Chester College of New England is a bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

-granting college that provides a foundation in the liberal arts

Liberal arts

The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...

 and the fine arts, complemented by majors in the professional arts. Located in Chester, New Hampshire

Chester, New Hampshire

Chester is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 4,768 at the 2010 census. It is home to Chester College .-History:Incorporated in 1722, Chester once included Candia, set off in 1763...

, the college offers degree programs in creative writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

; professional writing

Professional writing

Professional writing involves the use of clear language to convey information in a way that is easily understood by the intended audience. Individuals who can use language well may be employed as full-time professional writers in a variety of communications-related occupations, such as journalist,...

; photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 and media arts (with concentrations in video production

Video production

Video production is videography, the process of capturing moving images on electronic media even streaming media. The term includes methods of production and post-production...

, media arts, or photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

); graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

; fine arts; communication arts

Communication Arts

Communication Arts is the largest international trade journal of visual communications. Founded in 1959 by Richard Coyne and Robert Blanchard, the magazine’s coverage includes graphic design, advertising, photography, illustration and interactive media. The magazine continues to be edited and...

; and interdisciplinary arts. Chester College also offers minor programs in creative writing, illustration

Illustration

An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...

, photojournalism

Photojournalism

Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism...

, professional writing – publishing, and theater.

The four-year Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 program takes an interdisciplinary approach to studies, with a strong emphasis on both creativity and professionalism. The small, rural environment fosters intimate workshop classes and draws in artists and writers from all over New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

The college features a low student-to-faculty ratio (10:1), artist- and writer-in-residence programs, and a program of guest lectures, exhibitions, art and photography exhibits, internships, and relationships with professional associations.

Visiting Artists and Writers Series

Chester College invites several distinguished artists and writers to campus every semester. The Visiting Artists and Writers Series has welcomed several notable visual artists and authors to campus. Visiting writers and artists host lectures, sit in on classes, and host readings and gallery exhibits on campus.

Notable authors in the past have included Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Steve Almond is an American short story writer and essayist. He is the author of eight books.-Life:He was raised in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter,...

, Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist, he often focuses on minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness, and has written about such provocative topics as voyeurism and planned assassination...

, Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is an American author of essays, short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories , and The O. Henry Prize Stories .-Life:Gaitskill was born in Lexington, Kentucky...

, Jennifer Haigh

Jennifer Haigh

Jennifer Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer.She was born in Barnesboro, a Western Pennsylvania coal town 85 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Cambria County. She attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers'...

, Askold Melnyczuk, Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds

-Life:Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Francisco. She was raised as a “hellfire Calvinist”, as she describes it. She says she was by nature "a pagan and a pantheist" and notes "I was in a church where there was both great literary art and bad literary art, the great art being psalms and the bad...

, George Saunders

George Saunders

George Saunders is a New York Times bestselling American writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's and GQ, among other publications...

, and Michelle Tea

Michelle Tea

Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, prostitution, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and currently lives in San Francisco...

. Notable visual artists in the past have included Mary Babcock, Henry Horenstein

Henry Horenstein

Henry Horenstein is an American artist photographer. Henry Horenstein has worked as a photographer, teacher and author since the early 1970s. He is the author of over 30 books, including a series of photographic textbooks that have been used by hundreds of thousands of students over the past 30...

, Robert Lobe, Pipo Nguyen-duy

Pipo Nguyen-duy

Pipo Hieu Nguyen-duy is a fine art photographer, based in Ashland, Oregon and a professor of Photography at Oberlin College.-Early life:...

, Pol Turgeon, and Barbara Westermann

Barbara Westermann

Barbara Westermann is a conceptual sculptor living in New York City. She has shown her work widely, including shows at of Brown University, , the , the Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg in Germany...

.

History

The college was founded in 1965 as White Pines College by Faith Preston, Ed.D., who sought to create a post-secondary learning environment that focused on the needs of the individual student in a way that larger institutions could not. The first class was admitted in 1967. The name was changed in 2002 when the college expanded from a 2-year program to a 4-year college.

On June 22, 2007, former Manchester

Manchester, New Hampshire

Manchester is the largest city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire, the tenth largest city in New England, and the largest city in northern New England, an area comprising the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It is in Hillsborough County along the banks of the Merrimack River, which...

 Mayor Robert Baines was named interim president. He served half a year before announcing his intention to remain as permanent president.

Notable faculty include published authors David Crouse

David Crouse

David Crouse is a short story writer and teacher. Crouse's work explores issues of identity and alienation, and his stories are populated with characters living on the fringes of American society. The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction was awarded to him in 2005 for his first collection of...

(former faculty) and Robert W. Crawford (former faculty), as well as Christina Pitsch.

External links

• Chester College of New England