Welcome to Chellis House!
The May Belle Chellis Women's Resource Center was the dream of a few Middlebury College students who wanted a "safe space," a place where women could go and just be themselves. This center was established in 1993 and was named after the first woman to be graduated from Middlebury in 1886.
The mission of the May Belle Chellis Women's Resource Center (popularly known as "Chellis House") is not only to enhance the academic experience of all Middlebury students, faculty and staff but also to provide a warm and welcoming space where women and men can discuss, research and address gender issues. The center provides academic resources and general information on current events, job and internship opportunities, academic opportunities and health issues.
Chellis House also serves as a meeting place for the diverse student, faculty and staff groups that exist at the college. These groups include, but are not limited to: Feminist Action in Middlebury (FAM), the Women's Studies Program faculty, the Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (Moqa), Artemis magazine, the monitors who work on independent projects for the house, Women of Color, and Progressives.
Additionally, the women's resource center houses two faculty offices and the Alison Fraker Reading Room. This reading room is a developing resource library on gender and women's issues. It is dedicated to Alison Fraker who died in 1989, during her final semester at Middlebury, in an automobile accident. This room commemoraties Fraker's love of reading and her interest in creating a center for women on campus.