MONTEREY, Calif. – The Middlebury Institute has received a $4.5 million bequest from a trust established almost 50 years ago by Samuel F. B. Morse, the legendary founder of Pebble Beach. The money will be used to establish a special fund in Morse’s name that will support student scholarships, academic programs, and other priorities of the Institute well into the future. It is the largest single gift in the history of the Middlebury Institute.

Always the visionary, Morse created a trust that one day would transfer his fortune and fulfill his philanthropic vision. After his death in 1969, the trust provided income to his heirs until the passing of his longest-living child, Mary Morse Osborne Shaw. At that time, the remaining funds were to be divided between three educational institutions. The others are Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and the Stevenson School on the Monterey Peninsula.

Samuel F. B. Morse, the legendary founder of Pebble Beach. Photo courtesy of The Pebble Beach Company.

Charles Osborne, author of Boss: The Story of S.F.B. Morse, the Founder of Pebble Beach, says his grandfather “felt that any success he had started with the schools he attended.” He had grand ideas about his adopted home and “his dream for the peninsula was to make Pebble Beach a sportsman’s paradise and for Monterey to be a center of higher education.”

“We are honored and deeply grateful to Mr. Morse and his family for believing in the Institute’s mission during its early years and for planning to provide generous support well into the future,” said Middlebury President Laurie L. Patton. “While he could only imagine the possible future growth of our then-small school, Mr. Morse believed in the power of education and, as a visionary and innovator, understood the importance of language as a means for truly understanding other cultures.”

Samuel Finley Brown Morse, also known as the “Duke of Del Monte,” grew up in the East and attended Phillips Academy, Andover and Yale where he was captain of the undefeated 1906 football team and voted most popular in his graduating class of 1907. After graduation, Morse was ready to seek new opportunities in the West and quickly embraced the Monterey Peninsula, where he would make his mark. Initially tasked with liquidating properties along the Pebble Beach coastline for the Pacific Improvement Company, he instead saw the potential and myriad possibilities along the rugged coastline to shape a community, which ultimately included the now-legendary golf course. In his book, Osborne wrote that his grandfather “rallied against the forces of ugly, tasteless growth.”

Samuel F. B. Morse helped facilitate the purchase of the Institute's first building, the former city library, now the Barnet J. Segal Building.

Morse was an artist—a painter—who loved sports and traveled the world. As Osborne described him, “He blended old and new, bridging the romantic notion of the cowboy days of the Old West and the modern man of enterprise.” Morse left behind a lasting legacy on the peninsula, including the preservation of vast parcels of land. Local appreciation for his legacy is evident in the many streets and buildings named in his honor, including the S. F. B. Morse Building on the Middlebury Institute’s campus in downtown Monterey.

From his world travels, Morse understood changing world dynamics would make language and cultural understanding increasingly valuable. This worldly perspective made him an early supporter of the Institute, advising his friend and one of the early academic leaders of the small school, Dr. Remsen Bird. As the Institute blossomed, he underwrote the loan to purchase the former city library, what is now the Segal Building. In his role as president of the Monterey Foundation, he supported grants to the Institute. After his death, his family remained involved with the school during its formative years. 

“When he was approached by the Institute at its inception he understood that the charter was to provide an education for those who wished to be in the foreign service or do business abroad and who wished to polish their language skills,” Osborne said of his grandfather. “The Institute has done that and more and continues to do so. S.F.B. would be proud of the institution that has grown to be such an important part of Monterey, and of what it has contributed to the world.”

With its share of the S.F.B. Morse Trust, the Middlebury Institute will establish the Samuel F. B. Morse Fund, which will be invested as part of the Middlebury endowment to generate a generous funding stream for Institute priorities. The fund will help the Institute continue its core mission of preparing students to lead engaged, consequential, and creative lives, contribute to their communities, and address the world’s most challenging problems.

“This fabulous gift will be applied to our highest priorities—student scholarships and immersive learning opportunities—and also used to explore new avenues and approaches in teaching and learning,” said Patton. “This visionary trust is one more way Mr. Morse will leave his indelible mark on the peninsula, a community he not only envisioned, but helped to build.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The new director of education for equity and inclusion is Renee Wells, who joined the staff on August 1 to help the Middlebury community recognize barriers to inclusion, increase self-awareness, engage in difficult dialogue, and develop strategies for creating equitable spaces for all.

Prior to accepting her new post, Wells was the director of the GLBT Center at North Carolina State University for four years where she developed curricula and resource materials, led training sessions and workshops, collaborated on programming across the Raleigh campus, served on teams and committees, supervised a fulltime staff, and administered an annual budget in excess of $300,000. 

Wells holds a BA in English and a BS in education from Auburn University, an MA in English from Miami (Ohio) University, and an MFA from Southern Illinois University. She began her career as an instructor of English at the University of Alabama before switching careers in 2011 to become the assistant director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Michigan Technological University.

“I learned a great deal from a mentor at Michigan Tech about how institutions can unconsciously perpetuate barriers for students,” Wells said. “The ability to recognize that and what to do about it—a lot of that came from her.

“I am drawn to this work because there is no line between who I am and what I do. I could be sitting in my office reading an article about implicit bias, or I could be home reading an article in the New York Times about something similar being manifest in a different context. Equity and inclusion, that’s the lens through which I see the world and it shapes how I do my work.”

She adds, “When you are invested in issues of diversity and inclusion, the need feels much greater and the sense of personal accountability to do the work is much higher. It is really easy to tune it out if you are privileged because you don’t have to pay attention.”

Wells plans to help the Middlebury community adjust to “paying attention” to the subject of equity and inclusion, and as of Labor Day she had already facilitated 11 workshops for Middlebury students and staff. Adept at getting up in front of an audience, where she sometimes wears a T-shirt bearing the message “Feeling uncomfortable is a necessary part of unlearning oppressive behaviors,” Wells conducted dozens of workshops at NC State on recognizing microaggressions, supporting trans students, handling internalized oppression, identifying racial justice, supporting students with disabilities, and other topics.

And beyond her home campus, Wells has delivered numerous presentations to audiences, including “Leveraging Student Power,” “Understanding Gender and Sexuality,” “Power: An Exploration of Multidimensionality,” “Engaging Students in Difficult Dialogues,” and “LGBTQ-Inclusive Academic Advising.”  

Wells believes that her background in writing and teaching prepared her well for her work in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“My work is all about understanding audiences. It’s about knowing how to frame things in ways that make sense to them, knowing how to create buy-in with them, and knowing how to persuade them, particularly around advocacy and changing policies and practices. Being able to read people and connect with them is all about rhetoric,” Wells explained. “That’s where I came from and that’s what makes me good at what I do.”

Middlebury’s chief diversity officer, Professor Miguel Fernandez ’85, who led the search for the director of education for equity and inclusion, said, “Renee Wells brings a tremendous knowledge base and vast experience in trainings, workshops, and strategic work to Middlebury. I am excited by the prospect of how she will help our community break down some of the obstacles that have been in the way of making ours an inclusive and welcoming space.

“Renee also brings an intersectional and social justice lens to her work and she is sure to help increase critical awareness among our students, staff, and faculty. She has hit the ground running and we are thrilled to have her on our team.”

That team—the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—includes Fernandez, Wells, and Anderson Freeman Resource Center Director  Roberto Lint Sagarena and Associate Director Jennifer Herrera Condry, MA Spanish ’13.

Wells, who lives a two-minute walk from campus, is now deeply invested in life at Middlebury. “A big part of my job is community building. People need to know me and understand what I am here to do. I am here to support others, and a big part of what I need to do is connect with people and figure out what their perceptions are of the campus climate, and then determine the things that need to be addressed.”

Story and photo by Robert Keren

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The members of Middlebury College’s newest class of first-year students gathered at Mead Chapel on Thursday evening, September 6, for the opening Convocation.

The new undergraduates lined Storrs Walk on the breezy, late-summer evening as members of the administration and faculty, led by President Laurie L. Patton, processed into the chapel as strains of carillon music filled the air. The new students occupied the pews and each one touched the college mace, Gamaliel Painter’s cane, and passed it on to the next student until every member of the Class of 2022 had touched the walking stick carried by one of Middlebury’s founders.

Conducted prior to the opening of the academic year and steeped in tradition, Convocation marks the day when the director of admissions “hands off” the first years to the president; the vice president for academic affairs introduces the faculty to the new undergraduates; the student government president issues a warm welcome; and President Patton delivers an inspiring address.

The new students sit according to the five Commons – the college’s living and learning residential system – and the faculty head of each body offers a brief history. The ceremony is interspersed with musical selections performed by students and faculty, and readings of “Words on Wisdom” excerpted from the Hebrew Bible, Bhagavad Gita, New Testament, Qur’an, Zen teaching of Master Linji, and author Toni Morrison.

The president’s Convocation address, which has been the key component of Convocation since the 1970s, asked the new undergraduates, “How do you figure out who you are as college students?” The answer, she said, lies in “embodying Middlebury values and becoming wise” through integrity, rigor, connectedness, curiosity, and openness.

“Wisdom is knowing your own truth. That is integrity. Your job is to be like yourself. So I ask you now, and I will never tire of asking you, ‘How long are you going to worry about who you are not when you should be getting on with the glorious business of who you are?’ Your job at Middlebury,” she continued, “is to become more like yourself, whoever that person is and wherever that person takes us in our community.”

On rigor, Patton said, “Once you stop comparing yourself to everyone else, then you can go on to that second part: understanding how to push yourself in new ways. You may wonder sometimes if you have strength sufficient to the task, but you do have that strength. We chose you. We chose you because we sensed, and you did too, that there is something about you and this place that made a really wonderful match. You can do the work here, whatever that work turns out to be… You can be rigorous in that work, rigorous in that play, and rigorous in that creativity.”

Vice President Andrea Lloyd, the professor of biology who also serves as dean of faculty, advised the first-year students to “keep in mind as you get to know your faculty that we might seem like we have been here since the beginning of time, but most of us remember keenly what it was like to be settling here anew, getting the lay of the land and figuring things out. I suspect that all of us [faculty members] would be happy to share with you whatever wisdom we may have gleaned from our process of finding our footing here.”

The faculty’s dual role as teachers and scholars “blur together in wonderful and exciting ways as ideas, insights, and moments of discovery follow back and forth,” she said. “Seize the opportunity over the next four years to get to know us individually; to engage with us intellectually; and to join us in acts of discovery large and small.”

Director of Admissions Nicole Curvin said the admissions process “is not a treasure hunt with one perfect prize at the end. We’re not looking for fully formed 18 year olds – we’re not looking for perfection – nor should you get wrapped up in finding perfection, because the truth is you are not going to find perfection at Middlebury.

“But with a little bit of hard work, some resilience, and a willingness to take some risks, and yes, even fail, you can and will find your best versions of yourselves here eventually… Remember what it was about Middlebury that made you want to apply and come here; relish that as you set about on your path and find your way.”

Nia Robinson ’19, the president of the Student Government Association, told the gathering that there were two things she wished she knew when she first arrived at Middlebury three years ago.

The first is “you are the typical Middlebury student, just by going to college here.” Maybe you don’t know how to ski or maybe you are from a big city or another country, she said, but “you get to define and customize your own Middlebury experience yourself.”

Robinson’s second point is “reach out for help, even if you don’t think you need it. The transition from high school to college can be rough, and fortunately Midd is filled with people to help you figure out how to navigate it all.”

The Class of 2022 learned the words to the alma mater, “Walls of Ivy, Paths of Beauty,” and sang it together for the first time, accompanied by Associate Professor of Music Jeffrey Buettner on the organ. And as the new students streamed out of Mead Chapel into the summer night, they likely pondered what adventures lie ahead.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – How has violence become a daily part of American racism? Should we speak and risk being misunderstood, or remain quiet and believe we are unable to effect change? Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison raises these and other powerful questions in her most recent book The Origin of Others, a collection of essays that will be the subject of this year’s Clifford Symposium at Middlebury College September 20–22. The book was also summer reading for the College’s incoming class. Symposium activities include lectures, a film screening, a student forum, dance performances, and workshops.

“Morrison explores topics in The Origin of Others that are relevant to what we are experiencing right now in our society,” said J Finley, assistant professor of American studies and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, and one of three faculty symposium organizers. “She speaks with an intense voice of the racism of our ancestors and of the present, and asks: “Why should we want to know a stranger when it is easier to estrange another?””

“We’re looking forward to engaging the Middlebury College community—faculty, staff, students, trustees, and alumni—as well as members of the public in the Clifford Symposium at a new, deeper level,” said Larry Yarbrough, Tillinghast Professor of Religion and an organizer of the symposium. “During the new students’ orientation, more than 50 faculty members led discussion groups on The Origin of Others with members of the incoming class. We’re making use of our own faculty’s valuable expertise for much of the symposium programming.”

Yarbrough noted that students are also leading one of the events—a student forum—where they will read excerpts from The Origin of Others and from Morrison’s other works. The students will invite comments and discussion based on the readings. The event is sponsored by a variety of student organizations.

On September 20, Finley will kick off the symposium with the first keynote talk, a frank conversation about race, titled “‘Yonder they do not love your flesh’: Ghosts, Strangers, and the Specter of Race.” She will draw connections surrounding “Garner,” a surname that two people share over a span of 158 years—Eric Garner, who was killed by the NYPD in 2014 while selling loose cigarettes outside a beauty supply store, and Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who murdered her daughter rather than see her enslaved when the family was caught. The dead child is the inspiration for Morrison’s novel Beloved. 

Shatavia Knight ’20, president of the student organization Women of Color, was one of the organizers of the symposium’s student forum, where students will read excerpts from The Origin of Others and from Morrison’s other works, and will then invite comments on the readings.

Nia Robinson ’19, president of the Student Government Association, also helped organize the symposium’s student forum.

Will Nash, professor of American studies and English and American literatures and a symposium organizer, will immediately follow with the second keynote lecture, “Tending the Roots, Heeding the Call: Why We Must Read Toni Morrison Today.” Nash will discuss the importance that Morrison places on history as we look to the future. He will also look at her exploration of people’s fears to speak out during an escalation of racist thoughts and actions and how her work offers guidance toward a better understanding and mutual respect.

The first day of the symposium will conclude with a screening of The Foreigner’s Home, a documentary film that explores Morrison’s work through the 2006 exhibition by the same name that she guest-curated at the Louvre. Morrison invited renowned artists whose work also deals with the experience of cultural and social displacement to join her in a public conversation. The film expands upon that and offers exclusive and unreleased footage of the Nobel laureate in Paris in 2006 and at her home in New York state in 2015. 

The film’s producers will attend the event to provide an introduction and to lead a post-screening discussion. 

The symposium continues on Friday with a workshop on documentary filmmaking and the student forum. It closes with an arts performance based on an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s short story Recitatif. Middlebury faculty members Michole Biancosino, assistant professor of theatre; Christal Brown, chair of the dance department; and Matthew Taylor, assistant professor of music, created the performance. After its conclusion, they will discuss the challenges of staging this short story that explores the conflicted ways society deals with race and color.

Saturday’s activities include workshops and discussions on The Origin of Others as well as topics that have originated in the symposium sessions. Events wrap up with a second performance of Recitatif.

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.

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. 

The full symposium schedule is available here. For more information, please contact Mari Price at mprice@middlebury.edu or 802-443-5403.

Mike Roy, Dean of the Library

“We hear regularly from seniors that they wish that they had understood earlier in their careers at Middlebury that the library and the librarians can play an important role in their academic life at the College. When you start work on your first research paper, make an appointment with one of the librarians to talk through how to find the best sources for your project. Or drop by the research desk. We suspect that you’ll be amazed by the vast array of materials we can help you learn how to find and use, if only you just ask.”

Katrina Spencer, Literatures and Cultures Librarian

“First-year students should know that they can reserve group study (go/groupstudy) spaces in both the Davis Family and Armstrong Libraries. Streaming video content from all around the world is available on Kanopy (go/kanopy). And, students, just like anyone else in the community, can make requests for new purchases for our collections (go/requests). The libraries meet curricular needs and are responsive to needs that go beyond the scope of the curriculum, too.”

Terry Simpkins, Director, Discovery and Access Services

“We get the things you need for your course work, whether it’s a book, an ebook, printed music, DVD, CD, or database (go/requests). If we can’t purchase it or license it ourselves, we’ll get it for you from another library, anywhere in the world (go/ill). And if you want to know whether or not we have something, use MIDCAT, the library catalog (go/midcat) or Summon (go/summon), which is sort of like MIDCAT on steroids. Finally, you might also be surprised to learn we have a lot of technology equipment available for borrowing, from laptop chargers to video cameras to music keyboards. Just stop in at the circulation/borrowing desk and ask.”

Rebekah Irwin, Director and Curator, Special Collections and Archives

“First-year students, first of all, should walk through the front door of Special Collections (go/special) in the Davis Library and ask us something. What is your most valuable book? If I started at Middlebury in 1818, what would my major be? What is this place? After that, have a hands-on interaction with the rarest and most unique materials in the library. We think it’s the best way for you to make sense of the stories and ideas of the past—not just Middlebury College’s 218-year history, but the history of human aspiration and achievement, as it was handwritten, printed, tweeted, and Snapchatted. (And yes, we have Snapchats in the Archives.)  We’re on Instagram too! Follow us @middleburyspecialcollections.”

Wendy Shook, Science Data Librarian

“First-year students should know that research librarians are here to help them with all their research and digital literacy needs—don’t get frustrated, come talk to a librarian! Students should also know that Armstrong Science Library has services and spaces similar to the main library, but at the top of the hill in McCardell Bicentennial Hall.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury College has welcomed 47 new faculty members to its ranks this fall, including 15 tenure-track positions, 15 visiting faculty members, six professors of the practice, and 11 lecturers, instructors, and teaching assistants.

The new teachers arrived for a two-day orientation on August 27 at the Franklin Environmental Center. As a group, they represent 30 academic disciplines.

The following will join Middlebury this fall as tenure-track faculty members:

Biology

Kirsten Deane-Coe, assistant professor of biology, joins Middlebury from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she was assistant professor of biology. Deane-Coe earned her BS from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and her PhD from Cornell University.

Chinese

Hangping Xu, assistant professor of Chinese, earned his BA from Zhejiang University; an MA in literary and cultural studies from Dartmouth College; an MA in comparative literature from the University of Oregon; and his PhD in Chinese literature from Stanford University with a PhD minor in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. His research interests include modern Chinese literature and film, new media studies, comparative literature, and political theory.

Computer Science

Shelby Kimmel, assistant professor of computer science, earned her BA in astrophysics from Williams College and her PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests include designing and analyzing quantum algorithms, which take advantage of the laws governing small physical systems in order to solve computational problems. Since 2017, Kimmel has been a visiting assistant professor of computer science at Middlebury.

Andrea Vaccari, assistant professor of computer science, earned his MSc in physics from Università degli Studi di Milano and his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Virginia. His current research focuses on model-based analysis of images, stacks of images, videos, and spatiotemporal point cloud datasets.

Film and Media Culture

Natasha Ngaiza, assistant professor of film and media culture, earned her BA in literary and cultural studies at the College of William and Mary and her MFA in film and media arts from Temple University, where she taught film analysis, media arts, and media and culture.

French

Linsey Sainte-Claire, assistant professor of French, comes to Middlebury from Davidson College where she was visiting assistant professor of French and Francophone studies since 2016. Sainte-Claire’s teaching and research interests include contemporary French and Francophone literature, Caribbean studies, transnational studies, theater, educational studies, film studies, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial theory, and psychology.

Geography

Joseph Holler, assistant professor of geography, earned his BA at Ithaca College and his PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Prior to his tenure-track appointment, Holler was visiting assistant professor of geography at Middlebury from 2015–2017.

Japanese Studies

Otilia Milutin, assistant professor of Japanese studies, earned her BA in Japanese and French from the University of Bucharest, Romania; her MA in Japanese literature from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and her PhD in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia. Prior to her Middlebury appointment, she served as visiting assistant professor in Asian Studies at Knox College since 2016.

Music

Matthew Taylor, assistant professor of music, earned his BM in saxophone performance at Birmingham-Southern College and his MM and DMA at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Taylor has taught composition, aural skills, and music theory at the University of Miami since 2010.

Neuroscience

Clinton Cave, assistant professor of neuroscience, earned his BA in psychology, behavioral neuroscience track, from Yale University and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Most recently, Cave was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, designing and implementing experiments to uncover the molecular mechanisms of GDE2 dependent neurodegeneration utilizing RNAseq, conditional mouse genetics, and in-vitro modeling of neurodegeneration.

Political Science

Gary Winslett, assistant professor of political science, earned his BA in political science and economics from the University of Florida and his PhD in the Department of Political Science at Boston College, where he also taught Introduction to International Politics and the Political Economy of Climate Change.

Psychology

Martin Seehuus, assistant professor of psychology, earned his BS in economics and psychology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; an MA in psychology from The New School for Social Research; an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh; an MA in existential-phenomenological psychology from Duquesne University; and his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Vermont. Seehuus has been a visiting professor of psychology at Middlebury since the fall of 2015.

Religion

Justin Doran, assistant professor of religion, earned his BA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his MA and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Since July 2017, Doran has been visiting assistant professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Russian

Matthew Walker, assistant professor of Russian, earned his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Walker’s current research interests include Putinism and contemporary Russian culture; Nabokov, American and Russian novels; Russian romanticism; Gogol; aesthetics and politics in Soviet culture; and critical theory, media studies.

Spanish and Portuguese

Raquel Albarrán, assistant professor of Spanish, earned her MA and PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her BA from Universidad de Puerto Rico. Albarrán comes to Middlebury from Florida State University, where she was a postdoctoral scholar of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics.

Middlebury is also pleased to welcome the following visiting faculty, professors of the practice, instructors, lecturers, and teaching assistants:

Visiting Faculty

Benjamin Allred, MArch, University of Utah, visiting assistant professor of architecture

Berly Brown, MFA, SUNY Albany, visiting assistant professor of studio art

Stacie Cassarino, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, visiting assistant professor in FYS program

Isabelle Elisha, PhD, CUNY Graduate Center, visiting assistant professor of psychology

Karl Haas, PhD, Boston University, visiting assistant professor of music

Katherine Halvorsen, DSc, Harvard School of Public Health, distinguished visiting professor of mathematics

Tim Lilburn, PhD, McMaster University, visiting professor, sophomore seminars

Craig Maravich, MFA, George Washington University, visiting assistant professor of theatre

Ashar Nelson, MArch, University of Oregon, visiting assistant professor of architecture

Lana Dee Povitz, PhD, New York University, visiting assistant professor of history

Amit Prakash, PhD, Columbia University, visiting assistant professor in FYS program

Glenna Ryer, MFA, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, visiting assistant professor of theatre

Spring Ulmer, MFA, University of Iowa, visiting assistant professor of English and Amercian literatures

Bill Vitek, PhD, CUNY Graduate Center, visiting professor of environmental studies

Adam Wager, PhD, Rutgers University, visiting assistant professor of philosophy

Professors of the Practice

Susan H. Greenberg, MS, Columbia University, professor of the practice

Michael Kramer, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, professor of the practice, acting director, Digital Liberal Arts program

Anne-Marie Magri, BS, Adelphi University, professor of the practice

Tim Nguyen, MBA, Northwestern University, professor of the practice

Frank van Gansbeke, MBA, Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), professor of the practice

David Torres, BA, Middlebury College, professor of the practice

Lecturers and Instructors

Katie Aha, MA, Seton Hall University, visiting instructor in political science

Danté Brown, MFA, Ohio State University, artist in residence in dance

Alex Elias, MA, Long Island University, Brooklyn, men’s soccer coach, assistant in PE

Zohar Gazit, PhD, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Institute teaching fellow

Rachel Kahan, BA, Duke University, women’s tennis coach, assistant in PE

Xuezhan Zhang, MA, Hangzhou Normal University, lecturer in Chinese

Language Teaching Assistants

Kevin Bertet, Bordeaux Montaigre University, assistant in French

Youssef El Berrichi, MA, Dar El Hadith Al Hassani, assistant in Arabic

Mikuko Nagashima, BA, Kyoritsu Women’s University, assistant in Japanese

Iurii Puchkov, Irkutsk State University, assistant in Russian

Katrin Schmitz, Johannes-Gutenberg University, assistant in German

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs has released a new digital archive of papers delivered at its 2018 international and interdisciplinary conference titled “1968: 50 Years of Struggle,” which took place last spring. In an effort to broaden access to the conference proceedings, the center has made the video presentations available online.

In a decade marked by monumental social change, 1968 stood out for its extraordinary actions by anti-imperialist and anti-establishment forces across many countries. Over the two-day Middlebury conference, scholars representing 10 academic institutions examined the meaning of 1968 in different parts of the world.

As the new website notes, “With the rise of national liberation movements on almost every continent, the Civil Rights and Feminist movements in the U.S., anti-Vietnam demonstrations in the U.S. and around the world, and decolonization in Africa, 1968 pulsed with a new sense of optimism.

“It heralded new forms of art, music, thinking, and debate. But in 1968 conservative governments came to power in France, Britain, and the U.S; Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia; and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was met with intensifying violence.”

The new collection includes a keynote address by the famed American sociologist and communications scholar Todd Gitlin. The author of 16 books and a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, Gitlin opened the conference with his talk, “The Ambiguous Consequences of Failed Revolutions.” In the 1960s, as president of Students for a Democratic Society, Gitlin helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first American demonstrations against corporate aid to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Other videos include Middlebury faculty members Stephen Donadio, the Fulton Professor of Humanities and director of the Program in Literary Studies, who gave a talk titled “Black Power at Columbia, 1968,” and Linus Owens, associate professor of sociology, whose talk was titled “Two, Three, Many Columbias or One Too Many San Francisco States?  Remembering the 1968 Student Protests.”

The new archive was designed by student Jack Brisson ’19 in collaboration with Middlebury’s Office of Digital Learning and Inquiry. Visit the archive here.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – A group of Middlebury students are working to expand the number of legitimate sources where digital media consumers can verify a news story. The students are part of an international effort called NOW (Newspapers on Wikipedia), whose goal is to create 1,000 Wikipedia pages by December 15, 2018, for local newspapers that are currently not included in the free online encyclopedia. Several faculty members have also incorporated the project into their classes.

“NOW gives students a chance to contribute to Wikipedia as writers, researchers, and editors,” said Amy Collier, associate provost for digital learning and the leader of Middlebury’s NOW team. “Their work increases Wikipedia’s capacity to help people verify what they see online, an important step in fact checking.”

The Middlebury NOW team includes students and staff from Middlebury College and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California. The group will host a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on October 26 on both campuses with a goal of writing or finishing pages for 27 remaining Vermont papers with incomplete or nonexistent Wikipedia entries as well as 25 California papers.

Collier notes that those who want to substantiate a lesser-known or local news source frequently turn to Google, where the search results typically include an information box on the right. That data comes from a similar box, called an info box, on the Wikipedia page for the same news source. Numerous listings on the USNPL, a directory of thousands of media outlets, do not have Wikipedia pages, and therefore Google searches for these do not produce easily accessible info boxes.

Currently, four Middlebury College students work as interns on the NOW project: Nadani Dixon ’20, Caleb Turner ’20, Olivia Jin ’20, and Alfredo Torres ’19. Katie Caulfield, a student at Western Washington University who wanted to collaborate with the Middlebury team, as well as Ianthe Duncan-Poole, a student at the Middlebury Institute, are also part of the group. Collier expects other Middlebury students to join the project this fall.

Heather Stafford, multimedia and curricular technologist for Middlebury’s Office of Digital Learning and Inquiry (DLINQ), helps lead the group, and Bob Cole, director of exploratory initiatives and partnerships for DLINQ, recently joined the initiative. Cole is based at the Middlebury Institute.

The students and staff on the Middlebury NOW team have created 16 new Wikipedia pages for local newspapers that previously had no entries, edited or WikiGnomed 16 existing pages, and added 24 information boxes to pages that had none.

“I enjoy working on the NOW team because, as a college student who does research for her classes, I understand the importance of finding credible and reliable news sources,” said Dixon. “Having a Wikipedia page makes a local paper more visible and thus easier for users to consult. Through the project I’m also able to practice my own research and writing skills, and contribute factual and dependable information to the Web.”

Individuals at other colleges and universities have participated in NOW, said Collier, but to her knowledge Middlebury is the only school that has a formal team focused on the project.

Two faculty members at the Institute have incorporated the NOW initiative into courses. Marie Butcher, visiting assistant professor, has made Wikipedia editing a part of her class titled Advanced Editing and Writing. Gabriel Guillen, assistant professor of Spanish, also included NOW in a course—Spanish Fake News and Persuasion. Matt Lawrence, assistant professor of sociology at the College, has plans for students in one of his current classes, Social Life in the Age of Big Data, to create info boxes for newspaper Wikipedia pages.

Collier says that the NOW team plans to continue its work through the spring. “We’re hoping to grow the Middlebury NOW team’s contributions to local newspapers outside of the United States with articles in languages other than English,” she said. “This is an area where Middlebury has distinct opportunities to lead, as an institution with exceptional language programs and a robust global network.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Find a mentor. Volunteer in the community. Seek leadership positions. Back up your arguments with data. Send handwritten thank-you notes. Get to know international students.

That was just some of the sage advice offered to undergraduates at the sociology/anthropology “field guide” panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Careers and Internships on September 14 at Atwater Dining Hall. It was the first of several such discussions in a variety of majors that will take place this academic year.

Five Middlebury College alumni who majored in sociology/anthropology returned to campus for two days of career-related activities including the panel discussion, one-on-one meetings, classroom conversations, and informal talks over meals. Close to 50 undergraduates attended the panel discussion, asked questions, and emerged with valuable guidance.

“Your extracurricular activities are formative experiences and they can teach you leadership skills,” panelist Julie Tschirhart ’11, a city planner in Grand Rapids, Mich., told students. “I was a tri-chair of my Commons during my sophomore year and, while that was challenging and stressful, it also was the first time I ever facilitated a meeting, and that is a skill that I use in my current job.”

Patience and determination have paid off for Katie Flanagan Mobley ’97. “My first job was not a glamorous job,” said Mobley, who is now executive director of the Winooski, St. Albans, and Middlebury academic centers of the Community College of Vermont. “But in the sense of becoming a team player, pitching in, doing what’s needed, asking questions, and showing initiative—it’s taken all of us [on the panel] a while to get to this place. Being willing to do whatever was expected of me in my first job made a really big difference, and that opened up more and more opportunities for me.”

Michael Sheridan, associate professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology, moderated the alumni panel and asked the panelists to “tell us what you do” and “how your sociology and anthropology skill set advanced your career.”

Koby Altman ’04, general manager of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and a former Posse Scholar, said he learned at Middlebury how to frame an argument and support it with data. For example, he said, the Cavaliers just extended the contract of star forward Kevin Love for four years and $120 million. “If I did not have the ability to make an argument and back it up with real analytics,” he said, then the owner of the team might not have agreed to the terms of Love’s contract. “This department teaches you how to be a thinker, be original, think outside the box, and then back it up with real data.

“When you are going in to interview for a job,” Altman advised, “do as much research as you possibly can on the other person and their business. Find some coin or something about them that’s going to light them up. Like when somebody I am interviewing mentions Middlebury College, you want to be able to find [those areas of mutual interest] with the other person, and even if you have no connection, you should figure out something interesting about the other person and bring it up in the interview or in the email.”

A student research project at Middlebury set Elise Shanbacker ’07 on her career path. “For my senior thesis, I did an ethnography of a mobile home park here in Middlebury that has 67 units, and I applied a social capital lens to that,” said Shanbacker, who worked in state government and went to graduate school, then returned to the area in 2015 as executive director of Addison County Community Trust. “Researching the thesis connected me with the owner of the mobile home park, Addison County Community Trust, and that led to my first job out of Middlebury.”

Chris Murton ’03, a senior designer at Reed Hildebrand LLC, said. “What I do now is 100 percent applicable to what I studied at Middlebury because landscape architecture is ultimately about how people interact in their environment, whether it’s a city or a more natural environment, and it’s about how people experience the world around them. . . .  Anybody you speak with who was an anthropology or sociology major will say the breadth to which you can apply the skills you learned here are limitless.”

The Center for Careers and Internships conducts frequent field guide conversations with alumni throughout the academic year to help students think broadly about where their academic work might lead in a professional context. Future field guide events are scheduled for 2018–19 as follows: October 25 for economics, November 1 for political science, March 7 for education studies, March 14 (tentative) for English and American literatures, April 4 for film and media culture, April 19 for biology, and geology on a date to be announced.

“One of the greatest joys of being a professor at Middlebury is seeing people come back years later,” said Sheridan. “A lot of teaching involves planting seeds, but you don’t know what they are going to grow into. Seeing how our graduates on this panel have found their way professionally is just so satisfying.”

By Robert Keren; Photo by Todd Balfour

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – New England Review (NER) continues to celebrate its 40th anniversary year with the publication of its newest volume. In nonfiction, Eric Wilson, who won a Pushcart Prize for an earlier NER essay, returns with an account of the summer of 1955, when he was an exchange student in Berlin. Painter and children’s book author Phoebe Stone offers two vivid scenes from her childhood; a human rights activist battles her own demons in the Chinko Nature Reserve; and an aspiring novelist searches for the “real” New England by following the trail of Anne Hutchinson. 

Fiction and poetry include works by Bread Loafers Alison C. Rollins, Anders Carlson-Wee, Naheed Patel, and Amber Flora Thomas, as well as returning NER authors Paul Otremba, Christine Sneed, and Francis-Noël Thomas. Xujun Eberlein presents a story by Wang Zengqi in its first English translation, and Tony Hoagland pairs up with scholar Martin Shaw to translate four ancient Celtic poems. 

Along with its newest issue, NER has now released nine essays in its “From the Vault” series, which offers selected works from the archive online, introduced by past editors and staff. Contributors to date include founding editors Sydney Lea and Jay Parini, past editors Devon Jersild, T. R. Hummer, and David Huddle, and former poetry editor C. Dale Young.  

As part of its 40th anniversary year celebration, NER is holding several events. One of these will take place on October 20 when NER poetry editor Rick Barot will read alongside five recent NER contributors at Open Books in Seattle at 7 p.m. The next gathering will be the fifth annual NER Out Loud, in which Middlebury students from the student organization Oratory Now will read works from the literary magazine at the College Dance Theatre on October 26 at 7:30 p.m., followed by a S’More Readings reception, with students reading their own writing. 

Sample work from the new issue and more information about the magazine and events can be found on the NER website at www.nereview.com. 

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. – For the 15th consecutive year, Middlebury College opened the academic year with the Clifford Symposium—a campuswide conversation on a single, provocative topic that included lectures, film screenings, readings, performing arts, workshops, and discussion.

The title of the 2018 symposium was “Toni Morrison’s The Origin of Others,” which President Laurie L. Patton called “an important and deeply relevant examination of what it means to be a stranger to, and to estrange, one another.”

In opening the symposium, the president affirmed, “I believe that we at Middlebury have only begun to scratch the surface of the ongoing and deeply historical conversations we need to have in this symposium about race and about all forms of difference: class, gender, gender identity, sexuality, and religion, just to name a few.

“We need to think and talk about difference,” she said. “We need to think about all the ways we have ‘othered’ humans in the past and continue to do so in the present here in this community, here at Middlebury.”

Morrison’s collection of essays, published in 2017, encourages readers to examine issues from another point of view. It allows them “an opportunity to be and to become the Other. The stranger. With sympathy, clarity, and the risk of self-examination,” as the author explains in “Narrating the Other,” the fifth of six essays in the book. All of Middlebury’s first-year students and many faculty and staff members read The Origin of Others in preparation for the 2018–19 academic year.

Faculty, staff, and students listen intently to the opening keynote address by Professor J Finley at the Clifford Symposium on September 20 in Wilson Hall.

Two of the faculty organizers of the symposium, Assistant Professor J Finley and Professor William Nash, delivered powerful keynote addresses for the students, faculty, staff, and community members who filled Wilson Hall at the opening on September 20.

Finley, an assistant professor of American studies and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, gave a talk titled “‘Yonder they do not love your flesh’: Ghosts, Strangers, and the Specter of Race,” and in it she marked the 1991 Rodney King beating as “the moment when ‘the evidence of things not seen’ became seen and served as a turning point in our nation’s reckoning with racist state-sanctioned violence.” Concrete proof of anti-black violence, which previously had to be taken “on faith,” continues to grow today “with each cell phone video, audio recording, or dashboard camera making another piece of evidence of abuse, mistreatment, and brutality.”

From Rodney King on, “there is a record of the ways in which what it means to be black coheres and congeals on the torn flesh of those subjected to the racial state where blackness of flesh signifies, and has always signified, a need to be controlled,” Finley added. “We know that black people are routinely subject to state violence, but the video of [Eric] Garner’s death [at the hands of the NYPD], like that of Rodney King and now so many others, leaves a trace of that reality in a way that reveals the manner in which anti-black violence is perpetuated.”

Professor Will Nash gave a keynote address titled “Tending the Roots, Heeding the Call: Why We Must Read Toni Morrison Today.”

Finley said Eric Garner’s death in 2014 and the death of the child Beloved in Morrison’s post-Civil War novel by the same name are linked by the “lingering inheritance of racial slavery,” as sociologist Avery Gordon put it. Or as Morrison herself said, “Beloved’s haunting of her family is an allegory for how the legacy of chattel slavery haunts America; the nation is haunted by the ghost of the racialized Other forged in and through slavery.”

“We think of whiteness and blackness as separate as separate can be,” Finley said, “but whiteness cannot exist without blackness – blackness is the haunting force animating what it means to be a white person in the United States. To put a finer point on it, the violence of what it means to be black is a constitutive element of what it means to be white.”

The second keynote speaker, Will Nash, a professor of American studies and English and American literatures, gave a keynote address titled “Tending the Roots, Heeding the Call: Why We Must Read Toni Morrison Today.”

“In our current cultural moment,” Nash said, “when the escalation of racist thoughts and actions threatens to further rend the social fabric of our communities, when people stay silent out of fear of misspeaking or being misunderstood, when individuals believe themselves powerless in the face of ‘what has always been,’ Morrison’s bold exploration and explanation of these questions offers us much-needed guidance towards deeper understanding and mutual respect.”

Nash traced the “arc of engagement across the span of Morrison’s writing life” by looking closely at three of Morrison’s novels and “the cultural moments in which they appeared. In each instance, the novel comments on Black Americans’ present circumstance by turning to the past.”

A student asks a question of keynote speaker J Finley at the opening session of the Clifford Symposium.

After his analysis of The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, Nash said, “We must read Morrison now because she has once again produced a work deeply concerned with the cultural complexities and conflicts that we, her first-time readers for that text, are either working through or suffering under, depending on how one prefers to frame things. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that statement resonates strongly with the hopes that we, the organizers of this Clifford Symposium, have for what might come of it—that these questions about belonging and separation can be evocative and empowering for our community as we continue to wrestle with the question of who we are going to collectively be.”

Nash concluded optimistically: “One thing is absolutely certain, however. Any hope of moving forward meaningfully is grounded in a thorough treatment of where we’re coming from, an exploration of what that past meant to the people who lived it, and a meditation on what it might mean for us. And to find that, we need look no further than the works of Toni Morrison.”

The symposium was organized by Professors Finley, Nash, and Larry Yarbrough, and students Nia Robinson ’19 and Shatavia Knight ’20. The three-day event also included a screening of the film The Foreigner’s Home with a talk and workshop presented by two of its producers; readings of Morrison’s works by members of the student organization Oratory Now with an open discussion; and a staged adaptation of Morrison’s short story “Recitatif” created by faculty members Michole Biancosino ’98, Christal Brown, and Matthew Taylor.

By Robert Keren; Photos by Todd Balfour

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – A Middlebury sophomore from New Jersey who leads the College’s fly-fishing club participated in a select three-week Brook Trout Odyssey sponsored by Trout Unlimited during the summer of 2018.

During the trip, Matteo Moretti ’21, three other undergraduates, and a PhD student fished for brook trout across the state of Pennsylvania, interviewing scientists and conservationists to learn how the native trout were coping with climate change, pollution, overdevelopment, and other pressures. Moretti, who combines a love for fishing with his interest in film production and writing, produced a short video and a longer documentary film, posted an essay on the Orvis website, and now writes for a popular fly-fishing blog called The Wade.

Moretti is a catch-and-release fisherman who is more interested in connecting with nature than in catching a trophy fish and mounting it on the wall.

“Being a fisherman is about being an environmentalist,” he says. “And without practicing catch and release, I cannot give the fish the respect it deserves. It’s thrilling to let a fish slide out of your grasp and back into the water knowing all along that it will live another day to give another fisherman the same experience you just had.”

The Cranford, N.J., resident started fishing when he was six years old. He competed in the youth division of bass fishing events, and his high school fishing team (which he and a friend started) won the New Jersey state championship in 2016.

“Fishing for me is as much about the fish as it is about the places it can bring you, the things you can see and experience, the people you will meet, and the memories you make along the way,” he said. “It’s about being a steward to your environment out of respect for nature, respect for the fish, and respect for their future existence.”

Moretti prefers fly fishing over other forms of fishing “because it is an art form in itself. Whether it’s tying your own flies or the rhythmic nature of casting or simply watching others fly fish, I always feel so much more connected to nature when I fly fish. And the places it has taken me have been incredible—from glacial alpine lakes in the Rockies fishing for cutthroat trout to finding new populations of brown trout underneath a highway overpass in Pennsylvania.

“Regardless of where I am, I always find something beautiful in nature when I am fishing. It can be a three-inch long brookie (brook trout) or an 18-inch-long rainbow trout,” he explained. “As any fisherman will tell you, it’s about connecting with nature and not the size of the fish.”

Matteo Moreti, left, uses the "bow and arrow" method of casting a fly in tight quarters during the Trout Unlimited excusion last summer. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

Moretti was elected president of the Middlebury College fly-fishing club, or MiddFly, as a first-year student in 2017, and the organization is now thriving with members who text each other on a moment’s notice to say, “Hey, let’s go out and fish.” They also plan outings in Vermont, conduct fly-tying clinics on campus, and teach newcomers how to cast a fly rod on dry land. Last year they collaborated with a mountaineering shop to raise money for the local preservationist organization called the New Haven River Anglers Association.

As a sophomore, Moretti will be declaring a major soon. And after his summer of fishing for brook trout in the East and working as a fly-fishing guide in Colorado, he has decided to double major in environmental studies in combination with film and media culture.

“I am passionate about storytelling, fishing, and conservation, so this double major will be perfect for me. I love to be outdoors and to tell stories, and I have seen how fishing can be a way to bring about positive change to people. It can bring hope to people. It can teach you to breathe, to relax, and that everything is okay, and I really do believe that.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – A new grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support an effort to study the current state of digital scholarship infrastructure in the U.S. and to help envision a more modernized and sustainable system that would enhance scholarly communication at colleges, universities, and research libraries across the country.

Middlebury's Dean of the Library Michael Roy will lead the multischool team of library professionals to complete the $100,000 project over the next two years. He will be joined in this effort by David Lewis, former dean of the university library at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, and Katherine Skinner, executive director of the Educopia Institute. The core team will work with advisory committees composed of higher education and research professionals from a wide variety of institutions.

“Unsurprisingly, given the diversity of scholarly practice across disciplines and the widely distributed nature of higher education, the tools and services to support scholarship in this digital world developed in an opportunistic yet uncoordinated way,” said Roy.

One of the biggest challenges to growth in digital scholarship, says Roy, is the fragmented way in which research and academic libraries have developed their systems as they try to support both legacy print materials and new digital environments. Rising costs for journals and fiscal restrictions in higher education have stymied the development of a comprehensive and coordinated infrastructure.

Mike Roy

The new grant will focus on an inventory of the infrastructure—the systems and services that make scholarship discoverable, as well as those that preserve it—and an initial investigation of how it might best be improved. This study will include computer systems and software as well as the human resources necessary to manage the creation, maintenance, and use of the systems.

“There is a strong desire in the library community for a road map that includes not only technical requirements, but also strategies for the financing and governance of academy-owned and -controlled infrastructure,” said Skinner. “Currently many library leaders feel a sense of platform fatigue because they are paying for multiple uncoordinated projects. We expect this project to create the grist from which such a road map can be created, and expect to make recommendations to advance this goal.”

U.S. academic libraries spend an estimated $8 billion annually. One of the key questions the grant project will explore is whether 2.5 percent of that amount—$150 to $200 million per year—would be sufficient to create and support an infrastructure to provide access to the scholarly research outputs.

“We believe a benchmark figure of this sort is critical so that libraries and their parent institutions may evaluate their current levels of investment and plan accordingly for the future,” said Lewis, who authored an article that inspired this project, which posits that every academic library should commit to contribute 2.5% of its total budget to support the common infrastructure needed to create the open scholarly commons.

During the ambitious project, the teams will conduct a literature review and focus groups, develop a census of infrastructure, map the scholarly publishing system, write case studies of infrastructure providers, survey the investment in infrastructure by colleges and universities, and produce a report synthesizing the group’s research findings and recommending “promising directions to sustain and grow investment in this infrastructure.”

“Some members of the scholarly community believe that the current system would be improved and made more sustainable if it were replaced by a commons, funded and built by the scholarly communities,” said Roy. “This project will provide key information needed to test that hypothesis and help envision a path forward.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Nadia Murad, a survivor of the Yazidi genocide in Northern Iraq by ISIS fighters, will speak at Middlebury on Friday, October 5, at 7 p.m. in Wilson Hall. She is one of thousands of Yazidi women who were abducted by ISIS in August of 2014 and forced into the ISIS sex slave trade. Murad, who lost six of her nine brothers and her mother in the Kocho massacre, escaped after a month in captivity. Her talk at Middlebury is titled, “Hope Has an Expiration Date, Exploring the Plight of Victims of Ethnic and Religious Violence in the Middle East.”

Murad practices the Yazidi religion, which is indigenous to northern Iraq and also found in parts of Syria and Turkey. The ancient faith preserves pre-Islamic and pre-Zoroastrian traditions. She grew up in the Iraqi village of Kocho, a quiet agricultural area that had good relations with its neighbors, both Christian and Muslim (Arab, Kurdish, and Turkmen). She  attended secondary school and had hoped to become a history teacher or make-up artist. That all ended when ISIS attacked her homeland in Sinjar with the intention of ethnically cleansing Iraq of Yazidis.

Murad is founder of Nadia’s Initiative, a nonprofit “aimed at increasing advocacy for women and minorities and assisting to stabilize and redevelop communities in crisis.”

According to the group’s website, Nadia’s Initiative is working on efforts to establish meaningful and sustainable programming in the Sinjar region of Iraq through the Sinjar Action Fund. Following the IS attack of 2014, the Sinjar region has struggled to ensure the safety and livelihoods of the primarily Yazidi population now displaced throughout the country. The initiative seeks to establish both short and long-term programming aimed at redeveloping Sinjar, the ancient homeland of the Yazidi minority.

Murad is the author of the memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State (2017, Tim Duggan Books), a New York Times Editor’s Pick. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for her humanitarian work, including the 2016 Shakarov Prize by the EU parliament; the 2016 Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize; the Clinton Global Citizen Award; and being named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2016.

Murad’s appearance at Middlebury is sponsored by the President’s Office as part of Middlebury’s ongoing Critical Conversations series. The talk is free and open to the public. Wilson Hall is on the second floor of McCullough Student Center on Old Chapel Road on the Middlebury campus. Murad’s talk is free and open to the public.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury’s Department of Public Safety released the 2018 Annual Security and Fire Safety Reports on Monday, October 1. In a community-wide email, Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard shared the report, which includes campus crime and fire statistics for its Vermont campus over the past three calendar years (2015 – 2017), as well as a handbook of safety information and procedures.

Statistics for the Middlebury campus are for the full 2017 calendar year and include summer use of the campus by the Middlebury Language Schools and School of the Environment.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act) requires that colleges and universities receiving federal funding maintain and publicly disclose campus crime statistics for the preceding three years, as well as security information and policies. The definitions in the Clery Act are used by all institutions in the United States to classify and report crimes under the Act.

As required by the Clery Act, this report documents the numerous education efforts that Middlebury has instituted for incoming and current students. Programs for faculty and staff are described as well, including online mandatory sexual violence prevention and response training for all incoming students, education and response training for all faculty and staff, and the Green Dot Violence Prevention Strategy that was put in place campus-wide in the fall of 2015. Many of Middlebury’s programs aimed at preventing sexual violence are funded by a 2013 grant from the Department of Justice that was renewed in 2016.

Middlebury also filed reports on Monday for its Bread Loaf Campus in Vermont and for its summer Language Schools program at Mills College in Oakland, California. All three reports are available on the website of Middlebury’s Department of Public Safety, and include data from the Middlebury College Department of Public Safety, the Middlebury Police Department, and law enforcement agencies in locations where Middlebury has a presence.

Middlebury issues a separate report for its campus in Monterey, California, which is home to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – On a Thursday morning, the 14 Middlebury students in the course Vermont Life’s Vermont: A Collaborative Web Project are taking turns saying why they were each drawn to a class focused on a new digitized collection of Vermont Life, a magazine known for its iconic views of the state’s rural landscapes and its people.

“I think it’s very important, especially as a history major, to think about the direction of history and of keeping it current with the technological world we live in,” said Lizzie Sheline ’20. “It’s really critical that we keep making history new, accessible, and interesting.”

Taught by Kathy Morse, professor of history, and Michael Newbury, professor of American studies, the course takes advantage of a new, rich resource that is now on Middlebury’s website and available online to everyone—students, faculty, staff, and members of the public. The digitized collection, complete as of September 26, includes all issues of the quarterly. The magazine was founded by the state in 1946 and ceased publication in the summer of 2018.

During the class, students broke into groups of two or three to share feedback on timelines they created based on topics they found in digital copies of Vermont Life. Subjects ranged from French Vermont and the impact of IBM’s first 10 years in the state to roadside advertising and the history of Vermont’s ski industry. Some students shared challenges they had encountered with the technology the class was using.

An old winter issue of Vermont Life lies on a table in the classroom where students are taking a course focused on Middlebury's new digitized collection of the magazine.

Professors Michael Newbury and Kathy Morse are coteaching the class Vermont Life’s Vermont: A Collaborative Web Project.

“You are developing a coherent story where the reader learns something from your narrative and analysis, not a list of events,” Newbury told the class.  “The various media you insert—video footage, images, and text—should enhance your timeline.”

Morse added that the students know how to write a five-page paper, but this project doesn’t benefit from just adding text.

“I like teaching this course because it’s fun and challenging to explore new sources and scholarly methods alongside students,” said Morse. “We are trying new things together, and sharing the adventure. The class also connects directly to my own scholarship, as I’m working on a research project which will take digital form.” 

The initiative began when Newbury and Morse met with Rebekah Irwin, Middlebury’s director and curator of special collections and archives, along with Michael Kramer, acting director of the Digital Liberal Arts, to discuss a small-scale digitization of the collection. Irwin suggested doing it all—more than 20,000 pages and 70 years of magazines.

When Newbury sought permission from the state’s administrators for Middlebury to pursue the project, they were thrilled. “There is great sadness that the magazine closed,” said Irwin, “so this was a way to breathe life back into it.”

The College contracted with a professional digitizing service that used original copies held by the state of Vermont, Middlebury’s Special Collections, and the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library in Williston, Vt.  

“This is a good story of new, experimental academic efforts of faculty partnering with archives and libraries,” said Irwin. “It is our natural role, after all, to preserve and safeguard. We are really interested in the archives as an academic resource. The students will benefit we hope, not just here, but across Vermont’s institutions.”

The digitization project was made possible with funding support from the following: Davis Family Foundation; Middlebury College Friends of the Library; Middlebury College Departments of American Studies, Environmental History, and History; Middlebury College Digital Liberal Arts; the Center for Research on Vermont; the Vermont Historical Society; the University of Vermont Special Collections; and Saint Michael's College Library.

Photos by Jon Olender

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Four Middlebury students presented findings from their research, along with undergraduates from seven other colleges and universities, at the 2018 Symposium of the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium (KNAC). Hosted by Middlebury College on September 28–29, the symposium was attended by more than 140 participants.

The consortium was founded in 1990 with funds from the W. M. Keck Foundation, and its eight member institutions are Colgate University, Haverford College, Middlebury College, Swarthmore College, Vassar College, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College.

Currently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under its Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, the KNAC promotes student astronomical research and fosters interaction among students, faculty, and staff across the eight campuses.

During the two-day symposium, there were 16 talks given by 21 students and 15 posters presented by 18 students.

Karla Núñez ’19 gave a talk based on the research she performed the past two summers at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum titled “Do Chaos, Domes, Pits, and Spots Contribute to Changing Morphology of Europa’s Ridges?” Núñez determined that transitioning and nontransitioning ridges occurred in areas of Jupiter’s smallest Galilean moon that contained the fewest number of chaos, pits, spots, and domes. Her findings imply that these small features have no effect on the morphology of Europa’s ridges.

Diego Garcia ’20 presented a talk titled “Determining the Evolutionary Status of the Disk Surrounding HD 166191” based on research performed at Wesleyan University last summer and funded by KNAC’s NSF-REU program. Garcia’s work advanced astronomy’s understanding of the rate of planetary formation occurring in the star system, as well as the ambiguity in classification that surrounds young stars.

Sadie Coffin ’19 and Swarthmore junior Karina Cooper presented a group talk titled “Identifying Intrinsic X-ray Source Population Groupings in External Galaxies: Astronomical Uses for Machine Learning.” Coffin and Cooper worked with a catalog of X-ray emitting sources observed by the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory and used machine learning to probe the intrinsic structure and groupings within their data. Their findings were based upon their research performed at Wesleyan University last summer, which was funded by KNAC’s NSF-REU program.

Diego Espino ’19 presented the poster “Additional Comparisons of the Seismic Properties of the Sun During Solar Cycles 23 and 24” based upon his research last summer at the University of Southern California. Espino and his collaborators characterized solar activity by studying the sun’s three modes of intensity oscillation and sunspot coverage.

One of Diego Espino's illustrations of sunspot coverage vs. solar latitude demonstrating that sunspots shift closer to the solar equator as the solar cycle reaches a minimum. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Participants at the symposium arrived on Friday afternoon and attended a reception, banquet, and discussion at the Bread Loaf mountain campus in Ripton, Vt. On Saturday, there was a full schedule of events at McCardell Bicentennial Hall on Middlebury’s main campus.

In addition to the students’ posters and presentations, the president-elect of the International Astronomical Union, Professor Debbie Elmegreen of Vassar, delivered the welcome address; Middlebury Professor of Geology and Director of the Sciences Pat Manley gave opening remarks; and Middlebury’s P. Frank Winkler Fellow in Physics, Assistant Professor Eilat Glikman, closed the symposium with final comments.  

“The symposium is a stimulating environment for all students of astronomy," said Jonathan Kemp, one of the symposium’s organizers and Middlebury’s telescope and scientific computing specialist. “Some of the students had presented their research before, while for others it was their first opportunity to share their research with fellow students and faculty. The symposium provides inspiration to pursue research opportunities and a venue to meet faculty, make connections, and gain knowledge about subfields and career paths as well as issues of importance to young astronomers.”

The packed schedule of events also included four breakout sessions with KNAC faculty members on topics ranging from applying to graduate school to Bayesian statistics, and from equity and inclusion in astronomy to methods of communicating science.

The next KNAC Symposium will be held on October 11–12, 2019, at Vassar College.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The Middlebury College Phi Beta Kappa chapter inducted 12 students as new members at a ceremony at the College’s Kirk Center on Saturday, October 6. The ceremony and reception took place over Middlebury’s Fall Family Weekend.

The students, all members of the Class of 2019, are Peter Davis, Sarah Dutton, Kyle Freiler, Elizabeth Giovanniello, Stacy Goins, Kang Woo Khan Kim, Brendan Leech, Alejandro Perez, Grant Olcott, Molly Paradies, Christina Puccinelli, Peter Thewissen, Douglas Wilson, and Kylie Winger.

The new inductees qualified to be Phi Beta Kappa members based on their academic records for the past three years.

At the ceremony, each of the students wore a historic Phi Beta Kappa key from alumni, the oldest of which is the Jeremiah Atwater key, dating back to 1793.

Additional members of the senior class will be elected to Phi Beta Kappa in May, on the basis of their academic work during the last four years.

Phi Beta Kappa, founded in 1776, is the nation’s oldest academic honor society. The Middlebury College chapter, the Beta chapter of Vermont, was established in 1868 and is the 13th oldest Phi Beta Kappa chapter in existence.

Fourteen Middlebury students were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa on October 6. Back row (from left): Elizabeth Giovanniello, Kylie Winger, Sarah Dutton, Christina Puccinelli, Kang Woo Khan Kim, Molly Paradies, Grant Olcott, Peter Davis, Stacy Goins, Brendan Leech. Front row (from left): Kyle Freiler, Alejandro Perez, Douglas Wilson, Peter Thewissen.

Photos by Jon Olender