EMERSON SET TO GO GLOBAL
College plans Europe, Asia, Australia sites
The sun will never set on the Emerson empire.
The downtown college is planning partnership campuses around the world geared toward international students — even as it invests $300 million in improving its current digs next to the Boston Common.
Emerson will start what it’s calling “global portals” in Lugano, Switzerland, and Paris starting next year, President Lee Pelton told the Herald yesterday. In 2022, Pelton aims to begin similar setups in Hong Kong and Sydney.
“We live in a global world — we’re creating a borderless campus,” Pelton said.
These aren’t study-abroad institutions for students at the main campus — they’re partnerships with universities overseas to offer Emerson courses and degrees for people around the world. They feature Western-style instruction in English, and people who graduate are Emerson alums.
For Pelton, who’s led the college for seven years, constantly building and expanding the college’s brand is crucial for the institution’s long-term success. These partnerships abroad would put Emerson’s arts and communications classes — its bread and butter, and the primary part of the brand Pelton highlights — before more people.
This push to raise the college’s profile also is on display back at home around the corner of Tremont and Boylston streets, where the school is in the midst of a two-year series of projects totaling $300 million. One new dorm’s already up, and Emerson now owns buildings farther down Boylston toward Charles Street.
Workers scurry all over the Little Building, a dorm that’s belying its name and adding several floors for students atop new retail space as it’s overhauled to hold 1,030 students. Outside, the sidewalk will bump out into Boylston Street and will feature trees, benches and planters.
Basically, Pelton said, he’s looking to create something of a campus; he wants people to walk by and think about how they’re walking through Emerson — not just that they’re walking through Boston and happen to see an Emerson building.
“When they get here, they will know they are in Emerson,” Pelton said, looking out the window of his 14th-floor office.
Emerson’s grown only slightly in enrollment, staying around 3,400 undergraduates. One way the college has been able to afford it is it offers less financial aid than it used to, keeping the effective cost of attendance higher.
Pelton rejected the idea that this has made Emerson a haven for wealthy elites.
“We give our students the resources they need,” Pelton said, noting the college has high numbers of students from diverse backgrounds.
As Pelton walked down Boylston Street his eyes fell on another branding opportunity: the MBTA Green Line stop that is, in Pelton’s opinion, unfortunately named Boylston.
“There ought to be an Emerson stop,” Pelton said.