A new engineering education program is expected to open this fall in five Vermont College of Fine Arts buildings, administrators announced Wednesday.
Greenway Institute, a White River Junction nonprofit that offers sustainable engineering education, plans to purchase a large chunk of VCFA’s Montpelier campus: the Noble, Glover, Stone, Schulmaier and Dewey Hall buildings.
By the fall, those buildings are set to become the new Greenway Center for Equity and Sustainability, which will provide college-level classes for students, according to state Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, D-Norwich, Greenway’s cofounder.
“If you look at Vermont’s economy, one of the most promising sectors we have is the green energy and green technology sector, sort of broadly speaking,” Holcombe said. “It’s high-growth, it’s high-wage compared to other sectors and (in) pretty high demand. And there’s a real opportunity for Vermont here to position and brand itself as a place with a lot of people with passion and talent in this sector who are working to find solutions.”
The new Greenway Center is a joint project of Greenway Institute, Norwich Technologies and Elizabethtown (Pennsylvania) College and will be supported by a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation. If accredited, the Greenway Institute will technically be a separate campus of Elizabethtown College, where students can get college credit for coursework.
Campus buildings will be used for “higher education purposes and rental spaces for current tenants as well as incubator spaces and related residencies,” Greenway and VCFA said in a press release Wednesday.
“We carefully identified potential buyers that have a demonstrated commitment to serving the community and will continue to enrich the campus and city,” VCFA president Leslie Ward said in the press release. “We are pleased to be partnering with entities that share our community’s values and commitment to lifelong learning.”
Ward did not respond to a question about the five buildings’ sale price. Greenway’s other cofounder and executive director, Troy McBride, declined to provide an exact figure but said the buildings would be bought for “market price.”
Administrators expect to bring about five Elizabethtown students on campus for a semester-long pilot in the fall, said Holcombe, a former Vermont secretary of education.
“They’re going to both take these courses and hopefully give us some feedback, so that we can improve the design before going to scale,” she said. Holcombe hopes the campus will host around 40 college students — 20 first-years and 20 sophomores — in the fall of 2024.
For the past year, the Vermont College of Fine Arts has been working to shrink its footprint in the state capital.
VCFA offers low-residency master’s degree programs in six artistic disciplines, including creative writing, film and music composition. Students complete most of their program remotely and convene twice a year for in-person residencies — nine-day sessions that include workshops, seminars and exhibits.
Those residencies used to be held on VCFA’s campus, which occupies a cluster of buildings on Montpelier’s eastern edge, around a college green.
But last year, the college announced plans to move its residency programs out of state. Summer residencies moved to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, while winter residencies will take place at Susquehanna College in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.
The college’s administrative offices remain in the historic College Hall building, but other buildings were to be sold, administrators said.
Wednesday’s announcement marks the latest development in the fate of the campus. Last month, the college said that the New School of Montpelier, a small private school, had reached a deal to buy the college’s Alumnx Hall and Bishop Hatch buildings.
At the same time, administrators said that a deal for three other buildings — Gary Library, Martin Hall and the Crowley Center — had fallen through.