Jim Thornton
Jim Thornton has taught at Champlain College for 25 years. He served as Hotel/Restaurant Program Director, Business Program Coordinator and is currently Internship Coordinator for the Division of Business. He has taught courses in three divisions, across several programs. These include Intro. To Psychology, Senior Seminar in Contemporary World Issues (History), Community Service (Sociology), Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Hotel Front Office Management, Consumer Behavior, Management & Organizational Behavior, and internships in four Division of Business programs.
He is committed to experiential learning, believing that learning is discovery, by experience, leading to change of thought, feeling and behavior. He facilitates student - centered internships for seniors, who are challenged to pursue goal - centered learning and achievement, leaving a legacy in the organization where they intern. His students intern in profit and nonprofit organizations, including IBM, Lake Champlain Chocolates, VTANG, ECHO, General Dynamics, United Way, and many more sites.
His classroom courses include projects that get students engaged in real business operations. This could include working with clients to do a focus group in the Consumer Behavior course or creating a business plan that will be reviewed by the SBA in the Entrepreneurship course. As a team of students in his Building A Business class noted: "This project provided insight into the real business world, in a way that is almost impossible in the classroom. The project guidelines were very specific, which enabled us to research exactly what we needed to find out, for the creation of the business." (BBGE "Vermont Team," fall 2009).
Jim has traveled to 43 US states and has plans to see the remaining by the end of 2011. He has lived on three continents and hopes to live on at least one other. He has white water rafted in five states and has his eyes on at least five more big rivers to raft. He loves live theater and concerts, traveling to Boston, New York and other cities to enjoy them. Music choices range from Texas fiddle to Mozart, Faith Hill to Maria Carey.
He lives in the Burlington area with his three stray cats and travels as often as possible to visit his son and family in Baltimore, and brother and family in New York. He looks forward to more time with them in his retirement.
Community service has included board memberships with Burlington Children's Space, Spectrum, Waterbury Children's Space, Neighborkeepers, Vermont Health Department, and city and town committees and commissions. He is currently engaged in volunteer Pastoral Counseling at a local health care facility.
The little known: Prof. Thornton did not start his business career and education until he was 27, when he went to work for Marriott Hotels in Washington, D.C. There, he was involved in Human Resource Management, including loss prevention, supervisor/management training and development. Building on these experiences, he joined Kinark Corporation with a team who started the Camelot Hotel division. His undergrad major is World History, his minor, music. He still occasionally fantasizes that he is walking out onto the stage of Grand Ole Opry to perform. He holds a seminary degree and was an ordained minister, prior to student affairs administration work as a conference center director and Housing Director, and his hotel management career.
These ’07 Champlain grads rode cross-country on bicycle and moped to raise money in the fight against cancer