Knowledge Without Boundaries
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found it was ourselves . . .
Robert Frost
Middlebury College makes available to its students a distinguished faculty, challenging programs, facilities for research, residential living within a vibrant community, and much more; but none of its benefits will be of lasting value unless those who are chosen and come to learn are willing to offer, in Robert Frost's words, "the gift outright" of their energies and talents. Middlebury wants those who will give freely of themselves in academic study, in the arts, in the pursuit of leadership, in athletics, and in social service. What the College can give in return is described in the pages that follow.
Middlebury offers its students a broad curriculum embracing the arts, humanities, literature, foreign languages, social sciences, and natural sciences. Middlebury is an institution with a long-standing international focus, a place where education reflects a sense of looking outward, beyond the boundaries of our campus and even our nation. We seek to bring to Middlebury those who wish not only to learn about themselves and their own traditions, but also to see beyond the bounds of class, culture, region, or nation. Indeed, the central purpose of a Middlebury education is precisely to transcend oneself and one's own concerns. This transcendence may come for some through the study of other cultures; for some through the study of the environment; it will also come through inquiry into such fields as physics or philosophy, mathematics or music.
Middlebury's undergraduate liberal arts program is at the core of the College's identity and mission. Radiating outwards from this central point, however, is an array of affiliated programs that enhance the luster of the College as individual and distinctive entities, and also combine to create a network of opportunities that is unique among liberal arts colleges. These programs, situated across the United States and around the world, represent knowledge without boundaries both for undergraduates and for the hundreds of graduate students whom they serve. While these programs differ from each other in the extent of their connection to the undergraduate curriculum, all of them chart pathways outward from the undergraduate experience that are a model of the kind of expansive, continuing education that Middlebury seeks to cultivate in its students. Many of them offer specific opportunities to Middlebury undergraduates that are available nowhere else.
