Bennington students and faculty in the recording studio.

Two things intersect in the master-apprentice model of teaching: the Bennington principle of learning by doing, and the passion and mastery of the faculty, all teacher-practitioners doing ongoing work in their fields. Bennington’s curriculum is driven by the faculty, who teach courses that reflect their current curiosities as well as their deep knowledge of their particular disciplines. The way in which they create new work and pose new questions becomes a model for students, who in turn and over time create work and pose questions of their own with the faculty as mentors.

“Intellectually rigorous dialogue around the act of making—whether it be artifacts, ideas, or experiments—will be the College’s dominant pedagogic method and source of its special intensity.” —from the Symposium Report of the Bennington College Board of Trustees, 1994