Sterling College, the small work and farming institution in Craftsbury Common, has appointed Wyoming academic Scott L. Thomas as its next president.
Thomas, 61, has spent his career in education, most recently as dean of the University of Wyoming College of Education. He worked as a professor at the University of Vermont’s College of Education and Social Services from 2016 to 2021, where he first encountered Sterling as part of an agricultural program. He plans to move with his wife to the president’s house on Sterling’s campus this summer and start his new position in Vermont on July 1.
Thomas said that when he moved to Wyoming two years ago, he planned to stay, but the opportunity to lead Sterling was too good to pass up. He has long sought a vehicle to participate in solutions to climate change and environmental degradation, he said.
“This is a calling for me,” Thomas told Seven Days on Tuesday. “I could see taking this 21st-century experimental college and creating a national, and potentially international, model for how we think about sustainability and regenerative farming and strong communities.”
Sterling College is a small liberal arts college, with just 86 students enrolled this year and room for only 125 students on campus. It was founded in 1958 as Sterling School, a boys’ prep school. It became an accredited four-year college in 1997, offering both bachelor’s and associate’s degrees in resource management. The school has always had a strong agricultural mission, and its 130-acre main campus in Craftsbury is home to a variety of livestock, including a pair of draft horses. The college has another 300 acres in Wolcott.
Sterling now offers degrees in outdoor education, ecology, environmental humanities, and sustainable agriculture and food systems, but it is changing its emphasis this year. Starting in the fall, Sterling will offer its two- and four-year degrees only in environmental studies, with the other subjects available as concentrations.
Thomas’ job will be to embark on a fundraising campaign and to increase awareness about the small college, which is little-known even within Vermont, said Allison Hooper, who is chair of Sterling’s board of trustees. Sterling has an endowment of about $1 million.
“Sterling is probably the best-kept secret in the Northeast Kingdom,” Hooper said on Tuesday, noting that Thomas is familiar with the institution and its philosophy.
“We were looking for a person who will inspire the community and really amplify what we do,” she said.
Thomas, a Nordic skier who grew up surfing in California, has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a PhD in educational policy, leadership and research methods from the University of California, Santa Barbara. When he was at UVM, he said, he bonded with a group of Vermonters who surfed the waves on the New Hampshire coast, something he looks forward to doing again.
His interest in Sterling goes beyond sustainability to the structure of the institution itself. Its small size and unique mission are an antidote, he said, to homogenization in higher education.
“Sterling has kind of stuck there on its mission of deeply experimental programming rooted in the liberal arts,” he said. “These are things that I think are profoundly important for our civilization.”
Sterling is a member of the Work Colleges Consortium, a national group of liberal arts colleges where all students hold regular jobs on campus in order to reduce the cost of their education. Sterling’s main campus includes about five acres where students work in vegetable production, raising about one-third of the food prepared in the dining hall, according to Christina Goodwin, a Sterling graduate who is vice president for advancement. Tuition and room and board come to about $53,000 per year, according to the website.
Goodwin said almost all students live on campus and that there are no plans to increase enrollment beyond 125. Sterling recently received an anonymous $2 million gift to help with that goal.
“Being small allows us to make changes on a shorter timeline than larger institutions,” Goodwin said. “It doesn’t take long for us to turn and pivot.”
She described an “all-hands-on-deck” rural culture among students, staff and faculty.
“When the sheep get out, people rally to help in that moment,” she said.
Correction, April 12, 2023: Almost all of Sterling’s students live on campus. A previous version of this story contained an error.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2023.
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