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.

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.

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.