Marlboro College is a small, private, academically rigorous liberal-arts college located in Marlboro, Vermont, United States, with an enrollment of 195 students. The College received a perfect academics rating of 99 from The Princeton Review in 2014. Students at Marlboro create an individualized course of study in collaboration with faculty members and participate in a self-governed (self-run) community. Students pursue a self-designed, often inter-disciplinary thesis, the Plan of Concentration, based on their academic interests that culminates in a major body of scholarship.
Marlboro was ranked #117 (out of 1,611 institutions) among liberal arts colleges in the United States by U.S. News and World Report in 2017.
The College's unique facilities that can be used by students include an organic farm, a solar greenhouse, Marlboro's own nature forestland preserve, and an aviary. Weekly "town meetings" are held to vote for and change the College's bylaws.
Video Marlboro College
History
Marlboro College was founded in 1946 by Walter Hendricks on Potash Hill in Marlboro, Vermont, and many of the first students were returning World War II veterans. The school's operation was initially financed using money received from the GI Bill, as well as loans from Brattleboro Savings and Loan. The campus incorporates the buildings of three old farms that once operated on the college site, along with more modern buildings. Marlboro has grown steadily since its inception, and 195 students currently attend, with an average enrollment of 250 students. The College, however, is kept "intentionally small."
In 1997 Marlboro College founded the Marlboro College Graduate School to apply the same educational principles of Marlboro College to advance the careers of working professionals. The Graduate School also offers an accelerated Master's track to undergraduates in select programs. While the Graduate School was initially located in nearby Brattleboro, it moved to the main college campus in Marlboro in April 2017.
The Marlboro College campus has also been the summer home for more than 50 years to the Marlboro Music Festival.
Maps Marlboro College
Campus
Location
The Marlboro College campus is located on South Road in the small town of Marlboro, Vermont, in the wooded Green Mountains. Marlboro is just off Route 9, which runs east-west across southern Vermont, ten miles from Brattleboro to the east with Wilmington and Bennington further to the west. Boston is two and a half hours to the east, Burlington is two and a half hours to the north, Hartford, CT is one and a half hours to the south, and New York City is four hours to the south.
The closest major town is Brattleboro, and students frequently make the 20-minute drive along Route 9 to hang out there at night and on weekends. Brattleboro, like Marlboro College, is liberal in its social life and politics. The town features a well-preserved historic main street with a strong gallery scene, boutiques, ethnic and health food, and a historic arthouse movie theater. The similar but much larger Amherst-Northampton area of western Massachusetts, easily accessible via Interstate 91, is also a favorite hangout.
Facilities
Marlboro's facilities are relatively small because of its size. Many of the buildings--including the main classroom building, the dining hall, the admissions building and the administration building--are converted farm buildings that predate the college. Students and faculty worked together to convert these historic buildings for use by the college. Through grants from federal, state and private entities, the college improved the energy-efficiency of the Dining Hall, Dalrymple classroom building, Mather administration building, and the Admissions building since 2008, as well as the student residences. In the summer of 2011, the half-circle driveway at the campus entrance was converted to green space and walking paths.
Recently, the school has added a new performing arts center with an 125-seat auditorium, an electronic music lab, practice rooms with baby grand pianos and a 5,000-square foot dance studio, as well as a new dormitory called Out-of-the-Way. The college also expanded the library, the sculpture studio, and added a new Total Health Center (or THC) and exercise facility to the campus center. These additions made room for the world studies program in the old music building, a new student residence in the old health center, an expansion of the outdoor program into the old exercise room, and athletic space in the old dance studio.
The school recently completed an addition to the Outdoor Programs Building, to centralize the equipment that the OP maintains and loans out, as well as a new Greenhouse designed by a recent graduate and built by the community on the school farm (Marlboro Victory Garden).
The Snyder Center for the Visual Arts, a $3.5-million dollar, 14,000-square-foot visual arts center that houses studios, classrooms, and gallery spaces, opened in May 2016.
Academics
The Clear Writing Requirement
Freshman students usually take one or more classes designed to boost their writing skills to an acceptable undergraduate level. All freshmen must submit 20 pages (4,000 words) of nonfiction writing to the English Committee by the end of their second semester. If the committee decides that a student's writing skills need more work, they recommend a class to help, and the student must prepare another portfolio, at least 10 pages of which must be new, at the end of the next semester for re-evaluation. In the event that a student fails the writing requirement for three consecutive semesters, the school will ask the student to leave with the caveat that he or she can return after receiving high marks from an English class at another school. However, virtually all students pass the writing requirement within two semesters.
The Plan of Concentration
Juniors and seniors focus on developing an individualized Plan of Concentration rather than on heavy coursework. "Plan" is a large, self-designed project often involving a combination of disciplines. Juniors and seniors focus on independent work and increasingly take tutorial classes (one or two students and a faculty member). For most students Plan culminates in a written thesis, although art and science students may pursue other projects. All Plans must include a written portion constituting at least 20 percent of the total plan work. In addition, all Plans must include an independent project prepared without direct faculty input, also constituting at least 20 percent of the total plan. Plans that consist entirely of academic writing usually range from one hundred to two hundred pages, double-spaced.
The results of this work are defended in an oral examination before two Marlboro professors, and one outside evaluator who has expertise in the student's field of study but is not connected with the college. The presence of the outside evaluator is meant to ensure that the grading process is fair and objective. The final plan is then put on permanent file as a reference work in the college library.
Academic honors
Loren Pope, original author of the Colleges that Change Lives college guide and former education editor for The New York Times, writes about Marlboro, "You will find the Marlboro adventure far more intense and intellectually demanding than Harvard, any other Ivy, or Ivy clone. There simply is no comparison."
Marlboro College received a perfect academics rating of 99 and was also ranked #1 nationally for its quality of professors ("Professors Get High Marks") in The Princeton Review's 2014 annual college guide.
Beautiful Minds Challenge
Since 2012, the college has offered the Beautiful Minds Challenge, an essay contest for high school students that rewards winners with 12 full or partial scholarships and other prizes. Essays may take the form of text, images, audio, or video. Submissions are judged by Marlboro faculty, staff, and students. Finalists are flown to the Marlboro campus for a Symposium where they present their work.
People
Notable faculty
- Wyn Cooper taught at Marlboro.
- Jay Craven teaches film at Marlboro.
- Paul J. LeBlanc served as Marlboro's president from 1996 to 2003.
- Peter Lefcourt taught literature and writing from 1968-1970. (Novelist David Rhodes was one of his students.)
- Leslie Lamport taught at Marlboro in the late 60s.
- David Mamet taught at Marlboro for a semester.
- Joseph Mazur taught mathematics at Marlboro.
Notable alumni
- Journalist Hugh A. Mulligan
- Poet Sophie Cabot Black
- Poet Cate Marvin
- Scientist Robert MacArthur
- Dancer Shura Baryshnikov
- Writer D. Y. Béchard
- Novelist David Rhodes
- Portrait photographer Jock Sturges
- Novelist Parnell Hall
- Actor Ted Levine
- Missy Suicide (left after one year)
- Author Deborah Eisenberg (left after two years)
- Actor Chris Noth (left after two years)
- Artist Hans Rickheit (left after one year)
- Artist and poet Peter Strickman (1946-2017), Honors graduate
- Actor Matthew Temple
- Entrepreneur and investor Daniel Harple
- TV journalist David Asman
- Writer Joshua Harmon
- Writer Eneriko Seruma
Notable staff
- Poet Robert Frost was the college's first trustee
- Author Ethan Gilsdorf worked in the marketing department in the late 1990s
Student life
Open mic nights at the Campus Center happen several times a semester, in addition to events like President's Ball, Gender Bender, Queer Homecoming and other events. A "Farm to Fork" community dinner is held every September. During the Spring and Fall, students are encouraged to "plant, weed, landscape, and harvest on a regular basis" on the school farm. They also participate in other events, such as the harvesting of pine trees in the College's own forestland. "Midnight Breakfast" is an event celebrated each semester during the eve before writing portfolios are due.
The school was founded on and continues to encourage a tradition of community participation and values. A bi-monthly "town meeting" allows all community members to gather and vote to change the college bylaws. An elected community court dispenses justice when necessary. Different elected committees, consisting of students, faculty and staff, help to hire faculty (or even college presidents) and steer the curriculum, among many other responsibilities.
The school's security measures are designed to cultivate attitudes of trust and responsibility on campus. The library is also open all night and uses a self-checkout honor system to keep track of borrowed materials.
Athletics are also shaped by Marlboro's location, and by Vermont's long winters - the coldest weather coincides with the academic year. Though few organized sports teams exist, the school's "Outdoor Program" promotes activities such as rock climbing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, white-water kayaking, caving, canoeing, hiking, and the annual February broomball tournament, played on a frozen pond, a collegiate tradition maintained since 1998. In addition, the College is just 15 miles from the Mount Snow ski resort.
Student Publications
Editors-in-chief of the College's different magazines are elected during town meetings. The administration of the school publishes a biannual magazine, Potash Hill. A student newspaper, The Citizen, is published biweekly on campus. "Articles in The Citizen vary from serious editorials to tongue-in-cheek campus news, from oblique photo-essays to "Horrorscopes" like "Sagittarius: Money from strangers can be expected. Red is your color. Watch where you put your thumb." A student literary magazine composed of selected essays, poetry, and short stories, is published once per semester. The magazine "reflect[s] the strong and adventurous writing skills of Marlboro community members."
For example, this poem by student Joanna Moyer-Battick:
Winter Coat by Day
but when I get up to pee
the shadow of a man
bending to pull up his boots
Statistics
- An average of 67% of the school's applicant pool is accepted. The middle 50% range of SAT I scores (for 2005) was 1040-1310 out of 1600 possible points.
- 75% of Marlboro College alumni attend graduate school. The four most frequently attended institutions are Antioch University, Harvard University, Boston University and Yale University.
- Marlboro is only 1 of 3 national liberal arts colleges in which 100% of its classes have fewer than 20 students.
See also
- List of colleges and universities in Vermont
- Deep Springs College
References
- Notes
External links
- Official website
- Marlboro College Graduate School
- The Marlboro Radio Station, Dead Tree Radio
- Potash Hill
Source of article : Wikipedia
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