Academics

Mountain Campus

The Mountain Campus Semester Program will be on pause for the 2024-25 school year. Please check back for more information future program offerings.

An educational opportunity unlike any other at Burr and Burton, the Mountain Campus Semester Program brings a small group of motivated students comes together to engage in a semester-long study of the surrounding landscape and community—its past, present, and potential for the future. Classes are supplemented and blended with extensive fieldwork, local resources, and professionals to enhance the learning experience. Students take on significant leadership roles during the semester, and reflect often on their learning process, consequently coming to understand as much about themselves as they do the science, history, and literature of Vermont. The multidisciplinary curriculum is designed to be challenging and invigorating for college or career-bound students with a range of skills and experiences.

Students examine a central question: “How do we live well in this place?” through investigations into:

The social, political, economic and environmental issues affecting our local area and their relevance in the national and global context;
How artists and writers have been inspired by these issues and how they have addressed these issues in their work;
The different forest communities that exist on and around the campus and the ecological factors that influence them;
Uses of land in the area and the resulting impact on wildlife, the forest, and the community;
How to effectively prepare for and lead outdoor expeditions, how to achieve group cohesion and trust, how to build self-awareness and self-reliance;
Ways people can care for a community and affect positive change. There are four academic courses woven into the interdisciplinary curriculum.