MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Middlebury College conferred 171 master of arts degrees and three doctor of modern languages degrees at the Language Schools commencement on August 17.
With President Ronald D. Liebowitz and Vice President for Language Schools, Schools Abroad, and Graduate Programs Michael E. Geisler presiding, the Language Schools marked its 93rd summer of offering language immersion programs on the Middlebury campus.
Theoretical philosopher Gianni Vattimo from the University of Turin delivered the commencement address to the annual gathering of students, faculty, family, and friends. An honorary doctor of letters degree was conferred by the president and the board of trustees upon Professor Vattimo.
This was a landmark summer for the Language Schools. The Chinese School inaugurated its M.A. program with 17 students, including two from Middlebury’s affiliate, the Monterey Institute of International Studies. The College also announced a new partnership with Brandeis University that will signal the opening of the 10th Language School, the School of Hebrew, in 2008.
This summer, for the first time, the Language Schools’ enrollment topped 1,340 students in the schools of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Of those attending this summer, 129 are undergraduate students at Middlebury College and 27 are graduate students at the Monterey Institute.
In addition, 106 of this summer’s 171 M.A. recipients studied at one of the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad to help meet their graduate degree requirements.
Underscoring these points, President Liebowitz said, “Middlebury graduates quite often become leaders in a global society. The College has assembled an array of resources and opportunities, beginning with our renowned intensive summer Language Schools, that complement the liberal arts curriculum and provide exceptional opportunities for students to explore interests and issues extending beyond our national borders and familiar cultures.”
The summer of 2007 was historic for the Language Schools in another way as well. The noted philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis provided full scholarships to 100 Language Schools students this summer in five critical languages: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian. About one-quarter of those scholarships were awarded to students from the Monterey Institute.