MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Two new members have taken their seats on the Middlebury Board of Trustees: alumni trustee Zachary Bourque ’01 and term trustee Graham Goldsmith ’89. Both new trustees were elected to serve five-year terms on the 34-member board.

Bourque is a director and shareholder at the trust management firm Rice, Heard & Bigelow in Boston. He joined the company in 2001 and became a partner in 2010. A member of the firm's investment strategy committee, Bourque is the trustee of numerous trusts benefitting charities, families, and individuals.

Zachary Bourque '01

Graham Goldsmith '89

During his undergraduate years at Middlebury, Bourque played on the varsity basketball team, attended the Spanish School, and studied abroad in Madrid. After graduating with a BA in economics, Bourque stayed connected to Middlebury in a number of volunteer capacities. He held various roles in the Middlebury Alumni Association, including as a board member for 10 years and, ultimately, as president. Bourque also served as a partner on Middlebury's Schools Board of Overseers.

Graham Goldsmith '89 is the chief executive officer and the co–chief investment officer of Cross Ocean Partners. Founded in 2015 by Goldsmith and partners, Cross Ocean is an alternative investment management firm based in London, England, and Greenwich, Connecticut.

Prior to starting Cross Ocean, Goldsmith was a managing director and the global head of the Global Credit & Special Situations Group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he worked for more than 20 years. At Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldsmith was responsible for all secondary trading in credit products, including distressed debt, leveraged loans, high yield bonds, investment grade debt, and structured credit. After earning his BA in economics from Middlebury, Goldsmith completed an MBA at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

Bourque was elected by the alumni of Middlebury College, while Goldsmith was elected by members of the board of trustees. Their appointments took effect on July 1, 2018.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – The crowd filing into Axinn 232 on Friday couldn’t help noticing the two students dressed in early-19th-century garb standing off to the side. Two more students—not costumed—were seated with a laptop at the front of the room. The quartet was ready to act out a five-minute scene from Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, in which the two couples appear in the drawing room of an old country house, acting in two different timeframes set 200 years apart. Toss in a few references to fractal geometry and the second law of thermodynamics and you have a challenging scene made to delight curious minds.

The mini theater demonstration, representing a longstanding collaboration between theater professor Cheryl Faraone and mathematics professor Steve Abbott, was one of 41 presentations of research and creative work at the second annual Fall Faculty Forum.

Abbott told the audience of parents and students that Faraone had emailed the Math Department many years ago, looking for an expert who might be interested in working with her on a production of Arcadia. He had no background in theater, but was intrigued with how the two disciplines might interact, so he met with Faraone and the student actors, and was sold. Abbott and Faraone now team-teach a winter term course exploring the complementary ways in which “science and theater seek out their respective truths.”

Erik Bleich, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science, discussed his research on hate speech.

“This play engaged mathematics in a way that I had never seen before,” said Abbott. “It took a subject that I had spent my life doing and cast it through the eyes of an artist and put it out the other side and showed me things about it that I had never thought about.”

Last year, the faculty forum was born of a desire to celebrate and share the research and creative work of Middlebury College and Institute faculty. The organizers of the inaugural forum discovered a keen interest among students and parents to attend the faculty panels.

Down the hall from the theater group, another faculty panel, titled “Earth, Environment, and Ecology,” demonstrated the great diversity of research interests, even within related fields. Assistant Professor of Geology Kristina Walowski, a volcanologist, gave the audience a primer on investigating the earth’s interior with magma chemistry. Erin Eggleston, a colleague in biology, described her research on microbial metagenomics in wetland management decisions. Matthew Dickerson, a computer science professor, spoke about his work as a narrative nonfiction writer, studying the ecological impact of climate change and invasive species on river ecology and native trout. And Michael Sheridan, associate professor of anthropology, discussed his work in “ethnobotany and power across the African Atlantic.”

Beryl Levinger, Distinguished Professor and Chair, Development Practice and Policy Program at the Middlebury Institute, gave a talk titled, "Protecting Children: a comparative analysis of 175 countries and 50 US states."

Meanwhile, other panels covered topics ranging from migration and changing borders to rhetoric and inclusion. William Arrocha, associate professor at the Middlebury Institute’s Graduate School of International Policy and Management, argued for compassionate migration and pointed to the expanding number of sanctuaries established by state and local governments in the U.S.—a trend that stands in opposition to what many see as the country’s growing xenophobia. He began by reading several quotes from U.S. presidents on the topic of immigration and then asked the audience to match the name of a president with each quote. The exercise’s results surprised some and illustrated the country’s changing attitude toward immigrants.

In all, 42 faculty members, including seven from the Middlebury Institute, participated in the panels and three exhibits.

“The forum emphasizes how much we as a community value faculty research and creative work,” said Jessica Teets, associate professor of political science and one of the forum’s organizers. “It allows us to share our work with our colleagues, students, families, and staff; and potentially foster more interdisciplinary collaboration across campus.”

A full listing of the faculty presenters from this year’s forum is available online.

By Stephen Diehl; Photos by Yeager Anderson and Todd Balfour

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Seventy percent of the graduates in the Class of 2018 have reported that they are now gainfully employed, with another 13 percent actively searching for jobs and 12 percent continuing their education in post-baccalaureate programs.

The data stems from the annual “outcomes” survey conducted by the Office of Institutional Assessment and Research (OIAR) and the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI). The survey offers a reflection of what Middlebury College’s most recent alumni were doing three months after graduation. The response rate to the 2018 survey was 93 percent with 609 seniors responding from a class with 656 members.  

Leading the way for Middlebury’s 2018 graduates are social impact-related careers (21 percent), followed by financial services (15 percent), consulting (12 percent), technology (11 percent), healthcare and science (10 percent), and communications and media (8 percent). The percentage of the class employed – 70 percent – is the highest percentage reported in the past 10 years, CCI data shows.

By comparison, the Class of 2017 three months after graduation reported that 58 percent were employed, 23 percent were searching, and 14 percent were continuing their education. For the Class of 2016 three months after graduation, 60 percent were employed, 22 percent were searching, and 10 percent were continuing their education.

“The data speaks to our strategy of creating a career-education planning experience that is woven into our students’ undergraduate years,” said CCI Director Peggy Burns. “We look for students to be partners in the process of preparing for career readiness, to engage with CCI early and often, and to understand that planning for their future needs to be an integral part of their Middlebury journey.”

Burns notes two interesting trends in this year’s data. First, the number of Middlebury students graduating with tech-related jobs has grown by 55 percent over the last three years, a reflection, in part, of the increased interest in computer science as a major. Burns said another noteworthy trend is the growing number of graduates who go into fields that reflect their sense of social justice, finding employment in not-for-profit, education, and environmental fields. Twenty-one percent of the class found a job in one of those areas.

OIAR and CCI also conduct a survey six months after graduation to update the data from those who are currently searching or did not respond. For example, while the Class of 2017 reported after three months that 58 percent had jobs, that same cohort after six months reported that 77 percent were employed. For the most recent class of graduates the six-month data will be tallied in January.

The Middlebury alumni network also plays a key role in the graduates’ success, says Burns. “Our alumni are vested in supporting our students as they contemplate life after Middlebury by providing mentorship, advice, internships and jobs, or practice interviews,” she said. “In 2017-2018, 425 alumni were involved in on-campus and off-campus career-related programming.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Oddly enough, the Clean Air Act was in force for decades before carbon dioxide – a primary cause of greenhouse gas – was deemed to be a pollutant. That was just one of the facts revealed on October 4 when four Middlebury faculty members lectured on the topic of “Pondering Pollutants” for this fall’s Howard E. Woodin Environmental Studies (ES) Colloquium Series.

The four professors, all of whom teach within the Program of Environmental Studies, brought a different perspective to the semi-annual Core Panel Discussion, an event that showcases “the interdisciplinarity of the environmental studies major” and “promotes dialogue among students, faculty, and staff across the academic divisions of the College,” said Associate Professor Dan Brayton, the program director.

More than 60 students filled Room 103 in the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest to hear perspectives on pollutants from Molly Costanza-Robinson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Rebecca Kneale Gould, associate professor of environmental studies (and former associate professor of religion); Christopher Klyza, the Stafford professor of public policy, political science, and environmental studies; and Joseph Holler, assistant professor of geography.

The 70-minute panel discussion demonstrated how Middlebury’s environmental studies program “brings together a community of scholars and students engaged in the study of the human relationship to the environment from many different directions, across 24 departments on campus,” according to the catalogue description of the program. Faculty members who teach within the program seek to “foster in students a shared base of knowledge across the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.”

Costanza-Robinson, who teaches the core course Natural Science and the Environment, drew a distinction between contaminants, defined as “substances that are present in amounts that are above the natural background,” and pollutants, which are “a subset of contaminants that pose harm.”

It can be challenging to define “harm” in the context of pollutants, the chemistry professor said, because of three factors: the time delay between exposure to a chemical and the onset of symptoms, the possible occurrence of less-obvious but significant symptoms (such as a one-point drop in an individual’s IQ), and the idea of a “multifactorial” outcome, i.e., that harm to an individual may be caused by more than one pollutant.

“On the science side the question of harm takes it from a question of chemistry – how much of what is where? – to a messier question of biochemical mechanisms, of extrapolating from laboratory animals to effects in humans, to the multi-variable nature of epidemiology, and to the question of causation versus correlation,” she said. “There is even some debate in science circles as to what counts as harm versus what is simply a biological change.”

Associate Professor Gould, the second speaker, studies the connection between religious identity and environmental advocacy, and teaches the core ES course Contested Grounds.

In terms of defining the word “pollutants,” she said, “When I think about the humanities, we pay attention to how meaning is constructed, we pay attention to how words and images get deployed, and we talk about what are the consequences of that deployment." She followed up by asking: “How do people get constructed themselves as pollutants, as people who are dirtier than other people, and how does that relate to where these pollutants have their biggest effects?”

The comparative religion scholar projected a number of historical images on the screen and cited four pieces of scholarship to explain how the word “pollutants” has been used over time in describing certain groups of people in America.

The third speaker, Professor Klyza, teaches the core ES course Conservation and Environmental policy, and he looked at how society decides what is air pollution in terms of policy and law. Under the Clean Air Act, for a number of years carbon dioxide did not meet the law’s strict definition of an air pollutant until it was successfully challenged (Massachusetts v. EPA, 2007) in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“For an air pollutant to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, it must fit within the definition of an air pollutant and it must endanger public health and welfare. If it fails [to meet] either of those [standards], it is not a pollutant in a legal sense and it will not be regulated,” Klyza explained.

“The takeaway from a policy perspective is there must be a way to legally define a pollutant in order for policy to work. Society can disagree over that definition over what qualifies as a pollutant, but without some agreement there will be no government policy response.”

Joseph Holler, a geographic information scientist, was the panel’s fourth and final speaker. He said his discipline, geography, can contribute to building a case for causality “by determining that there is a level of a pollutant above baseline levels in a given location and a level of harm above baseline levels in [the same] location.” Holler cited the research into the occurrence of breast cancer on Long Island where scientists built “a case for causality by finding the confluence of above-normal rates of sources of pollutants with above-normal rates of breast cancer.”

He shared two important observations with students of environmental studies: First, the data that’s available about pollutants is often “contingent on politics and what we decide to measure in the first place.” And second, “translating that data into estimations for given neighborhoods” can be a difficult and challenging task, but it is never trivial for the researcher.

Middlebury's Program in Environmental Studies was founded in 1965 and is the oldest undergraduate ES program in the nation. It is also one of the College's most popular majors.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – A collection of four poems titled "rice burger and banana milk" took the top spot at the 2018 Paul W. Ward ’25 Prize for excellence in first-year writing. Writing Center Director and Senior Lecturer Mary Ellen Bertolini presented the $500 prize to Ho June (Sean) Rhee ’21 at an October 5 celebration in Twilight Auditorium during Family Weekend.

Rhee wrote and illustrated the poems as a final project for his course, "The English Language in a Global Context," which covered themes such as linguistic variation, language and globalization, language policy, and education. Students were asked to write for an audience beyond the classroom—to make some of the abstract concepts accessible to a broader audience.

“I didn’t want a 5–6 page, Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced research paper as my final project,” said Rhee. “Rather than looking outward into the global issues of languages, I wanted to look inward into my relationship with languages.”

Although Rhee is originally from South Korea—English is his second language—he says that he was “always floating among cultures growing up. I was an in-betweener, and I saw myself as a fusion dish, a crossbreed of cultures.”

Rhee says that winning the Ward Prize prompted him to reflect on his years of English-learning experience and confront his own lack of self-confidence and feelings that he was missing an authentic voice in his writing.

“‘rice burger and banana milk’ showed me the exit to step outside of the ivory tower and roam around my inner thoughts and emotions,” said Rhee. “I didn’t feel the pressure to use specific jargons and complex sentence structures to make my work sound more ‘sophisticated.’ I simply transcribed what I felt into words and lines. I was finally able to find my voice and share my thoughts.”

Paul W. Ward ’25 Memorial Prize winner Ho June (Sean) Rhee with advisor Shawna Shapiro, associate professor of writing and rhetoric. Photo: Rafael Cruz Hernandez ’19

“The best pieces for this assignment, no matter what the genre, are those that engage both the head and the heart,” said Shawna Shapiro, associate professor of writing and rhetoric and linguistics. “What impresses me most about Sean’s work is that he employs a rich linguistic palette—including Korean, Tagalog, Spanish, and English, as well as hand-drawn illustrations—to create an emotional landscape that is both complex and relatable.”

This year’s Ward Prize winners and honorees, all members of the Class of 2021, were nominated by their instructors across a range of academic disciplines. A committee of three faculty members, including Pat Zupan (Italian), Vicki Backus (biology), and Kristina Sargent (economics) judged the submissions.

“We are impressed this year that among the students honored today are those for whom English is just one of many languages they speak,” said Bertolini. “Moreover, we are impressed at the range of interests and styles that all your writing represents: the judges read personal narratives, critical arguments, creative work, and research papers from many departments and across many divisions.”

Two students received runner-up awards. Emma Norton was nominated by writing professor Catharine Wright for her first-year seminar essay, “Ink: A Meditation on My Mother and Toni Morrison’s Sula.” And Madeleine Stutt’s essay, “By the Water,” was nominated by senior lecturer David Bain.

Honorable mention awards were given to three students. Kamli Faour’s essay, “Assimilation Nation,” was nominated by Professor Hector Vila. Audrey Kelly was nominated by Catharine Wright for her essay, “Nothing Is Ever as Simple as Black and White.” And Lachlan Pinney’s “Definers, Defined, and Escapees” was nominated by Professor Brett Millier.

This Ward prize is named in honor of Paul W. Ward, a graduate of the Class of 1925, whose lifelong career as a journalist and diplomatic reporter bought him both the Pulitzer Prize and the French Legion of Honor. Throughout his career, he emphasized the use of basic English as a writer's most necessary tool.

By Stephen Diehl; Photos by Raf Hernandez ’19

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Thursday afternoon, Room 305, Alexander Twilight Hall. It’s a gray October day, yet light pours in through the room’s immense west-facing windows, so high they overlook the tops of trees.

Dominating the space—a large seminar table. The room is at once so small the table and its surrounding chairs occupy almost every inch of available space, yet so high-ceilinged the mind soars for a moment before settling back to the task at hand.

At the center of today’s discussion: a woman, alone and vulnerable, confronts a man at the apex of social and political power. First in long speeches, then in rapid-fire stichomythia, their clash of wills and values rings back and forth. He argues for loyalty, law, and social order; she for her conscience and a justice beyond human knowing.

Creon condemns Antigone to die, but by play’s end his life is shattered.

“This is not a black-and-white play,” said classics professor Pavlos Sfyroeras.

For students in Sfyroeras’s first-year seminar on Sophocles and Athens, issues of human law and divine justice, of who speaks and who is silenced, of who is honored and who is excluded, the clash between individual and society, the persistent gap between our ideals and actions remain as complicated and perplexing now as they were nearly 2,500 years ago in Periclean Athens.

Students in the first-year seminar Sophocles and Athens listen to Professor Pavlos Sfyroeras during a recent class.

“The plays are so profoundly political,” said Elsa Korpi ’22, an international student from Helsinki. “Their purpose is to engage the public in some kind of dialectic. I say dialectic, not ‘debate,’ because I feel like debate is just about winning. But none of the characters are really going for the win. They’re just trying to have this dialogue to figure out what is right and what is wrong. And that’s something that modern societies could benefit from a lot—that mindset of just exploring things in public is so powerful.”

“The plays are very relatable,” said Max Padilla ’22, who plans to major in both neuroscience and philosophy and pursue a JD/MD post-graduation. “Antigone is the story of a woman breaking social barriers and doing something new, something she was told she wasn’t strong enough to do before. Even today that’s something we see, where women are trying to be represented properly; while we do have the right to vote we’re not always treated as equals in society—maybe not officially but on a subconscious level. So, I found it interesting that Sophocles, a man so long ago, spoke to that.”

“The civic side of theater is just so fascinating,” said John Vaaler ’22, who’s come to Middlebury from Minneapolis and is interested in literature. “When I check the CNN app there’s “politics,” “business,” “entertainment.” They’re all very separate. But in ancient Greek society, politics, and entertainment were synonymous. And that connection I find so interesting—just seeing how civics applies to art and vice versa.”

What Sophocles and other Greek tragedians ask of us, said Sfyroeras, is to examine ourselves ruthlessly and relentlessly. Part of the unique power of Greek tragedies: “They have a way of renewing the questions that we ask of ourselves.”

While Sfyroeras has pushed students to make contemporary connections—watching Sophie Scholl together to look at parallels between her defiance of Nazi Germany and Antigone’s defiance of Creon’s orders, reading about contemporary theater groups using Ajax to reach out to Iraq/Afghanistan veterans—the heart of the seminar is close reading. Class time often progresses line by line, with a focus on understanding key passages, analyzing how a scene relates to the play as a whole, looking at characters and their motivations, and understanding how the text works as dramatic literature.

Sometimes Sfyroeras stops to give an impromptu translation of the Greek original, highlighting a subtlety or image lost in translation.

Professor of Classics Pavlos Sfyroeras discusses Sophocles with his first-year seminar class.

Wanting to underscore Antigone’s “very visceral” feelings for her family, Sfyroeras turns to the play’s opening phrase, translated in the assigned text as “My sister, my Ismene.” On the chalkboard, he writes the phrase in the original Greek, then provides the far more startling literal translation: “O shared-in-common head of Ismene, head that shared (i.e., came out of) the same womb.”

“For me, it added a whole other layer,” said Emily Nagatomo ’22, an Albuquerque native who’s considering a breadth of majors, including English and psychology. “Before I thought of them as sisters like me and my little sister or anybody with their sibling. But then phrasing it like they were coming from the same womb, they were one person—it conveys a whole different bond so that when Antigone denounces Ismene and rejects her it’s all the more poignant and significant.”

The “foreignness” of classical texts is as important to Sfyroeras as the things that make them familiar and universal. Through background readings, slide lectures on Greek vases, and impromptu disquisitions on Athenian governance, philosophy, and history, Sfyroeras gets students to confront and to appreciate the many ways Sophocles’s culture is utterly unlike our own.

“This is actually especially relevant these days,” said Sfyroeras. “These texts come from a culture that in many ways is alien to us. At the same time, they are the foundational texts of who we are and of the way we speak.”

Several students, for example, noted the strangeness of a dramatic text that centers around “whether or not you can bury someone.”

But, as Sfyroeras observed, contemporary events can sometimes illuminate Greek tragedy in surprising ways. For example, after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, one of the brothers was killed fleeing the police. “No one, no single town in the Northeast, was willing to give this person who had done this horrific thing a burial.” Suddenly, the strangeness of the Ajax and Antigone burial debates had turned into a gut-wrenching, national issue.

Asked why he had chosen to focus on Sophocles rather than another Greek tragedian, Sfyroeras remarked: “The message of Euripides seems to be, ‘Watch out, otherwise you will be in trouble.’ The message of Sophocles seems to be, ‘It is the human condition to be in trouble already.’ In other words, there is a darkness at the heart of being a human being, and especially of being a citizen, yet this very darkness can become a source of light.”

Sfyroeras continued: “I think the most valuable thing about Sophocles is the way he forces us to ask questions. He doesn't necessarily give answers, but every single play, I think, is asking a number of questions that we also face.

“And that’s why I consider Sophocles a good topic for a first-year seminar. These are questions that young people on the verge of citizenship should really start asking: What is our duty when we are asked to live by principles that violate our nature? Is there a self, a core of the soul, that is independent of social relationships? What role should knowledge play in a society? Are there limits to it? How are we going to define them? How are we to nurture young people into becoming reflective, politically autonomous citizens?”

Attention to this latter question infuses Sfyroeras’s work as a classics professor, as a cohead of Ross Commons, as an advisor and long-time teacher of first-year seminars. Alongside the College’s goals that first-year seminars provide a gateway to the undergraduate experience, Sfyroeras’s own goals for the class underscore his profound commitment to students and profound love of the material.

“What I want is for students to really become familiar with a body of work and to engage seriously and carefully with texts, cultural artifacts, that are at the foundation of the way we think as 21st-century individuals.

“I also want them to develop, if they haven’t already, the ability to read for pleasure and to think of these texts as sources of strength and comfort and consolation for difficult times that they will encounter later in life.

“And this has been my experience: these texts are really manuals for survival, as individuals and as communities.”

Sophocles and Athens is one of 44 first-year seminars offered this fall on a wide range of topics, from “Love and Death” to “Music and the Black Church” to “Venomous Cures."The courses are designed to allow students to participate actively in their own learning and to begin to acquire the writing and speaking skills necessary for independent, intellectual achievement throughout college and beyond.

By Gaen Murphree; Photos by Todd Balfour

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury College will open a new exhibit of historical images and text at the Kirk Center on Saturday, October 20, as part of Homecoming. The exhibit, titled “The Continuity of Change: Living, Learning, and Standing Together,” offers a look at student life and activism throughout Middlebury’s history. The public is invited to an opening reception at 5 p.m. with remarks at 5:30.

The new exhibit is the result of nearly two months of research by six student interns in the College’s summer MuseumWorks program, who were asked by Alliance for an Inclusive Middlebury and the president’s office to reimagine the Kirk Center as a space highlighting the past, present, and future of Middlebury.

“We knew it would be a big task, but we said yes,” said Jason Vrooman ’03, director of MuseumWorks and curator of education and academic programs for the College’s art museum. Vrooman says the Kirk exhibit gave MuseumWorks students a challenging opportunity to fulfill their exhibit practicum, an important component to the summer program.

Each Monday throughout the summer, the MuseumWorks interns met with college archivist and practicum co-director Danielle Rougeau at the Special Collections room in the lower level of Davis Family Library, poring over mountains of historic materials and making difficult decisions about what to include in the new exhibit.

“We looked at maps, we looked at scrapbooks, we looked at student journals, publications, minutes of faculty meetings, official administrative reports and distilled all of that into an exhibition in the span of two months,” said Vrooman.

Created to give the feel of a collage, the new exhibit panels blend historic imagery from the archives with interpretive text.

“As we are becoming more diverse as an institution, we have to think about how we welcome people into our spaces in a way that feels inclusive,” said Baishakhi Taylor, vice president for student affairs and dean of students. “This exhibit is really trying to represent the 218 years of Middlebury’s changing, dynamic history. We are a place that values tradition and innovation at the same time.”

Vrooman says that, while the exhibit aims to be truthful about obstacles to students’ full participation in the life of the college – past and present – it also conveys optimism in how much has changed for the better over Middlebury’s 218-year history.

“The student curators looked for moments when perhaps we [Middlebury] could have learned and improved and had room to grow and also moments of great inspiration when Middlebury really got it right as a community,” said Vrooman. “The idea is that all of those moments help us understand where we are now, and will be both lessons and inspirations for the future.”

Will Kasso Condry, an artist who is best known on campus for his striking murals in the Anderson Freeman Center and McCullough Student Center, contributed three original paintings to the new display. He said that, as usual, collaboration was key to his approach. Condry met with the interns in a series of conversations about art’s ability to promote community.

“One thing that stuck out for me was the student activism over the years—how students have been a driving force of change,” said Condry.

As students delved into the mountains of historic materials, they were surprised to discover that student activism on campus dates back to some of the earliest days of the College and, in fact, has provided the impetus for institutional change many times over.

“Activism may look very different now, but it’s been a constant thread in Middlebury’s history,” said Jessie Kuzmicki ’19, one of the student interns who helped curate the exhibit. She said the continuity of that theme comes to life through the timeline of the panels.

Sam Martin ’19, another MuseumWorks intern who helped design the panels said that the look of the new exhibit is part of its message. “I think the aesthetic of the exhibit is really special. It’s really tape and glue and scissors and spray paint — meant to look like students put it up to bring color and light and a real sense of energy to our story.”

The full list of student curators includes Yihao (Lyra) Ding '19, Jessie Kuzmicki '19, Sam Tompkins Martin '19, Samantha Horton '20, Laurel Margerum '19, and Elizabeth Warfel '19.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – From Brattleboro in the south to St. Johnsbury in the north, Middlebury faculty members are giving public lectures across the State of Vermont this year in connection with the “1st Wednesdays” program sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council.

Hosted by nine public libraries from October 2018 through May 2019, the free lecture series offers 72 talks given by professors, authors, journalists, historians, activists, and artists.

And while members of the Middlebury College faculty have lectured in 1^st Wednesdays events for years, the College is more deeply involved than usual now because of its newly funded Mellon Foundation grant titled “Listening and Speaking in Public Spheres.” Five of the events in the series, including three in Middlebury, are being cosponsored by the Mellon Foundation and the College.

Sarah Stroup, the associate professor of political science and faculty director of the Mellon grant, said the funding “makes possible a new set of talks with a new speaker format. The five talks supported by the Mellon grant seek to re-envision the way in which we think of guest lectures – not as another moment to see a ‘sage on the stage,’ but as an opportunity to deepen our conversations and relationships.”

“In this digital age, we have a special opportunity to connect when we sit down in person together to engage with a topic or speaker.” Stroup explained. “The 1st Wednesdays events that we are co-sponsoring will employ an experimental format meant to facilitate careful listening and collective dialogue.”

The five Mellon-funded events (all at 7 p.m.) are:

- November 7 at Wilson Hall in McCullough Student Center, Black Lives Matter advocate DeRay McKesson will lecture on “Political Activism and the Case for Hope.”

- January 9 at Wilson Hall in McCullough Student Center, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni will discuss identity politics and the importance of free speech.

- March 6 at Brownell Library in Essex Junction, political scientist Sarah Stroup will discuss what topics are suitable for public discussion and how to encourage “productive disagreements” in her talk titled “Arguing About Civility.”

- April 3 at Ilsley Public Library in Middlebury, author Susan Clark will lecture on “Slow Democracy and the Power of Neighborliness.”

- May 1 at the Rutland Free Library, Middlebury’s James Calvin Davis, professor of religion, will speak about “Civility and Its Discontents.”

In other 1st Wednesdays events, Middlebury’s Hepburn Professor of History Paul Monod kicked off the statewide series on October 3 with his lecture “The British Monarchy: Politics, Money, and Public Image” at the Rutland Free Library.

On November 7 at 7 p.m. (all events are at 7 p.m.) at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, Middlebury visiting scholar Stanley Sloan will lecture on “The Fate of Western Democracy.” On December 5 at the Manchester Community Library, Assistant Professor Deborah Evans will speak about “Robert Penn Warren’s Timeless All the King’s Men.”

In early January, three Middlebury faculty will be on the 1st Wednesdays circuit. On January 2: Associate Professor of History Joyce Mao will speak on “Mad Men and Mad Women: Gender in Mid-Century America” at Montpelier’s Kellogg-Hubbard Library; art historian Katy Smith Abbott, associate professor, will lecture on “The Original Renaissance Man: Understanding Leonardo da Vinci” at Newport’s Goodrich Memorial Library; and Associate Professor of Music Damascus Kafumbe will offer his views on “Music, Storytelling, and Politics.”

On February 6, Timothy Spears, professor of American studies, will lecture on “The Making of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” at the Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro; and Jane Chaplin, the Armstrong professor of classics, will speak about “The Invention of History” at the Rutland Free Library.

The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum will host Professor William Nash on March 6 speaking about “The Power of the Journey in Their Eyes Were Watching God.”  The Rutland Free Library will welcome Catharine Wright, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric, on March 6 to speak on “Outlaw Women” in fiction and memoir, and Richard Wolfson, the Wissler professor of physics, on April 3 to lecture on “Einstein in a Nutshell.”

A complete calendar of the 2018–19 1st Wednesdays Humanities Lecture Series can be viewed here sorted by date, keyword, or location.

Slide Show

On October 23, 2018, Middlebury hosted the Brazilian environmental artist Néle Azevedo for an installation of her renowned work, Minimum Monument: Art as Emergency. An audience of participants helped install the 400 figurines on the steps of Davis Family Library.

On October 23, Azevedo brought a smaller version of her work to Middlebury as part of the U.S premiere of the exhibit. Cláudio Medeiros, associate professor of theatre and a native of Brazil, facilitated Azevedo’s visit in conjunction with her residency at a climate-change symposium at the University of Vermont. In his bilingual introduction, Medeiros noted that the Middlebury installation was “part two” of her U.S. premiere (she had completed an installation in Burlington earlier in the week).

Flanked by two large coolers containing 400 of the 20 cm figurines, Azevedo stood at the entrance to the Davis Family Library and welcomed the crowd of students, faculty, staff, and community members. Her ice installation, or what she refers to as an “intervention,” has come to be seen by many around the world as a metaphor for climate change, and in her opening remarks she described her deep concern for the future of Brazil’s Amazon rain forest in light of the current political climate in her home country.

The artist then invited the crowd to join her in creating Minimum Monument on the steps and stone walls leading to Davis Family Library. Azevedo, her assistants, and several Portuguese-speaking student volunteers began to unwrap the fragile frozen figures and pass them out to the multi-generational crowd.

Over the next 20 minutes, children, retirees, college students, and staff gently carried the small ice people to the exhibit area and found places for them to sit. The occasional shattering of an unlucky figurine made the crowd wince, but Azevedo, unfazed and smiling, encouraged her eager volunteers. She asked that the figurines be placed about six inches apart on the steps. In other areas, she left it to the imagination of the person placing the sculpture.

"It was wonderful to see town folks mixed in with members of the college community," said Medeiros. "And I was struck by how quickly the piece stated its power, which is both poetic and political."

As daylight faded on a chilly fall day, the figurines, by design, began to drip, reminding the audience of the fleeting beauty before them.

"A participant told me that to them it almost felt like a prayer," Medeiros said. "Later on, when there were only a few of us left and the melting was advancing, someone commented on the sound of figurine cracking and falling on the concrete steps. ‘It was chilling,’ they said."

Azevedo's visit to Middlebury was made possible, in part, by Professor Maria Woolson of the University of Vermont Department of Romance Languages and Linguistics. The event was also sponsored by several Middlebury departments and programs, including the director of the arts, the Program in Studio Art, the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, the Franklin Environmental Center, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and the Environmental Studies Program.

This is the second installment in ongoing coverage of this Habitat for Humanity project undertaken by Middlebury students. You can find the first part here.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – “We are going to need that rendering today.” “Please work with your project manager now to get those details.” “We cannot have an inaccuracy of 13/16ths of an inch in these drawings.” “We have to have everything ready to go by Friday.”

These are the sounds of urgency one might hear inside a busy architectural firm, except we are not in an architect’s office today. We are in a Middlebury College classroom in the Johnson Building with architect and assistant professor John McLeod and the 11 undergraduates in the interdisciplinary class called Architectural Studies 273.

The students are busy designing two Habitat for Humanity houses that will soon occupy a 20,000-sq.-ft. lot located at 51 Seymour Street in Middlebury.

The design development for two single-family homes that meet all town and state building codes, and adhere to Habitat for Humanity requirements, would normally be a task undertaken by a small team of architectural professionals. But in this instance, McLeod, a Middlebury “professor of the practice,” is operating the class “just like it’s an architectural firm consisting of one principal and 11 interns.”

With the need to complete all construction drawings by early February 2019, McLeod says, “The project is going very well overall. We have had many challenges on many fronts” – including square footage, storm water drainage, and parking – “but none of that is unusual. Making buildings is a complex process and every hurdle we encounter is a good experience for the students because for anyone interested in being an architect, it doesn’t get any more real than this.”

Adds McLeod, “In a typical architect’s office, you’d have only one or two people working on a project of this size, so with 11 students we have to divide the work up and that can be quite challenging at times.” While some students on this Tuesday in October are busy researching products and materials, energy-efficiency standards, and fire and safety codes, other students are using AutoCAD and sophisticated software products to produce the technical drawings needed for construction.

Representatives from the Addison County chapter of Habitat for Humanity (i.e., the “clients” on the project) attend almost every class to observe, ask questions, and offer assistance.

House A, the house closer to Seymour Street, will contain three bedrooms and be approximately 1,100 sq. ft. in size. The house further set back, or House B, will contain two bedrooms and be about 900 sq. ft. Both houses will meet Efficiency Vermont’s highest standards, which, as McLeod explains, will cost a little more up front but will reduce significantly the operating costs for the eventual homeowners (who have not been selected yet.)

Each house will have one full bathroom and a laundry area, and each will have its own electric heat-pump system for heating and cooling. And to reduce cost and stay within budget, the houses will be built on slabs.

The next deadline for the class is November 5 when the Middlebury Design Review Board will again examine progress on the project. In January, McLeod's business partner and architect Stephen Kredell will lead a winter term class that will finalize the drawings and prepare to seek bids on the site work, concrete, electrical, and plumbing for both houses.

The construction of the houses will be undertaken later in 2019 by Habitat for Humanity volunteers, with the hope that some will be Middlebury students. 

“Our intent all along has been to take the project though about 75 percent of the construction documents this fall semester, and to finish the remaining 25 percent during winter term,” said McLeod. “That will give us plenty of opportunity this winter to adjust things if needed according to the budget before the actual construction begins.”

– With reporting and photography by Robert Keren

President Laurie Patton and Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández emailed the following statement to the Middlebury community on Friday, October 26.

You may have heard this week that, according to the New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance. The proposal calls for narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth. Many see this as a way of the government eradicating federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who identify as a gender other than the one they were born into.

We write to assure you that any change to the national policy will have no effect on Middlebury’s policies or procedures. Middlebury prohibits discrimination in employment (or in admission or access to its educational or extracurricular programs, activities, or facilities) based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, among many other forms of identity. Furthermore, it is unlawful in Vermont for an employer to discriminate because of a person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, place of birth, disability or age.

At Middlebury, we remain committed to maintaining a diverse and inclusive campus environment where bigotry and intolerance are unacceptable. We will continue to offer the highest levels of support for our transgender and gender-non-conforming colleagues and students in the face of challenges ahead.

We remain steadfast in our commitment to a vibrant community that welcomes and affirms all of its members.

Sincerely,

Laurie Patton
President 

Miguel Fernández
Chief Diversity Officer

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Less than a week after a leaked memo from the Trump administration mapped out a plan to narrowly define gender under federal law, Middlebury students rallied on Proctor Terrace to protest the proposed action and express their support for the campus transgender community. Organized by the College’s Queers and Allies and Trans Affinity Group, the #Won’tBeErased rally called for action against what many see as a reversal of progress on transgender rights.

The Department of Health and Human Services, in a memo obtained by the New York Times, proposes that “Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.”

Several students spoke at the rally, decrying what they believe will erase the identities of transgender and intersex people. One student read statements emailed from students who did not feel comfortable speaking in public on the topic. Students called on the crowd of about 200 students for solidarity and support and urged them to join the fight.

Earlier on Friday, in an email to all faculty, staff, and students, President Laurie Patton and Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández pledged their continued support to transgender students at Middlebury.

“We write to assure you that any change to the national policy will have no effect on Middlebury’s policies or procedures. Middlebury prohibits discrimination in employment (or in admission or access to its educational or extracurricular programs, activities, or facilities) based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, among many other forms of identity. Furthermore, it is unlawful in Vermont for an employer to discriminate because of a person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, place of birth, disability or age.

“At Middlebury, we remain committed to maintaining a diverse and inclusive campus environment where bigotry and intolerance are unacceptable. We will continue to offer the highest levels of support for our transgender and gender-non-conforming colleagues and students in the face of challenges ahead.”

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – As the campus community joins the rest of the country in trying to reckon with the senseless violence in a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 dead, students and administrators sent messages of support to students, faculty, and staff. Mark Orten, dean and director of the Charles P. Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life, in a message to the full community, acknowledged the horror of the killings and called for the community to renounce violence, while maintaining hope. Later, the Student Government Association, in partnership with Community Council, sent a message to students, expressing grief and a desire for meaningful change.

“We hope that there comes a day where this email does not have to be sent,” wrote the SGA and Community Council. “We hope that we can reach a point where religious groups do not have to seek extra protection in order to practice and pray. Until then, SGA, Community Council, and Middlebury College will work to make sure that students feel like they have a community of support and understanding. We encourage all members of the community to join.”

“In this moment, let us re-commit to full inclusion of all religions, races, sexes, gender expressions, sexual orientations, and abilities,” wrote Orton. “And let us always speak up against hateful and discriminatory speech or actions, wherever they occur.”

Following is the text from the two messages:

Message from Dean of Spiritual Life Mark Orten:

To the Middlebury community,

It is difficult to put into words the anguish and heartbreak so many of us feel at the horrific killings at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh on Saturday. It was an attack on the Jewish people, on the spirit of our nation, and on humanity itself.

At this time, our thoughts go out to the people of Pittsburgh. For anyone in our community in need of support, I urge you to reach out to advisors, counselors, deans, chaplains, or any others who are available to support you. 

Tragically, this is the kind of event, fueled by hatred, that we experience too often. Only days earlier, we were trying to comprehend the unfathomable act of mailing of pipe bombs to political figures and the media, or how we could stand collectively against efforts to exclude and marginalize individuals because of their gender identification.

It is understandable if members of our community experience these days as a time of sorrow.

And yet we must resist the pull of hopelessness.

We are not and can never be a perfect community, but we are a community united by firm belief in human dignity, and we stand against all acts of hatred and violence including, in particular at this time, acts motivated by religious bigotry and anti-Semitism. We stand with all of our Jewish companions, families, friends, and neighbors in their right to be safe without defense, and to conduct their religious observances in peace.

In this moment, let us re-commit to full inclusion of all religions, races, sexes, gender expressions, sexual orientations, and abilities. And let us always speak up against hateful and discriminatory speech or actions, wherever they occur. 

Let me close by saying, in the tradition of the Jewish people, may the memory of the victims of Saturday’s shooting be a blessing for their loved ones and the world.

Wishing you peace,

Mark Orten

Dean / Director
Charles P. Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life

Message from the Student Government Association and Community Council to students:

Dear Fellow Middlebury Students,

Two days ago, a gunman entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people and injured 6 others. There are no other explanations for this other than anti-semitism and this country failing vulnerable communities once again. The litany of places where we cannot trust to be protected continues to grow, and we see this affecting fellow students at Middlebury. Once again, we find ourselves needing to affirm members of our community in the wake of a tragic event.

The Middlebury SGA and Community Council supports our Jewish community here on campus and beyond. We denounce the hateful, destructive views and actions that threaten their wellbeing and safety. Both organizations take pride in the diversity and representation present in both, and want to make sure that Jewish students know that we value their contributions to the larger Middlebury Community.

We hope that there comes a day where this email does not have to be sent. We hope that we can reach a point where religious groups do not have to seek extra protection in order to practice and pray. Until then, SGA, Community Council, and Middlebury College will work to make sure that students feel like they have a community of support and understanding. We encourage all members of the community to join.

To Jewish students, please know that your deans, Parton Counseling, and the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life are available and open for support. This is a difficult time, but we hope the resources available can be of use as you work to heal and understand. In addition, Hillel will be hosting healing arts and crafts on Wednesday from 4-6 in the Jewish Center in the FIC. Please reach out to Cece Alter (calter@middlebury.edu) and Rae Aaron (raaron@middlebury.edu) for peer support from Hillel.

In solidarity,

SGA & Community Council

The #MeToo movement and appearances before Congress by tech industry leaders such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have put a spotlight on public apologies. Lisa Leopold is an expert on apologies—both public and private—and an associate professor and coordinator for the Middlebury Institute’s English for Academic and Professional Purposes Program. She gave a presentation on her research on October 5 at the faculty forum during the College’s Fall Family Weekend. Here she discusses it in a Q&A.

1. What are the basic ingredients of a real apology?
A 1981 study that remains relevant today identified the following strategies: an expression of apology, acknowledgement of the blame, explanation for why the situation occurred, offer of repair, and promise of nonrecurrence. Another study found that apologies that acknowledge the wrongdoing, express remorse, and offer compensation are more likely to be effective than those that do not.

2. What makes an apology fake?
Many features make it insincere, including a failure to specifically name the transgression while apologizing; apologizing for something other than the main offense; a conditional apology (e.g., “I apologize if I offended anybody by that”); the inclusion of the word “but” to continue with an explanation after the apology; and the passive voice.  

Some celebrity apologies have been criticized for diverting attention to other issues when apologizing—for example, Harvey Weinstein in his apology said he was going to direct his anger to the NRA, and Kevin Spacey, in his apology, made an announcement about his sexual orientation.

3. What are some examples of bad public apologies?
Even a less-than-perfect apology may be better than no apology at all. That said, here are a few examples that could benefit from a bit of improvement:

• “For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask forgiveness and I will work to do better.” (Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook)

Note that Zuckerberg distances himself from the transgression by using the passive “for the ways my work was used to divide people” as though he has no control over that.

• “For any women from my past who I may have offended, I sincerely apologize. I am still evolving.” (Russell Simmons, record producer)

Note how Simmons uses the modal “may,” which ultimately weakens the remorse he is showing. The line “I am still evolving” may be seen as a very poor explanation to justify the action. The apology is issued for potentially offending women rather than for the actual transgression.

4. What are some of the most common mistakes people make when they apologize?
One of the serious mistakes is not using the appropriate strategy for the recipient they are issuing the apology to. Researchers have found that we are not all alike in our apology preferences. In one survey, 10 percent of the people favored restitution—they wanted the transgressor to ask them what to do to correct this mistake. Ten percent favored genuine repentance—they wanted to know the offender’s plan to correct this mistake. But the vast majority—40 percent and 37 percent, respectively—wanted to hear expressions of regret and acceptance of responsibility with words such as “I was wrong.”

5. What are some words that strengthen an apology?
Certain intensifiers such as “so,” "very,” “truly,” “sincerely,” “extremely,” or “awfully” in front of the word “sorry” or words such as “utmost” or “heartfelt” in front of the word “apology” can strengthen it.  Similarly, when expressing regret, if you “deeply” regret something, that will sound stronger than if you just “regret” it. Saying you are “completely” wrong intensifies an apology, and admitting wrongdoing with the active, rather than passive, voice shows you are claiming more responsibility.

6. What do people sometimes overlook in an apology?
What is missing is as important as what is contained in it. That is, does the offender apologize for the complete offense or only for part of it? Does the offender apologize to all victims, or only to some?
 
7. How did you first become interested in apologies?
Apologies are extremely high-stakes and very important in personal and business communication. I wanted to help the international graduate students I teach acquire the sophisticated skill needed to write effective apologies for a U.S. audience.

I also wanted to enhance my own understanding of what makes an apology effective when communicating with people in the U.S. and with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. For example, I found it fascinating to learn that Americans strongly prefer expressions of regret, whereas Russians show a strong preference for requests for forgiveness when apologizing.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Middlebury College will host the fourth summit for the Creating Connections Consortium (C3), a group that promotes diversity in higher education, November 9–11. This year’s conference theme is Reimagining the Academy: Constructing Inclusive and Participatory Communities in Challenging Times. The event brings together undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members, diversity officers, and deans from 19 colleges and universities to focus on the program’s mission and goals.

For undergraduates, the gathering offers the opportunity to meet graduate students and faculty who can serve as role models and mentors in academia. 

“One student spoke up at the last summit,” said Miguel Fernández, chief diversity officer at Middlebury, “and said that he never imagined, as a low-income, first-generation student, that he would ever consider going to graduate school, but after spending the weekend at the C3 Summit he was motivated by the work of grad students and faculty with backgrounds like his to continue his education at the graduate level.”

The summit also provides graduate students with the chance to connect with faculty who can discuss with them what it’s like to teach at a liberal arts college.

According to Rachel Hynson, director of C3, 15 schools, all members of the Liberal Arts Diversity Officers consortium or LADO, will bring students to the event. A total of 18 Middlebury students will participate, including two who will present their research. Thirty-two graduate students from C3’s partner research universities—University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, University of Michigan, and University of Chicago—will take part as well. Hynson estimates that 225 people will attend.

The summit will feature two keynote talks—one by Chastity Lord, chief operating officer of Color of Change, a leading online racial justice organization. Eve Louise Ewing, author of the book Electric Arches and a faculty member at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, will deliver the second keynote. Panel and workshop topics will include “Things Nobody Told Me about Graduate School,” “Multicultural Centers: What Works, What Doesn’t?,” and “Diversifying the Curriculum.”

Along with the summit, C3 offers its Undergraduate Fellowship Program for rising juniors and seniors attending any of the 31 LADO colleges and universities. In partnership with LADO, C3 also organizes annual panels and workshops at its four research universities for graduate students from historically underrepresented groups, many of whom are unfamiliar with liberal arts colleges and may not have considered a career at these institutions.

C3 was launched in 2012 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A $5.5 million Mellon grant, which began October 1, 2017, will support the program through 2022. Fernández is the principal investigator of the grant.

For more information, see the C3 summit agenda.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Roger Winters ’17 was backpacking the Appalachian Trail when he got the call of a lifetime.

“There was a huge thunderstorm, and I was alone walking through the woods as lightning flashed around me, the trees creaked and cracked, and the rain came pouring down. I made it to a shelter after a couple miles, and the storm passed. After drying out a bit, I checked my phone and saw a voicemail from Providence, Rhode Island.”

Brown University’s Alpert School of Medicine was offering him a spot.

“It was one of the most amazing feelings,” said Winters, “to go from feeling frustrated, alone, wet, and cold—to elated.”

Thousands competed for the 144 seats in Alpert’s class of 2022, which had an admit rate of 2.9 percent. Nationwide the picture was still daunting but more hopeful. For example, the year before Winters applied to med school (the most recent year for which data is available), 51,680 applicants competed for 22,266 spots.

The Association of American Medical Colleges reports that for the past few years the percentage of applicants who get accepted to a U.S. medical school has been in the low 40s (41–44 percent).

For Middlebury College grads starting med school in 2018, the admit rate more than doubled recent national averages: a whopping 89 percent.

“It’s truly a team effort,” said Director of Health Professions and STEM Advising Mary Lothrop, emphasizing the contributions of her advising team (Assistant Director Hannah Benz, MD, and Coordinator Nicole Veilleux), colleagues in the Center for Careers and Internships, faculty, alumni, colleagues at other colleges and medical schools, community partners, “and most importantly the candidates themselves.”

Middlebury’s approach combines laser-like attention to the nuts and bolts of what makes a med school applicant successful with a commitment to helping each student find his or her own path.

“While I was a student at Middlebury, the pre-health advisors guided me on my course work selection, connected me with students who could offer peer-to-peer advice, taught me how to network to identify summer research and work opportunities, hosted workshops, and more,” said Ariana Mills ’17, a research assistant at Columbia University Irving Medical Center who is now applying to med schools.

Alongside national and international opportunities, pre-health advising also partners with local organizations so students can shadow physicians at Porter Medical Center, volunteer at the Open Door Clinic, or serve as EMTs with Middlebury Regional Emergency & Medical Services.

Like many schools, Middlebury offers a rigorous internal Health Professions Committee process. Through a series of interviews, a student gets feedback on his or her own strengths and weaknesses. The end product is a committee-written letter that gives an overall picture of each student as an individual.

“The committee process at Middlebury really prepares you for what can be a daunting application cycle,” said Hosain Ghassemi ’17, who, like Mills, is in the midst of applying to med schools. Ghassemi spent last year as an AmeriCorps STEM coach and is now working with International Medical Aid and volunteering at a children’s hospital. “From shaping personal essays, collecting letters of recommendation, to narrowing down the school list and preparing for interviews, a lot goes into creating an application. The committee process really lets you be proactive about tackling each of these different hurdles.”

Foundational to Middlebury’s success is its careful parsing of the core competencies outlined by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Also key, said Lothrop, is its membership in the Northeast Consortium on Medical Education, which brings together nine undergraduate institutions and nine medical schools. Through the consortium, Middlebury explores best practices with peers and hears directly from med school admissions about trends, what makes a candidate a good fit, and what makes them competitive.

“All our rubrics and readiness guidelines are informed by those conversations,” said Lothrop.

Consortium membership also lets Middlebury hear about changes coming down the pike.

“Well in advance of changes to things like the MCAT or the curriculum,” says Lothrop, “we’re having conversations about how best to prepare our candidates. For example, when medical schools began shifting towards the multiple-mini-interview format, we developed a ‘boot camp.’”

Equally important is the soul-searching side of things.

“Just listening—listening to what they’re saying, and to what they’re not saying,” said Lothrop.

“When you can get students to pause and say, ‘I have some agency in this. What do I really want to be doing and what do I need to do to get there?’ that is one of my favorite moments, because then we can get to work to create a strategy for achieving those goals.”

Winters’s own path to med school, for example, was not straightforward. He loved science, did a research internship, but wasn’t sure what career path was right for him. Then the winter of his sophomore year he got some tough love from med school advising.

“I had a very candid conversation with Dr. Benz in which she gave me an honest assessment about my strength as a candidate. She told me that while I was involved and engaged with great extracurriculars, I did not have the grades for medical school and needed to make some changes. That conversation was transformative for me, and influenced how I shaped the rest of my time at Middlebury.”

Winters pushed himself to “study smarter.” He took on leadership roles in the extracurriculars that mattered most to him. He took off fall semester of his junior year to backpack through Chile and Bolivia. When an internship with an ambulance company fell through, he pounded the pavement until he got accepted at the oncology clinic of Valparaiso’s Hospital Carlos van Buren. Shadowing physicians half a world away from Middlebury, he realized “that medicine is the right path for me.”

For Jim Ho ’18, now a first-year medical student at Yeshiva University’s Einstein School of Medicine, Middlebury’s premed advising helped him fast-track his way through.

“I knew that I wanted to be a physician early on, so I began preparing to apply to medical school upon entering college,” said Ho.

Ho finished most of his prerequisites by the end of his sophomore year, took the MCAT that summer, then went through the Health Professions Committee process as a junior and began submitting medical school applications “on one of the first days.” He spent his senior year “juggling schoolwork with flying around the country for medical school interviews.”

“Hannah and Mary provided stellar guidance and unwavering support,” said Ho.

Relationships with advisees, said Lothrop, can sometimes span a decade. Many prospective students talk to premed advising before choosing Middlebury and many students apply to med school after graduation.

Jenny Pushner ’21, now in her second semester at Middlebury, is undeclared, but she knows her interest is science. She met with Benz her first semester at Middlebury and has just attended health advising’s fall kick-off info session.

“I'm not really sure if I’m premed,” said Pushner, “but I’m taking all the classes and following the path.”

Harrison Knowlton, a senior neuroscience major, is also president of the student Pre-Health Society. Like Pushner, Knowlton always knew he was a “sciencey kid.” As he’s gone through Middlebury, he’s considered research, teaching, and medicine. This summer he took the MCAT and then shadowed a neurologist at the Central Maine Medical Center.

Suddenly everything fell into place.

“Actually experiencing it for the first time, going behind the scenes. There I was actually in the hospital. We’d go to the intensive care unit. We’d go all over the place, and it’s one of these things where it’s like, ‘Wow, this is what I want to do. It’s so cool.’ There’s no eloquent way to put that, but just seeing it, I just fell in love with it.”

By Gaen Murphree; Photo by Yeager Anderson ’13.5

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – MiddVote, the nonpartisan student organization that works to register student voters, has had a very active fall, hosting voter registration and absentee ballot request drives throughout the campus. The student group, which is sponsored by the Center for Community Engagement, has popped up just about everywhere, from Davis Family Library to the Anderson Freeman Center to the annual fall Quidditch festival.

They’ve been on a mission to bring clarity and support to what can be a confusing process for students who want to vote while away from home. Inconsistencies among different states and their election rules present a significant challenge for some students—especially those voting for the first time.

“Each state has a different system, and you can’t register to vote online in certain states,” said Nora Bayley ’21, a political science major from Red Wing, Minnesota, and a Democracy Initiative intern with CCE. “This can discourage students from registering, because they don’t want to print out and send in a registration form on their own. To combat this, we printed off registration and absentee ballot request forms for all states for which the forms are not available online and give them to students during our drives.”

This fall, Bayley and fellow intern Abby Dennis ’21 have hosted 14 voter registration and absentee ballot request drives. MiddVote and CCE are also providing stamps this year, based on a recent study showing that securing the correct postage was a surprisingly common barrier to students mailing in absentee ballots.

“This has proved to be an incredibly popular idea, and we have given out over 300 stamps in the past three weeks!” said Bayley “I am extremely excited about the MiddVote effort because it has shown me how much our student body really cares about the midterm elections this year and that they want to stay involved and informed.”

Dennis, of White Salmon, Washington, says MiddVote has stretched beyond the campus borders. “We are also partnering with local business to remind community members to vote on election day,” said Dennis. “Starting later this week, three local businesses and the town library will be handing out candy and cards that we made that remind people when and where to vote. I am excited about that because I really want MiddVote to be about not just the students, but also the local community.”

Ashley Laux, who oversees MiddVote at the Center for Community Engagement, would like to see the various initiatives raise the student voting rate by 10 percent over the last midterm elections in 2014. Laux says the College is participating in the Tufts National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement and will be able to announce the campus voting rate in spring 2019.

“Student response has been strong to MiddVote’s voter registration events,” said Laux. “It can be confusing for students to navigate voting laws and policies in their home states and I appreciate MiddVote volunteers’ enthusiastic, kind approach to helping their peers navigate the voting process.”

On election day, Tuesday, November 6, MiddVote will host an event at College Park in Middlebury (across from Shafer’s Market and Deli) to celebrate civic pride and encourage greater participation in the midterm election. Dennis and Bayley received a grant from MTV’s +1theVote campaign to fund the party, which includes free pizza and hot chocolate and face painting for children.

Other student organizations have also been active in stirring up enthusiasm this fall. Feminist Action at Middlebury (FAM) is hosting a Halloween night get-out-the-vote phone bank party to call Addison County residents and remind them to vote on Tuesday. And Middlebury’s College Republicans and College Democrats clubs will cohost an election evening “watch party” with MiddVote at Crossroads Café.

By Stephen Diehl; Photos courtesy MiddVote

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Two distinguished legal scholars debated each other in a lecture titled “The Courts in the Age of Trump” with a focus on the recent confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a well-attended campus event held on October 25.

More than 250 members of the College community, mostly Middlebury undergraduates, filled Dana Auditorium to hear John O. McGinnis, a professor of constitutional law at Northwestern University, and James E. Fleming, a professor of law at Boston University, talk about President Donald Trump’s two appointments to the Supreme Court and whether they “pose a threat to fundamental rights and equality under the law.”

The panelists offered divergent views about the 2018 Supreme Court. McGinnis, who served in the administration of President George H. W. Bush as a deputy assistant attorney general and is a member of the Federalist Society, said he “generally applauds” Trump’s appointments of Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch because “they move the Court toward interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning of its provisions.”

Fleming, a former litigation attorney who has published six books on constitutional law, urged the audience “to never forget Bush v. Gore, never forget the stolen seat [now occupied by Gorsuch], and never forget [Senator Mitch] McConnell’s plowing through of the Kavanaugh nomination. Never get over these wounds to the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and the legitimacy of our practice of constitutional law.”

James E. Fleming, a law professor at Boston University, was one of two legal scholars who debated the ramifications of Trump's two Supreme Court appointments at Dana Auditorium on October 25.

The panelists, who know each other well, delivered prepared remarks concerning constitutional theories about originalism, federalism, textualism, majoritarianism, and substantive due process. The 90-minute event was moderated by Assistant Professor Keegan Callanan, a political scientist and director of the Alexander Hamilton Forum.

McGinnis, who went first in the debate, spoke in historical and theoretical terms about constitutional law before getting into the current administration in Washington: “If you, like me, have some reservations about Donald Trump’s moral values, then you should actually be grateful that he is not nominating judges who want to read his moral values or their moral values into the Constitution. [You should be] grateful for judges who want to follow the original meaning of the Constitution. You should be grateful for the rise of originalism.

“Indeed, without originalism, one could easily imagine a right-wing activist court saying that fetuses were persons deserving of constitutional protection, i.e., prohibiting the laws that permit abortion . . . or that state minimum-wage laws were unconstitutional.”

He continued, “If you have an angry reaction to [Supreme Court] decisions, then I ask that you consider how your fellow Americans would feel if judges read moral principles that you liked, but were not clearly part of the Constitution, and went ahead and made Constitutional law on that basis. This practice would undermine the court, making it less effective at protecting the consensus principles that are actually in the Constitution—very important consensus principles [such as] trial by jury and freedom of speech.”

McGinnis, who was a law clerk in the 1980s to then-Court of Appeals Judge Kenneth W. Starr, concluded with an argument in favor of states’ rights and the Constitutional amendment process.

“The original Constitution as amended gives you great scope to make it better,” he said. “Our states are, as Justice Brandeis said long ago, laboratories of democracy. There are very few restrictions on what states can do to advance new moral visions for additional rights for people, for transgender people, or to place new restrictions on markets or to empower markets. These ideas then can become demonstration projects for the rest of the nation, and they can catch fire.

“It’s always open to you as well to become part of the great historical movements to amend our Constitution through Article 5 by persuading your fellow citizens, as did generations before you, when they correctly provided equality to African Americans, the vote to women, and authorized a progressive income tax.

“The rule of law is the province of judges, and it’s an important province, but you, not Supreme Court judges, are the only legitimate framers of our moral and political future.”

Professor Fleming discussed what the replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh might mean in the future before offering “a constructive pep talk to liberals and some words of caution for conservatives.”

Kavanaugh “is an anti-regulatory conservative mainly concerned with attacking the underlying administrative state,” Fleming said, referring to a recent New York Timesopinion piece by reporter Emily Bazelon and law professor Eric Posner. But “being a textualist hardly makes one an originalist,” he said, and “Kavanaugh is no more originalist than [Chief Justice John] Roberts or [Justice Samuel] Alito.”

Is Kavanaugh likely to overrule the “substantive due process cases” that make up Kennedy’s legacy? Fleming asked. “Based on what Kavanaugh has said . . . we can expect him to side with the dissenters in Obergefell” v. Hodges, for example, which was the landmark 2015 case that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry.

Fleming opined, “It’s good that [Middlebury] did not schedule this event for two weeks ago right after the Senate Republicans and one Democrat shamelessly confirmed a perjuring sexual assaulter with an outrageously partisan, aggrieved, conspiratorial, injudicious temperament to the Supreme Court. I would have been too ashamed, dismayed, and shocked to say anything constructive about Trump, Constitutional interpretation, and the future of the Supreme Court two weeks ago.”

Americans have to acknowledge the fact “we are stuck with a packed Supreme Court consisting in part of a sexually harassing perjurer, Clarence Thomas; an occupant of a stolen seat, Neil Gorsuch; and a sexually assaulting perjurer with a Trumpian temperament, Brett Kavanaugh. Like it or not, this is the Supreme Court of the United States, and we have to move on.”

Fleming advised to liberals to “stop harboring hollow hopes about the Supreme Court” and pursue justice through state courts and state legislatures. And to conservative thinkers he said, “Beware that such a [Supreme Court] may come to live in infamy” and that Justice Roberts could become the “swing vote” who can “moderate the hard right.”

The debate was sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Forum, a new faculty-led initiative at Middlebury that “aims to foster thoughtful engagement with the ideas that have informed the creation and development of the American polity.”

By Robert Keren; Photos by Yeager Anderson ’13.5

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Strong returns in venture capital investments and private equities and public equity markets helped generate a strong investment return of 9.7 percent for Middlebury’s endowment in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2018. Thanks to the solid return and to gifts received during the year, the value of Middlebury’s endowment ended the year at $1.124 billion—an increase of $50 million. 

Last year’s performance boosted the endowment’s 3-year annualized return to 6.0 percent, the 5-year return to 8.2 percent, and the 10-year return to 7.4 percent.

The annual and 10-year returns both surpassed Middlebury’s own benchmark (75 percent global equity/25 percent Treasury securities) of 7.6 percent for the year, 7.7 percent for five years, and 5.7 percent over 10 years.

Middlebury’s endowment is managed by Investure, a firm based in Charlottesville, Virginia, that manages the endowments of colleges, universities, and foundations with a total value of more than $13 billion. Investure began managing the Middlebury endowment on May 31, 2005. 

The Middlebury endowment supports all of Middlebury’s schools, including the undergraduate College, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Middlebury Language Schools, Schools Abroad, Bread Loaf School of English, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, and School of the Environment. Last year Middlebury drew $66.8 million from its endowment to support its operations.

“The strong return for the year and the growth in value of Middlebury’s endowment only strengthen the financial foundation of the institution,” said David Provost, executive vice president for finance and administration. “Once again, Investure outperformed our key benchmarks and we are confident with how the firm continues to align its overall strategy with the ever-changing dynamics of the market.”

“We also want to acknowledge the importance of the support Middlebury receives from our alumni, parents, and friends. Their contributions have helped to build the endowment that is the foundation for the educational experience Middlebury provides to its students.”