Summary

Marlboro College is a small, coeducational, alternative liberal-arts college in Marlboro, Vermont, USA.

History

Marlboro College was founded in 1946 by Walter Hendricks for returning World War II veterans on Potash Hill in Marlboro, Vermont. The school's operation was initially financed using money received from the GI Bill. The campus incorporates the buildings of two old farms that once operated on the college site. Marlboro has grown slowly but steadily since its inception, and about 270 students currently attend, with an average enrollment at 315 students.

In 1997 Marlboro College founded the Marlboro College Graduate School in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont to apply the same principles of Marlboro College to advance the careers of working professionals.

The Marlboro College campus has also been the summer home for more than 50 years to the renowned Marlboro Music Festival.

Campus

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, from Brattleboro ten miles (16 km) to the east to Wilmington and Bennington further to the west. Boston is two and a half hours to the east, Burlington is three and a half hours to the north, and New York City is four hours to the south.

The closest major town is Brattleboro, and students frequently make the 25 minute downhill 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 is also a favorite hangout but is almost an hour away down Interstate 91.

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. The campus' historic buildings require a lot of maintenance.[citation needed] Through grants from federal, state and private entities, the college has been able to improve the energy-efficiency of the Dining Hall, Dalrymple, Mather and the Admissions building since 2008, with plans to work on student residences in the future. In the summer of 2011, the half-circle driveway at the campus entrance was converted to green space and walking paths.

In the last several years 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. A new dormitory called Out-of-the-Way, and a new painting and welding studio. 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.

Currently, the school is working together to build an addition to the Outdoor Programs Building, to centralize the equipment that the OP takes care of and loans out. The school (as in the students, faculty and staff) is also actively building a new Greenhouse on the school farm, (Marlboro Victory Garden) which was designed by a recent graduate.

Academics

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 (5,000 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, almost all students pass the writing requirement within two semesters.

Juniors and Seniors focus on developing a Plan of Concentration rather than on heavy coursework. "Plan" is a large self-designed project often involving a special and individualized combination of majors and minors. Juniors and Seniors focus on independent work and increasingly take tutorial classes (one or two students and an instructor). For most students Plan culminates in a written thesis, although art and science students may pursue other projects. However all Plans must include a written portion constituting at least twenty percent of the total plan work. In addition, all plans must include an independent project prepared without direct faculty input, also constituting at least twenty 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.

Student life

Because of its isolation, Marlboro's social life is largely self-contained and centers primarily on small student-organized events or parties. Open mic nights at the Campus center happen several times a semester, and seniors organize a boisterous party called Cabaret at the end of each semester, which features insulting awards given to students. Graduating seniors and professors hold a party at the end of every academic year.

A thriving college radio program called Dead Tree Radio is run by the students and is one of the main sources of music played throughout the campus. Due to the isolated nature of the school, Marlboro students lean towards each other for outside influences which creates a wide variety of genres played thought the radio station.

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 maintains minimal security measures in order to promote 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 nature-oriented activities such as snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, canoeing, hiking, and the annual February broomball tournament. The college mascot is the fighting dead tree.

Publications

The administration of the school publishes a quarterly magazine, Potash Hill. A student newspaper, The Marlboro Citizen, is published biweekly on campus. A student literary magazine is published once per semester.