School of Social Innovation

Expand your impact on society, helping to build a better future starting today with real-world experiences, dedicated faculty, and deep community connections.

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Choose an education that will transform you into an agent of change.

The School of Social Innovation is for students who care about others: the born educator, the team player, the change maker, the advocate. The world needs more of these passionate and talented people to lead the future toward radical change—people like you.

At Champlain, you’ll be challenged to find your voice and use it to make a difference in the lives of others. And to make a difference, you have to break the mold. These majors focus on how to bring social, environmental, and economic justice into the future. If you’re drawn to fields that are in service to others, you’ll need a flexible, modular curriculum that will prepare you to make a measurable contribution to the world.

Experience-Based Learning

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Meaningful Internships with Area Organizations

Get ready to put your degree into practice. Our partnerships with area-based organizations and agencies gets you working with your peers and people in the community right away and every year of your college career. Whether advocating for others, protecting the environment, or leading change—you’ll start getting involved in the community and learning how to make a difference in your first year at Champlain.

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Center for Community & Social Justice

Work alongside fellow students and faculty to develop innovative solutions to societal issues in The Center for Community & Social Justice. This is our incubator, think-tank space where our community works together to develop next practice models of community engagement, social safety networks, and policing that support whole community health and safety.

Learn About the Center for Community & Social Justice
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Behavioral Neuroscience Lab

Collaborate on research projects with faculty who have extensive experience in their fields of study. Champlain’s Behavioral Neuroscience Lab—the only lab of its kind in Vermont—allows our undergraduate Psychology students to explore topics of interest using state-of-the-art tools such as EEG testing, physiology recording equipment, and a tDCS machine (to stimulate specific areas of the brain).

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Prison Law Initiative

Prison Law Initiative allows Law and Criminal Justice students to put what they’ve learned in the classroom to work by providing 24 hours of legal education to incarcerated individuals at each of the six correctional facilities in Vermont.

93%

of School of Social Innovation majors in the Class of 2023 achieved career success within six months of graduation.

86%

of School of Social Innovation majors in the Class of 2023 participated in at least one experiential learning opportunity, such as an internship, before graduating.

Accredited

Champlain’s Social Work program is accredited by the Council on Social Work Education and allows you to earn a master’s degree in social work (MSW) in one year instead of two.

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Accelerated Masters Degree in Social Work (MSW)

Through our CSWE-accredited Social Work program, you can apply to a Master of Social Work (MSW) program that will allow you to earn a master’s degree in one year instead of two. If accepted, you will save a year of graduate tuition costs.

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Field Work & Student Teaching for Education Majors

Get in Classrooms Your First Year

At Champlain, you’ll engage in field placements and student teaching starting in the first semester. By the end of your first year, you’ll have spent nearly 30 hours in a classroom—a number you’d likely reach in your senior year at other institutions. From there, you’ll progress from weekly one-day observations in classrooms to supervised field experiences, to full-time teaching

Program directors and full-time faculty try very hard to forge relationships with students so that we can offer advice about careers by knowing what each individual student wants. Once a student talks to me during the registration period about their career aspirations, that stays with me, so when I’m out in the community or in the courts or in a board seat on a non-profit board, if an opportunity for an internship comes up or a job opportunity comes, I can [suggest it] because I know what they want out of their career.
Tony Perriello
Tony Perriello, J.D, Criminal Justice Program Director

Service in Action

All students in the School of Social Innovation, regardless of their major, take two signature service learning courses that bridge the classroom with our surrounding community. These 1-credit courses are service- and action-oriented, designed with service in mind.

  • In EHS 100: Making Connections, students meet together in an interdisciplinary, seminar-style setting to build a foundational understanding of integrative thinking and learning and to begin to make connections among the various elements of the Champlain College student-experiences and competencies. Students will take part in a real-world community awareness or service experience as a class and then examine the experience from the perspectives of social work criminal justice, the law, environmental policy education, and psychology.

  • In EHS 210: Social Justice Intensive, students meet together in an interdisciplinary, seminar-style setting to build a greater understanding of integrative thinking and learning and to add a focus within a social justice context. Students will participate in an off-campus service learning project and critically examine the experience from the perspectives of social work, criminal justice, the law, environmental policy education, psychology, and additionally consider their experiences in Core, and LEAD.

School of Social Innovation

Find Your Program

More Inside Schools & Divisions

  • Robert P. Stiller School of Business 

    Navigate today's demanding business environment while considering your ability to impact change.

  • Division of Communication & Creative Media 

    Shape the way people view and interact with the world around them in a career-focused, diverse, and collaborative environment.

  • School of Social Innovation 

    Expand your impact on society, helping to build a better future starting today with real-world experiences, dedicated faculty, and deep community connections.

  • Division of Information Technology & Sciences 

    Learn to balance technology and humanity through smart, ethical, and innovative contributions in our ever-expanding digital world.

  • Core Division 

    Examine the world around you and develop essential skills to navigate it. Anything but gen ed, our Core Division equips you with the ability to ask the right questions, create solutions, and communicate effectively.

  • Champlain College Online 

    Champlain College Online helps you learn whenever and wherever is best for you, with more than 100 degree and certificate programs 100% online in 7-8 week terms.