Ned Houston wore many hats during his 37 years on staff at Sterling College, from president of the tiny Craftsbury Common college to what he called, “lowly faculty member.”
Ned Houston and his wife, Susan, a former Craftsbury Selectboard member for 18 years, have lived in the small Northeast Kingdom town for decades. They’ve seen first hand the economic and cultural benefits that the environmentally focused school has had on Craftsbury since its founding in 1958.
The school, one of the smallest four-year colleges in the country, once attracted students from around the country to Craftsbury, a collection of small villages that includes Craftsbury Common.
Here, students and faculty did significant work, heading out to conduct field work in the Himalayas, and resource management projects along the Colorado River, not to mention their work in Vermont itself.
The college has helped define the economic and cultural life of the community, made up of born-and-raised Vermonters mixed with alums of the school who decided to stick around. The college, community members say, played a part in bucking Vermont’s longer-term demographic trends when, in the 2020 census, it saw its population actually increase.
“I think, despite our location in a very rural area, we gave quite a lot of world exposure to students, and to ourselves,” Ned Houston said.
But this month, after 65 years of operation, the school announced it would be ending its academic programming following the upcoming spring semester. College officials said the school faced persistent financial and enrollment challenges.
The news has spurred plenty of worry in the town of roughly 1,300. What does a future in Craftsbury without Sterling College look like?
“We had been a relative success story,” said Gina Campoli, a Craftsbury Common resident. “And now we’re getting hammered.”
The closure has also reinforced anxiety around the future of higher education in Vermont. Sterling College is just the latest in a string of transitions and closures at small colleges in Vermont and in New England.
More than a half dozen colleges in Vermont, including Green Mountain College in Poultney, the College of St. Joseph in Rutland and Goddard College in Plainfield, have shuttered after facing similar challenges around finances and enrollment.
“Sterling has always seemed to have this unique niche of people and has been able to survive some challenges in the past,” Campoli said. “And to have this reality hit us now, it’s very sad.”
Cultural impact
Emily McClure first purchased The Genny, Craftsbury’s local general store, with two other business partners in 2012. In the years after, McClure said Sterling College students have been a routine presence at the store — as customers, employees and community members.
Those students have for years had an indelible influence on the culture of the town, she said.
“There’s this young energy that comes with a college in your town,” McClure said. Craftsbury Common would not be what it is, she said, without Sterling College having been there for nearly 70 years.
Having a college in town brings academics and thinkers into the community to speak at events and “adds a great deal to I think that just the general depth of discussions of things here in the college,” Ned Houston said. The college has also served as a major employer for the region.
Alums, too, are a big part of the community’s social fabric. Susan Houston said many graduates become ingrained in the community and settle down, working in the area, having children and sending them to the local K-12 public school, Craftsbury Academy.
“I think that that has really helped boost our population,” she said.
But McClure said the town and college’s populations have decreased since the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of students who remain in the community after they graduate has also dwindled, she said.
“It really has been this kind of slow decline in the presence of the college over the last five or so years,” she said. “Whereas I feel like, when I first got here, it just felt like it had a bigger presence.”
The college is set to officially shut its doors in the summer. “I’m sure we’re going to feel it, but I think we’re going to feel it more in an energetic way than we are financially,” McClure said.
Susan Houston, too, fretted over the longer-term impacts of the college’s closure, particularly on the population of alums.
“We won’t have new alums living in our community anymore, and that just makes me really tragically sad because I’ve so enjoyed knowing these students as anxious and excited 18-year-olds, and now they’re in their 30s and in their 40s, and I loved having them as community friends,” she said. “I think we’re going to really miss that.”
Water woes
The town’s civic infrastructure also could take a big hit when Sterling College closes.
Paula Davidson, the treasurer of the Craftsbury Fire District #2, a volunteer body that manages the local water system in Craftsbury Common, said the college has been key to the water district’s operations since the body was founded in 1983. The district serves residential homes, a church, libraries and the Craftsbury Academy.
Kestrel Owens, a commissioner of the water district, said the college’s closure will “have a major impact on our budget in terms of what sort of income we have to run the water system.”
The college has historically been the district’s largest customer, representing 45% of the district’s water usage and 36% of district’s customer income, Davidson said.
The district maintains water connection for Craftsbury Academy, which represents 12% of its income and serves approximately 180 students. The district also operates 40 other metered connections in Craftsbury Common, serving roughly 68 residents.
Without the college, “I’m not sure how we will proceed,” she said.
Davidson said the district expects to begin charging more in the coming years to build capital reserves. “We also hope to find grants and loans to help us afford the looming infrastructure repairs and replacements,” she said.
But she said the district “will be anxiously watching to see what happens with the Sterling College buildings.”
What happens next is unclear. Sterling College President Scott Thomas previously said the focus now is getting the remaining students through their last semester.
Thomas said the college’s board of trustees will determine how to steward the college’s remaining resources.
“I don’t know what’s next, but there will be resources remaining,” he said earlier this month. “We do have a very clear mission, and we do have a fantastic board, so we’ll see what happens at that point.”
Ned and Susan Houston said there are many ideas floating around about what to do with the Sterling College campus and its properties.
“I’m hoping that there will be a group of people who will convene community members and whoever, alums and whoever,” Susan Houston said, “so we can together creatively help design what the future will be, because most of us really need to keep some of the whole vision of the college alive and well through whatever the next reiteration is.”
