About Us

Our Strengths

• Career Focus

  Each Champlain College degree program has a single goal: to prepare the student for a leadership role in their chosen field.

  In a highly competitive world, nothing less will do. Success depends upon distinction, and students must emerge from their education well prepared and ready to conquer the greatest challenges their profession can present. This rigorous career focus informs every facet of the Champlain experience:

  A faculty of practicing professionals
  These experts have made their mark in their industries and bring a wealth of personal passion and indispensable real-world wisdom to every course. They’ll challenge your assumptions, expand your horizons, and show you what you really need to know.

  A lifetime of connections
  Starting on day one, our faculty’s extensive networks of industry contacts and recruiter relationships put you on the inside track to rewarding internships, job placement, and other opportunities.

  Multidimensional teaching
  A demanding job market requires not just mastery of your profession’s skills, but financial know-how and a global outlook that brings new and informed perspectives to the workplace. Your studies here are truly multidimensional thanks to our InSight program. We prepare you for your professional life and teach you how to make reliable financial decisions that align with your career and life goals.

  Champlain College offers three paths to success:

  ON-CAMPUS UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS 
  Champlain undergraduate degrees offer career-driven majors and an active approach to learning that applies classroom teaching to real projects in your chosen profession. Take courses in your major during your very first semester through the Upside-Down Curriculum and customize your education to specific career goals with targeted internships, specializations, minors and co-curricular activities.

  ONLINE UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE & CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS
  Quickly and affordably launch a new career or boost an existing one with a Champlain College certificate program or online degree. Receive up to 90 credits for your work and relevant experiences then acquire the rest without putting life on hold.

  ONELINE GRADUATE DEGREE & CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS
  Our graduate programs are informed by an entrepreneurial spirit and the new rules of today’s evolving business world. Innovative online formats accelerate your career quickly and efficiently with learning that occurs on your schedule.

• Academic Excellence

  Each Champlain College degree is built on a foundation of uncompromising academic excellence. We’re committed to providing effective, engaging education and successful career outcomes for students. This spirit of integrity informs every aspect of our educational experience.

  Your Classroom Experience
  Small class sizes-with an average 11:1 student/teacher ratio-create an intimate learning environment. You’ll never join faceless crowds in cavernous lecture halls. Instead, you’ll work closely with professors who offer individualized attention and address your personal areas of interest. These relationships often result in exciting internship and employment opportunities that come from your teachers’ connections.

  Your Career-Focused Major
  Our majors are not static programs but living platforms of applied learning. Each program is reviewed annually to ensure that it continually reflects the evolving needs of its field and remains focused on today’s issues and tomorrow’s challenges. Emerging trends in communication technology and industry best practices are constantly integrated into the architecture of each program to keep the fundamentals similarly aligned.

  Our Upside-Down Curriculum presents courses in your major in your first semester so you can devote four full years to developing the skills and instincts an exceptional career demands. You’ll couple this experience-based learning with extensive fieldwork that further expands your capabilities and keeps you ahead of the curve. Undergraduate Majors & Minors

  The Core
  Every undergraduate participates in Champlain’s Core curriculum, a four-year course of interdisciplinary study that is designed to prepare you to be an intellectual leader. To promote your ability to express, defend and expand your ideas, Core classes are discussion-oriented, problem-based and experiential. In each class, the questions asked are much more important than the answers, because in the 21st century, there are few clear-cut “right” answers to the big issues

  This inquiry-focused learning examines important questions from multiple perspectives and explores the global experience through history, science, culture, technology, and other disciplines. The Core curriculum allows you to be an active participant in your education, something unique compared to traditional general education at most institutions.

  You’ll develop your integrative and critical thinking and analytical skills, learn how to evaluate diverse perspectives and apply them to a broader understanding of yourself and others, become an effective communicator and lifelong learner. These abilities are key to obtaining a well-rounded general education and also the knowledge, skills, and perspectives that will help you be a more successful professional and citizen.

  InSight Program
  All undergraduate students at Champlain participate in the InSight program, which works together with your major and our liberal arts Core curriculum as part of your multidimensional career-focused education. InSight is designed to help you articulate your personal value proposition and develop essential skills in personal finance that, together, will equip you to successfully transition straight from college into your future career. You’ll even create a student loan repayment plan before you graduate!

  And you’ll get the opportunity to experience practical, hands-on learning through our career signature events, professional workshops, company visits, employer information sessions, internships, field experiences and much more. It’s the equivalent of what other institutions would require for you to obtain a professional certificate-at no additional cost to you.

  You’ll complete a series of required milestones focused in three key areas: career positioning, personal finance, and wellbeing. In these areas, you will create personalized action plans to effectively market yourself to prospective employers, learn how to manage your personal finances, and care for yourself and build resiliency. Along the way, you’ll earn achievements that allow you to measure your success.

• Innovation & Leadership

  Since 1878, Champlain College has assumed a leadership role as one of higher education’s relentless innovators. In recent years, that tradition has accelerated with the College’s exploration of groundbreaking new paths to academic achievement and educational quality:

  • Champlain’s Centers of Experience
    Professional environments for students to work on professional projects that turn theory into practice. These include the Senator Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity, the Emergent Media Center, the Center for Community & Social Justice, and Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
  • Visionary Majors
    As one of the first game degree granting institutions, we pride ourselves on developing forward-thinking programs such as our Degree Design Lab that allows students to build their own major and our cutting-edge BS in Interactive Narrative for Games & Digital Media, which prepare students for growth in industries of the future.
  • Pioneering Online Learning Programs
    Champlain College was among the very first institutions in the nation to recognize the internet’s revolutionary learning potential and create degree programs that leverage it.
  • InSight Program
    Champlain’s comprehensive career and personal finance education will help you manage your future and ensure a smooth transition from college to career.
  • Co-curricular Activities
    Built around majors and individual career interests give students the chance to broaden their horizons on and off campus via special courses, trips, encounters and other experiences.
  • LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification
    LEED certification of College buildings ensures a sustainable campus and a healthier learning environment in places like Aiken Hall and Perry Hall—the 21st most sustainable building in the world at its opening and one of only three Vermont buildings to achieve Platinum Certification.
• Caring Community

  At Champlain College, students become an integral part of a community of educators, artists, business people, and others both on campus and in the larger Burlington area. This community provides the essential human touch missing from many collegiate experiences.

  group of students in front of a dorm

  In the classroom and online, students work one-on-one with a compassionate community of teachers who know more than just your name-they understand who you are as a person and where you want to take your life.

  On campus, you’ll become involved with a community of resident experts and visiting professionals. Together, you’ll tackle shared concerns and industry issues at events like our “Building Partnerships for a Thriving Workforce” summit.

  Venture into the city of Burlington, and you’ll find business and arts communities extending invitations to book fairs, film festivals, writers conferences and symposiums such as the Burlington Business Association Summit.

  As a member of these communities, you’ll take part in initiatives like Sustain Champlain, which works to infuse the College campus with a proactive environmental ethos, and the Center for Service & Sustainability, which connects students to leadership, service and mentoring opportunities in the region.

• Global Vision

  One of the most important values we teach at Champlain College is that no matter what place each of us calls home, we are all citizens of the world participating in a global society. Champlain takes an active approach to fostering this common humanity and promoting the international perspectives required for shared peace and prosperity. Foreign study and off-campus travel are built into many curricula, enabling students take advantage of opportunities like these:

  • Champlain College campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland, give students the chance to live and learn abroad as a seamless part of their Champlain experience.
  • Third-party programs allow students to study nearly anywhere in the world; students have studied in locations such as Argentina, China, Italy, Scotland and New Zealand.
  • International internships, available in cities around the world, simultaneously supply invaluable work experiences and global lessons.
  • Exchange programs with partner institutions in other countries bring a diverse global presence to our Burlington campus while allowing our own students to spend an unforgettable semester abroad.
  • Service-in-Action trips give students inspiring opportunities to explore different cultures and perform volunteer work in places where their peers usually vacation.
• Ideal Learning Environment

  Sitting on Lake Champlain between the Green and Adirondack Mountains, scenic Burlington is a perfect place to learn, work, and play. Here in Vermont’s largest city, endless sophisticated pleasures come wrapped in a human-scaled urban landscape whose safe, clean and friendly atmosphere makes everyone feel welcome.

  Burlington, Vermont

  Burlington is one of the nation’s most beautiful and remarkable places, a city that’s won more accolades in the last few years than most receive in a lifetime:

  America’s Healthiest City
  The Best Adventure Town
  The #1 Happiest Small City,
  A Top-25 Small City for Art
  One of America’s Best College Towns,
  One of 10 Great Places For Campus Culture
  One of America’s Prettiest Cities,
  One of America’s Most Sustainable Cities,
  One of the Top-10 Cities for the Next Decade.
  The #1 Place to Raise a Family
  One of the Top American Walking Cities,
  The #1 Greenest City in the U.S.

  Businesses
  Birthplace of socially responsible business icons like Seventh Generation, the Magic Hat Brewing Company, and Ben & Jerry’s, Burlington has an entrepreneurial tradition of social activism, volunteerism and environmental stewardship that reflects the community’s deeply held belief in public service and sustainability.

  But there’s more here than a progressive ethic. Radiating from downtown’s pedestrian mall are shops of all kinds and the restaurants at the center of Vermont’s heralded food movement, which serve their creative cuisine against a constant backdrop of concerts, cultural events, art shows, street fairs, and other happenings.

  Activities
  Like being active? Well aside from the beautiful gym at Champlain College, Burlington has a large variety of parks and recreational facilities available to the public, and well maintained sidewalks making it easy to stay active.

  Best of all, Burlington lies within sight of Vermont’s highest peaks and hundreds of miles of ski, snowboard, hiking, and bike trails. From lakes and rivers to state parks and National Forest lands, Vermont has so many recreational possibilities that it’s been named the #1 Place for Families That Love Outdoor Sports.

   

• Exceptional Alumni Network

  There’s perhaps no greater testament to the rewards a Champlain education offers than the loyalty and affection our tens of thousands of alumni maintain for the College throughout their lives.

  This allegiance is about more than powerful memories and emotional bonds. It pays real-world dividends for current students every year as numerous alumni invariably return to campus. Some visit to dispense career advice and industry wisdom. Others come to recruit current students for exciting internships and recent graduates for lucrative full-time jobs at the forefront of their chosen fields.

  This network of Champlain alumni is one of the College’s greatest assets. With decades of graduates now occupying the upper echelons of America’s leading companies and organizations, it’s the key that opens otherwise inaccessible doors to lifelong success for countless Champlain students.

  Are you a Champlain College Alum?