Saint Michael's College

Saint Michael's College

The endowment originates from the Society of Saint Edmund, a religious order that established the college in 1904 as a residential Catholic liberal-arts institution. Today it supports roughly 1,200 undergraduates and a handful of graduate programs on a campus one exit north of Burlington. Vice President of Finance Robert S. Robinson is the key decision-maker overseeing the pool. Allocations emphasize real assets and private-market exposure. The endowment holds a Natural Resources and Timber composite alongside direct real estate, including on-campus residential halls (Hamel, Purtill, and Dupont) and a land parcel known as Winchester Place on Route 15. Strategy tags point to buyout and natural resources, and the school partners with the Champlain Housing Trust on affordable-housing redevelopment. Geographic focus is concentrated in Vermont. The college reports endowment data through NACUBO and maintains memberships in NAICU, ACCU, and NECHE. Its philanthropic arm, the Saint Michael's College Fund, operates adjacent to the endowment. The campus also houses a permanent art collection in the McCarthy Arts Center and maintains the Saint Michael's College Natural Area. What distinguishes Saint Michael's is its unusually direct ownership of productive real assets for an endowment of its size — rather than relying solely on commingled-fund exposure, the college appears to hold timber and natural-resource investments that blur the line between operating assets and financial portfolio, a structure shaped by its religious founding and localized Vermont footprint.