MiddNews
Middlebury College is featured in a report published this month by the NAFSA: Association of International Educator that describes efforts by U.S. colleges and universities to integrate global approaches in teaching into campus learning. Titled "Internationalizing the Campus," the report profiles the international education initiatives of 16 institutions, and their impact on students, schools, and communities nationwide.
The profile on Middlebury includes mention of the language pledge in the summer language schools, the numbers of undergraduates who study abroad, and the decision to make language and international study a peak of excellence.
According to NAFSA Executive Director Marlene Johnson, the institutions featured in the report have developed innovative ways to educate students for a world in which global challenges know few boundaries.
The report details model approaches, exemplary practices, and major trends in international education in the United States. Institutions profiled were selected by a committee of international educators who assessed internationalization efforts at 117 institutions nominated for consideration. Read the report at: http://www.nafsa.org/content/professionalandeducationalresources/publications/campusreport2003.pdf.
The Middlebury College career services office reports that employers surveyed by the National Association of College Employment say they plan to hire about the same number of new college graduates as they hired last year. Employment counselors consider this information good news in view of an earlier survey that showed a planned 3.6 percent reduction this year.
The service sector, expecting an increase of 4.8 percent, holds the most promise for spring grads, while manufacturers plan to cut hiring by 8.4 percent. Most employers surveyed said the war in Iraq would have no effect on current hiring.
Robert Cohen, of Middlebury's English department, is a 2003 winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He will make use of the fellowship to work on a novel. Cohen is one of 184 fellows selected by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from among 3,282 applicants for prestigious awards totaling $6,750,000. According to the foundation, Guggenheim fellows are appointed on the basis of unusually impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.
The foundation offers fellowships to further the development of artists and scholars by assisting those selected to engage in creation in any of the arts or to do research in any field of knowledge under the freest possible conditions.
Paul Muldoon, a member of the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English since 1997, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Muldoon won for his book "Moy Sand And Gravel," his ninth colletion of poems, and his first since 1998. Muldoon is Professor of the Humanities at Princeton, and in 1999 was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. He has been called the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War.
A recent study completed for the College by Northern Economic Consulting (NEC) of Westford, Vt., shows that Middlebury College brings $125.2 million annually into the local economy. The study, which included information on employment, wages, and tax revenues, reports that the College provides 1,253 faculty and staff jobs at Middlebury itself, and that the College's presence in the area creates another 736 jobs in Addison County. The state treasury also collects $10.3 million in tax revenues as a result of economic activity associated with the College.
Middlebury College President John M. McCardell Jr. said that the study was an important tool. "We know that we are a major economic force in the town and the region, but it's important to have current data that explains the extent of this role," said McCardell.
Money flows into the local economy from student fee payments, student spending at local businesses, spending by visitors to the campus, and research and grant money. NEC compiled a similar document for the College in 1996. The 2003 study is available on the College's Web site at /~pubaff/news_2003/ecoimpact.html.
Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson will deliver the commencement address at Middlebury College's graduation ceremony on Sunday, May 25.
One of the nation's leading Hispanic politicians, Richardson was elected governor of New Mexico in November 2002. He previously represented northern New Mexico in the United States House of Representatives, and served under President Clinton as secretary of energy and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The College also will present honorary degrees to Frederic W. Allen, former chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, former Middlebury trustee, and the father of Zachariah Allen, a member of the current graduating class; Deborah Bial, founder and president of the Posse Foundation, a nonprofit organization that identifies, recruits and selects student leaders from public high schools in urban areas and prepares them for enrollment at top colleges nationwide; David Herbert Donald, the Charles Warren Professor of American History and professor of American civilization emeritus at Harvard, and one of the nation's leading historians of the Civil War and the American South; Eve Ensler '75, playwright and activist, who wrote "The Vagina Monologues;" Julie Johnson Kidd '67, trustee from 1974 to 1982, and president of the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation in New York City; and Ruth Stone, Vermont poet, and recipient of the 2002 National Book Award in Poetry for "In the Next Galaxy."
Three recent Middlebury graduates have received 2003 fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support graduate study. The students are Amanda Hakemian '02, to study chemistry at Northwestern; Meghan McKnight '98, to study ecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Elana Wilson '01, to study geography at Cambridge, in England. Six additional Middlebury graduates and one graduating senior received honorable mentions from NSF.
The New England Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has selected Middlebury to receive an Environmental Merit Award in recognition of its exceptional work and commitment to the environment in 2002. The award, which recognizes outstanding environmental advocates who have made significant contributions toward preserving natural resources, was presented at a special Earth Day ceremony held on April 22 at Faneuil Hall in Boston.