Our Story
For more than 50 years, Unity College has been preparing the next generation of environmental professionals and leaders to successfully face real-world challenges. The College was founded in 1965 as the Unity Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences to serve a student body of 39 students and consisted of a small employee base. The founders, a group of local businesspeople, were looking for ways to counter economic decline in the town of Unity, Maine. Shortly afterward, the Institute became Unity College and in 1969 awarded its first baccalaureate degrees to a graduating class of 24 students.
In 2015, the College proudly celebrated its 50th anniversary with a student body numbering 643 students. In 2016 Unity College began offering 100% online Distance Education graduate programs following with online undergraduate programs in 2018. In 2017, the Enterprise Model was adopted as the institutional organization to be more responsive to the rapidly changing needs of students and society. In 2022 we were approved to begin offering competency-based education with the first cohort to enroll at the Unity College Technical Institute for Environmental Professions. As of today, Unity College has an annual unduplicated headcount of more than 5,000 full-time students, the largest in our history.
