A small Vermont community offered an ideal setting for such education, Pitkin believed. The individual responsibility, communal problem solving and rugged individualism that marked these communities might serve as a fine model for persons of the cities and their suburbs. So might the ingenuity, craftmanship, frugality, integrity and pragmatism for which Vermonters were famous.

Royce Pitkin - known to generations of students and colleagues as "Tim" - retired in 1969. He was honored this past May at the University of Vermont, receiving the doctor of laws degree for his service to higher education. In his 31 years as Goddard College's president, he had seen the college grow from an enrollment of less than 50 to more than a dozen times that number.

He had helped it earn the reputation of being one of the most interesting and distinctive colleges in the country. He had secured grants from the Ford Foundation and other foundations and agencies for pioneering experiments in faculty development, in curriculum design and in ways of relating a college to community needs, problems and resources.

True to its founding principles, Goddard was involved with adult education from its earliest years. Twenty-five years of experience led to the initiation of the Goddard Adult Degree Program in 1963, with an enrollment of 19. This spring's official ADP enrollment was 405 men and women, earning the bachelor of arts degree through independent study all over the country and in several foreign countries.

Other adult programs followed. The undergraduate Goddard Experimental Program in Further Education evolved from a Head Start training program to be Vermont's first college program specifically designed for economically disadvantaged persons.

The Goddard Graduate Program, leading to the master of arts degree, was and remains the only program of its kind, in which students work with faculty members to design wholly individual study programs and carry them out in their home communities with the help of individually appointed consultants.

Two programs leading to the master of fine arts degree were established, one in writing, one in the visual arts. The Visual Arts MFA Program and MA programs in social ecology and special education share a format in which intensive residential study in the summer alternates with supervised non-resident internship and independent study the other months of the year.

While Goddard was growing in its educational offerings, it was addding to its facilities. Adjoining land was bought, extending the Plainfield campus into East Montpelier and a tiny corner of Marshfield. Pitkin wanted Goddard to "grow while staying small." so the building erected on the new Northwood campus housed what was for five years a separate-but-equal program. Between the Greatwood and Northwood campuses was built a Learning Resources Center - the Eliot Pratt Library and, in the early 1970s two buildings for the arts designed and constructed by students and their architectural teachers.

A corner of the new land was the 19th century Cate Farm. For several years its farmhouse and outbuildings were home for the Bread and Puppet Theater whose director, Peter Schuman, and his company were guest artists at Goddard. Today Cate Farm is headquarters for the Goddard Institute of Social Ecology, marked by windmills and solar collecting domes, the site of continuing research in alternative energy sources, biologically sound agriculture, energy-efficient construction, the breeding of fish and crayfish as a food crop, and the cooperative social organization that can make a whole of humanity's interaction with the rest of nature.

Goddard has gone through a lot of changes in the last dozen years. It has its fourth president since Pitkin retired - John Hall, who had been a GI Bill student at Goddard in the late 1940s and who later helped plan and start New York's Empire State College.

There has been a major shift in enrollment too. What was a residential undergraduate college with a small adult program when Pitkin retired is now a low-residence or non-residence college for adults that also operates a small residential undergraduate program.

Changes in administration and enrollment, combined with the rising costs that have plagued all higher education, produced some traumatic times at Goddard, including faculty retrenchment in 1977, budget-shaving in the years since then, some salary cuts for the 1980-81 fiscal years. As Hall points out, committed staff and faculty members are not simply Goddard's most precious educational resource, they are lifesavers.

In spite of the problems, Goddard remains one of the few colleges with a clear and distinct philosophy of education, underlying all of its programs. The philosophy can be summarized briefly in these statements:

Education is an individual matter, because no two persons are the same.

Learning occurs when persons cope actively with concerns important to them and their fellows, and reflect on what worked and what didn't. The role of faculty is to facilitate this process.

When that kind of learning is going on, it forces students to rebuild their ideas about the world and themselves in the world.

Education is a moral affair, because the changes in perception of oneself and the world continually raise questions about how one lives best with others and with the totality of one's environment.

Goddard's differences from most colleges stems directly from its philosophy. Doing and evaluating what was done are more important than instruction. Courses are based in issues and problems rather than subject matters. Individually planned independent study is a central mode for learning. Learning is expected to be demonstrated in products and projects, work and life. The vast educational resources of the world outside the college are used extensively. All education is understood as "experimental".

The Resident Undergraduate Program was Goddard's original liberal arts program designed for students of the "traditional" college age. It operates on a typical academic calendar of fall and spring semesters. Students may live in a cooking dorm on the Northwood campus where they share the shopping for and preparing for meals, or they may choose to live in a smaller dorm on the Greatwood campus, eating meals in the cafeteria with college staff, faculty and often students from one of the external degree programs' residency sessions.

The curriculum includes non-resident terms, when students are expected to leave the campus setting and apply their theoretical learning to specific practical situations. These terms often include study at a different institution, volunteer or paid work in a related field and travel to learn firsthand about the culture and customs of another people.

The fall '80 semester marks the halfway point in a two-year, three-part curriculum experiment initiated by the faculty and administration early in 1979. One component of this experiment is geared to intensive learning with the semester divided into three 4 1/2 week course modules. The modules allow for concentrated in-depth study of a particular topic or subject area from several perspectives.

The second component is a one-third commitment on the part of both faculty and students to thematic study. Each theme is chosen by the students and faculty in community meetings held during the prior semester. The fall 1979 theme was "A Possible Education for the Apocalypse"; the theme for spring 1980 was "The Twentieth Century Experience."

Faculty and student reaction to this format after one year has been positive overall. Several modifications in such things as scheduling and the pace of the introduction to new material have been made as the result of an ongoing evaluation by faculty and students. Further refinements and more detailed evaluation will take place during the coming academic year.

Based on brief periods of residential study and individualized independent study, the Adult Degree Program was on of the first low residency, external degree granting porgrams in the country. It is planned for men and women at least 21 years old - many are in their 40s and 50s - who want to earn the bachelor of arts degree.

The program's six-month semester begins during a 12-day residency period on the Goddard campus. During the residency, students define and plan their own independent liberal arts study for the coming semester, with the help of faculty and other students. Each faculty member works with a small number of students, supervising their studies by mail throughout the semester. Final evaluations are made during the next residency period, as plans begin for the new semester.

To keep residency groups small, the total program enrollment is divided into six sections, or "cycles," which meet at different times on the Goddard campus.

In June of this year, Cycle One became the "thematic cycle," with a specific focus on Peace and International Relations available to students of all disciplines. Studies in these areas have been and continue to be available to students in all of the cycles. In the "peace studies cycle," however, deliberate and careful attention is given by students and faculty to providing a perception of each subject area from the thematic perspective.

A special English Studies semester begins in October with a residency period in southwestern England. Students and two faculty members will stay in the Dillington House Adult Education Center, a 16th century country house - once the home of George III's Prime Minister Lord North - in Ilminster, Somerset, Enland.

The Goddard Experimental Program in Further Education began as a teacher training project for the Head Start Program, helping to prepare Vermont's original Head Start teachers for their work with children.

It is an external undergraduate degree program designed for people with full-time family and/or work-related responsibilities. Students meet with faculty and staff every third weekend to take courses, talk with counselors and plan independent study projects. Students from the Vermont and New York City areas meet on campus, while those in Washington, D.C., meet at the GEPFE Center there.

A recently organized "little GEPFE" group, in which all the students are studying in the same subject area with the same faculty/counselor, meets in Plainfield over a different weekend.

Faculty members serve as academic advisers or counselors, as well as teaching courses and supervising independednt studies. Adjunct faculty members are hired each semester based on the students current educational needs.

The Goddard Graduate Program began in 1970 with a non-residency self-designed independent study format. Students in this program work with a member of the graduate core faculty and a local field faculty person, someone from their home are who has a high level of knowlege about and expertise in the student's field of study.

Students meet with core faculty members in their own communities and attend periodic seminars and workshops in area offices whenever possible. Use of available community resources is central to the program's design and students are encouraged to make use of and enhance their own community.

Admission to the Master of Arts Program may be gained anytime during the year, and students are recommended for graduation throughout the year.

The Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at Goddard is the only graduate-level external degree program .... (turn to Goddard's, page 29 [sorry I don't have this - Q4 webmaster]).