I think Middlebury professors are extremely accessible to students. We come to a place like Middlebury because we want to have those interactions with students, whether it’s in the classroom or getting to know you better outside of academics, or providing mentorship for both your career at Middlebury and beyond. Those are the type of interactions that we love. And so we try to provide lots of opportunities for you to have those types of interactions with us. So obviously, in the classroom, that’s one way that we interact with you. But we also have office hours, which are just times every week where students can drop in and talk to us about anything that they want, whether it’s questions that they have about material from class or anything else that they wanna talk about. And most professors have way more office hours than the minimum required, because we just wanna give all of our students opportunities to come. You know, I schedule my office hours based on when students are available to make sure that they can all come and talk to me. And I give students extra credit for class if they come. ’Cause I just want an incentive for students as much as possible to come and have those interactions with me. Lots of professors also have interactions with students outside of class. So like, in the Computer Science Department, we have a barbecue every summer for students who are doing research with us on campus. And I’ve had lots of coffees and lunches with students to just talk about what’s going on in their lives and what they’re thinking about in terms of summer internships, or what classes to take next semester, or whatever they wanna talk about.

One of the reasons I chose to come to Middlebury was because the beautiful landscape we’re surrounded by. We have the Green Mountains to our east and the Adirondacks to our west. Coming from Texas, it’s entirely different than anything I had ever experienced, but I’ve loved the opportunities to go swimming in local swimming holes in the summer, hiking in the fall and spring, snowboarding in the winter, or sledding down the hill in front of the chapel. On the weekends, a lot of times we go to local farmer’s markets either here in our own community or in one of the surrounding communities. I’ve also had the opportunity to volunteer in the local community and get to know people that call this place their home and it’s really safe. I feel comfortable walking home with my friends after a night out, coming back to campus or driving a few hours away down to Burlington with my friends. It’s been a wonderful place to be ingrained in for the last four years, and a lovely place to call home.

As an institution, Middlebury supports inclusivity on campus. For example, first gen, low income first-year students have access to a preorientation program called First@Midd which specifically supports them in their transition into higher education. And beyond that, all year round, students have access to plenty of affinity spaces on campus, such as LASA, the Latin American Student Association, as well as BSU, the Black Student Union, and so many others. And beyond that, Middlebury has a financial commitment to supporting inclusivity. For example, right now, I am currently pursuing an unpaid internship in Costa Rica that I otherwise would not have been able to pursue had it not been for Middlebury’s commitment to inclusivity in so many different ways.

Hi, my name’s Alex Draper. I am the chair of the Theatre Department here at Middlebury. And I’ve been asked to make a short film about where on campus experiential learning takes place. And one of the places is right here in Seeler Studio Theatre where we rehearse, and produce, and present plays. And all of the productions we do in the Theatre Department count as classes. So the students are taking them as an official course. And their time put into rehearsal is recognized as such. And in addition to that, all of the classes that we teach have a practical experiential component. So that everything you’re studying, you’re actually putting into practice in some way. If you’re a costume designer, you are designing, drawing, producing costumes. Same thing, set design, playwriting, acting, directing. All that is applied to work that is actually up on its feet and presented in class or to an audience. In addition to that, the department’s very lucky that we have in the outside-of-the-classroom part of experiential learning, we have a professional theater company, PTP/NYC, that’s been in existence for 34 years now, where we take a company of actors made up of half Middlebury College students and half equity actors. We rehearse up here in New York for three weeks, and we take two shows to New York City and run them in rep for five weeks during the summer. And through that process, students get to take all of the things they’re learning in our classrooms here and apply them to very real-world situations as a small theater company producing work in front of live audiences and reviewers in New York City. So I’m sure there are many more examples across campus of great ways in which experiential learning takes place here, but that’s just a few of the examples from here in the Theatre Department.

Living in a dorm is just so much fun. There’s just endless possibilities, and you really have so many opportunities to really create connections and foster community in your dorm. And there’s just so many people who wanna help when needed and are always down to hang out with you. And you honestly get to get really creative with your living space. And you just make memories in your dorm that will stay with you for years to come. And there are just so many support systems in place, such as your RAs, which are student staff members, and they’re always ready to offer resources and supports for you. Like I’m an RA, for example, and I love talking to my residents, seeing how they’re doing, and just knowing what’s going on with their lives. And there’s also just so many opportunities just for different places to live in dorms here on campus. There are the townhouses, there are special interest houses, and academic interest houses, such as the gender studies, Spanish, Portuguese, and there’s also social houses here, which are really cool to live at.

I think the art scene here is really great. It’s super easy to get involved in, and there are always things going on whether it’s a faculty show or a student-run show. We’ve got a student-run theater, the Hepburn Zoo. I’m in an a cappella group, the Middlebury Mischords, and sometimes we have shows. There’s just so many different ways to get involved or go see something. A really great example of this is we have Nocturne, which is an outdoor arts festival in the spring where students who have been working on dance performances, like, pieces of art, or people will sing or do scenes and they present all over campus, and you can walk around and just see what everyone’s been up to.