Wonderful counselor event today at Merrimack College in North Andover MA! What's most impressive about Merrimack is its huge growth over the past 10 years. What used to be a small, local college is now a thriving institution with 4000 undergraduate and almost 2000 graduate students. They are adding programs and building facilities every year. There's a brand new nursing building with state-of-the-art simulation labs, and, by the way, every student at Merrimack is given an iPad. Love that! I was particularly impressed with their Academic Success Center. Besides the usual tutoring and support for all students, anyone with learning differences is automatically assigned a success coach, and all students are offered the opportunity for success coach. This means a weekly 30-minute check-in to make sure the student is on track. Also, all students take four classes, not five, which affords them the opportunity to really focus and succeed. Additionally there's a great system of early alerts so any faculty, coaches, residential staff or anyone else who is concerned about a student not showing up or appearing in distress is reported to the Success Center. If they receive more than one or two emails about a student, the RA knocks on the student's door to check in. Love that! I'll finish with this: in 2020, Money Magazine rated Merrimack College one of the best colleges for your money!

2024 Update

It was great to get back to Merrimack College, about 25 miles north of Boston, in North Andover, Massachusetts. They've seen huge growth in the last 10 years, and there's more to come. There are currently about 4000+ undergraduates and 1700+ graduate students, and the plan is to continue to increase both populations.

The big news at Merrimack is their brand new Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities. While many other institutions are discontinuing various liberal arts majors, Merrimack has decided to develop those departments by creating this new major. Students pick one area of concentration which will include 5 classes, while also fulfilling other Humanities core requirements. Unlike a major in English or Theology, for example, a student would not take 10 or 12 classes in that department, only five. It's not as deep a dive into one academic discipline. Traditional majors in the liberal arts are still offered. Here's the fantastic news: tuition for students in this major is capped at $17K.

There's lots more that's new: Merrimack launched a new co-op program last year; students can spend a semester working at a co-op instead of taking classes and with some summer work or AP credits, can still graduate in 4 years. They changed athletic conferences this year as well, joining the division 1 MAAC conference. In other news, Merrimack is becoming an R2 research institution, and soon launching a new online MBA program and master's nursing program. Some other things to come in the not-too-distant future include a 3-year bachelors degree with 96 credits and fewer electives, pending state approval, an expanded construction management program and, down the road, a new architecture program. They are also looking to expand the engineering and computer science departments, and are launching a new speech language pathology doctoral program next year. They're also hiring 7 new research faculty, mostly in the biology and life sciences, who will focus on undergraduate teaching as well.

Something else that's new is a large number of "new" majors that are, by design, interdisciplinary. Each is a combination of departments or programs that already exist to appeal to niche interests. Students can even design their own. Some examples include Business Communication, Data Science and Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Graphic Design, International Policy Studies, Leadership and Political Science, Music, Business Marketing and Management, Public Health and Communication, Sports Analytics, and many more. How cool is that?
With the impending demographic cliff, many are concerned about potential closures of small, regional liberal arts colleges. It's a reasonable fear as we are seeing some colleges slash programs. Merrimack is very rapidly moving in the opposite direction. They seem to have a pulse on what people are looking for in higher ed and they are pivoting to the demands of the market. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next 10 years will look like at Merrimack!