Bennington College

Academic Facilities

Most of the classrooms at Bennington are arranged for seminar-style discussions and typically seat 15 to 20 students around a central table. In addition, classes are sometimes held in the campus café or in dormitory common rooms. Faculty members have offices throughout the campus where they meet regularly with students to discuss their work outside of class. The Dickinson Science Building includes fully-equipped science labs, a computer center with audio/video digitizing and processing capabilities, and a language lab. The 120,000-square-foot Visual and Performing Arts Center (VAPA) contains three "black box" theaters with state-of-the-art technical support, the Usdan Art Gallery, and studios for music, dance, video, painting, architecture, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, and photography. Bennington also houses one of the largest sprung wood floors in the world, especially designed for dance performance. Most facilities in VAPA are available for student use 24 hours a day.

New Technologies play a central role in facilitating the dynamic relationships between diverse disciplines and between faculty members and student that define the College. Bennington's Center for Audio Technologies consolidates all campus music/audio technology; facilities include an electronic music studio, a computer instructional studio, a language laboratory that uses both existing technologies and creates new ones for the study of foreign language and culture, a digital audio studio, and a lab equipped for the production of graphics, computer art, and multimedia projects. Architecture and design programs are enhanced by computer-aided design (CAD). All dorm rooms are wired for internet access. Notwithstanding in the range of such resources, students and faculty at Bennington are continually reminded that technologies, new and old, are designed to enhance the creative imagination, as opposed to replacing it.

A college-run farm provides a laboratory for exploring the science, economics, and community development dimensions of organic farming.