Bennington College

"At Bennington we are not practitioners turned teachers for a few hours each day; we are models of the real thing, . . . We teach what we know, and we learn more as we teach."- Mary Oliver, poet and retired faculty member

Bennington College, a liberal arts college founded in 1932, began as and remains an invitation to learn. Bennington is committed to the belief that teachers should do what they teach, should bring to the classroom an engagement with their discipline learned through active practice in the world. This same spirit continues to animate a faculty of working scientists, writers, scholars, and artists eager to teach, in the words of one, "what keeps them awake at night." Students study literature from published poets, design their own experiments alongside chemists engaged in research, study music with composers recording their own work, and explore international relations with a former diplomat. Faculty members teach both the disciplines they practice, such as science, dance, or architecture, and join together to create courses that study subjects from a combination of different disciplinary perspectives.

Because both students and teachers are actively engaged in the work at hand, the relationship between teacher and student is richly collaborative, more like coach to athlete, mentor to apprentice, and ultimately colleague to colleague than expert to nonexpert. Collaboration between faculty members and students works in both directions: faculty members participating in student work and vice versa.

Each academic year consists of three terms: two intensive 14-week on-campus terms during the fall and spring and a six-week winter term of off-campus field work. During the winter term, students take their academic interests to the world beyond the college campus, where they pursue jobs and internships in fields that complement their studies, clarify their interests, and prepare them for their future. Students' written reflections on their work experience, as well as reports written by their employers, become part of their academic profile. The campus career center helps students find meaningful work experiences in areas ranging from publishing to politics and from arts administration to teaching. Students graduate from Bennington with a curriculum vitae as well as a diploma.

There are 550 undergraduate and more than 100 graduate students currently enrolled at Bennington. Virtually all undergraduates live in College housing.

On the graduate level, Bennington awards the Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.), Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.), and Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (M.A.L.S.) degrees. There is a one-year post-baccalaureate program in premedical and allied health sciences for students preparing to apply to medical or allied health sciences graduate schools. Students may enter the M.A.T. program in teaching as undergraduate, transfer, or graduate students.