Separating fact from fiction in Dan Brown page-turners.

From Middlebury Magazine: A behind-the-scenes look at an art historian's improbable four-year adventure.

Helen Young (Biology) and her students have recently been exploring the effects of landscape on pollinator: How does the presence of forest around a field affect the number and diversity of bee pollinators? What about corn fields? Or roads and rivers and cities? This work has strong relevance in Addison County, an area heavily reliant on agriculture for its well-being.

Larry Hamberlin had an essay included in a book of Schubert studies published by Ashgate Press in the fall.

In the spring, Hamberlin presented papers at the Experience Music Project's pop music conference in Seattle and at the conference Feminist Music and Theory in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

Professor James Morrison (Political Science) has begun podcasting all of his lectures. These lectures are available online and through iTunes. More information is available at Morrison's Web site.

The Web site SouthChinaSea.org was started in 1998 by David Rosenberg, a professor of Political Science at Middlebury, as a student-faculty collaborative research project. It has developed into a five-star online resource for students, scholars and policy-makers interested in South China Sea regional economic, environmental, and security issues.

In the summer of 2003, Miguel Fernandez, Middlebury Class of 1985 and a professor of Spanish at the College, ran into Mark Del Mastro with whom he had studied at Middlebury in Madrid, in the master's program in 1988. Del Mastro, a professor at The Citadel, was teaching at the Language School. There they met Juan Pablo Spicer-Escalant, who teaches at Utah State and was the designated director for the new Middlebury program in Guadalajara.

Steve Abbott has been selected as co-editor (with Bruce Torrence of Randolph-Macon College) of "Math Horizons." This lively journal, published quarterly by the Mathematical Association of America, is dedicated to exposing current undergraduates to the history, culture, and personalities of mathematics, as well as to the latest results in the field. The publication features writing by some of the leading mathematical expositors, but also works with a student advisory board to include student writing on topics where their perspective may be the most insightful one.

During her sabbatical leave in Germany during 2008-09, Bettina Matthias (German) researched and wrote a German textbook for opera singers and musicians. Having taught in the "German for Singers and Vocal Coaches" program in the German Summer Language School since 2000, she decided to dedicate her sabbatical to writing a much-needed book that takes into account this special group's needs, abilities, interests and professional realities.

Since 2001, Bettina Matthias (German) has worked with German students, from first-semester to graduating senior, in Middlebury's German Theater Group. What started as an alternative to the typical final paper in late 2001 has grown into a very successful staple in the German Department and on campus, a steady group with at least 10 members at any given time, that has won the German Theater Competition at Mt. Holyoke College five times and has performed nine full-length plays in German. In fall, we will celebrate our tenth production together.