MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – More than 2,100 alumni and their family members returned to campus June 8-10 to reconnect with classmates, see what’s new on campus, and share memories of their Middlebury College experiences.

President Laurie L. Patton marched with the procession of classes during the traditional alumni parade to Mead Chapel for Reunion Convocation. Inside the chapel, Patton escorted the oldest attending alumni—Stuart Walker and Dumont Rush, of the class of 1943— down the aisle and to their seats in the front. Walker and Rush were celebrating their 75^th Middlebury reunion.

“It’s such a delight to be among you all, walking into the Chapel together to the sound of rapping canes,” said Patton to the alumni gathering. “This is my third opportunity to celebrate a Reunion at Middlebury, and the thrill of walking up to Mead, and down this aisle, is unlike any other alumni experience I’ve had. Welcome back, and welcome home to Middlebury!”

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Robert Sideli ’77, past president of the Middlebury Alumni Association Board, and Meg Storey Groves ’85, associate vice president for Alumni and Parent Programs presented five awards during the convocation. First was Corey Reich, a member of the Class of 2008, who received the Young Alumni Achievement Award. While a student at Middlebury, Reich was diagnosed with ALS and advised by his doctors to not return to school. Reich defied that advice and graduated in 2008 with honors. In the years since graduating, he became an advocate and highly successful fundraiser for those with the disease. Under the banner of “Corey’s Crusade,” he has raised $8 million for the cause.

Members of the Class of 1968, celebrating their 50th reunion, arrive at Mead Chapel for Convocation.

Frank Pallone, a member of the Class of 1973, was one of two recipients of the Alumni Achievement Awards. Pallone, who majored in history and French, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New Jersey, in 1988 and has served their ever since. During his time in Congress, Pallone has made healthcare access and environmental issues his hallmark issues.

Charlotte Sibley, of the Class of 1968, received the second Alumni Achievement Award. Sibley, who majored in French and German at Middlebury, accepted what was for her an unlikely internship on Wall Street the summer before her senior year, and learned how in-demand her language-speaking skills were in the business world. She ended up pursuing a career in the pharmaceutical industry, retiring as senior vice president of leadership development at Shire Pharmaceuticals.

President Laurie Patton escorts two members of the Class of 1943, Dumont Rush, left, and Stuart Walker to Reunion Convocation at Mead Chapel. Rush and Walker were celebrating their 75th Middlebury reunion.

Conrad Ambrette, a member of the Class of 1968, and Mary Farley, a member of the Class of 1973, received the Alumni Plaque, which is awarded annually in recognition of service to the College.

President Patton also received a surprise honor during Convocation. The Class of 1983 "adopted"  Patton into their class at the end of the reading of their class history during Convocation. Patton, a 1983 graduate of Harvard University, was surprised and thrilled to become an honorary member of the class.

Members of the Class of 2013 gather outside of Mead Chapel for a photo during Reunion.

In a new event for this year’s reunion President Patton moderated a panel titled “The Middlebury Experience: What Endures and How It Evolves,” that included alumni from five decades, including Magna Leffler Dodge ’68, Ted Truscott ’83, Leilani Brown ’93, Tyler Lohman ’08, and Barbara Ofosu-Somuah ’13, who reflected on some of the forces that shaped their experiences as undergraduates.

The 50^th reunion class achieved a 68 percent participation rate in gifts to the College, raising more than $12.8 million, including documented bequest intentions. The 25^th reunion saw a 40 percent participation rate and raised more than $2 million in gifts to Middlebury.

Alumni families enjoyed picture-perfect spring weather during Reunion weekend.

The weekend’s events also included numerous class gatherings, tours, a veterans’ gathering, college admissions workshop, hikes and fun runs, readings, open houses, and class photos. There also were musical performances, yoga, an ice-cream social, golf tournament, lectures, and panel discussions.

The highlight of the weekend, as always, was the reunion dinner, organized by class, under the tents behind the Mahaney Center for the Arts, followed by fireworks and dancing, with music provided by local favorite The Grift.

Photos by Todd Balfour and Jennifer Kiewit.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury College and seven other undergraduate institutions are now affiliated with the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, or AURA – the organization responsible for the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the National Solar Observatory.

AURA, which was founded in 1957 to create and operate world-class astronomical observatories on behalf of NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), voted at its annual meeting in May to admit the eight undergraduate institutions that comprise the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, or KNAC, whose members are Colgate, Haverford, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan, and Williams.

The new affiliation will enhance research opportunities for faculty and students at KNAC-member institutions. KNAC, which was originally funded by the W. M. Keck Foundation in 1990, is now supported by the NSF under its Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

In welcoming KNAC and its member colleges to AURA, Professor Matt Mountain of Johns Hopkins University, the president of AURA, said, “KNAC offers AURA an exciting opportunity to expand our membership to a powerful consortium of colleges with a collective faculty deeply committed to undergraduate education and astronomical research."

AURA’s mission is to establish, nurture, and promote public observatories and facilities that advance innovative astronomical research. AURA's Space Telescope Science Institute is responsible for the science mission for the Hubble Space Telescope, the science and operations for the James Webb Space Telescope, and the MAST data archive. AURA’s nighttime ground-based facilities include the Gemini Observatories, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) under construction in Chile, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The National Solar Observatory (NSO) in New Mexico is AURA’s solar center, and it is managing the construction of the DKIST Solar Telescope in Hawai'i.

While the leading U.S. research universities belong to AURA, KNAC is the first member of AURA with a focus on undergraduate education and research.

Debra Elmegreen of Vassar College said, “KNAC faculty members are very excited to be accepted as a member institution of AURA, since many of them have spent a large part of their careers using facilities at the AURA centers. We are happy to have a voice among the member representatives as the community collectively works towards planning, enhancing, and advancing astronomical research through AURA."

Middlebury College, with the resources of its Mittelman Observatory, has long been active in KNAC. This summer, for example, two undergraduates, Sadie Coffin ’19 and Diego Garcia ’20, are doing astronomical research with faculty members at Wesleyan University. In the summer of 2015, Middlebury students Larson Lovdal ’16.5 and Milena Crnogorcevic ’17 were research assistants to Assistant Professor Eilat Glikman along with two visiting KNAC students. Through KNAC programs, Frank Winkler, professor emeritus of physics, has engaged numerous undergraduates in his research, which is ongoing.  

Middlebury will host KNAC’s 2018 Fall Student Research Symposium on September 28-29, with an opening session on Friday at the Bread Loaf campus and numerous activities on Saturday at McCardell Bicentennial Hall.

For more information about astronomy at Middlebury, contact Jonathan Kemp, the telescope and scientific computing specialist who directs the Mittelman Observatory.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The Origin of Others, a book of essays by Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison, will be the subject of the Middlebury College Clifford Symposium September 20–22, and summer reading for the College’s incoming class.

“Morrison’s The Origin of Others provides several powerful starting points for the Middlebury community—staff, faculty, students, administrators, trustees, and alumni—to engage with a number of the most pressing social issues of our time, including fear, citizenship, race, and belonging,” said J Finley, assistant professor of American Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. 

“Her book is not a prescription for problems facing our small community and the world at large, but it does offer a compelling common vocabulary for thinking about questions that emerge from each of its six short, densely-packed chapters,” added Finley. “How, for example, should weaddress such questions as ‘What is the nature of the Stranger?’ and ‘Why is there such a prevalent capacity to estrange Others—even among us?’”

Along with lectures, performances, and readings, the Clifford Symposium will include a student forum and workshops led by faculty, staff, and alumni. The full schedule of events will be announced in September.

Incoming Middlebury students will receive a link to the book in July in preparation for discussion groups that will be part of their orientation program and for the symposium that will follow.

Published in 2017, The Origin of Others is based on Morrison’s 2016 Norton Lectures at Harvard University. In the text, she draws on her own life and novels, a wide range of American and African literature, and contemporary events.

In addition to Finley, the faculty organizers of the symposium are Larry Yarbrough, Tillinghast Professor of Religion, and Will Nash, professor of American studies and English and American literatures. They are collaborating with colleagues in the Dance, Theatre, Music, Political Science, English and American Literatures, History, and Sociology Departments, and at the New England Review and the Anderson Freeman Resource Center.

The symposium is an annual event named after Nicholas Clifford, who taught history at the College from 1966 to 1993 and who in his many years as a member of the faculty and administration cultivated critical inquiry at Middlebury. 

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – New England Review (NER) continues its 40th anniversary year with the publication of a feature on film director, screenwriter, and producer Terrence Malick that offers 11 takes on nine films, from Badlands (1973) to Song to Song (2017), with contributions by writers Maud Casey, Jennifer Chang, Skip Horack, and A. Van Jordan among others.

Nonfiction offerings include scenes of the rural South from the early life of Middlebury's former Alexander Twilight Artist-in-Residence François Scarborough Clemmons; an essay encompassing the history and culture of public baths from the Romans to the YMCA; and a meditation on surrealism and travel by India Hixon Radfar ’90. 

Also in these pages is new work from 15 poets, including Dilruba Ahmed, Heather Christle, and Garrett Hongo, and fiction from longtime NER contributor Castle Freeman Jr., debut author Chandra Graham Garcia, and more. Three short fictions by contemporary Russian author Alla Gorbunova, a poem from the French by Sylvie Durbec, and a little-known essay by Thomas Mann about an early morning walk with his dog all appear here in English translations.

This month NER also began its “From the Vault” series, which offers selected works from the archive on the NER website, introduced by past editors and staff.

On June 9 the magazine presented its ninth annual reading at Middlebury College’s Reunion, featuring alumni Salena Casha ’13, Laura Irei ’13, Peter Knobler ’68, and J. T. Price ’01, along with Professor Emeritus Michael R. Katz. More events will take place in the fall. 

Samples of the new issue and more information about the magazine and events can be found on the NER website.

Published by Middlebury College, New England Review is a nationally recognized literary journal that cultivates artistic excellence and innovation in contemporary writing and engages readers deeply in the literary arts through its quarterly publication, dynamic web presence, and public reading series. 

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — June marks the start of the 99th summer session of the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English, a six-week residential summer graduate program under the directorship of Emily Bartels. Classes begin on June 18 at Bread Loaf’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, campus. On June 27 classes start both at the campus of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford in England and at the School of English’s main campus in Ripton, Vermont.

Founded in 1920, the Bread Loaf School of English offers a graduate curriculum in the fields of literature, pedagogy and literacy, creative writing, and theater arts. The program is tailored to K–12 English and language arts teachers, who make up about 75 percent of the student body; its faculty come from leading colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. The school aims to provide in six weeks a full-time, intensive educational experience, enriched by the local culture at each campus.

Students at the Bread Loaf School of English enjoy a meal in the dining hall at the Ripton, Vt., campus.

A total of roughly 380 students from 41 states, the District of Columbia, and six countries will pursue continuing graduate education, a Master of Arts, or a Master of Letters degree in English. This year, Bread Loaf inaugurates a new partnership with the Academy for Teachers that will bring three New York City teachers to Bread Loaf. On the Vermont campus, the Bread Loaf Teacher Network will bring together a diverse and talented cohort of youth, the Next Generation Youth Leadership Network, funded by the Ford Foundation, catalyzing their efforts to promote social equity and excellence.

Bread Loaf students will study with a faculty of 45, in courses on African American poetry, American realism, Shakespeare, Beowulf, disability literature, creative nonfiction, film, queer pedagogies, and European and Victorian novels, to name only a few. New offerings will spotlight poetry and the graphic arts, oral history and solo performance, gender and sexuality in North American native literature, ancient prose fiction, the city in 20th-century texts, and “how to be a literary and cultural critic.”

Studies will extend imaginatively beyond texts and classrooms. Throughout the summer, Bread Loaf students will enjoy a diverse cocurricular program. Guest speakers will include U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, prize-winning novelist Justin Torres, performance artist Whitney White, Jane Austen authority and Princeton professor Claudia Johnson, and Middlebury President Laurie Patton. In Vermont, the Acting Ensemble, under the direction of Brian McEleney, will work with students to stage an adaptation of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and the Kronos Quartet will start the summer off on a musical notee. Other events across the campuses include letterpress and theater workshops, research symposia, films, panels, opera, and theater trips. 

More information is available at www.middlebury.edu/blse, 802-443-5418, or blse@breadnet.middlebury.edu. 

Photos by Brett Simison 

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – There is a Maker Movement afoot in Addison County, and the Patricia A. Hannaford Career Center together with Middlebury College and a handful of local residents are leading the way toward the creation of a public maker space in Middlebury. 

The “Maker Movement” refers to the increasing number of people who employ do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-with-others (DIWO) techniques and processes to develop products or devices needed for specific purposes. Adweek says today’s makers “tap into an American admiration for self-reliance combined with open-source learning, contemporary design, and powerful personal technology like 3-D printers.”

As envisioned, the Addison County Maker Space will comprise more than 20,000 square feet at the Hannaford Career Center, including the existing industrial design and fabrication lab, engineering and architectural design lab, construction trades lab, computer lab, visual communications lab, costume shop, and commercial kitchen—all found inside the career center located on Charles Avenue in Middlebury.

Partnering with the Hannaford Career Center in the development of the maker space are the following:

- Middlebury College’s Fund for Innovation, which allocated $30,000 to create an internship program for undergraduates seeking to teach, mentor, or collaborate with others at the maker space.

- The Addison County Economic Development Corporation, which donated $1,000 toward the creation of the Addison County Maker Space in existing classrooms and workshops at the Career Center.

- A crowdfunding campaign that has raised nearly $6,000 to date to “provide workspace, job skills training, a place to be creative and explore interests, and an incubator for people of all ages to dream big and bring their ideas to life.” 

- The Town of Middlebury donated $1,000 from the Middlebury Business Development Fund.

- Local residents and businesspeople, many of whom who participated in the Maker Faire open house at the Career Center in February of this year.

The mission of the Addison County maker space will be “to engage the community in pursuits related to occupations, hobbies, or crafts that will grow the technical and creative economy of Vermont.” It is envisioned to be “a place for people to imagine, experiment, network, collaborate, and create for personal and professional growth.”

Taking it one step further, David Cole ’92, the founder of Mechanical Advantage LLC, a high-tech Middlebury machine shop, sees the Maker Movement in Vermont as an engine for economic development:

“I am hoping that the maker space will lead to the creation of more technical jobs that pay well right here in Addison County,” Cole explained, “but the community building and networking at the maker space will have to happen first. We have to tap into the expertise we have in this community by attracting more adults with skills to volunteer at the maker space.”

Cole, whose machine shop specializes in the fabrication of biomedical devices, is enthusiastic about partnering with the career center. “When you start a maker space, you typically need to pay for the building and fill it with expensive equipment. You also need to cover the insurance, the heat, the lights, the parking, everything. By creating our maker space in the career center, we just have to open the doors and everything you need is there, it’s paid for, and it’s not being used after 2:30 in the afternoon!”

Kate La Riviere, the career center’s community outreach coordinator, says the Hannaford Career Center administration is 100 percent behind the idea of turning the building into a community maker space under the aegis of the Adult Education Program. “We want to raise awareness about what resources we have here and who can use them. We want residents of Addison County to bring their ideas to life inside our four walls because we have the infrastructure already in place.

“We can start small, but with the right supervision and volunteers there’s no reason our whole building can’t be the maker space. We want to create and sustain a community of makers right here!”

Starting in September, Middlebury College students will get involved by serving as paid interns or mentors at the maker space. The Fund for Innovation grant from the College was awarded to Noah Graham, professor of physics, who said, “We are always looking for opportunities for our students to work hands-on in an applied context, and the maker space should go a long way toward accomplishing that goal. It will complement what they are doing with their liberal arts education.”

The internship program at the maker space (located about one mile from campus) will be administered by the College’s Center for Careers and Internships, and will be open to all Middlebury College undergraduates.

Dave Cole, who attended public school in Middlebury, graduated from the College, and later studied auto mechanics before deciding to earn a master’s degree in engineering at Purdue, says the maker space will roll out slowly at first. “We have a lot of logistics to figure out, but eventually the maker space will be open longer, with more rooms and more resources available to all. We are so close now to achieving our dream of creating a space where the whole community can interact amid the hum and buzz of activity.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt., and NEW YORK, N.Y. - PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project), in association with Middlebury College, will present its 32nd repertory season—its 12th consecutive in New York City—running July 17 through August 5 in a limited off-Broadway engagement at the Atlantic Stage 2, located at 330 West 16th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.

The 2018 season will feature a double bill of Howard Barker’s The Possibilities, directed by Professor Richard Romagnoli, and Caryl Churchill’s The After-Dinner Joke, directed by Professor Cheryl Faraone. The double bill begins previews July 10 for a July 17 opening. The summer season will also include a production of Brecht on Brecht, adapted by George Tabori and directed by Jim Petosa, which begins previews July 11 for a July 18 opening.

In The Possibilities, four short plays explore actions unexplainable by logic or rationality. From the biblical Judith to Czar Alexander to a bookseller who hordes her stock for fear that knowledge may fall into the wrong hands to a woman whose dress is investigated by the state as a provocation to men, these four plays contain all of Howard Barker’s signature wit and complexity.

Told in 66 brief episodic scenes, the plot of The After Dinner Joke follows Selby, a young woman who quits her secretarial job to pursue her passion for “doing good.” As a charity worker, she earnestly avoids political issues, only to discover the impossibility of this.

Brecht on Brecht celebrates one of the 20th century’s greatest dramatists in a stunning revue of his life’s work. Featuring songs and scenes from Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Bertolt Brecht’s most famous collaborations, as well as first-hand accounts from Brecht himself, Brecht on Brecht explores the political and social issues the playwright faced as an artist fleeing Nazism for exile in America.

This year’s acting company includes several Middlebury alumni and students including Chris Marshall ’94, Tara Giordano ’02, Lucy Van Atta ’12, and Adam Milano ’15, as well as 2018 graduates Eliza Renner, Sebastian LaPointe, Miguel Castillo, Noah Liebmiller, and Roxy Adviento. Current students include Madeleine Russell, Olivia Christie, Ashley Fink, all from the Class of 2019; and Madeline Ciocci ’20. Stage managers include Alex Williamson ’17 and current students Joey Hernandez, Stephanie Miller, and Coralie Tyler from the Class of 2020. Annie Ulrich ’13 designed all the costumes for the three productions. Kyle Meredith ’19, who works in the Middlebury College Animation Studio, is creating graphics, slides, and moving cartoon images for The After-Dinner Joke.

PTP was founded in 1987 by the artistic team of Cheryl Faraone, Jim Petosa, and Richard Romagnoli, who continue to run the company. Alex Draper is associate artistic director. Since moving to New York in 2007, PTP/NYC has produced 25 main stage productions and numerous late evening readings, workshops, and experimental theatre pieces in its After Dark series.

For performance times and ticket information, visit PTP/NYC online.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury has received an $800,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of a new project titled “Listening and Speaking in Public Spheres.” The three-year grant will help Middlebury develop a faculty training program to produce new curricular and co-curricular options for students to “engage significant, even controversial, topics on campus, in the community, and online.” The grant will also support a collaboration with the Vermont Humanities Council (VHC) to expand the topic of public discourse beyond the Middlebury community to a statewide audience.

“We are thrilled and grateful for this support from the Mellon Foundation,” said President Laurie Patton. “Building a robust and inclusive public sphere is one of the defining issues of our time, and is the first part of our new vision statement. I believe developing skill in communicating across differences must be a part of every Middlebury student’s experience, every faculty and staff member’s professional approach in supporting our educational mission.”

The Mellon grant will directly support the first of three transformational and foundational goals identified in Middlebury’s strategic planning process, “Envisioning Middlebury,” which states that Middlebury will become “a center for persuasive and inclusive dialogue.”

“The timing of this grant is ideal as we begin to develop strategies across all Middlebury operations to achieve our goals, which are crucial for a 21st century global environment and yet rooted in the ideals of classical liberal learning,” said Patton. “This program will engage our faculty, students and staff, and have a marked impact on our curriculum.”

One of the primary activities covered by the grant will be a series of professional development workshops offered to faculty, particularly in courses that emphasize listening and speaking in their scholarly content.

“We hope to work with faculty instructors already teaching courses on the media, language and communication, and rhetoric,” said Sarah Stroup, associate professor of political science and the faculty director of the Mellon grant. “We will also work with faculty to develop the tools for listening and speaking in the classroom to teach any type of content, from lab sciences to the arts.”

The grant calls for a six-person faculty workshop each semester over the three-year life of the grant, resulting in 36 trained faculty members by the conclusion of the project. Faculty workshops will be led by outside consultants and focus on developing skills and pedagogical approaches oriented around speaking, listening, difficult topics, and digital platforms.

The ability to understand another point of view and to engage in productive disagreements is essential for both Middlebury’s educational project and for public life beyond the college, says Stroup. “We hope to achieve measurable differences in the depth and breadth of campus discussions, which should result in better learning and more effective civic and political engagement.

“Our ambitious and accomplished students are already engaged in a wide array of affinity groups and in civic and political causes beyond our campus,” Stroup continued. “They reflect the culture of the hardworking faculty, staff, and administrators that are good at moving fast and getting many things done. Yet our culture of busy-ness does not always prepare us for the slow and difficult process of communicating across differences. In and out of the classroom, we hope to equip students with a sense of agency and responsibility while developing the tools for effective dialogue.”

The grant will also support work being done by the Vermont Humanities Council, including its “First Wednesdays” series, a monthly statewide speaker series hosted at nine different sites around the state, as well as financial support to enhance its speaker’s bureau. Stroup expects the collaboration with VHC will provide ways for students and community members to discuss a wide array of topics from a diverse set of viewpoints.

The idea of civil discourse has evolved dramatically in recent years, shaped by the growing role of digital platforms and social media, and increased tensions around ideas of free speech and inclusivity. Responding to these rapid changes, a committee of six faculty and administrators researched and proposed the Mellon grant, including James C. Davis (religion), Shawna Shapiro (writing program & linguistics), Sarah Stroup (political science), and Dana Yeaton (theatre), Timothy Spears, vice president for academic development, and Amy Collier, associate provost for digital learning.

“One of the chief aims of this program is to prepare students for engaging the world beyond Middlebury—hence the emphasis on ‘public spheres,’” said Spears, the principal investigator for the Mellon grant. “We also recognize that no single entity constitutes the public sphere, that we all increasingly navigate multiple worlds through a variety of means—by speaking, writing, and via social media. We were quite frank in our proposal that exercising one’s right to speak these days is no easy thing, that the political environment can be a deterrent to speaking in and across these public spheres. We believe the program we are developing with Mellon’s support will give our students the orientation they need to succeed in this rapidly changing landscape.”

President Patton has emphasized the need for a “robust and inclusive public sphere” since she first arrived on campus in 2014. In her inaugural address, she foreshadowed the goals of the new Mellon-funded program: “And so allow me to describe a future. Here is my thought for you, today, and in the years to come: I challenge us to have more and better arguments, with greater respect, stronger resilience, and deeper wisdom.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — June marks the beginning of the Middlebury Language Schools, known internationally for their full immersion approach to language teaching. This summer the School of Hebrew—one of a total of 11 Language Schools—will celebrate its 10th anniversary.

The Language Schools will welcome over 1,500 students and 300 faculty to both the Middlebury College campus and Mills College campus in California to study Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. This year’s students will represent 47 states and 75 countries, with Middlebury undergraduates representing 2 percent of the student body. 

Students will live, learn, and interact in the language they have come to study, and all sign the Language Pledge, a formal commitment designed by Middlebury to speak the language of study for the entire summer session. The Language Schools will also host cultural events that are often open to the public. 

Board games in another language, such as these available to the students at the School of Hebrew, provide another way for students to build vocabulary and fluency.

Students will bring a wide range of experiences with them this summer. One student is a flight attendant who travels to Central and South American countries and wants to improve her Spanish. A student from Texas graduated with a degree in creative writing from Stanford and has been named a finalist multiple times for Best American Short Stories. Another is an immigration lawyer who wants to improve his communication with his clients. One student is currently working on an MBA in renewable energy at a German business and engineering school. Another student from the South Korean navy wants to become an interpreter of Japanese culture. Universities with the highest representation of students include Brown University, Columbia University, Kenyon College, the University of Chicago, and New York University.

Since 1915, more than 50,000 students from all walks of life—including more than 12,000 advanced degree holders—have attended one or more of the Language Schools.

The late philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis funded the Davis Fellows for Peace, which continues to grant 100 scholarships to cover tuition, room, and board in the 11 Language Schools. The initiative, which began in 2007, is intended to challenge Middlebury to use its expertise in language acquisition and policy studies to recruit and train future potential peacemakers.

More information about the Middlebury Language Schools can be found online or by contacting the Language Schools at 802-443-5510. For a list of main events open to the public this summer, please see the event list.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – To improve public safety at rallies, demonstrations, and other large events, a Middlebury College assistant professor of computer science is advancing research this summer to detect abnormal crowd behavior from a drone.                         

Jason M. Grant, who works in the field of computer vision, created an algorithm that can discern abnormal crowd motion for his doctoral dissertation in computer science at the University of Notre Dame. Now he is trying to become one of the first computer scientist to employ the technology in real time with a drone.

“Advances in crowd-analysis research have improved greatly in recent years to ensure the safety of individuals at large public events,” said Grant. “My research is aimed at preventing incidents from occurring through real-time detection of abnormal crowd behavior.” Grant references such tragic events as stampedes at the Jamaraai Bridge in Mecca or the 2010 crowd disaster at the Love Parade concert in Germany. His work in the detection of abnormal crowd behavior is aimed at giving event organizers and safety personnel a tool to reduce the severity of incidents that can occur whenever large crowds of people gather in a space.

This summer Grant is working in tandem with Henry Mound ’20.5, a computer science major from Redding, Conn., to perfect crowd-behavior analysis from up to 400 feet in the air – the highest that a drone can be flown legally. For their research, Grant and Mound are flying a professional DJI Matrice 600 Pro hexacopter controlled by three Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers with a video camera and computer mounted onboard.

Grant’s methodology is based upon detecting deviations in the dominant paths of motion within a scene. “We implement a method for dominant-motion extraction based upon optical flow clustering, and we develop a matching algorithm to compare dominant motion paths at various points in a video feed,” he explained.

Jason Grant (left) and Henry Mound '20.5 control their DJI hexacopter from the ground. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Optical flow is a tool used by computer scientists to perceive the apparent pattern of motion in a video, which is a key component in abnormal crowd behavior detection

Grant also employs a second method using a “particle advection model” for local motion that predicts the location of a particle based on its previous motion. “By measuring the distance between the predicted trajectory and the observed trajectory, we are able to determine the presence of abnormal behavior,” he said.

Both methods complement each other and can be deployed in real time. Grant and Mound are hoping to test both drone-borne technologies this summer or early fall by conducting a controlled experiment using upwards of 100 volunteers in a large open space on campus, such as the football field.

Mound is also assisting Grant in preparing the syllabus for a new course tentatively called Robotics and Drones that will be offered in the spring of 2019 by the Department of Computer Science. The undergraduate research assistant is “learning the basics of computer vision and writing programs to control the smaller drones that will be used by the students in the course. Many of the experiments he is conducting this summer will form the basis for projects and homework assignments in that new class,” Grant explained.

Mound experimented with the Tello quadcopter made by DJI in June and will try out Robolink’s CoDrone quadcopter in July. After the summer, Grant and Mound will look at the strengths of both units before determining which model will be coded and deployed by students in the Robotics and Drones course next spring.

“It’s been a very exciting summer so far,” Mound said while working with a Tello on the sixth floor of McCardell Bicentennial Hall. “One of the reasons I came to Middlebury was to have an experience like this working for 10 weeks on research with a computer scientist like Professor Grant.”

Grant, who earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and both an MS and PhD in computer science and engineering at Notre Dame, was originally interested in facial recognition but, after about three years, he became fascinated with “the motion and behavior of crowds, rather than that of individual people.” His dissertation completed earlier this year was titled, “Analysis of crowd behavior based on optical flow clustering: detection, classification, and clustering,” and he hopes to see it published soon.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors while at Notre Dame, Grant has received funding for his research and conference travel from Middlebury College, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the National Society of Blacks in Computing, and the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology.

The drone's eye view of Bicentennial Hall, as photographed by Prof. Jason Grant during a recent test flight.

– With reporting and on-the-ground photography by Robert Keren

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – A new exhibit of early printed books at Middlebury College, In the Footprints of the First German Printers: 1450–1500, offers visitors a chance to see 12 highlights from one of the College’s collections of its earliest and most rare books. The exhibit is the first at Middlebury to focus exclusively on medieval books and marks the first time that such a large number of the College’s oldest printed books are on display at once. Organized by Middlebury’s Special Collections, the free exhibit is located in the atrium and lower level of the Davis Family Library.

All but one of the 12 books are part of the College’s Tashiera Incunabula Collection. (Incunabula, Latin for cradle, describes the first printed books produced in Europe from 1450–1500.)

“It is very unusual for a small liberal arts college to have a collection of this size—44 in all—of early printed books,” said Rebekah Irwin, director of Middlebury’s Special Collections. “We’re fortunate that these books can be a resource for faculty and students.”

Retracing the expansion of printing in Europe, the exhibit follows the German pioneers who initiated and spread the technology and art of book printing, and developed a tradition that changed how people learn and share knowledge. 

Each book contains the history of the early evolution of printing. According to Irwin, studying the materials of the covers, pages, inks, page layouts, and hand-painted additions to the printed text reveals how the first printers’ processes developed and how readers’ interpretation of texts evolved.

“Because the ascent of the mechanical printing press in Europe coincided with Renaissance humanism and the rediscovery of classic texts from antiquity,” said Irwin, “this German invention—and the printers who implemented it—revolutionized Western scholarship and the book trade across Europe.”

An early opening page in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) establishes the order of the universe and its cosmography, as created by God. The earth sits at the center of the universe, upside-down to the viewer but oriented towards the hand of its creator. Nicolaus Copernicus would publish his heliocentric model of the universe in Nuremberg exactly 50 years later.

Helen and Arthur Tashiera were Californians who spent their summers in the 1920s and 1930s in Shrewsbury, Vt. According to College Archivist Danielle Rougeau, their admiration for Middlebury’s academic programs led them to donate an early printed book to Middlebury in 1938—it was the College’s first medieval book. In 1946, they donated 43 additional European printed books that also date from the time of print’s infancy in the 1400s and 1500s.

Marie Théberge, whose son Philippe Bronchtein is a 2010 Middlebury graduate, was the guest curator of the exhibit. Former Special Collections Postgraduate Fellow Mikaela Taylor ’15 designed it with additional support from Rougeau and Irwin.

Théberge, who lives in Quebec, completed her master’s in French studies at Montclair State University in 2016. While earning her degree, she relied heavily on medieval books in both Special Collections and the Middlebury College Museum of Art. After receiving her master’s, Théberge approached Special Collections with a proposal to volunteer her time on a project. “She wanted foremost to be helpful, and to participate in the care and preservation of rare books,” said Irwin.

Théberge’s own work had focused on French medieval manuscripts—handwritten books, rather than mechanically produced. “Early printed and handwritten books share many features,” said Taylor. “They are fascinating but can also be a challenge to modern students—they are typically in Latin, and their subject matter can seem arcane when tackled by a 21st-century reader. With Marie, we found a curious, conscientious, and serious researcher ready to interpret and showcase these books.”

“Curating the exhibit of the Tashiera collection gave me a wonderful opportunity to interact with beautiful early printed books,” said Théberge. “I also loved collaborating with the team at Special Collections—it was truly an enriching experience. I am especially grateful to Mikaela Taylor for her creativity and enthusiasm for my vision of the exhibit.”

In the Footprints of the First German Printers: 1450–1500 will be on display in Davis Family Library atrium (main level) and Harman Periodicals Reading Area (lower level) through September 30.

Hanna Hagerty ’20 described how she gained a greater understanding of modern China during a two-week trip there with fellow Middlebury College students, Middlebury Institute students, and faculty from both institutions.

I was one of five Middlebury College undergraduates—along with 13 graduate students from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and three professors—who recently completed the Institute’s immersive learning practicum in China titled “Understanding the China Dream.” Led by Yuwei Shi and Wei Liang, professors at the Middlebury Institute, and Jessica Teets, professor of political science at Middlebury College, we traveled through six cities in two weeks researching contemporary Chinese foreign policy, economics, and civil society. In particular, we examined these three broad categories in the context of the “China Dream,” promoted by Chinese President Xi Jinping as an embodiment of national ideals and aspirations.

Our two-week whirlwind began in the nation’s capital. After spending four days in Beijing, we traveled down to Suzhou and Shanghai in Jiangsu Province via high-speed train. Next, we flew inland to Yunnan province to visit Dali and Kunming, the provincial capital. Finally, we flew back to the coast and ended our trip in Shenzhen.

Visiting six cities in two weeks, we participated in 20 different meetings with a wide variety of individuals and groups. These meeting were predominantly conducted as presentations followed by Q&A or semi-structured discussions. We met with university professors, investment banks, a state-owned enterprise, nonprofit incubators and coordinators, government representatives, and more. Through these meetings we pieced together a more comprehensive understanding of how China is navigating development in economic, political, and social spheres.

Hanna Haggerty '20 stands with Shanghai's skyline in the background.

As an immersive learning experience, this trip was an amazing opportunity to meet and interact with important individuals in different business, academic, and governmental fields. Attending a press conference at the Ministry of Finance, sitting in the boardroom of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and visiting Tencent and Microsoft all stand out as prominent examples of the ways in which this trip was a unique experience.

Throughout our trip, we had the opportunity to pose questions and engage with prominent professionals according to our own personal interests. Our areas of research covered a wide variety of topics, ranging from nonproliferation, China-Japan relations, and international trade to Hukou policy, minority status, and technological innovation. While we did not have the time to explore each subject in depth, the number and diversity of meetings we attended enabled us to at least touch on each of our wide array of topics.

The level of prior experience with China varied considerably among our group. Out of 21 participants, two of us did not speak any Mandarin Chinese and four had never visited China before, while four others hold or have held Chinese citizenship. Whether we walked into this trip with dozens of visits under our belt, just a few, or none at all, I believe we all had new experiences and left with new insights informed by some very interesting people and places.

Personally, I learned a tremendous amount from the different individuals and organizations we visited. I entered this trip with a very rudimentary understanding of contemporary China. While two weeks of firsthand experience is far from a complete crash course in the subject, this trip contributed substantially to my understanding of what China is in a modern context. During those two weeks, each visit added another small piece of information, and eventually I had accumulated enough pieces to start visualizing broader structures and patterns. This practicum helped me challenge and complicate preconceptions I had about what contemporary China looked like and how it functioned on a global stage. Finally, I believe the people I traveled with had a significant impact on how valuable and enjoyable this adventure was.

The research crew heads into the woods near Middlebury in search of ticks.

“I don’t love having to handle live ticks. I mean, I’m used to it,” says conservation biology major Robert Cassidy ’19, who admits that when spending hours scouring the woods for ticks, “the feeling is a lot like schadenfreude, where you’re excited when you find ticks . . . but you know it’s not good for anyone if you find a lot of ticks.”

2018 marks the third summer of Allen’s continuing study of the ecology of Lyme disease. A forest ecologist with a deep grounding in mathematics, Allen’s research involves fieldwork, lab work, and developing a mathematically driven model to help analyze, determine, and quantify the factors driving the continued rise of tick-borne illnesses.

“Tick-borne diseases are interesting because we have a very complex system where lots of different factors are interacting: climate, host community, vegetation,” said Allen. “And all these things can affect both the population of the vector, the tick, but also the persistence of the bacteria within the system. So I’m trying to look at how both abiotic drivers—like climate—and biotic drivers affect this vector-borne disease.”

Step one is counting ticks.

Each morning, Allen and his team suit up in light-colored coveralls and head out to one of Allen’s 14 designated research sites.

Once on site, the researchers split up, each armed with a one-meter square of white canvas mounted on a wooden dowel.

“It’s pretty low tech, but it’s fast, it’s cheap, and it works,” noted Allen, of the team’s drag-and-count technique.

Each site is carefully subdivided, marked by small red and yellow flags, and each subplot is further keyed to vegetation type and density. Sites range from low to high elevations (Allen uses elevation as a stand-in for climate) and are anywhere from 62 to around 42,000 acres, with large and small sites at both high and low elevations.

To catch ticks, a researcher slowly and methodically walks a subplot, dragging the canvas square along the forest floor. Every 10 meters, he or she stops, spreads out the canvas, and inspects it closely. Some kneel and peer; some spread the canvas against a tree trunk to catch the light. All find and count every single tick. Nymphs and adults get put in small plastic vials, labeled, and taken back to the lab for further research. Larvae get stuck to a piece of tape and counted.

Allen’s technique for distinguishing larvae from specks of dirt? “Blow on it and see if it crawls.” Ticks respond to movement, heat, and carbon dioxide.

Afternoons are spent back in the lab. Each tick is put under a microscope, pierced in the gut (where Borrelia burgdorferi resides) with a surgical needle, and tested for the Lyme-causing bacteria. Further tests then reveal which of the 19 possible Borrelia strains found in the Northeast an infected tick was carrying. Many strains can be correlated to specific host animals; some are more virulent to humans than others.

Out in the field, not just any old tick will do. Allen and crew are only looking for Ixodes scapularis (commonly known as the blacklegged tick, or deer tick), the tick that spreads Lyme disease in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and north-central states like Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“It takes a little while to learn to identify them quickly, but after that it’s pretty straightforward,” said biology major Maisie Anrod ’19.

In Vermont, the Ixodes life cycle takes two years to complete. In year one, the larvae hatch, feed, and molt into nymphs. In year two, the nymphs feed and molt into adults; the new adults then find a host and feed. Most typically, adults mate on the host, males die after mating, and females overwinter to lay eggs the next spring . . . and the cycle starts all over again. At each life stage, a tick feeds only once. In Vermont, larvae tend to hatch in late summer. Nymphs—which transmit the most Lyme to humans because they’re more difficult to detect—are most active early to mid-summer. Adults are most active in the fall.

Larvae are born free of Borrelia; so to be Lyme vectors ticks must acquire Borrelia from host animals. Larvae and nymphs prefer to feed on smaller animals, like mice. Adult ticks prefer larger mammals, like deer. Some animals are better Borrelia hosts and transmitters than others. Top dog in the Northeast is the white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus, which is 1.5 times likelier to transmit B. burgdorferi than Eastern chipmunks, six times likelier than Eastern gray squirrels, and a whopping 35 times likelier than possums, according to some studies. (Possums, curiously enough, emerge as unlikely heroes in the battle against Lyme because in addition to low incidence for carrying the bacteria they are also great groomers and thus far likelier to bring the tick life cycle to a biting end.)

Since first being identified near Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975, Lyme has emerged as vector-borne public health enemy number one.

“The intersection of public health and conservation is really interesting,” said conservation biology major Harper Baldwin, who, along with the rest of Allen’s research crew, appreciates the real-world applicability of the Lyme ecology project. Evan Fedorov, a soon-to-be sophomore planning to major in molecular biology and biochemistry, noted that he was interested in the tick research because of his interest in infectious diseases: “Dave’s research is so relevant to Vermont and to public health, so for me it was a great fit.”

Tick-, flea-, and mosquito-borne illnesses have tripled since 2004, according to a May 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lyme is by far the most common, accounting for 82 percent of all tick-borne illnesses and 63 percent of all vector-borne illnesses. While just 30,000 cases of Lyme are reported each year in the United States, the CDC estimates actual numbers at around 300,000.

Allen and other scientists continue to ask, “Why?”

Possible culprits include a warming climate and forest fragmentation, leading to loss of biodiversity. While mice, for example, do well in fragmented ecosystems, many others do not. Fewer foxes or owls mean a lot more mice—more ticks and more disease.

But the picture is far from complete.

Since 1975, Lyme has spread predominantly north from Connecticut to Maine (now top state for Lyme incidence, with Vermont close behind), and to Wisconsin and Minnesota. But what part of seasonal temperature variation formerly limited Ixodes’s range? Cooler summers? Warmer winters? Both? What part do rainfall, humidity, and other weather patterns play? Last summer, one of the rainiest Junes on record, Allen counted double the ticks; this year numbers have dropped to previous levels. Allen and team are building “tick hotels” this summer to see how ticks fare when exposed to different levels of humidity: desiccation can mean mortality. And what about “questing” behavior, the way ticks cling to vegetation when they crawl up out of the leaf litter, lurking for a host?

Last year a student researcher discovered that—contrary to the literature—ticks preferred conifer to deciduous leaf litter. Was that because of the record rainfall? Allen has found that ticks don’t like to quest from ferns. Why? A recently graduated senior researched Borrelia rates in two identical-looking species of mice. Taking mouse ear clips to genetically identify each species, she determined that deer mice have an even higher infection rate than white-footed mice. So did previous studies ignore the mouse doppelganger?

Understanding the ecological complexities, said Allen, will give humans better tools for predicting, controlling, and preventing the spread of Lyme disease.

“We try to tease apart those potential covariants,” said Allen, noting that “ecology is a very complicated place to do modeling. Very small systems and very large systems,” like those studied by moecular biologists, physicists, and astronomers, “are more orderly. Things in the middle don’t often follow the rules as much.”

By Gaen Murphree; Photos by Todd Balfour

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury’s new assistant vice president and chief information officer (CIO) is Vijay Menta, an IT professional with 20 years of experience at Yale University managing application-development teams, implementing infrastructure services, and mitigating security risks. Menta started his career at Yale in 1998 as a consultant and programmer, and worked his way up to manager, director, and, until recently, associate CIO.

As the head of Information Technology Service (ITS) for Middlebury College and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Menta now oversees the work of about 55 employees in areas that range from enterprise applications to user services to information security and infrastructure. He started his new job on May 29, 2018.

With the College and the Institute poised to replace Banner SCT as its information management system, Menta has arrived at a crucial time. “We will be replacing Banner less than 12 months from now, and I was excited about the opportunity to come here because I want to be doing the implementation rather than arriving after the fact,” the new CIO said.

Middlebury will transition to administrative software produced by Oracle Corp., and Menta has experience with both Banner and Oracle. In addition, he has first-hand knowledge of Blackbaud, the software Middlebury is planning to implement for fund-raising, donor management, and other Advancement Office functions.

“The seven different roles that I filled at Yale have given me the full breadth and depth of knowledge in Information Technology. I am well qualified to lead ITS at Middlebury, and I feel like I will be a great fit for the culture here and the size and aspirations of this institution,” he said.

Menta is currently immersed in an “observation and listening mode,” making a point of conferring with his new colleagues in their environments rather than in his office at Davis Family Library. (After consulting with Communications for this article, he dashed off to the Athletic Center for a meeting with Athletic Director Erin Quinn.) In his consultations across campus – and in Monterey later this year – Menta is always on the lookout for new ways of doing Middlebury’s work more efficiently.

“I am always asking myself, ‘How can ITS add value to everything that Middlebury does, and how can we be a strategic partner with other departments?’” The answers will help Menta create a blueprint for ITS’s future. “This is an exciting time for us in ITS because we have so much going on right now.”

The new vice president of ITS has five people reporting to him: John Grunder for ITS operations at Monterey; David Ludwig for enterprise applications; Carol Peddie for finance, budget, and planning; Petar Mitrevski ’07 for user services; and Chris Norris for information security and infrastructure.

Menta also has a leadership role in the development of Project Ensemble within the Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium composed of Champlain, St. Michael’s, and Middlebury Colleges.

Casting his eye to the future of ITS, Menta said: “I am still formalizing my thoughts, but one thing is very clear to me already. All of the people who work at Middlebury are very committed to their work. Their hearts are in the right place. They want to do their best, but they are constrained by the lack of resources, and they feel like they are being pushed toward only keeping the lights on.

“All institutions of higher education are suffering from budget cuts and resource constraints, so the best thing we can do is provide added value to every service we provide. I am looking for ITS to provide our community with more self-service functions. The user experience should be easy and automated, just like when you reset your PIN at the bank. You don’t have to call the bank’s help desk, do you? That’s the level of service I am looking for us to provide. Behind the scenes, we are working our magic so users don’t feel like they always have to get in the queue to get service from ITS,” he said.

“Middlebury also needs to be ahead of the curve in digital learning and academic technologies,” Menta added, “so I am partnering with Amy Collier [associate provost for digital learning] on providing the services needed to fully support that space.” 

Menta, who is married with two daughters, has a natural youthfulness and enthusiasm that puts his colleagues at ease. For now, his wife, Malini, an IT professional with an investment bank, is staying in Connecticut while their younger daughter, Ameya, finishes high school. Their older daughter, Alekya, is a rising sophomore at Tufts University.   

The new chief information officer earned a BS in civil engineering at Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University in India before coming to the United States for the first time as a graduate student at Clemson University. “The people at Clemson were very friendly and very welcoming,” he said, “just like the way people have treated me here.”

Menta holds an MS from Clemson in civil engineering and an MBA from the University of New Haven, and he earned plaudits during his two decades at Yale for his collaboration and coordination across diverse user groups.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury has received an $800,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of a new project titled “Listening and Speaking in Public Spheres.” The three-year grant will help Middlebury develop a faculty training program to produce new curricular and cocurricular options for students to “engage significant, even controversial, topics on campus, in the community, and online.” The grant will also support a collaboration with the Vermont Humanities Council (VHC) to expand the topic of public discourse beyond the Middlebury community to a statewide audience.

“We are thrilled and grateful for this support from the Mellon Foundation,” said President Laurie Patton. “Building a robust and inclusive public sphere is one of the defining issues of our time, and is the first part of our new vision statement. I believe developing skill in communicating across differences must be a part of every Middlebury student’s experience, and every faculty and staff member’s professional approach in supporting our educational mission.”

The Mellon grant will directly support the first of three transformational and foundational goals identified in Middlebury’s strategic planning process, “Envisioning Middlebury,” which states that Middlebury will become “a center for persuasive and inclusive dialogue.”

“The timing of this grant is ideal as we begin to develop strategies across all Middlebury operations to achieve our goals, which are crucial for a 21st-century global environment and yet rooted in the ideals of classical liberal learning,” said Patton. “This program will engage our faculty, students, and staff, and have a marked impact on our curriculum.”

One of the primary activities covered by the grant will be a series of professional development workshops offered to faculty, particularly in courses that emphasize listening and speaking in their scholarly content.

“We hope to work with faculty instructors already teaching courses on the media, language and communication, and rhetoric,” said Sarah Stroup, associate professor of political science and the faculty director of the Mellon grant. “We will also work with faculty to develop the tools for listening and speaking in the classroom to teach any type of content, from lab sciences to the arts.”

The grant calls for a six-person faculty workshop each semester over the three-year life of the grant, resulting in 36 trained faculty members by the conclusion of the project. Faculty workshops will be led by outside consultants and focus on developing skills and pedagogical approaches oriented around speaking, listening, difficult topics, and digital platforms.

The ability to understand another point of view and to engage in productive disagreements is essential for both Middlebury’s educational project and for public life beyond the college, says Stroup. “We hope to achieve measurable differences in the depth and breadth of campus discussions, which should result in better learning and more effective civic and political engagement.

“Our ambitious and accomplished students are already engaged in a wide array of affinity groups and in civic and political causes beyond our campus,” Stroup continued. “They reflect the culture of the hardworking faculty, staff, and administrators that are good at moving fast and getting many things done. Yet our culture of busy-ness does not always prepare us for the slow and difficult process of communicating across differences. In and out of the classroom, we hope to equip students with a sense of agency and responsibility while developing the tools for effective dialogue.”

The grant will also support work being done by the Vermont Humanities Council, including its “First Wednesdays” series, a monthly statewide speaker series hosted at nine different sites around the state, as well as financial support to enhance its speakers bureau. Stroup expects the collaboration with VHC will provide ways for students and community members to discuss a wide array of topics from a diverse set of viewpoints.

The idea of civil discourse has evolved dramatically in recent years, shaped by the growing role of digital platforms and social media, and increased tensions around ideas of free speech and inclusivity. Responding to these rapid changes, a committee of six faculty and administrators researched and proposed the Mellon grant. Committee members were James C. Davis (religion); Shawna Shapiro (writing program and linguistics); Sarah Stroup (political science); Dana Yeaton (theater); Timothy Spears, vice president for academic development; and Amy Collier, associate provost for digital learning.

“One of the chief aims of this program is to prepare students for engaging the world beyond Middlebury—hence the emphasis on ‘public spheres,’” said Spears, the principal investigator for the Mellon grant. “We also recognize that no single entity constitutes the public sphere, that we all increasingly navigate multiple worlds through a variety of means—by speaking, writing, and via social media. We were quite frank in our proposal that exercising one’s right to speak these days is no easy thing, that the political environment can be a deterrent to speaking in and across these public spheres. We believe the program we are developing with Mellon’s support will give our students the orientation they need to succeed in this rapidly changing landscape.”

President Patton has emphasized the need for a “robust and inclusive public sphere” since she first arrived on campus in 2015. In her inaugural address, she foreshadowed the goals of the new Mellon-funded program: “And so allow me to describe a future. Here is my thought for you, today, and in the years to come: I challenge us to have more and better arguments, with greater respect, stronger resilience, and deeper wisdom.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – When Middlebury College launched its School of Hebrew in the summer of 2008, few observers could have predicted the remarkable success of the Hebrew language program.

But now, 10 years later, the School has experienced remarkable growth in both its size and scope. Whereas the School opened in 2008 with four faculty members and 28 students enrolled in one undergraduate-level summer program, today’s School of Hebrew has more than 40 faculty members teaching 155 students enrolled in any of the School’s five different programs.

“The School of Hebrew, under the visionary leadership of Vardit Ringvald, is fulfilling its mission to professionalize the teaching of Hebrew as a world language,” said Professor Stephen Snyder, Dean of the Language Schools. “The School’s growth is particularly impressive in light of the decreases in undergraduate enrollments in Modern Hebrew and across all languages over the past 10 years.”

The School currently offers instruction via a seven-week undergraduate-level session, a six-week program for Master of Arts degree candidates, a three-week program in Classical Hebrew, and a three-week course for lifelong learners of the language. In addition, students at the graduate level in Hebrew can now pursue a Doctor of Modern Languages degree from Middlebury by selecting Hebrew as their primary language and either Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, or Spanish as their secondary language of study.

Through its wide range of offerings in Hebrew, Middlebury is leading by example. As an illustration, Dean Snyder points to the School’s “hybrid MA” in Hebrew that combines face-to-face instruction in the summer months with distance learning courses during the academic year. “This innovation proves to be ideal for our students, many of whom are in-service teachers, and it may provide us with a model for the expansion of our graduate programs across the Language Schools.”

All of the teachers in the School of Hebrew, including Vardit Ringvald (above left), work one-on-one with students.

The School of Hebrew has been under the direction of Vardit Ringvald since its founding at Middlebury in 2008. Formerly a professor of Hebrew at Brandeis University, Ringvald since 2013 has been the C.V. Starr Research Professor of Languages and Linguistics at Middlebury College, in addition to her duties as director of the summer school.

“The range of offerings in Hebrew reflect our School’s three main missions,” said Ringvald. “First, to increase the number of people who are proficient in the Hebrew language. Second, to improve the teaching of Hebrew in all educational frameworks. And third, to create opportunities for research to better understand the field of teaching and learning Hebrew in the United States.

“As a result of our wide array of programs and activities, we have become a central place for Hebrew learning in the United States and beyond,” the director continued. “We have students from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and across the Americas.”

The School of Hebrew receives generous support from a variety of sources including the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life – each of which provides scholarships for approximately 30 students in the School of Hebrew.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – This summer Meron Benti ‘19 and Philitricia Baraza ‘18 will direct a camp in Kenya for young adults with albinism–a rare genetic condition that causes a lack of melanin in people affected by it. The camp or summit, called Amani for People with Albinism (APWA), is a youth empowerment program that will take place in Meru, Kenya, August 17-24. Benti and Baraza were awarded a $10,000 Projects for Peace grant to fund APWA. Projects for Peace, an initiative started by the late philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis, is designed to spark innovative, entrepreneurial approaches to building meaningful prospects for peace around the world.

“I experienced discrimination because of my condition,” said Benti, an anthropology major and a native of Ethiopia who has albinism herself. “A program like ours can support other young people with albinism and allow them to develop self-confidence and an understanding of their inner talents and abilities.”

An economics major from Kenya, Baraza said they chose to include the word Amani, which means peace in Swahili, in the camp’s name for several reasons. “We hope the camp will bring participants together in a peaceful setting,” said Baraza, “where young Kenyan adults with albinism can build the leadership skills necessary to spread positive awareness of their condition. We hope it can bring some inner peace to these young people as well.”

In their Projects for Peace proposal, Baraza and Benti note that albinism is most common in Sub-Saharan African countries where approximately one in every 5,000 to 15,000 people suffers from it. Africans with albinism face higher chances of developing skin cancer, fewer educational opportunities, and life-threatening conditions caused by beliefs in witchcraft about the power of their body parts. They are more likely to face discrimination and unemployment because of the vision disabilities caused by their condition. They may also lack family support because families without knowledge of albinism often abandon their children with the condition.

APWA will offer young adults aged 18-27 from various Kenyan communities the opportunity to take part in personal and professional development workshops organized in partnership with a Kenyan nonprofit, the International Peace Initiatives Center, based in Kenya and the U.S. They also worked with the Albinism Society of Kenya who helped spread the word about APWA and identify youth for participation.

Along with the Projects for Peace grant, Benti and Baraza are working to raise $2,500 on MiddSTART, a micro-philanthropy site that helps Middlebury students find the necessary funding for creative, entrepreneurial projects. With nine days left before their July 25 deadline, they had raised all but $590. The MiddSTART effort will help cover the costs of lodging, food, and transportation for the summit participants and volunteers. The funding will also support the filming of a documentary about the program that further promotes positive awareness about albinism and those with the condition. Alyne Gonçalves ‘18.5, a geography and environmental studies major from Praia, Cape Verde, recently joined Benti and Baraza in their efforts to organize the camp and will lead the documentary project.

"While this program only lasts a week,” said Benti, “we hope that what the participants learn, the relationships they form, and the messages shared at the event will stay with these young adults for much longer. We hope to inspire participants to shape more positive futures for themselves and other people with albinism living in Kenya and all over Africa."

More information about APWA is available on the project’s FaceBook page.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Walking up the back hill at the Knoll one afternoon, Food and Garden Educator Megan Brakeley noticed something odd about the garden’s lone tamarack.

“There were all these eyes looking at me, all these little black beady heads,” said Brakeley, who had paused to admire the tree’s soft branches only to realize “It’s alive!”

She then called her crew of summer interns around the tree to ask, “What are these creatures, and what should we do about them?”

“There were clusters of larvae on little branches on the tamarack, and it was funny because there they were, just falling from the tree,” said Knoll intern Thibault Lannoy.

For Lannoy, a physics major and rising junior, these impromptu moments of problem-solving are one of the best parts of working at the Knoll.

“A big part of the process is us learning as a group and exchanging information. . . . We’re all there to ask questions,” said Lannoy.

After a little online and print research, the group determined that they were looking at a sawfly infestation—and catching the larvae at the very moment that individuals begin to drop to the ground to pupate.

After that, it was on to squishing.

Brakeley sees the summer Knoll internships as a place to better understand natural systems and grasp technical skills like how to use or maintain a tool properly—as well as a place where students have the freedom to make mistakes, figure things out as they go, and build their own powers of observation and decision making while they put in the hours necessary to keeping the garden beautiful and bountiful.

The daily list of tasks is written on a whiteboard in the tool shed at the Knoll.

Students founded what was then called the “Middlebury College Organic Garden” in 2002. Even then, it was affectionately referred to as “Kestrel Knoll” for the flights of raptors often seen overhead. The garden was officially renamed the “Middlebury College Organic Farm” in 2011, and then “The Knoll” in 2017.

“First and foremost, we were motivated to grow food,” said cofounder Bennett Konesni ’04.5. “We wanted the experience of planting a seed, caring for it, and eating whatever grew. We wanted to eat that food in the dining halls and share it with our friends, professors, and neighbors.”

Knoll intern Raine Ellison ’19 harvests carrots.

Students also wanted to learn more about food systems, said Konesni. A Food Studies program joined Middlebury’s academic offerings in 2015. And, indeed, said Food Studies professor and program director Molly Anderson, “One of my things is to make sure that no student goes through the program without being aware of the Knoll and having visited.”

Konesni also related that students founding the Knoll simply wanted a place to connect with nature, with each other, and just be.

“Founding the Knoll really came from a need—a hunger—of just needing to get out of our heads and back into the earth,” said Sophie-Esser Calvi ’03, who now oversees the Knoll as associate director for the Global Food and Farm Program.

That spirit remains alive today.

“I knew that I wanted to be outside, and I wanted to be working with either plants or animals as part of my major, and also thinking about sustainability and how you can favor agricultural practices that are more sustainable,” said conservation biology major Theo Henderson ’20.

Micah Raymond ’21 harvests shallots at the Knoll.

A recent morning found this year’s Knoll interns hard at work, harvesting chard. All four worked companionably, sometimes in silence, sometimes chatting, carefully breaking off the outer leaves, bundling the chard with rubber bands, then plunging the bundles into a waiting bucket of water. Yellowed or decaying leaves went in the compost bucket. All kept a sharp eye out for insect eggs or damage or other evidence of pests. Off to the east, five turkey vultures circled overhead. Bees buzzed in and out of flowers, drawn to the purple poppies, especially. The air erupted constantly in tweets and chirps and twitters.

The day before—gray and rainy—saw the considerably less pastoral task of weeding out invasive wild parsnip, whose yellow blossoms found along roadways throughout the state are notorious for causing painful rashes and blisters.

“You should see us gear up,” quipped rising sophomore Micah Raymond. “We look like ghostbusters.”

Theo Henderson ’20 waters seedlings at the Knoll greenhouse.

Raymond also noted that one of the best parts of the work day is the “300-footers,” a term coined at a nearby organic farm for questions that can occupy a work crew weeding a really, really long row of vegetables.

“We pose these questions that are like, ‘What would you do if you all of a sudden had a million dollars?’ You can donate it, but you couldn’t invest it. . . . Or ‘If you had a superpower, what would it be?’ or ‘What is a weed?’”

The bulk of the food raised at the Knoll goes to local nonprofit HOPE (Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects), which runs the county’s largest food shelf. The rest goes to dining services, local restaurants, and Weybridge House, where the students in the summer FoodWorks program (which includes the Knoll interns) cook, eat, and live.

To get a wider perspective on food systems issues, interns go on weekly field trips to local farms and other places of significance. Last Wednesday, for example, they visited a certified organic vegetable farm with a 191-member CSA; a farm that raises grass-fed, grass-finished beef, using carefully managed pasture rotation practices; and the HOPE food shelf.

Thibault Lannoy ’20 thins out beet plants. The bulk of the summer harvest is donated to the local food shelf in Middlebury.

“Seeing the whole HOPE operation just makes me excited to get our food out,” said intern Raine Ellison ’19, who said she finds peace of mind in knowing she’s making a contribution to battle hunger locally.

Raymond, who volunteered in a local community garden in middle and high school and is one of the more experienced gardeners on this summer’s crew, said that because their dad is a chef, they've always thought about food. But this summer, growing food, looking at local food systems, and living in Weybridge House, has got them thinking about food in new and deeper ways.

“We can seed something and then watch it grow and then we harvest it, and then we cook it, and then we eat it. We see the entire process of meals that we make, which is really exciting,” said Raymond. “People are totally, completely disconnected from the food system. Even if it’s a local food system, they don't necessarily know where it came from or how it got there or where that person got that. It's like the chain is kind of cut short. But if you actually know the amount of energy and water and care that went into that thing, it makes you super grateful and almost patient and slower when you’re eating it.”

By Gaen Murphree; Photos by Robert Keren

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – One hundred thirty-six Middlebury undergraduates representing 19 different departments and programs exhibited the results of their faculty-mentored research at the 2018 Summer Research Symposium on July 26 at McCardell Bicentennial Hall.

Students presented research projects in the physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and the topics ranged from “Identifying SloR Binding Sites in the S. mutans UA159 Genome” to “The Effect of Employment Related Hardships on Economic and Political Opinions in Post-Communist Russia” to “Health and Labor Productivity Impacts of Mining: Evidence from South Africa.”

“We had a wonderful selection of academic departments and programs represented this summer and a strong turnout from the students,” said Lisa Gates, the symposium organizer and associate dean for fellowships and research. “Compared with five years ago, we have definitely increased the number of projects and participants exhibiting their posters at the Summer Symposium.”

In addition to students exhibiting the fruits of their research with faculty in chemistry, physics, biology, neuroscience, and geology, there also were projects conducted with professors in Japanese studies, theatre, sociology, philosophy, Arabic, geography, and the digital liberal arts.

From top, Rebecca Wishnie '20 discussed her poster; Matthew Ottomano '20 explained the "Dial-A-Ride Problem"; Harper Baldwin '20 talked about the ecology of deer ticks; and conversations about undergraduate research filled the Great Hall. Click on the images to enlarge.

Middlebury junior Rebecca Wishnie presented her research on “State-Santioned Violence, State-Sanctioned Mourning: The Handmaid’s Tale and Charles Murray’s Visit to Middlebury.” Working with Professor Sujata Moorti (Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies), Wishnie delved into the similarity between the March 2, 2017, Charles Murray “shout down” at Middlebury and a scene in Season 2 of the television program on Hulu.

Wishnie perceived the scene from the popular dystopian drama as a form of state-sanctioned mourning, and she applied it to the Murray incident through the lens of Professor Allison Stanger’s op-ed piece in the New York Times.

Matthew Ottomano and Searidang Pa, members of the Class of 2020, showed their project called “Dial-A-Ride Problem” developed this summer with Assistant Professor Ananya Christman (Computer Science). The researchers found a “2-chain” algorithm yielded better results than a “max-chain” algorithm in terms of serving all requests for rides while maximizing objectives such as revenue and efficiency. The research has implications for ride-sharing businesses such as Uber and Lyft.

Harper Baldwin ’20 worked alongside Assistant Professor David Allen (Biology) and Maisie Anrod ’20 this summer studying the ecology of the deer tick Ixodes scapularis. With a group of Symposium attendees gathered around her poster, titled “Not a Dry Topic: Humidity and Ixodes scapularis,” Baldwin discussed how humidity affects the tick’s “questing” or host-seeking behavior.

The researchers made eight tick enclosures and placed six I. scapularis nymphs in each one, the junior from Brattleboro, Vt., said. Next, they placed the enclosures in the field and recorded the relative humidity and temperature at each site. Over time, they opened each enclosure for three minutes and took note of whether the ticks were questing.

“We are trying to understand how heat and humidity affect the ticks’ daily activity patterns. We hope that in the future our research will have public health implications, but there needs to be more study,” Baldwin said. “At this point we know that there are more ticks out questing when the humidity and the temperature are relatively high.”

On the other side of the Great Hall, Tate Serletti ’20, Liza Tarr ’19, and Emma Hampsten ’18.5 discussed their project “In Plain Sight” conducted with Assistant Professor Carly Thomsen (Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies). The students are creating a film and website about “metronormativity” – the assumption that LGBTQ people are more welcome, accepted, and happy in urban areas as opposed to rural settings.

“Our project is an extension of Professor Thompsen’s ongoing research in a subfield called rural queer studies,” said Serletti. Working with interviews conducted in 12 locations across South Dakota and Minnesota, “this scholarship works to dismantle assumptions we have about rurality and the prospects for queerness in those places,” she said.

Middlebury’s annual Summer Research Symposium is conducted by the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research, and is designed to showcase undergraduate research while providing students with opportunities for personal and professional growth. Summer research assistants are supported by multiple funding sources including foundations, government agencies, gifts to the College, and institutional grants.

– With reporting and photography by Robert Keren