Burlington College faces a growth challenge

Vermont Business Magazine, Aug 01, 2003 by Edelstein, Art

Burlington College located at 95 North Street needs to expand. "We are bursting at the seams in our building," said acting president Robert Rice. "We need office and classrooms and a new library."

The school is expected to build an addition to its existing building as a solution.

"It's the problem you like to have," said Rice. "We are growing and need to do something about that."

One of the major reasons the school needs more library space, said Rice, is the recent donation by Dr Frank Manchel, a former professor of film history and criticism at UVM, of a 6,000-volume collection of cinema studies books and periodicals. The collection has been characterized as perhaps the most complete collection of books of its type outside the Library of Congress.

Steward LaCasce founded Burlington College in 1972 as the Vermont Institute of Community Involvement. It gained accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges in 1982.

Burlington College is small. There are just 193 full time equivalent students and a total of 280 students attend classes there. The school charges $6,560 for a full time semester of 12-15 credits, or $13,120 per year. Housed in a former food market purchased in 1983, the school holds its classes there. It also owns two residential buildings in the city for student apartments.

Rice, who has been at the school since 1999, took over last spring when President Mary Clancy resigned. He said the demographics of the student body are changing rapidly.

"Early in the college's history we catered to Vietnam vets and adult learners. In the past five years the demographics have changed remarkably and the average age of students is down in the low 20s."

Rice attributes the age drop, in part, to two flagship programs the school operates. The most attractive to younger students is Cinema Studies and Film Production. That program, he said, is attracting what he termed "a significant number of students who tend to be younger students."

Former president Dan Casey, who led the school from 1994-2002, initiated the program.

The other flagship program is Transpersonal Psychology (the humanistic psychology of Freud, Jung and Adler), which Rice said, "has a great deal of interest among the young."

"We are the only undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree in this subject any

where in the US," boasts Rice.

Rice said the school is attracting the children of baby boomers who are younger than the students it originally attracted.

The school also flourishes in his estimation as "a niche player." The school

currently offers an Associate of Arts degree program in Liberal Studies and BA

degree programs in Cinema Studies and Film production; Human Services;

Psychology; Transpersonal. Psychology; Interdisciplinary Humanities; Writing

and Literature; and Fine Arts.

Additionally, students can develop an individualized major with their academic adviser to meet their particular needs and interests. The Independent Degree Program is available for those students wishing to complete a BA through independent study. Certificate programs are available in Film Studies and Paralegal Studies. Recently added majors include Social Ecology, Legal and justice Studies, and Inter-American Cultural and Development Studies.

"All of our classes are very small, typically eight to 15 students," said Rice. The school runs its classes in seminar form in what he described as "kind of a tutorial system with a lot of personal attention." All students receive narrative evaluations instead of letter grades.

Currently, Burlington College has a 25 member staff, and a 15 person academic staff. The teaching faculty is comprised of adjunct teachers. The school runs 55 courses per semester and employs 60 faculty members per semester.

Rice said his faculty comes primarily from the Burlington area and is made up of residents who are often professionals in their own field who also teach.

"We draw on resources of the community," he explained.

Financially, said Rice, "We are in a good position. We own a lot of assets and don't have much debt."

However, like many other Vermont schools including Goddard College in Plainfield and the Vermont State College system, he said Burlington was "fiscally fragile because we are tuition dependent. We don't have a significant endowment."

This tuition driven school has seen its enrollments rise by 10 to 15 percent per year in the past three years, a trend that will continue this fall. In June the school graduated 52 BA degree students, its largest class to date.

The problem, said Rice, "is the need to replace those 52 students who graduated."

Rice knows the school must increase the size of its endowment. During the oneyear presidency of Mary Clancy, a full time development person was hired and the groundwork for fund-raising was laid. The school is also pursuing a variety of government grants and Rice said there has been some initial success, as it has attracted small grants totaling $20,000 to develop a paralegal certificate program.

Rice said the school might have to grow its size to compete for more money from donors. If this comes to fruition the school would become more aggressive in recruiting. He said the school would have to go this route, "in order to afford more staff to provide the services we need to provide to a student body changing in demographics."