Goddard College

Goddard College was a private college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle. The college offered undergraduate and graduate degree programs. With predecessor institutions dating to 1863, Goddard College was founded in 1938 as an experimental and non-traditional educational institution based on the idea that experience and education are intricately linked.

For many years, Goddard College provided a mix of residential, low-residency, and distance-learning programs. Its intensive low-residency model was first developed for its MFA in Creative Writing Program in 1963.

In April 2024, Goddard announced that the college would close at the end of the spring semester, due to financial issues and a decline in enrollment. The college was accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.

Goddard College began in 1863 in Barre, Vermont, northeast of Middlebury as the Green Mountain Central Institute. In 1870, it was renamed Goddard Seminary in honor of Thomas A. Goddard [Wikidata] (1811–1868) and his wife Mary (1816–1889). Goddard was a prominent merchant in Boston, and was one of the school's earliest and most generous benefactors.

Founded by Universalists, Goddard Seminary was originally a four-year preparatory high school, primarily affiliated with Tufts College in eastern Massachusetts. For many years the seminary prospered. Many public high schools opening in the 20th century made many of the private New England academies obsolete. Attempting to save it, the trustees added a Junior College to the seminary in 1935, with a seminary graduate, Royce S. "Tim" Pitkin, as president.

In 1936, under his leadership, the seminary concluded that for Goddard to survive, an entirely new institution would need to be created. Many educators and laymen agreed with him. Pitkin was supported by Stanley C. Wilson, former governor of Vermont and chairman of the Goddard Seminary Board of Trustees; Senators George Aiken and Ralph Flanders; and Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Pitkin persuaded the board of trustees to embrace a new style of education, one substituting individual attention, democracy, and informality for the traditionally austere and autocratic educational model. On March 13, 1938, Goddard College was chartered. In July 1938 the newly formed Goddard College moved to Greatwood Farm in Plainfield, Vermont.

The new Goddard was an experimental and progressive college. For its first 21 years of operation, Goddard was unaccredited and small, but it built a reputation as one of the most innovative colleges in the country. Especially noteworthy was Goddard's use of discussion as the basic method in classroom teaching; its emphasis on the whole lives of students in determining personal curricula; its incorporation of practical work into the life of every student; and its development of the college as a self-governing learning community in which everyone had a voice.

In 1959 Goddard College was accredited. One of the founding principles of Goddard was to provide educational opportunities for adults. There was a great need for a program for adults who had not completed college, to obtain degrees without disrupting their family lives or careers. The Adult Degree Program (ADP), created by Evalyn Bates, was established in 1963. It was the first low-residency adult education program in the country. Over the years many experimental programs were designed at Goddard. The programs included the Goddard Experimental Program for Further Education, Design Build Program, Goddard Cambridge Program for Social Change, Third World Studies Program, Institute for Social Ecology, Single Parent Program and many others.