Marlboro College was a private college in Marlboro, Vermont. Founded in 1946, it remained intentionally small, operating as a self-governing community with students following self-designed degree plans culminating in a thesis. In 1998 the college added a graduate school. The college closed at the end of the 2019–2020 academic year and gifted its endowment to Emerson College in Boston to create the Marlboro Institute of Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College. History Marlboro College was founded in 1946 by Walter Hendricks, who had been inspired by his time as director of English at Biarritz American University. Many of the first students were returning World War II veterans. The campus incorporates the buildings of three farms that were on the site at Potash Hill. The first students were primarily freshmen but included some sophomores and juniors and one senior, who in 1948 became the first Marlboro graduate. The students made "How Are Things At Casserole College?" the first school song in response to the dining hall menu. The college remained intentionally small; in 2017 it was one of only three liberal arts colleges listed by U.S. News & World Report where all classes had fewer than 20 students. In 2012 Marlboro instituted the Beautiful Minds Challenge, an essay contest for high school students with full or partial scholarships and other awards as prizes. Essays could take the form of text, images, audio, or video and were judged by Marlboro faculty, staff, and students; finalists were flown to the Marlboro campus for a symposium where they presented their work. The program was discontinued after the 2018 competition. The Renaissance Scholars program, instituted in 2015 with the objective of attracting new students from every state and increasing diversity, caused a rise in enrollment to approximately 200 in fall 2016. Merger In 2018, Marlboro's small size and dwindling enrollment led the Board of Trustees to begin exploring merging with another college or university. A merger with the University of Bridgeport was announced and then called off in 2019. In late 2019, the college announced that it would merge with Emerson College at the end of the 2019–20 academic year. Under the agreement, finalized on July 23, 2020, Marlboro gave its endowment to Emerson, which created the Marlboro Institute of Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies. Marlboro students were guaranteed admission and tenure-track faculty were guaranteed teaching positions at Emerson. At that time, Marlboro