I love this time of year. And yes, in good part because it is summer. But also because we have wrapped up another academic year, a group of students has graduated and are making their way in this world, and we now spend time looking back, reflecting on what went well, and what we can do better looking forward.
As an institution of higher learning, Champlain College has been described as agile, nimble, forward thinking, and innovative. For a small, private college in one of the most rural states in the nation, we are the little college that could. We have literally come a long way, from humble beginnings in 1878 as “Burlington Collegiate Institute” housed at one time above what is now Nectars, to our current home in the hill section of Burlington. We’ve gone from offering Associate’s Degrees in fields such as Secretarial Science to Fashion Merchandising and Court Reporting to now having numerous Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees (both traditional and online) in fields ranging from Marketing (my personal favorite of course) to Game Development, Early Childhood Education, Digital Forensics and Environmental Policy. We have campuses in Dublin and Montreal. We are ranked in Princeton Review’s 377 Best Colleges and in US News and World Report’s Best Comprehensive Colleges in the North. Read more about our awesome history and our even more awesome NOW on our “history” page over at our website.
But what has any of this to do with reflection and thinking about where we go from here?
Everything actually.
While I was on sabbatical Champlain College really started to grow up. You see, while in our history we had been given gifts to support our physical growth (think buildings such as The Miller Information Commons and the S.D. Ireland Global Business and Technology Center) we haven’t really had the type of contributions to academics that more traditional four year colleges and universities have. Champlain College is a tuition-driven institution which means we don’t have large endowments, or specialized “faculty chairs”. October 2012 changed all that. We received the biggest gift in our 135 year history: $10 million from the Robert Stiller Family Foundation.
Wow. Look at us. Getting all grown up.
This gift resulted in Champlain getting its first “named” school: The Robert P. Stiller School of Business (of which I am a proud faculty!). Over the next five years we will also be able to add additional faculty, and we’ll be adding an emphasis to our school on Positive Organizational Development (based on the Appreciative Inquiry framework).
Part of the gift also included a challenge: The 2K 4 2M Challenge. A matching gift that if we can raise funds from 2,000 alumni we’ll get an additional $2 million to put towards our “Vision, Innovation, Passion” campaign. Naturally the idea here is that to have a truly successful educational institution we need to engage and gain support from alumni like never before; that our alumni are critical to our success, just as we have been a major part of their success.
We need 380 more alumni to donate any amount (even $1 counts!) to get us to 2,000 alumni.
Naturally there’s a catch. We have to get the 2,000 donations by June 30th. But I’m sure you are up for it.
So no matter WHEN you went to Champlain. Take a few minutes and reflect back on your experience with us. Think about what you learned, where it took you, the people you met, how your life, your perspective, your world changed while you were here. Then think forward. Where will you help us go now? Your gift will help us expand our campus and continue to make a difference in the lives of young people. It will help the new Stiller School of Business do more to fulfill our mission of “…changing the world through business” and it will help Champlain College continue to thrive and grow as a leader for education and an economic driver for Burlington and for Vermont.
It’s easy to make a gift. Just head on over to our online support form, fill it out, input your credit card info and become part of history at Champlain by being the biggest group of alumni to ever donate to the college.
Still not sure?
How about you watch these videos and see just how far we’ve come. Now imagine what videos we’ll be able to post five years from now because of your gift!
You Make It Happen | Champlain College from Champlain College on Vimeo.
Champlain Rules from Champlain College on Vimeo.
You can also help by spreading the word and sharing this post, or the link to our “official 2K42M” page where people can read more about it and check out messages from alumni who have given as well as noted colleagues Jim Ellefeson, Cinse Bonino, and Nancy Kerr.
Now, between you and me, there is also a letter from the Accounting faculty. You see, we have a little competition going on (well, specifically Thane Butt and I have a little competition going on). She believes that more Accounting alumni will donate than Marketing alumni. Frankly, I just can’t imagine that, because, as we all know MARKETING IS AWESOME! So here’s a special call to all Champlain Alumni who graduated from our Marketing program. You know what to do.
Let’s beat Accounting!
Champlain College is getting ready to graduate the class of 2013 (commencement is just a few short weeks away!) and that means a whole host of Marketing grads are ready for YOU to hire them!
This week we learned just how serious Twitter is. In the midst of tragedy, horror, anger, pain, and fear we saw just how much this digital communication tool, and a host of other almost “instant” communication channels have changed the way we look for, engage with, and participate in information dissemination and sharing.
We all just got up, and headed down to the student union and watched CNN, talked to each other in hushed tones, cried, and took it all in. Over the days that followed the news media were our source for information via newspaper, radio, and TV. As a community at my college, we talked, we shared, we commented. Face to face. We looked to our journalists to provide us with facts and information, which we took in, and for the most part, trusted. Through all of this, investigators controlled the message. Journalists speculated and dug, but information was not easy to come by unless released by NASA. Some video camera footage from individuals was used.
I then went downstairs and put on the TV. I got on the land line to try to reach friends in DC (because by that point one of the planes had hit the Pentagon, and we had close friends who worked there). I won’t go into much detail here as we all an remember it. But I will say that I got my news from CNN. I listened to NPR. I read several different newspapers. I went online when able to (CNN had to drastically change their design to cope with the traffic to their site). Again, there was no Facebook. There was no Twitter. We got on the phone, we emailed, we talked in person, we gathered around the TV. We looked to our journalists to provide use with facts and information, which we also started to verify and explore on the internet, but we still, for the most part trusted those journalists. Through all of this, messaging was controlled by investigators and law enforcement, but we started to see that control slip as theories and other information popped up on the internet weeks afterwards. But control of the information and “leaks” were the word of the day.
Put me back into the petri dish that is a college campus at the beginning of the semester and no matter how much antioxidant foods, and antibacterial soaps I utilize, it is no match. For those of you who teach, you know what I mean. That third week pandemic that hits every semester. It’s shear luck to beat it. Clearly my luck in this case did not hold.
I am a professor of marketing, specializing in digital marketing and social media, at a small, private college in Burlington, VT. I blog about teaching and my areas of interest that include digital marketing, social media marketing, and the impact of social communication technology on society, families, and children. In addition to teaching college students, I also conduct workshops and will speak to community groups and organizations. I am also a Mom of a 16 year old daughter and two crazy cats. My opinions are my own and do not represent my employer.
