Champlain College Paper Format & Writing Requirements

Champlain College at a glance

A private, career-focused college on a hillside above Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont, known for its upside-down curriculum that puts majors first, top-ranked game design and digital forensics programs, and a campus of converted Victorian mansions.

The campus sits in Burlington, Vermont, operates as a private institution, and enrolls about 6,000 students — a scale that directly shapes how writing support works. Founded in 1878 with an acceptance rate around 85%, Champlain College pairs selective admissions with the large-course writing loads typical of its category.

Citation styles Champlain College actually requires

Champlain College courses predominantly require APA 7 or MLA 9. That is not a trivial preference: it decides your title page, heading levels, in-text punctuation and reference format on every graded document.

• APA 7: used across social science, nursing and business courses
• MLA 9: used across humanities and writing-sequence courses

Verify against the specific course syllabus anyway — instructors can override departmental defaults, and the first paper is where they enforce it.

The writing requirement, decoded

First-semester seminars have students writing in their majors immediately, and game design, cyber and business courses lean on design documents, policy reports and case analyses; peer tutors support drafting through academic support programs.

Plan the sequence early: composition requirements compound, and students who defer them discover the advanced seminars — where the writing-intensity lives — conflict with major courses later. The registrar's degree audit shows exactly which flags remain; check it each semester.

Three things about Champlain College papers that surprise new students

• Champlain traces to 1878, when it opened in Burlington as a small business school for bookkeepers and stenographers, and it did not take the Champlain College name until 1958.
• The upside-down curriculum puts first-semester students into courses for their declared major instead of front-loading two years of general education.
• The Hill Section campus reuses Victorian-era mansions and estate houses as residence halls and classrooms overlooking Lake Champlain.

None of these appear in the course description. All of them appear in the rubric. Students who learn them in week one report smoother first-semesters than students who meet them at the deadline.

Assignments Champlain College students face most

• Essay — most frequently assigned across Champlain College's programs
• Coursework — most frequently assigned across Champlain College's programs
• Case Study — most frequently assigned across Champlain College's programs
• Annotated Bibliography — most frequently assigned across Champlain College's programs

Popular programs at Champlain College include game design, cybersecurity, business administration — each pairs the assignment list above with its own capstone or practicum expectations, detailed on our subject pages.