August 9, 2002
Contact: Travis Fahey
802-443-5198
tfahey@middlebury.edu
Posted: May 31, 2002
MIDDLEBURY,
VT- The Middlebury College Language Schools will hold commencement
for its 88th summer session in Mead Memorial Chapel on Friday, Aug. 16
at 8 p.m. Mead Chapel is on Hepburn Road off College Street (Route 125).
The public is invited to attend the event.
President
John M. McCardell, Jr. and Dean of the Language Schools and Schools Abroad
Michael Katz will award degrees to nearly 150 master of arts candidates
in French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Ten candidates will receive
a doctorate in modern languages. Awards for distinguished study will also
be given to select students in the schools of Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.
Michele Forman, Middlebury Union High School (MUHS) teacher, Middlebury
College honorary degree recipient and former Arabic student at Middleburys
Language School, will deliver this years commencement address. Forman
became Vermonts first teacher to receive the National Teacher of
the Year Award when President George W. Bush presented her with the honor
last year. Forman has spent the last year speaking on education topics
throughout the country and abroad as part of her duties as national teacher
of the year. Among many other accomplishments, Forman recently started
and will continue to teach a not-for-credit course in Arabic at MUHS to
an average crowd of roughly a dozen students. The students, who go to
the class at 6 a.m. once or twice a week, study Arabic culture out of
personal interest. Forman teaches it on her own time. She said learning
and teaching the Arabic language has provided her with a new historical
and cultural perspective, which she incorporates into many of her classes
at MUHS.
Following
Formans address, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree will be conferred
upon Raphael Confiant, associate professor of Creole at the University
of Antilles-Guyanes in Martinique and a founding member of the literary
Créolité movement.
Middlebury
College Professor Emeritus of Music Emory M. Fanning will accompany the
commencement procession and recession on the Mead Chapel organ.
Middlebury
Colleges first Language School, the German School, was founded in
1915, followed by the French and Spanish Schools in 1916 and 1917, respectively.
Since then, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic programs have
been added. Next summer, a ninth school, the Portuguese School, will open.
The language programs follow an immersion philosophy, at the heart of
which is the Language Pledge - a formal commitment to speak, read and
write only in the students respective language of study for the
duration of the summer session.
Middlebury
also offers language programs at the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad
located in Buenos Aries, Argentina; Paris and Poitiers, France; Mainz
and Berlin, Germany; Ferrara and Florence, Italy; Irkutsk, Moscow, Voronezh
and Yaroslavl, Russia; Getafe, Logroño, Madrid and Segovia, Spain;
and Montevideo, Uruguay.
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