Deepening Roots: How CCI Helped Grow the Community Roots Apprentice Fellowship
In The Perennial Turn course (ENVS 0332A, co-taught by Marc Lapin and Bill Vitek), students are asked to imagine change. The assignment is simple but profound: write a short pamphlet urging direct action on an issue that matters deeply to you. What surprised faculty and staff wasn’t the topics students chose, but the vulnerability with which they wrote. “Many students were writing about stress, anxiety, and disconnection,” said Lisa Winkler, Community Program Director for New Perennials.
One student wrote about the urgent need to build emotionally communicative relationships to learn how to cope together.
These were students whose formative high school years were shaped by the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many learned remotely. Some never attended their graduation in person. The sudden leap into a rigorous, in-person, socially conscious liberal arts environment proved jarring and, for some, overwhelming. Those student reflections became the seed for what is now the Community Roots Apprentice Fellowship (CRAF), a collaborative program between New Perennials, Middlebury College students, community practitioners across Addison Country, and the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI). Launched in fall 2024, CRAF offers something increasingly rare: time, trust, and learning without the pressure of grades or productivity metrics.
Learning Beyond the Classroom
CRAF brings together a small cohort of students, typically five second-and third-years, with five local practitioners for approximately ten weeks and 25 hours of apprenticeship. Together, they explore questions rarely centered in traditional coursework:
What can we teach each other outside the classroom? Where do liberal arts education and creative life intersect? How do connection, belonging, and purpose shape lifelong learning?
“CRAF offers apprentices and practitioners an opportunity to explore, question, teach, and learn in a collaborative context free of limitation,” Winkler said, “while nourishing deep roots in communities and classrooms.”
The fellowship spans disciplines and sectors. Recent pairings have included students working alongside leaders at Vermont Adult Learning, the Middlebury Area Land Trust, Town Hall Theater, the Yoga Equity Project, and Caleb Kenna Photography. Each partnership is intentionally open-ended, allowing projects to emerge organically from shared curiosity rather than predefined outcomes.
A Moment That Captures the Purpose
For Winkler, one presentation from this year’s cohort captured the heart of the program. Student Elia Meyer-Arrivillaga ‘27.5 partnered with Natalie Reigle, Regional Director of Vermont Adult Learning in Addison County. At first, the two weren’t sure where to focus their efforts. Rather than rushing toward a deliverable, they spent time listening – to each other and to the needs of adult learners navigating a new proficiency-based education model.
What emerged was an unexpected idea: building bridges between Middlebury College departments and Vermont Adult Learning classrooms.
Elia met with staff at the biomass plant, faculty in Bicentennial Hall, and colleagues at the Observatory, exploring how the everyday work of the College could serve as hands-on learning resources for adult students. Together, Elia, Natalie and Vermont Adult Learning teachers created tours, lesson ideas, and a network of campus contacts willing to collaborate long-term.
“The benefits go both ways,” Winkler explained. “Adult learners gain access to non-traditional learning experiences and Middlebury faculty and staff for meaningful partnerships with a local education organization.”
Most importantly, Elia and Natalie developed a relationship grounded in shared goals. One that continues to generate impact beyond the fellowship itself.
Relationships That Keep Growing
CRAF’s influence doesn’t end where the semester does.
In another pairing, student Ariella Frommer ‘28.5 and Joanna Colwell, founder of the Yoga Equity Project, are planning a spring 2026 fundraiser – Tree Pose in the Trees – to support yoga accessibility for communities historically excluded from wellness spaces. The event will likely take place at The Knoll or on land stewarded by the Middlebury Area Land Trust, connecting multiple CRAF partners in a single act of mutual support.
Similarly, student Claire Lee Perry and Kristin Bolton, Director of Elderly Services in Middlebury, continued working together after their fellowship ended. What began as a loneliness survey expanded into a larger research project, which Claire later co-presented at the 2025 Health Equity Summit in Burlington.
These relationships are based on curiosity and trust. They allow people from very different stages of life to exchange ideas laterally, and to create something that changes them, and hopefully their communities, for years to come.
CCI’s Role: Making the Work Possible
The Center for Careers and Internships plays a critical role in sustaining CRAF. Through grant support, CCI funds stipends for both students and practitioners. $400 for each student and $750 for each practitioner.
“That support communicates that we value everyone’s time and energy. It allows participants to truly lean into the work, ” Winkler said. By investing in non-traditional, community-rooted experiential learning, CCI helps ensure that programs like CRAF are accessible, not just to students who can afford unpaid opportunities, but to a wide range of learners and mentors.
Redefining Success
For a program intentionally built around slowness and non-transactional learning, success looks different.
“Success is the coming together of two people who have never met,” Winkler said, “who come from different moments in life, and who through curiosity, build a relationship that changes them both.”
As CRAF continues to evolve, the team is thoughtful about growth. Keeping the program local feels essential. Scaling up raises questions about capacity, funding, and how to preserve the intimacy that makes the experience meaningful. What’s clear, however is the impact.
“We know this program is valued,” Winkler said. “We see it in student applications, in survey responses, in the quality of the projects, and in the genuine admiration participants express for one another. The relationships, and the roots, are deepening.”
In a time when many students are searching for grounding, CRAF offers something quietly radical: a way to learn how to belong. “I know what community feels like from home,” said Elia Meyer-Arrivillaga. “CRAF helped me start finding that here.”
Apply to the Community Roots Apprentice Fellowship
Curious about how stories are reported, pollinator habitats are restored, recovery communities are supported, or what meaningful, place-based learning looks like beyond the classroom?
The New Perennials Community Roots Apprentice Fellowship (CRAF) invites Middlebury students to explore these questions, and many more, through a paid, community-rooted apprenticeship during the Spring 2026 semester. Fellows are paired one-on-one with local practitioners for an open-ended, creative exploration of community, meeting approximately 2–3 hours per week (about 20 hours total). Students receive a $400 stipend, and preference is given to second- and third-year students.
This semester’s practitioner partners include:
- The Addison Independent
- The Bridge School
- Turning Point Center of Addison County
- Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community/Gather
- Bee the Change
Application Deadline: Sunday, February 12, 2026 at 10:00 PM
Mandatory Orientation: Tuesday, February 17, 4:30–6:00 PM at 23 ADK
Students interested in deepening their connection to place, people, and purpose are encouraged to apply. Learn more at newperennials.org/student-fellowships and submit an application at go/CRAFSpring26.