News & Events

Burlington College Plans For Growth

Burlington is an off-beat school with everyday problems that need fixing, and College President Jane Sanders has a plan.

Housed in a former grocery store in the Old North End, Burlington College is something of an odd duck among its more traditional peers. That's by design.

There is no conventional grading system. Students, most of them in their mid-20s with part-time jobs, play a direct role in shaping their own course of study. Courses are as diverse -- paralegal studies, humanities, transpersonal psychology, cinema studies and film production -- as the students themselves.

Fewer than 300 are enrolled in the college, established in 1972 as the Vermont Institute of Community Involvement. Students who want a traditional education go somewhere else.   

Burlington College, while great at providing an alternative approach to education, has conventional problems. A small endowment of about $80,000, anemic enrollment, and an unorganized approach to development have been the college's Achilles' heel, Sanders said.

"What was going on here was education, and our education is fantastic, but we need to be able to do the business of education as well," Sanders said. "We intend to stay as unique as ever, but we also intend to do as well as any other college in terms of running the true business of a school."

Hired last spring, Sanders has spent the past year collecting ideas from faculty, staff, students, board members and alumni. Since then, the college has begun developing a system to monitor and forecast enrollment, budgeting and academic programs over the next five years. It also has built a database of alumni.

Also, the school's all-adjunct faculty has been restructured to include six full-time positions in cinema studies, psychology and human services, general education and humanities.

"From a worker standpoint, I felt it was important to give people a consistent, livable wage they could count on," Sanders said. "From an academic standpoint, it's important to emphasize the importance of teaching and advising. Teaching is not a supplement."

Near-term plans include buying an adjacent property -- a one-story home on Haswell Street -- to be used for student housing. The college owns two other properties, another house on Haswell Street and one on Lakeview Terrace. Both are used as student rentals.

Planned renovations and landscaping improvements around the college's entrance would be completed by the end of this year and are covered in the college's $2.6 million budget, Sanders said. The new Haswell Street property, the price of which is being negotiated, will be purchased by taking out a loan.

The most ambitious part of the plan -- a $3 million building to house classrooms, an auditorium, a cinema and screening room, and an expanded library -- is in the preliminary planning stages. The facility would be built in the southwest corner of the college's 1 1/2 acre parking lot, overlooking Lake Champlain.

Joe Bookchin, the college's director of film and video production, said the film department could use the space.

"It would do a lot on many different levels," Bookchin said, referring to the department's capacity enrollment and lack of physical space in the main campus building.

Sanders is candid about the college's ability to pay for such an expensive building. Individual donations to the college in 2004-05 were $39,700. Alumni, alone, she said, could not foot the bill.

"Carrying out strictly a capital campaign would be premature," Sanders said. "We have a small alumni base. Our college is young, only 33 years old."

Patrick Gallivan, chairman of the college's board of trustees, calls Sanders "essential to Burlington College's future."

"She is the right leader at the right time for this place," Gallivan said. "She has a real vision for the place and a real idea where she wants to see it."

Written by Jill Fahy, Burlington Free Press
Reprinted by permission