Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Alvin P. Sanoff
“The opportunity for students to go to a smaller school where they can deal
with the faculty can mean the difference between success and failure.”
—Richard Levao, President, Bloomfield College
of financial aid; 40 percent come from households with
family incomes under $20,000. President Richard Levao
tells the story of one current student who works 35 hours
a week while attending classes full-time. “She is virtually
the sole support for her family and is working to the edge
of exhaustion to make a difference for them,” he says. In
another case, a mother enrolled at Bloomfield to show her
daughter that earning a college degree was possible. Now
both mother and daughter are alumnae of the college.
Bloomfield provides students with a core liberal
arts curriculum combined with courses to prepare them
for jobs in such fields as nursing and accounting. Because
many Bloomfield undergraduates do not come to campus
fully prepared for college-level work, the college provides
substantial academic support. It has a center for academic
development, partially funded by a federal grant, that remains
open around the clock. “Many of the students come here with
the kinds of social and academic issues not widely understood
to be part of higher education,” says Levao. A number of the
Bloomfield students, he adds, would have a difficult time at
a large state university. “The opportunity for students to go
to a smaller school where they can deal with the faculty can
mean the difference between success and failure,” explains
the president, who describes his faculty as very supportive of
students. “The faculty have self-identified their way here.”
In addition to the courses that are taught on campus,
Bloomfield offers non-credit classes at a Baptist church in
Newark for non-matriculated students. Those who do well
in the non-credit courses are given a chance to enroll at the
college. Many of these students are in their fifties and sixties,
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