Champlain College Launches New Website

A new, rebranded Champlain College website was unveiled today, the result of nearly two years of planning, design and transformation designed to enhance the College's ability to tell its success stories and attract new students.

Work on the revamped www.champlain.edu began in May of 2011 and focused on a number of goals developed collaboratively with representatives from admissions, faculty, students, parents and marketing.

The goals were to:

  • Capture our Passion. Build an online presence that conveys Champlain College's unique spirit and energy.
  • Capture our Distinctiveness. Portray Champlain College's innovative and career-focused approach to education.
  • Think Like Users. Organize information with the end-user in mind.
  • Not a Me-Too Site. Breakaway from the pack and create a college website like no other.

The new site also unifies the branding of the College's offerings for undergraduates, online and distance adult learners and graduate program students. It updates the portal for students and faculty and staff to access campus services and information.

"Our website needs to be a reflection of our reality" said Ian Mortimer, vice president of enrollment management at Champlain. "This new website will make a compelling first impression for students, parents, and other stakeholders of the college. It also highlights Burlington's many cultural and recreational attractions in a multi-media fashion. "Also, I am very proud of the fact that current Champlain students played a very large and important role in the project — further pushing our commitment to experiential education, " he said.

Website home pageChamplain's geographic reach for new students goes well beyond Vermont and New England, he said, and this gives the College an effective way to help reach students who may not have visited Vermont before. "The new website captures the academic richness, excitement and possibilities students find when then come to visit campus and later attend college here," Mortimer said.

"We feel confident we've achieved these goals, and will keep them our focus as we evolve and improve the site," explained Meghan Haley, director of the website team. "This project was about much more than just building a new website. It was about leveraging the power of the digital communication space to expand our reach and polish our presence. It was about telling the Champlain story in a more amplified and compelling way. It was about working as a team by bringing together students, faculty, and staff to realize a common goal."

Among the changes that include dynamic photos, easier navigation, videos, more social media and better program descriptions, visitors to www.champlain.edu will also find:

  • Sticky Tools. In the new site academic information, college activities, news, and social updates are much easier to access. The left-hand navigation to the "FIND A PROGRAM" feature is always available and icons offer quick links to the events calendar, campus news and social hub.
  • The Promise of Career Success. Champlain's education is about career success and the new site celebrates that promise by telling our graduates' success stories. The Career Success tab is now a primary navigation tool.
  • Empowering All Our Voices. The Champlain community is a vibrant community and the new website reflects that. Not only will visitors be able to find events, news and social stories, but also the Champlain community can use the new site as a platform to tell their stories with the new Blog Network.

In partnership with BarkleyREI out of Pittsburgh, PA, the project was led by Haley, the director of Digital Marketing, with writing, tech and design support from Marcelle Langan, Brian Andrews, Dan Selicaro and Nichole Magoon and a team of Champlain students. The website is designed to allow for better analytics to give a better idea of how visitors use the site and using the feedback, allow the team to create continual improvements in the online experience.

"We hope you find the new site engaging, usable, and a positive reflection of Champlain College," Haley added, "We appreciate and welcome your thoughts or suggestions on how to make what we have even better."

If you have any suggestions or comments, please send them to webmaster@champlain.edu.


Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and over 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 384 Colleges: 2019 Edition. For the fourth year in a row, Champlain was named a "Most Innovative School" in the North by U.S. News & World Report's 2019 "America's Best Colleges,” and a “Best Value School” and is ranked in the top 100 “Regional Universities of the North” and in the top 25 for “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” Champlain is also featured in the Fiske Guide to Colleges for 2019 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada and Great Britain and is a 2019 College of Distinction. For more information, visit champlain.edu.