Bennington College Bennington College is a private , nonsectarian liberal arts college located in Bennington , Vermont , USA . The college was founded in 1932 as a women ' s college and became co - educational in 1969 . It is accredited with the New England Association of Schools & Colleges ( NEASC ) . History . 1920s . The planning for the establishment of Bennington College began in 1923 and took nine years to be realized . While many people were involved , the four central figures in the founding of Bennington were Vincent Ravi Booth , Mr . and Mrs . Hall Park McCullough , and William Heard Kilpatrick . A Women ' s Committee headed by Mrs . Hall Park McCullough , organized the Colony Club Meeting in 1924 , which brought together some 500 civic leaders and educators from across the country . As a result of the Colony Club Meeting , a charter was secured and a board of trustees formed for Bennington College . One of the trustees , John Dewey , helped shape many of the College ' s signature programs such as The Plan Process and Field Work Term through his educational principles . In 1928 , four years before the College would begin , Robert Devore Leigh was recruited by the Bennington College executive committee to serve as the first president of Bennington . Leigh presided over the forging of Bennington ' s structure and its early operation . In 1929 Leigh authored the Bennington College Prospectus which outlined the " Bennington idea . " 1930s . The first class of eighty - seven women arrived on campus in 1932 . The College was the first to include the visual and performing arts as full - fledged elements of the liberal arts curriculum . Every year since the College began in 1932 , every Bennington College student has engaged in internships and volunteer opportunities each winter term . Originally called the Winter Field & Reading Period , the two - month term was described by President Robert Devore Leigh in his 1928 Bennington College Prospectus as " a long winter recess giving students and faculty opportunity for travel , field work , and educational advantages of metropolitan life . " This internship was renamed twice , as Non - Resident term and , as it is called today , Field Work Term . In 1934 the Bennington School of Dance summer program was founded by Martha Hill . Martha Graham , Doris Humphrey , Hanya Holm , and Charles Weidman all taught at this laboratory . The program gained attendance by José Limón , Bessie Schonberg , Merce Cunningham , Betty Ford . In 1935 the administration agreed to admit young men into the Bennington Theater Studio program , since men were needed for theatrical performances . Among the men who attended was the actor Alan Arkin . 1940s - 1980s . Built in 1959 , the Edward Clark Crossett Library was designed by the award - winning modernist architect Pietro Belluchi . After opening , Crossett Library was featured in Architectural Forum and became a focus of study for many architrecture students in the 1960s . Crossett Library went on to win the 1963 Honor Award for library design . In 1968 , three new student houses were completed to help house the growing student population and were named in honor of William C . Fels , Jessie Smith Noyes , and Margaret Smith Sawtell . These houses were designed by the distinguished modernist architect Edward Larrabee Barnes who posthumously earned the 2007 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal . In 1969 Bennington became fully co - educational , a move that attracted major national attention , including a major feature story in the New York Times Magazine . 1990s . In 1993 , the Bennington College Board of Trustees initiated a process known as " The Symposium . " Arguing that the college suffered from " a growing attachment to the status quo that , if unattended , is lethal to Bennington ' s purpose and pedagogy , " the Board of Trustees " solicit [ ed ] . . . concerns and proposals on a wide and open - ended range of issues from every member of the faculty , every student , every staff member , every alumna and alumnus , and dozens of friends of the College . " According to the Trustees , the process was intended to reinvent the college , and the Board said it received over 600 contributions to this end . The results of the process were published in June 1994 in a 36 - page document titled " Symposium Report of the Bennington College Board of Trustees " . Recommended changes included the following : Near the end of June 1994 , 27 faculty members ( approximately one - third of the total faculty body ) were notified by certified mail that their contracts would not be renewed . ( The exact number of fired faculty members is listed as 25 or 26 in some reports , a discrepancy partly due to the fact that at least one faculty member , photographer Neil Rappaport , was reinstated on appeal shortly after his firing . ) As recommended in the Symposium , the Trustees abolished the presumptive tenure system , leaving the institution with no form of tenure . The firings attracted considerable media attention . Some students and alumni protested , and the college was censured for its actions by the American Association of University Professors , who said , " . . . academic freedom is insecure , and academic tenure is nonexistent today at Bennington College . " Critics of the Symposium , and the 1994 firings , have alleged that the Symposium was essentially a sham , designed to provide a pretext for the removal of faculty members to whom the college ' s president , Elizabeth Coleman , was hostile . Some have questioned the timing of the firings , arguing that by waiting until the end of June , the college made it impossible for students affected by the firings to transfer to other institutions . President Coleman responded that the decision was fundamentally " about ideas " , stating that " Bennington became mediocre over time " and that the college was in need of radical change . Coleman argued that the college was in dire financial straits , saying that " had Bennington done nothing . . . the future of this institution was seriously in doubt . " In a letter to the " New York Times " , John Barr , Chairman of the Board of Trustees , asserted that Coleman was " not responsible for the redesign of the college . . . It was the board of trustees " . In the immediate wake of the controversy , for the 1994 - 1995 academic year , the college ' s enrollment dropped to a record low of 370 undergraduates , and the following year ( 1995 – 1996 ) , undergraduate enrollment declined to 285 . According to Coleman , a student body of 600 undergraduates was required for the college to break even . Over the following years , enrollment has slowly increased , reaching 500 students in 2002 , and 600 in 2004 . Currently as of 2011 , the college has a total enrollment of 822 students . In May 1996 , seventeen of the faculty members terminated in the 1994 firings filed a lawsuit against Bennington College , seeking $ 3 . 7 million in damages and reinstatement to their former positions . In December 2000 , the case was settled out of court ; as part of the settlement , the fired faculty members received $ 1 . 89 million and an apology from the college . Acceptance is considered very difficult with more than 50 % of freshmen in the top 10 % of their high school class and scored over 1230 on the SAT I or over 26 on the ACT . Academics . Graduate programs . Masters degrees offered : MFA in Writing , MA in Teaching a Second Language , MFA in Performing Arts , and Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program . Graduate Program in Writing . Bennington College has a low - residency Master of Fine Arts program in writing . " The Atlantic " recently named it one of the nation ' s best , and " Poets & Writers Magazine " named it one of the top three low - residency programs in the world . Core faculty has included fiction writers David Gates , Amy Hempel , Jill McCorkle , Sheila Kohler , Martha Cooley , Askold Melnyczuk , Lynne Sharon Schwartz , and Alice Mattison ; nonfiction writers Sven Birkerts , Susan Cheever , Phillip Lopate , Tom Bissell , and George Scialabba ; and poets April Bernard , Major Jackson , Timothy Liu , Amy Gerstler , Mark Wunderlich , and Ed Ochester . The Writing Seminars were founded by the poet Liam Rector . Following Rector ' s death in August 2007 , Sven Birkerts took over as acting director of the Writing Seminars . He was subsequently named director in January 2008 , following a nationwide search for Rector ' s successor . Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program . For students who have excelled in an undergraduate program in an area other than science and now wish to acquire the prerequisites necessary to apply to medical and other health - related professional schools , Bennington offers a one - year intensive science curriculum . Now in its thirtieth year , the program offers advising and support through and beyond the postbac year during the medical school admissions process . Postbac students are both recent college graduates and experienced professionals from many backgrounds advancing on to Dartmouth ' s Geisel School of Medicine , Harvard , Johns Hopkins , UVM , Yale and other medical and health profession schools . Campus . The groundbreaking ceremony for Bennington College took place on August 16 , 1931 and construction of the original Bennington College campus was completed by 1936 . The Boston architectural firm , J . W . Ames and E . S . Dodge designed Commons , the 12 original student houses , as well as the reconfiguration of the Barn from a working farm building into classrooms and administrative offices . The original student houses were named for the people integral to the founding of the College . The campus was built by more than 100 local craftsmen , many of whom had been out of work since the stock market crash of 1929 . The campus stretches 440 acres with main campus centered on 10 acres . There are 300 wooded acres , 15 acres of wetland , and 5 acres of tilled farmland . Residence halls . 94 % of students live on campus . There are 21 student houses and all dorms are co - educational . Each dorm hosts a weekly " Coffee Hour " where students discuss campus and house issues together . There are also 15 staff / faculty houses . Student life . Bennington College has a total undergraduate enrollment of 668 , with a gender distribution of 32 . 9 percent male students and 67 . 1 percent female students . 94 . 0 percent of the students live in college - owned , - operated , or - affiliated housing and 6 . 0 percent of students live off campus . Student publications . " The Silo " is a student - run and produced journal of arts and letters at Bennington College . It has been published since 1943 . Notable alumni and faculty . Among the more notable of Bennington ' s alumni are : Alan Arkin , Andrew Kromelow , Anne Ramsey , Anthony Wilson , Carol Channing , Donna Tartt , Andrea Dworkin , Kathleen Norris , Susan Crile , Kiran Desai , Bret Easton Ellis , Judith Butler , Libby Zion , Jill Eisenstadt , Jonathan Lethem , Justin Theroux , Michael Pollan , Helen Frankenthaler , Cora Cohen , Liz Phillips , Tim Daly , Roger Kimball , Holland Taylor , Bradley S . Jacobs , Melissa Rosenberg , Jane Thompson , Peter Dinklage and Beau Friedlander . Faculty has included Wharton and James biographer R . W . B . Lewis , essayist Edward Hoagland , literary critic Camille Paglia , rhetorician Kenneth Burke , fomer United Artists ' senior vice - president Steven Bach , novelists Bernard Malamud and John Gardner , trumpeter / composer Bill Dixon , composers Allen Shawn , Henry Brant , and Vivian Fine , painters Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski , politicians Mansour Farhang and Mac Maharaj , poets Léonie Adams and Howard Nemerov , sculptor Anthony Caro , dancer / choreographer Martha Graham , drummer Milford Graves , author William " Bill " Butler ( author of " The Butterfly Revolution " ) , economist Karl Polanyi and a number of Pulitzer Prize - winning poets including W . H . Auden , Stanley Kunitz , Mary Oliver , Theodore Roethke and Anne Waldman . Kiran Desai ( ' 93 ) won the Man Booker Prize ( UK ) ( 2006 ) for her novel " The Inheritance of Loss " . Alan Arkin ( ' 55 ) won an Academy Award in 2007 for his role in " Little Miss Sunshine " . The band Mountain Man formed at Bennington College when all three singers were students .