Campus Life
Curious about the opportunities available to your students? Take a tour of Middlebury’s organic garden, visit the Innovation Hub and the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, explore leadership opportunities, hear the story behind the cane your students receive at Commencement, and so much more.
Getting Down to Earth
Explore the Knoll, Middlebury’s organic garden, a green getaway and home away from home for students. Video and spoken-word poem composed, filmed, and performed by Regina Fontanelli ’22 and featuring Emma Vallon ’21, Maddison McKnight ’22, and Mykhailo “Miisha” Poklad ’22.
People, place and the planet. A community, a home away from home. Hands in the dirt and heart to the earth We wanted a place for togetherness A green getaway where we could grow crops and grow ourselves Be beautiful, blossoming Plant a seed and see what happens Not every fruit comes to fruition or kernel comes to harvest But we sure do love the trying, the mowing, the digging Sometimes if you dig a little deeper you find a sapling of something wonderful inside A little surprise Sometimes when we stand on this land we feel so lucky to be alive And sometimes we plant leaves to remember those we had to leave behind We are college students But we are also evergreens Ever learning with our head but more importantly with our hearts Down to earth but growing up Through our brushes and brambles we are perennial Try to pick our petals but we just pick up our roots and keep going We are panthers We are the ones you love and we love you right back And we miss you And we mourn the days you could graze the garden with us But for now thank you, Thank you for helping us grow enough to grow all by ourselves
Tour the Campus
See the paths your students walk each day in this map and virtual tour. View photos and learn about the buildings where classes and activities take place.
The Innovation Hub
Meet the Innovation Hub Team
Discover the possibilities of funding, mentorship, space, classes, and events. The Innovation Hub helps you develop leadership, creative thought, and intellectual risk taking—through a multitude of opportunities on and off campus.
Innovation Hub Transcript of Orientation video 2020
Heather Lovejoy: Hello, and welcome to the Innovation Hub overview session! I’m Heather Lovejoy and I’m the director of programs at the hub. The hub is one of the experiential learning centers alongside the Center for Careers and Internships and the Center for Community Engagement.
We are a team of staff and faculty that offers creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and social impact programming. On this webinar you will get to know some of our team and learn about some of our programs.
One of the most important things you need to know about our programs is that they are available to everyone—you do not need to identify as an innovator or entrepreneur! So much of our programming is dedicated to exposure and skill-building. In fact, we see about two-thirds of the student body in our programs each school year. The first step to getting involved is meeting with an advisor to learn about our offerings in course work, mentoring, funding, events and space.
I also wanted to share a few examples of how you can plug into our Creativity and Innovation suite; MiddSTART is a crowdfunding website for your creative projects, you can participate in the TEDx student board to organize a speakers’ conference, you can apply to work on a business idea in our MiddEntrepreneurs course over winter term, or you can pitch for a MiddChallenge grant to work on a project over the summer. There are many other opportunities for funding and mentorship through the hub, so feel free to schedule a meeting with us. Now I’ll pass it off to my colleagues to share some details about their programs.
Charlotte Sullivan: Hi, my name is Charlotte Sullivan and I help facilitate Middlebury’s Social Entrepreneurship programs at the Innovation Hub. For example, each fall, I help select a small cohort of students from the sophomore and sophomore Feb classes who are interested in studying and implementing social change. The program offers funding, mentorship, and experiential learning opportunities for students to pursue this goal during their career at Middlebury. I would be happy to email with you or make a time to meet if you have any questions about this or our other programs. Now I’d like to introduce you to Greg Conrad.
Greg Conrad: Hi, my name is Greg Conrad and I am the associate director of Middlebury’s leadership and innovation program, MiddCORE.
We are a one-month, mentor-led program designed to help you launch your education, your passions, and your purpose into the professional world. By consulting for companies, with real-world problems to solve, you will up-level your potential: develop the confidence, skills, hands-on experience, and network you’ll need to make a positive impact on the world and on your future. As a MiddCORE alum, I can say with certainty that MiddCORE was a highlight of my Middlebury experience.
For more information, please check out our website and feel free to email us at MiddCORE@middlebury.edu. Our team is looking forward to hearing from you! Next up, I’m excited to introduce, Ben Powers!
Ben Powers: Hi there! I’m Ben Powers, and I help run Oratory Now, Middlebury’s FREE peer coaching service dedicated to public speaking. Each semester, we train about 50 students to work as peer Oratory Coaches, who can help you get ready for presentations, pitches, interviews—anything that involves oral expression. Lately, we’ve been especially focused on helping speakers to present ONLINE. We now offer both synchronous and asynchronous remote coaching options. Oratory Now coaches and interns also produce speech competitions, do coaching work in the local community, and this fall we’re offering an online, credit-bearing course called Oratory in Action. You can find us at the Hub, or at oratorynow.org. We look forward to speaking with you this fall! Now I get to pass you over to EJ Bartlett.
EJ Bartlett: Hi and welcome to Middlebury College. We are glad you are here. I am EJ Bartlett, the marketing director at the Innovation Hub and MiddCORE. Thanks for taking the time to learn a bit more about Innovation Hub. We’d like to invite you to connect with us in person. We will be hosting two drop-in Zoom chats—one on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 10:30 a.m.–noon and a second one Wednesday, Sept. 9, 10:30–noon. We will be available to answer any of your questions. We will also have student representatives from our various programs available for you to chat with and ask questions about the student experience.
Slide: Drop-in Zoom chats
Aug. 26 10:30-noon
Sept. 9th 10:30-noon
You can find those Zoom links below. If any of these programs have peaked your interest, there are videos below on the orientation page on the individual programs or visit go/innovaitonhub.
Slide: go/innovationhub
Thank you for coming and we look forward to working with you.
What MiddCORE Alums are Saying
MiddCORE is a suite of experiential learning programs at Middlebury that builds skills, creates opportunities, and expands networks for tomorrow’s leaders and innovators. Through three main offerings: MiddCORE workshops, MiddCORE J-Term course, and The Summer Intern Lab, you will engage with distinguished mentors and facilitators to apply classroom-gained knowledge to real-world challenges, develop critical skills, and gain experience working with top brands.
Middlebury's Social Entrepreneurship Program
Middlebury’s Social Entrepreneurship Program helps students develop their personal qualities and enhance their academic experience at Middlebury through an extracurricular commitment to driving social change.
Meet Our Oratory Now Student Coaches
Oratory Now is Middlebury’s FREE peer coaching service dedicated to public speaking. Find out about credit-bearing courses, and request coaching for presentations, pitches, and interviews at oratorynow.org.
Hi there! And welcome to Middlebury.
I’m Ben Powers, and I’d like to introduce you to Oratory Now, Middlebury’s FREE peer coaching service dedicated to public speaking. Oratory Coaches are available online to work with individual students, small groups, and full classes on presenting, pitching, and interviewing. There’s a pretty good chance we’ll get to meet you during the upcoming school year. A couple of our coaches are gonna tell you how:
- Hey everyone! I’m GiGi. Ben’s absolutely right— You might meet a team of Oratory Now coaches through your First Year Seminar- where they join you via Zoom to run a presentation workshop for you and your classmates. You could even follow up for 1 to 1 remote coaching to make sure you nail your first college presentation!
- If a professor notices your speaking skill, dedication, and potential, either in presenting or simply speaking up in class, you might be nominated for the Spencer Prize for First-Years. That’s where I found Oratory Now! You’ll join other nominees for a super friendly competition where you’ll deliver a speech connecting what you’re learning in class to what you care about. Final bonus - you could win your share of $1600 in prize money!
- Toward the end of the Fall term, you and your classmates might present at the (first annual!) First Year Symposium.
- In the winter or spring, you could get one of your PE credits by taking OratoryX- the “vocal workout” Phys Ed course taught by student coaches.
So that’s a small sample of some of the things going on over at Oratory Now..Who does all the coaching, teaching and event production? We’re a team of about 50 students who train together each semester, and are hired by the college as student employees. We’re all working on our speaking, coaching, and professional communication because we know how valuable these skills are, no matter what we do after Midd. And lately, we’ve been forced to get pretty good at all this online stuff!
Just this summer, Oratory Now hired a couple of interns —that’s us! We ran a series of online workshops for MiddCORE and Middlebury Social Impact Corps, and we coordinated remote oratory coaching in-language for three of the Middlebury Language Schools. We also helped begin planning Oratory Now’s credit-bearing Fall course: Oratory In Action, and got a couple of free sandwiches out of it.
So! Sound like something you might want to do? Come chat with a Coach during Orientation Drop -In hours, Or find us at oratorynow.org.
Thanks for watching. We look forward to speaking with you!
Agents of Change
The Center for Community Engagement prepares students for lives of meaning and impact through service, scholarship, and citizenship. Learn how students get involved to make a difference in our community, develop new skills, and discover new interests here.
Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs
What is the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs? Who are the people behind the many events and programs put on by the RCGA every year? How can students get more involved, and why should they want to? Learn more about RCGA on our website!
A Home for the Arts
Explore the Mahaney Arts Center in this gallery of photos.
Sing a Song
Members of the Middlebury choir and a cappella groups across the generations teamed up to sing the Alma Mater for you.
Verse 1: Walls of Ivy, paths of beauty,
we have known and loved thee well,
Spired chapel rising proudly,
Morning hymn and evening bell.
Chorus: Middlebury, Alma Mater,
Symbol of our strength and truth,
Symbol of our strength and truth.
Verse 2: Sunset glowing o’er the mountains,
Snowy peaks and winding ways,
Peaceful stillness o’er the campus,
Mem’ries of most happy days. (chorus)
Verse 3: Loyal ever in these friendships,
We have spent four glorious years.
Filling us with hope and courage,
Till the hour of parting nears. (chorus)
The Story of Middlebury's Cane
Each year at Middlebury’s Commencement, graduates receive a diploma, of course, but they also receive an unusual keepsake—a finely crafted replica of Gamaliel Painter’s cane. Here’s the story of why the cane has endured for so long as a cherished Middlebury tradition.
Transcript coming soon.
Fall Family Weekend Savings at the College Store
All orders on Under Armour merchandise from October 9 through October 11 will receive free shipping.
Take an additional 15% off CLEARANCE items with code “Clearance15.”