Bennington College

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Bennington College
Established	1932
Type	Private Liberal Arts
Endowment	$12,000,000
President	Elizabeth Coleman
Provost	Elissa Tenny
Undergraduates	571
Postgraduates	154
Location	Bennington, VT, USA
Address	One College Drive Bennington, Vermont 05201-6003
Telephone	802-442-5401
Campus	Rural, 550 acres (2.2 km²)
Website	http://www.bennington.edu/

Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont.

Contents 1 History 2 Education style 3 Graduate Program in Writing 4 Bennington College people 5 Bennington College in fiction 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] History

Bennington College was founded in 1932 as a women's college focusing on arts, sciences, and humanities. It became co-educational in 1969. The campus is a modified farmer's field.

Financial mismanagement between 1932 and 1986 nearly destroyed the institution^{[citation needed]}, but changes in 1994 under the Board of Trustees and President Elizabeth Coleman improved the financial picture^{[citation needed]}. These changes also cut back or replaced faculty and abolished presumptive tenure, leading to student and alumni protests, censure by the American Association of University Professors, and other difficulties.[1] Huge fundraising campaigns and a re-vamping of the college's image countered low enrollment rates^{[citation needed]}. By the late 1990s, Bennington College was at its most stable point in 20 years^{[citation needed]}. Rising enrollment, large donations by older alumni from the first 10 classes, especially recent multi-million donations made by the Merck family (owner of Merck Pharmaceuticals), and vigorous expansion have made Bennington once again a viable option for students seeking a liberal education.^{[citation needed]}

Bennington ranks 91st on US News Magazine's list of top liberal arts schools. Also according to U.S. News, Bennington's endowment of less than $12,000,000 places it fifth behind Middlebury College, Norwich University, Saint Michael's College, and Marlboro College among private colleges in Vermont.

[edit] Education style

Bennington exists on a system of Plans, where students and faculty jointly decide a student's course of study. Main subjects taught include: Social Sciences and Humanities, Dance, Drama, Theater Arts, Music Performance and Composition, Life and Physical Sciences, Literature and Writing, Teacher Education (Center for Creative Teaching), Foreign Language Arts (Isabelle Kaplan Center for Languages and Culture), Visual Arts (ceramics, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, architecture), Video and Media Studies.

Students are held accountable for their work by close critique and review by faculty and peers rather than traditional letter grades. Bennington offers written evaluations rather than a graded scale as the default option for undergraduate performance review. According to the official college website, "all students are encouraged to consider requesting grades for at least two years (or 64 credits) of their study at Bennington so that a GPA might be produced upon graduation." There are no competitive sports teams, fraternities or sororities, ROTC, or school mascots.

The flow of study at Bennington is referred to as "the Plan Process," and is comprised of the aforementioned critique and review, usually taking the form of reflective essays and Plan Meetings, which roughly occur every other term. Though there is no "core curriculum," students choosing to focus in particular fields are encouraged to take certain classes, or a certain amount of credits in the field. Plan Meetings are attended by the student's Faculty Advisor and a small selection (normally two or three, but sometimes four or even five) of faculty members who may or may not be a part of the student's chosen discipline. Students can request changes to be made to their Plan Meeting rosters.

Bennington is run on a three-term system in which students work on campus for the Fall and Spring terms and complete a 7-week, 210 hour "Field Work Term" during the winter. During this time the campus is mostly closed, and students must seek internships and housing off campus (paid jobs are allowed). On-campus housing is closed from mid-December until March. The Field Work Term office offers many different venues of help for finding and securing jobs. For one full Field Work Term or two half-Field Work Terms, students are allowed to participate in an "Independent Study," which can range from starting an entrepreneurial business to working on one's Senior Project.

Bennington has been part of the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission since 2006.

[edit] Graduate Program in Writing

Bennington College is home to a low residency MFA program in writing. Core faculty include fiction writers David Gates, Amy Hempel, and Alice Mattison; nonfiction writers Sven Birkerts, Susan Cheever, Phillip Lopate, and Bob Shacochis; and poets Henri Cole, Amy Gerstler, and Ed Ochester. The Executive Director is poet Liam Rector.

[edit] Bennington College people

Main article: List of Bennington College people

Among the more notable of Bennington's alumni are: Mathew Marks, Jack Bankowski,Alan Arkin, Carol Channing, Merce Cunningham, Kiran Desai, Bret Easton Ellis, Michael Pollan, Helen Frankenthaler, Jonathan Lethem, Holland Taylor, and Justin Theroux. Notable current and former faculty include essayist Edward Hoagland, novelists Bernard Malamud and John Gardner, music composer Allen Shawn, dancer/choreographer Martha Graham, jazz musician Milford Graves, and a number of Pulitzer Prize-winning poets including Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver and Theodore Roethke.

[edit] Bennington College in fiction

Bennington has been fictionalized as Camden College in novels by alumnus Bret Easton Ellis. Other writers from Bennington include Jill Eisenstadt, and Jonathan Lethem. Donna Tartt, also a Bennington alumna, set her 1992 novel The Secret History at the fictional Hampden College, which bears a strong resemblance to Bennington.

[edit] See also

• List of colleges and universities in the United States

[edit] External links

• Bennington College official website
• Bennington College Master Plan 2004
• Bennington College Symposium Report
• Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 42.919161° -73.239455°
  • Satellite image from WikiMapia, Google Maps or Windows Live Local
  • Street map from MapQuest or Google Maps
  • Topographic map from TopoZone
  • Aerial image from TerraServer-USA
• Bennington College alumni site

Higher Education in Vermont
UVM • Bennington • Burlington • Champlain • CSJ • Goddard • Green Mountain • Landmark • Marlboro • Middlebury • Norwich • St. Michael's • School for International Training • Southern Vermont College • VT Law Vermont State Colleges Castleton • CCV • Johnson • Lyndon • Vermont Technical College

Women's colleges that became coeducational

Beaver College • H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College • Washington College of Law • Chowan College • Carlow University • Florida State University • Shorter College • LaGrange College • Andrew College • University of North Carolina at Greensboro • Ohio Dominican University • James Madison University • Georgia College & State University • Bennington College • Connecticut College • Elmira College • Sarah Lawrence College • Silver Lake College • Vassar College • Hunter College • University of Mary Washington • Viterbo University • Drexel University College of Medicine • Radford University • Texas Woman's University • Trocaire College • Longwood University • Cazenovia College • Mississippi University for Women • Albertus Magnus College • Goucher College • Lake Erie College • Tift College • Wheaton College • University of Saint Mary • Emmanuel College • Notre Dame College • Hood College • Seton Hill University • Chestnut Hill College • Hartford College for Women • Immaculata University • Lesley College • Wells College • Randolph College • Regis College