24-07-2025
The Greenway Institute – Making Transformative Engineering Education Affordable
Aerial View of the Greeway Institute Campus in Montpelier, Vermont
The Greenway Institute - a new university in Vermont - is making engineering education more affordable. Several other new engineering and STEM-focused institutions have recently been founded across the US, but without the same focus on revolutionizing the business model of higher education. Olin College of Engineering, founded in 1997 with gifts of $460 million from the F. W. Olin Foundation, was one of the first of these new institutions and developed a new curriculum centered on project-based learning and user-centered design. The Roux Institute at Northeastern University launched in Portland, Maine in 2020, backed by tech entrepreneur David Roux and by the Harold Alfond Foundation, who each contributed $100-million gifts. The Roux Institute focuses on graduate education infused with AI, and in 2024 opened its new campus at the former B&M Beans Factory to be a base for co-op work-study projects that can help transform the local economy. The newest addition is a STEM-focused higher education institution planned for Bentonville, Arkansas, announced at the 2025 Heartland Summit by members of the Walton family, and will offer an education that integrates STEM and business for its planned 500 students in its first undergraduate class, with tuition fully covered in the initial years.
Building a University Economically
Another new entrant in this space is The Greenway Institute. In contrast with Olin, Roux, and Walton, Greenway was founded without a large endowment or major gift and provides a case study of how engineering education can more efficiently and economically serve students and society. The initial seed funding for investigating the concept of Greenway came from corporate sponsors and a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation in collaboration with Elizabethtown College to develop and launch the Greenway Center for Equity and Sustainability (GCES) in Engineering in Vermont. The NSF grant enabled Elizabethtown and Greenway to pilot new educational approaches within an ABET-accredited engineering program and have set the stage for the opening of a standalone engineering college in Vermont.
Greenway Founders and their Vision
Greenway's founders include Troy McBride, Rebecca Holcombe and Mark Somerville. Troy McBride, a Greentech entrepreneur and former engineering professor at Elizabethtown College, began thinking about Greenway College over a decade ago. Rebecca Holcombe, a former Secretary of Education of Vermont, brought extensive experience in educational policy and a commitment to better serve historically marginalized students. In 2024, Mark Somerville, former Provost of Olin College of Engineering, was appointed as the founding president and co-founder. As a former founding faculty member, dean of faculty, and provost at Olin College, he brings 23 years of experience in transforming undergraduate engineering education. Somerville also brings a deep knowledge of engineering with a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT, and from studying physics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
The Greenway Model
Greenway's approach addresses three key problems in engineering education: affordability, engagement, and connection to real-world engineering work. Two years of Greenway education are centered on hands-on engineering projects that target learning objectives across multiple courses simultaneously, acquiring math, science, and engineering skills while discovering real-world applications. Mark Somerville, in an interview, pointed out that 'learning engineering by practicing engineering is both much more effective and a whole lot more fun.' Greenway's model also includes two years of 'work-integrated learning' in which students work in engineering jobs, while simultaneously receiving high-touch mentoring and support from Greenway faculty. Somerville observed that 'instead of just sitting on a campus, students are actually out working and doing real things that matter to real people – and if you couple that with intentional reflection, you get incredibly powerful learning.' This structure also makes the Greenway education 'radically affordable,' both because it drives down cost and simultaneously enables student earnings. At the same time, it ensures alignment between Greenway's curriculum and current work in industry.
Building Maturity and Professionalism in Students
Greenway's approach is intended to help students develop interpersonal and workplace skills usually only found after graduating from college. Somerville notes that 'while there's enormous growth that happens in the first two years of residential education, we do our students a disservice when we cloister them for four years.' Drawing on and expanding the idea of 'co-op' internships pioneered at the University of Waterloo, Northeastern University, and the new Iron Range Engineering program in Minnesota, Greenway's model has students living in the world and working for two years during their education, while simultaneously getting support from mentors from Greenway. This is more of an intentional transition to the 'real world', and it produces 'the kinds of outcomes that only come from an authentic work environment with coaching and mentoring,' according to Somerville. The common 'drink from a fire hose' form of engineering education is not only 'a sadistic metaphor,' says Somerville, but also 'assumes that the most important outcome of an engineering degree is to acquire a whole bunch of specific technical content knowledge. That doesn't make sense in a post-AI world.' Greenway's approach posits that 'content knowledge acquisition may not be nearly as important as learning to learn, habits of mind, and the processes and ways of approaching things that engineers employ.'
A Vermont Prototype
Greenway plans to admit its first class in the Fall of 2027, on the former Vermont College of Fine Arts campus in Montpelier, Vermont. According to Somerville, 'Vermont's a great place to prototype - there's the necessary infrastructure, a growing Greentech sector that's hungry for employees, and a real need to create more attractive educational options.' Somerville notes, though, this is just the start: he frames the Vermont campus as 'a first full prototype.' Greenway's intent is to scale to multiple locations across the US, once the model is proven.
A More Sustainable Business Model for Higher Education
The rising cost of higher education, the student debt crisis, and the increasing numbers of colleges closing were all important factors in developing the Greenway model. According to Somerville, 'The key move with Greenway is asking the question, how might you design the education to be synergistic with the business model?' Greenway's new business model 'really changes your value proposition and your cost structure.' 'Between making the education 50% out in the real world, and questioning the idea of the amenities arms race, the institution is simply a lot cheaper to run.' Somerville says that at the same time, the model helps students' bottom lines as well: since they are working for two full years while at college, 'instead of students waiting four years before any real earnings, they'll be making good money for half of their program – about a hundred thousand dollars on average,' according to Somerville.
The result is 'something that both is unlike anything that is out there and that at the same time builds out of a set of ideas and components that are actually proven in the world,' says Somerville, who says Greenway asks the question, 'how can we maintain the humanity of education, but do so in a way that actually is affordable?' With the arrival of the Greenway Institute and other new engineering institutions, we will see how these questions are answered in the coming years.
