“The next generation is graduating into a world with significant challenges in a time of rapid change. Colleges today cannot just prepare students to enter the world as it is -- we must prepare students to re-make it as they want it to be,” said Bennington College President Mariko Silver. “This campaign is about ensuring the continuity of Bennington's legacy as a hub of creativity and ground-breaking, culture-shaping work. It is also about expanding access and opportunity for the young people who are going to address the most pressing challenges before us. Today's Bennington students are tomorrow's world-builders and problem-solvers.”

“The call for institutions of higher education that seek to enlighten, to forge bonds across barriers, and to prepare future generations to solve our most pressing challenges has never been louder,” said Board of Trustees Chair Alan Kornberg '74. “This is a moment to reaffirm our commitment to Bennington and the essential value it provides in an uncertain world.  

Bennington has added more than $23 million in commitments to the endowment in the past four years. Our goal is to establish a $100 million endowment that will support the programs fundamental to a Bennington education; invest in faculty and students; and provide the College with the creative freedom needed to continue to build new programs consistent with our values and long-term goals.

 

The campaign is built around five priorities:

 

Financial Aid

Ensuring that our student body as a whole represents a diversity of perspectives and experiences enriches the Bennington community in innumerable ways; this is an essential part of preparing all our students for the world they will enter into after graduation. While this has always been a high priority  — and nearly a quarter of our student body is Pell-eligible  — increasing our endowment in support of financial aid will provide deeper assistance and more access for future change-makers and culture shapers who would most benefit from a Bennington education, but would be otherwise unable to afford it.

Field Work Term  

Every Bennington student, every year, is required to spend six weeks at an internship or other work experience, which is aligned with their academic work. This experience, called Field Work Term, has been a pillar of a Bennington education since our founding in 1932, and part of why our alumni are far more engaged at work than the national average, and why Forbes ranked Bennington in the top five most entrepreneurial colleges.  

“Asking our students to land four internships, as well as figure out housing and transportation, is a challenge — and deliberately so; even with support, we know this experience cultivates a resourcefulness that serves them well beyond their time at Bennington,” said President Mariko Silver. “However, as the world changes, and there are fewer paid internships available, and as we work to make a Bennington education increasingly accessible to people of all backgrounds and experiences, we must calibrate that challenge to ensure that what had once been a challenge has not become an insurmountable barrier to students’ education and ability to make contributions to the world.”

The College is working to provide all students with the ability to select their top-choice internship without regard to finances. The funding will also support an alumni mentorship program.

 

Public Action

Through the Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA), the College invites students to take on the most urgent social, political, and environmental problems of our time. Recent projects and partnerships include: working to reduce single-use plastics; addressing the global refugee crisis; partnering with the EPA to address climate change locally; working with state governments to respond to the discovery of water contamination.; and working with the State Department in their planning of the new embassy to engage questions of climate change through the soft diplomacy of art. In all these projects, students must work across disciplines to answer the most important questions and to inspire action among the public as well as among policymakers.

Building an endowment in support of public action will multiply the impact of our work on issues ranging from democracy and social justice to public education and environmental health. Designated innovation funds will allow for urgent and timely programming based on current events.

 

Campus Renewal

Bennington’s campus spaces are dynamic and as much a part of our pedagogy as what happens in our classrooms and labs. We know that learning happens in the hard questions asked across the dining tables, in collaborations sparked in the communal spaces, in students’ practice in studios, and in relationships forged with visiting speakers, writers, and practitioners.

This campaign will continue to support projects that transform our campus infrastructure, including new classrooms, performance and lecture spaces, a new 5,000-square-foot health and wellness center, and a new student center to house student-driven programming.

 

The Bennington Writing Seminars

Now in its 25th year, the Bennington Writing Seminars is one of the top low-residency MFA programs in the country. Students develop their craft by honing their ability to read critically and through mentorship with acclaimed authors. Our alumni, faculty, students, and staff publish work at the highest levels.

"Bennington has a deep history of fostering and educating visionary writers, many of whom have had a profound effect on American literature, said Bennington Writing Seminars Director Mark Wunderlich. “We are working to ensure that the Writing Seminars fully represents the diversity, complexity and richness of American literature today, and this campaign will help us achieve that goal."

The endowment will give us the scholarship resources to recruit the most accomplished and promising students from across the socioeconomic spectrum. The funding will also support our ability to attract and retain the finest faculty and scholars, including graduate students who serve as semester-long mentors to undergraduates.