A Global Initiative
Middlebury College is poised to become the first truly global liberal arts college, President Ronald Liebowitz told some 400 guests at a festive reception and dinner at the Peterson Athletic Complex last month. The event marked the official beginning of the Middlebury Initiative, an ambitious effort to implement the recommendations contained in the College’s new strategic plan. At the conclusion of this five-year effort, the president said, “We will see a College that is stronger academically and financially, more accessible to a wider range of exceptional students, and considerably more visible and influential in this country and abroad.”
Liebowitz explained that the initiative will build on the College’s established strengths, including its human-intensive approach to education; its leadership in environmental studies, languages, and international studies; and its worldwide network of connections with other colleges and universities through the Middlebury-C.V. Starr Schools Abroad, the Language Schools, the Bread Loaf School of English, The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
“When you look at how all of these pieces fit together—when you connect the dots—you realize that there is a whole here that is much greater than the sum of its parts,” he observed. “Our task is now to take full advantage of these programs in order to enhance the opportunities we can offer our students to best prepare them for the challenges of the 21st century.”
Liebowitz announced that fundraising for Middlebury would seek to:
- supplement the College’s financial aid program in order to attract and support talented students who represent a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives;
- enhance Middlebury’s human-intensive learning environment by adding 25 new faculty positions;
- provide new funds to support curriculum development, student research, student involvement in the scholarly pursuits of their professors, and infrastructure;
- create new opportunities for student creativity, innovation and entrepreneurialism outside the classroom; and
- ensure institutional flexibility by increasing unrestricted support for the College through annual giving
Achieving these goals will require significant financial support, Frederick M. Fritz ’68, chairman of the Board of Trustees, told the guests at the dinner. That’s why the College is undertaking a five-year, $500 million fund-raising effort to implement the strategic plan. This is the largest fund-raising goal ever attempted by a liberal arts college; Fritz reported that $234 million has already been secured during the campaign’s planning stage.
For more, see the Middlebury Initiative Web site.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
No doubt there were students thinking that the Middlebury Language Schools were taking the notion of “total immersion” a bit far.
On the night of July 4th—the first official day of the of the Schools’ six-week session—Addison County sat in total darkness, while the area’s main power substation underwent emergency repairs. While faculty and staff scrambled to find flashlights, the skies opened up with drenching rains, adding yet another fairytale, dreamlike element to the affair.
And yet for the students “living the language,” well, they carried on. Even though it was all so new to them—the Language Pledge, Vermont, everyone thrown together in one, big uncertain situation—this happened: Echoes of por aquí, por aquí, (“This way, this way,” in Spanish) bounced off corridor walls as students crept to a dormitory lounge, the way lighted by the ghostly blue glow of one person’s laptop; a shouted warning, in French— n’utilisez pas l’ascenseur (“Do not use the elevator”)—in the Château; and singing, in Arabic, filled one dorm room, so spirited that the voices carried out an open window and into the heart of the storm.
And then just after midnight, with a sudden burst of energy, the lights blasted back on. But the carriage, well, it didn’t turn into a pumpkin. With the lights blazing, people kept on singing.
That Wooden Bench
For what we hope will become a regular feature of College Street, we sent a query to all Middlebury students, asking them to weigh in on a particular aspect of life at the College. The winning entry would be based on originality, clear and concise writing, and the ability to make a persuasive case. What follows is H. Kay Merriman’s choice for a favorite study spot on campus.
One solitary piece of rustic wooden furniture remains on the Middlebury campus after the removal of the summer’s inviting Adirondack chairs. Overwhelmed by the imposing freshman dorm to its right and underwhelmed by the slight tree sprouting at its side, that wooden bench between Chateau and Battell maintains the delicate balance of pleasing aesthetics and relative discomfort that makes for the ideal study spot.
At first glance, the bench seems to be a piece of art intended to rival the Frisbee dog in front of Munroe, rather than a place to curl up and crack open The Merchant of Venice. There is no path leading to it, and the patch of grass that it occupies often quickly loses its inhabitants to the larger and arguably more exciting Battell Beach. With its back to the panoramic mountain view that a student seeking inspiration desires, this stoic settee conveys to its occupant that there is work to be done; the outdoor adventure can wait. Its relative removal from the traffic patterns of College life separates its visitor from tempting distractions and yet facilitates people watching when a momentary break is necessary. Napping, though, is nearly impossible while perched on those utilitarian wooden rungs.
I would not recommend cramming for a final or writing a term paper in this study spot. Yet, for reading profound works or for seeking to be profound in one’s own right, that wooden bench, as a microcosm of Middlebury and a postcard of Vermont, provides the ideal atmosphere.
— H. Kay Merriman ’10
Go Figure
1,479: Number of students admitted for September
645: Number of first-years who arrived on campus this fall
44: Percentage “yield”—the ratio of matriculated students to admitted students for fall
47: Number of states represented among fall first-years
40: Number of countries represented among fall first-years
63: Number of international students among fall first-years
8: Percentage of fall first-years who are first-generation college attendees
42: Number of school or class presidents among fall first-years
45: Number of publication editors among fall first-years
3: Number of oboe players among fall first-years
[Syllabus]
Course: The Black Death
Department: History, first year seminar
Instructor: Louisa Burnham, assistant professor
Course Description: This seminar examines the great plague of 1348, the Black Death, as an epidemiological, cultural, and historical event. What was the plague? How did it affect European society in the short term, and what were its repercussions? Was the Black Death truly a turning point in European history, or have its effects been overrated? Finally, the course examines the role the plague has played as a metaphor in society and discussions will address modern plagues like the hemorrhagic viruses and AIDS using fiction and film as well as the works of modern scholars.
Reading List
- Albert Camus, The Plague
- Robert Gottfried, The Black Death
- Rosemary Horrox, Ed., The Black Death
- Nancy Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine
- Lester Faigley, The Brief Penguin Handbook
- Ann Benson, The Plague Tales
- John Aberth, The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350
Burnham Says: The primary purpose of first year seminars is to teach writing, and there are so many fascinating paper topics on the Black Death. One of my favorites allows students to work with unpublished archival sources that I have transcribed (and translated) showing the arrival of the plague in the city of Montpellier in southern France. I ask my students to assess the plague’s impact on the city, and in order to do that, they analyze the official register of a medieval notary, the chronicle of the city’s consulate (where a large number of the consuls died and had to be replaced), and a list of religious endowments established throughout the fourteenth century in the city. They have access to virtually every document that exists for the year 1348 from Montpellier, and every time I assign this paper, a student notices something new and makes a connection I had never thought of.
Current Affairs: Burnham has set up a Google news alert for the phrase “bubonic plague” and says it is fascinating both to see how often the disease itself pops up in the news and how the phrase is simply used as a metaphor. “Plague as metaphor comes up again and again in the course,” she says “especially when we watch Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and read Albert Camus’ The Plague. ...We also consider a variety of the “coming plagues,” like Ebola, bird flu, SARS, AIDS, and multi drug-resistant tuberculosis. Richard Preston’s writings on Ebola serve in part to scare us all witless—and I use a historical-science fiction novel by Ann Benson (The Plague Tales) to explore the similarities between then and now.”
Seven Signs of Fall at Middlebury
- Wonnacott Commons teaming up with dining services for cider pressing
- Ski bladers gliding down Cider Mill Road
- Campus Adirondack chairs going into an eight-month hibernation
- Library study carrels accumulating towering stacks of books
- Leaf peepers photographing “Moose Crossing” signs near Bread Loaf
- Long, angular shadows blending into peach-plum sunsets over the Adirondacks
- The first frost glazing Battell Beach in a silvery sheen
Tracking Eastward
This fall, the College opened the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School Abroad in the Middle East, the first of the Middlebury Schools Abroad in the region.
The school, located in Alexandria, Egypt, becomes the eighth in the College’s prestigious study abroad program, which now has sites in 30 cities and 12 countries.
Location:
Alexandria, Egypt
Population: 4 million
Founded 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great
City moniker: Pearl of the Mediterranean
Fall 2007 enrollment:
20 students
Who's attending:
Intermediate and advanced Arabic language students
Language spoken in classes:
Arabic
Rank of Arabic in most common languages spoken globally:
Fifth
Language Pledge in effect:
Yes
Academic site:
Alexandria University
Housing:
In apartments with Egyptian students
Walking time from the Bibliotheca Alexandria:
Five minutes
Electrons and Beaver Ponds
It seems bizarre that electrons can travel
backward in time.
The physicist Richard Feynman concluded that watching
his lawn sprinkler. Electrons are an enigma:
their mass is measured by inertia but not by gravity.
But solutions do exist. I look for some today
as I fly toe-stepping along the Green Mountains in my
Piper Super Cub.
I trace the Long Trail, that brown-black serpentine
footpath grafted to the ridge in the message
of fresh October snow.
My favorite lean-to stands
among thick cedars and hides the small stream
that has taught my morning face to listen better
to the woods.
South of Lincoln, I catch a sight of a series of beaver
ponds, each professionally engineered with a dam and tidy
beaver-house in the middle.
On a sun-brushed stream I spot a moose standing knee deep,
looking farcical, chomping away at succulent lilies
and not at all interested in the fading red, yellow,
and brown leaves.
Eggs know how and when to become animals, some
Animals convert grasses and greens into protein.
How does time curve, gravity work, and what about
the twelve dimensions
in the universe?
Night can conceal knowledge and dawn extricates it,
but tell me exactly what light is.
My plane is balanced by power and gravity to remain
in the air above the earth.
In space there is no up or down.
In fifty years third-graders will explain this
in elementary terms.
The afternoon fades and is flushed with certain shades
of colors difficult to duplicate
or fingerprint.
I need to see as far as I can but speculate about
a simple, indifferent life.
Rainbow trout flash and stretch for sunlight,
summer clouds bulge and swell, and rain spills out
from a pregnant sky
fat with time and purpose.
—Donald Everett Axinn ’51
Observed
The Class of 2011 arrived on campus just after Labor Day. More than half of the class attended public high schools, and three-quarters come from outside New England. ... Middlebury’s Schools Abroad program got a shout-out in The Huffington Post, a popular blog published by Arianna Huffington. In a posting urging more college students to study abroad, author Stacie Nevadomski Berdan cited her nephew, a Middlebury junior, and his decision to spend the fall semester at the College’s school in Alexandria, Egypt. The C.V. Starr-Middlebury School Abroad in the Middle East opened this fall. ... The College is considering a proposal to amend the Commons residential system. Under discussion is a recommendation to move to a “4/2” system that would involve a four-year association in one Commons, with a two-year residency in housing associated with that Commons. ... The Julian W. Abernethy Collection of American Literature acquired a piece of literary history this summer: a carbon copy of the original opening of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Panned by Hemingway pal F. Scott Fitzgerald, the nixed opening chapter was nonetheless saved by Papa and is an intriguing document to Hemingway scholars. The carbon copy is part of a trove of material—family correspondence, journals—belonging to the Hemingway family that the College acquired in August.
In September, Middlebury announced that it would begin applying its renowned Language Schools model to the pre-college set. Collaborating with its West Coast affiliate, the Monterey Institute for International Studies, the College will open the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy at three sites next summer. The residential camps will run for four weeks, and students will be required to speak their target language (Arabic, Chinese, French, or Spanish) for the duration. ... Zipcars have come to campus. This fall, the College entered into an agreement with the world’s largest car-sharing service to offer transportation alternatives to students, faculty, and staff. Two Toyota Hybrid Priuses are available for rent 24 hours a day, seven days a week. ... The visual is Tim Burton-esque: just outside the Mahaney Center for the Arts, an encampment of 15-foot-tall conical structures that appear as if they are writhing in the wind. The work of artist Patrick Dougherty and more than 230 community volunteers, the environmental sculpture titled “So Inclined” was built on site over the course of three-weeks. Locally harvested saplings were used to construct the lean-tos, which will be on exhibit until early December. n Jazz great Cyrus Chestnut played a packed Mead Chapel in September. Chestnut tickled the ivory, Dezron Douglas played the bass, and Neal Smith manned the drums on a rocking night. There wasn’t a disappointed soul in the house.
What began as a Middlebury tradition has become a national effort: people all across the country are now picking up Butch. The Butch in question being Butch Varno, the Middlebury resident with cerebral palsy who has been escorted to Panther football and basketball games by Midd students for nearly half a century. Last spring, Varno and his mother lost their home after a catastrophic flood, and since then the College has initiated a community response fund to help the Varnos renovate a new home and secure financial support to meet their needs into the future. After Sports Illustrated re-ran a 2003 Rick Reilly column about Varno, support from across the nation has poured into the fund. Learn more. ... The Faculty Council is working on a policy that would prohibit amorous relationships between professors and students. In a Campus poll, a majority of students said they would support such a ban. ... Shortly before this magazine went to press, a group of students participated in a campus rally to demonstrate support for the citizens of Burma. Organized by Burmese students Yan Oak ’09 and Htar Htar Yu ’08 the event included a candlelight vigil and featured students wearing red t-shirts bearing the slogan “Free Burma” (The Middlebury Campus reported that the red shirts were chosen to match the color of the robes worn by Burmese monks in a symbol of unity and solidarity.)