Q&A: Norwich University: Defending the Republic as citizen soldiers

Vermont Business Magazine, Aug 01, 2002

Founded in 1819 in the town of Norwich by Alden Partridge as The American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy, Norwich University's one of the nation's oldest military academies. Dr. Richard W. Schneider, 56, became the University's 23rd President in July 1992.

Schneider is a 1968 graduate of the US Coast Guard Academy. He earned his master's degree in Physical Sciences from Wesleyan University and a doctorate in Public Policy from the University of Delaware. He was commissioned as an ensign in the Coast Guard and served eight years of active duty, including a tour in Vietnam.

Due to his wife's ill health, he retired from the Coast Guard Reserve as a rear admiral, and then served in several top administrative position's at Drexel University in Philadelphia from 1985-92. His high school sweetheart and wife of 23 years passed away in 1990 of Crohn's disease. He was a senior vice president at Drexel at the time he was asked to apply for the presidency of Norwich in 1992. Schneider was chosen out Of over 300 candidates.

An energetic and enthusiastic leader, he has earned numerous awards and honors during his tenure, highlighted by his recent selection as the Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army for Vermont. He was also honored as the 23rd recipient of the Distinguished Citizens Award by the Green Mountain Council, Boy Scouts of America.

Schneider has four grown daughters from his first marriage, and 10 grandchildren. He remarried in. 1999, and he and his wife, Jaime Gilroy Schneider, reside on the campus in Northfield, where the college moved more than 100 years ago. Schneider commented in the interview that it was "very interesting" being a single university president, living on campus, and trying to date.

Robert Smith interviewed Dr. Schneider on the campus in Norwich in early July.

VBM: Perhaps you could begin by giving us some of the history of the university.

Schneider: Norwich was founded in 1819, so it's one of the oldest schools in America. In fact, when we go to inaugurals of college presidents, we always march at the front of the fine, which is where they always put the oldest schools.

We were founded in Norwich, Vermont, and were there for a number of years. We were founded by Captain Alden Partridge, who was a superintendent at West Point. He was a Dartmouth student for three years, was a mathematician, went to West Point, in one year graduated and became a first lieutenant, not a second lieutenant which is usually the entry rank in the Army. Was made an assistant professor, and in four years became a superintendent.

He was an academic revolutionary. He stayed at West Point for a number of years and threw out Greek and Latin and put in modern languages, put in a bunch of applied courses, then left and came back to his home state of Vermont. He then established a school that looked just like West Point except that it was private. We were there until a huge fire burned the place to the ground. That was in Norwich. The people in Northfield approached the board of trustees and the president at that time, which was in 1865, and said if you'll come to Northfield we'll build your building and give you the land.

Now, there's a great story in here. Probably one of the first economic development programs that Vermont ever had was seeing that schools are economic engines.

VBM: Which is one of the reasons we're interviewing you for Vermont Business Magazine. We understand that.

Schneider: Right. In Vermont we're one of your largest economic sectors. Norwich is the largest employer in Central Vermont, except for the State of Vermont itself. As an industry, we're probably up there at three or four. We're clean jobs that pay well, and generally tend to be pretty good citizens.

But back to the history. Our founder believed in two principle things. First, that we had to be a militia country. We couldn't afford a large standing army, and he was afraid of large standing armies anyway. If you study history you see that a lot of" large standing armies were used against their own people, and he really felt that from our heritage we really needed to maintain a large active militia, and that meant that every man needed to know how to fight to defend the republic. That was the first principle that our school was founded on.

The second one was that we had to teach practical courses to build the economy. Now in 1819, if you were in school, then you were a man and you were studying to be a pastor. Now God knows that we needed good pastors in 1819, and we need them even more probably today, but the fact of the matter is this was a very practical school and the courses were focused on military, science, the liberal arts and modern languages.

And he was one of the very first experiential teachers. He would march the Corps of Cadets around the countryside and on the way teach them botany, agriculture, bridge building, surveying-all the things we needed to build the country and the economy.

So it was a very practical, applied curriculum in a military environment, because he felt he needed to teach people how to defend the country. So he taught basic soldiering officer skills, because the threat to America in 1819 was the Red Coats coming back over the Green Hills of Vermont, and we didn't want that to happen.