Terrain V01 - Journal - Page 10
8 | Sterling College
...continued,
Matthew Derr is fond of needling colleague Ned Houston—former faculty,
dean, and interim president—by admitting “what is most remarkable about
Sterling is that it exists.” This is a complex assessment, and one not to be interpreted as disparaging of the institution. As we all know, Sterling is anything
but ordinary; it is an entity that at times
feels improbable and small …even fragile.
Early on, in its founding incarnation as a
boys’ college preparatory school, Sterling differentiated itself in the landscape
of traditional education by implementing a curriculum that was experiential
and expeditionary, one that immersed
boys in the woods and waterways proximal to the Common. With the school’s
transition in the 1970’s, the faculty referenced Outward Bound and the work
of Kurt Hahn to launch the Grassroots
Project at Sterling Institute, providing
adults an opportunity to work, learn,
and implement tangible skills, leveraging the resources of farm and forest as
a classroom. Superficially, students paid
to learn to work, and learned to work by
working. The Institute grew to encompass two years of programming, and in
the 1980’s Sterling became an accredited college offering an Associate of Arts
degree in Resource Management enhanced by an extensive internship program and opportunities for off-campus
learning. Its commitment to experiential
education never wavered: the late 1990’s
saw accreditation as a 4-year college
offering a Bachelor of Arts degree, one
with a core curriculum that required students to undertake a winter backpacking expedition, engage in the school’s
mandatory work program, and speak
up in participatory all-college meetings.
Sterling’s denomination as a college did
little to express the depth and breadth
of the experience made possible there;
it was, and is, something of a unicorn.
There is nothing similar in higher education, a fact that proved both a great asset and an occasional challenge.
What emerged from Sterling’s evolution
was a unique operational model, a highly engaged faculty and student body,
and a bit of a conundrum for broader
communities to interpret. Sterling was
so unique, its curriculum, schedule,
and focus on community integration
so non-typical in the context of colleges, that it struggled to navigate the
pathways whereby more conventional
colleges found fiscal support and a prospective student body. What Sterling
had, however, was a fierce notion of its
intrinsic value, and grit emblematic of
its Northern Vermont roots. Pennies
were pinched, expenses were kept to a
minimum, and despite an incredible record of alumnx giving, the steady climb
to monetary well-being and widespread
recognition and awareness was steep
and rocky. Sterling persisted doggedly,
but with little cushion.
When Matthew Derr arrived in 2012, he
faced the same immediate crises that
previous Sterling presidents had faced.
There were leaky roofs that needed
patching, a river of snowmelt that spilled
each spring through the barns, and
perpetual concerns about student enrollment and retention. But outside, the
climate, both literal and metaphoric, was
growing increasingly hostile, especially
for small colleges. As Derr developed the
Nourish the Roots strategic plan, and
in turn set out on his early forays into
fundraising, he maintained his focus on
the mission and the work, and his confidence in the import of both. He chose not
to focus on crises of the mundane … he
did not go asking for money to fix roofs
or barn floors, at least generally. Instead,
he set out to communicate an imperative. In his soft-spoken but unflagging
way he asserted that it was very, very
important that the place survive. He offered potential donors the privilege of
supporting a vital cause. “Just imagine
what we could do if we had more …” he’d
pose, and then donors, students, and
staff began to contemplate the same.
This approach worked; the Rian Fried
Center for Sustainable Agriculture &
Food Systems (RFC) and its Alfond Draft
Barn being just two examples. Founded
in 2014, the RFC serves as the instructional laboratory for an experiential and
place-based curriculum that unites the
farm and forest and kitchen.
Efforts such as Derr’s Nourish the Roots
campaign have a way of propelling
themselves. With some early fundraising wins, Derr and the institution gained
confidence, both internal confidence
around increased financial viability, and
institutional confidence around the value that internal stakeholders, namely
staff, board, and students, had always
felt. This perceived confidence engendered greater confidence from donors,
and the loop reinforced itself. Slowly
but surely, the institution became the
vehicle and not the priority; people supported the College, sure, in large part
because it was easy to describe Sterling
as an institution doing good things in a
complex world. Transcending that narrative, Derr began to re-position Sterling: it became not just a college, but a
cause. This shift fostered engagement
from a whole other population and made
for both a broader audience and support
base, which in turn reinforced that same
loop. “Fundraising was possible because
we believed it. Fundraising didn’t make
it possible for us to believe it. We asked
for support because we knew the work
was important,” says Derr. He admits
to some sleepless nights and a steady
hum of concern over whether the bills
would get paid and the lights would stay
on, but never for lack of conviction that
Sterling was worthy. On this point he
was unequivocal.