con­stant, in his opin­ion, is the sense of car­ing among fac­ulty and staff and the per­sonal rela­tion­ships that grow within the cam­pus com­mu­nity. “Wes­ley really cares about young peo­ple. Maybe you’ll find that other places, maybe not. I think that a lot of times, pro­fes­sors at other schools do more impor­tant things out­side the actual class­room than work­ing with indi­vid­ual stu­dents.” Like many pro­fes­sors at Wes­ley, Fluman has demon­strated that car­ing atti­tude on many occa­sions when stu­dents have come to him with prob­lems. He said, “Whether that prob­lem is aca­d­e­mic or per­sonal, stu­dents feel close enough to cer­tain pro­fes­sors that they can con­fide in them know­ing what they say will remain in con­fi­dence.” He added, “A lot of times pro­fes­sors take on the role of a holy per­son or doc­tor in student’s eyes because of the respect they are given in their class­room.” There­fore, Fluman takes his role very seriously.

While work­ing at the Col­lege, Fluman’s inter­est in the East­ern cul­ture has grown enor­mously, espe­cially with the addi­tion of for­eign stu­dents vis­it­ing Wes­ley. When a group of Japan­ese stu­dents first vis­ited cam­pus in 1995, Fluman men­tored one of them, who later returned home and then invited him to visit Japan. Intrigued by the Japan­ese cul­ture, he ended up vis­it­ing the coun­try nine more times after that.

Fluman has become strongly involved with the sis­ter schools who bring groups of their stu­dents to Wes­ley annu­ally and as coor­di­na­tor of Wesley/Japan pro­grams, he strives to ensure that the vis­i­tors have a reward­ing and edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence. Last sum­mer, he and other fac­ulty and staff involved with the pro­gram played host to 53 stu­dents and four pro­fes­sors from Hachi­nohe Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (HIT) in Japan for the Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage (ESL) Insti­tute on cam­pus. Eleven Wes­ley stu­dents shared dorm rooms and worked closely with the vis­it­ing stu­dents. “This part­ner­ship gives Wes­ley stu­dents the oppor­tu­nity to bridge that gap in cul­tures and dis­cover a dif­fer­ent way of life,” he explained.

Hav­ing seen the Col­lege grow and change over almost five decades, Fluman has been an eye­wit­ness to a good por­tion of Wesley’s his­tory. Still, he finds it dif­fi­cult to specif­i­cally define the Col­lege and sum up his feel­ings about the insti­tu­tion. “I work for that neb­u­lous some­thing called Wes­ley Col­lege. As soon as you put a label on it, you shrink down the actual size of that neb­u­lous. You can’t see, hear or smell it; it’s a feel­ing, an emo­tion that doesn’t have any form of words.”

“Peo­ple ask me what I am going to do when I retire. I tell them ‘art’ — exactly what I do now,” Fluman stated. Wes­ley will always be the place where he did what he loves to do and was able to teach and shape the lives of oth­ers at the same time. W