Profile 1
Subtitle
AcademicDeptName
This is your headline that positions your department in the context of Middlebury’s academic mission, ideally in an active voice that speaks from the user’s perspective in terms of what they will gain from the experience.
This is introductory language that gives an overview of the department. Much of what you currently have on your home page is perfectly appropriate here, but should be much shorter. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ipsum dolor sit amet ipsum dolor sit amet.
Spotlight
This is where you could feature something timely, such as a recent award, a new program or initiative, or faculty/student research. You can then link to a place in the site where that info is expanded on.
Link.
Announcement!
This is where you could put temporary important information that you want students and faculty to see right away, such as deadlines or upcoming schedule changes.
More about Announcement
Carousel Example
Profile 2
Subtitle
Profile 3
Subtitle
Profile 4
Subtitle
Learning Goals
Department has three key components:
- Advanced competency in X, Y, and Z.
- Broad exposure to A, B, and C.
- Deep engagement in critical thinking.
Learn more about our Learning Goals.
Themed Panel
Themed Panel
A themed panel is a great way to show multiple aspects of a related topic, such as featured courses, upcoming events in a symposium, or alumni activity around the major. Here we highlight that Department has a range of courses, from introductory XYZ to independent study for juniors and seniors in the major.
Video Group
A video group can show multiple perspectives of the department in a single place. The actual videos can live on an internal page that can be linked to OR each video can link to the appropriate page, such as Student Resources or Alumni Highlights or News and Events.
More about What’s Happening
Dance Company of Middlebury
Transcript
All videos require a transcript for accessibility. Communications can help you with that.
Pursuing Your Passions
Transcript
This is my first Spring Symposium. I really love being able to come and see what students have been working on for so long and what they’re passionate about. I think it gets that why you go to a liberal arts school is the ability to do research, and talk about it, and have other students come and listen.
It’s been really cool seeing classes that I’m in relate to the research in other classes that’s completely different, yet somehow it has a baseline of similar information and themes.
I think it’s pretty cool that people pursue things that they care about individually and studied on their own instead of just doing things that we do in class which is just obviously awesome as well, but you get to really see what people’s individual passions are.
I’ve got two friends actually presenting right behind me. One’s doing something on calcite bearing veins. He’s a geology major. Other one is doing economics research in the forests of Tanzania, so it’s just a really awesome experience.
As a presenter I felt like I had put in so much work and time into finishing my thesis and I wanted something as a culmination to present and share my research and findings.
It helps me better understand my own work, having to present it to people in terms that make sense to the general public is something you don’t do in class, and so the symposium is great for that.
I am presenting mine on Kamishibai, which is sort of humorous Japanese storytelling and this is a very niche sort of area that I really wanted to share it with people. And so being able to share my enthusiasm with everyone else around me and get them to appreciate it as well, is really meaningful to me.
I’m an econ major. It was interesting getting a lot of different perspectives. I was in a room that was all about gender and so it was interesting getting perspectives from people that study sociology, gender and sexuality studies. So I think getting feedback from people outside of your discipline on your research is super cool.
The Spring Symposium to me is the best of Middlebury. It’s when everybody comes together with their ideas, with their passions, and it’s one big party. So it combines the fun-loving, the openness, the intellectual rigor, and the sense of sport all in one thing.
Winter Term Adventures
Transcript
Coming soon.
Middlebury’s Carbon Neutrality
Transcript
The goal to become carbon neutral started in 2007. It followed on the heels of an earlier goal that was set in 2004. And when it looked like that goal was going to be achieved, because the trustees approved funding for the biomass plant, students went to Ron Liebowitz, the President of the college of the time, and said we should have a new goal.
Our new goal should be neutral by 2016. Ron was impressed enough with the students arguments that he said, I’ll give you 20 minutes in the next trustees meeting, you better be prepared.
And he guided them a bit about things to be ready for. And he said, I said to the students, there’s one board member who will ask you the first question.
And the first question will be, what if we don’t get there, and how will we deal with that? And so the students made their presentation, and the board member put his or her hand up and said, so what happens if we don’t make it? And the student having had a little bit of guidance, a little of anticipation, Ron mentioned he was really proud of this, said that we actually haven’t figured that out yet.
I completely remember feeling really intimidated and unprepared. And what do we say, what do we do? And getting questions that I didn’t know the answer to. And just needing to really be grounded in this is the right thing. At the end of the day, this is the right thing to do.
And the mechanics of how it gets done, and the timeline, and all these variables that have to be negotiated by people who know the technical details, leave that piece to them. But our role as students was making a moral demand that here is Middlebury, this strong leader in sustainability, and here is a very obvious and concrete step the college can take.
And we wanted the college to do it. And I think that’s, for student organizers, that is your power.
The trustees essentially said, we’re interested but came back to us in February, and show us how we’re gonna do it.
There was a deep belief that figuring out a way to get to carbon neutrality was exactly how we wanted to be positioned.
But the idea that we didn’t quite know how we were gonna get there was obviously the hurdle.
At that point they formed a subcommittee of these students, and some people from the board, and the college, who worked on that question, and essentially came back and said look, if we don’t do anything more than biomass, we could get to carbon neutrality by buying somebody else’s offsets.
We don’t wanna do that, but if we did, here’s the risk, and it was about $200,000 a year. The trustees said well, we could be comfortable with taking that risk. And that’s when they adopted the goal to become carbon neutral by 2016.
Because we were an early innovator, the learning curve was steep.
Because we decided that this at the beginning would be inclusive and participatory process, that always makes the process longer and more complex. It also improves it significantly. Ultimately, we got the carbon neutrality through two major steps. One was we switched our fuels primarily to wood chips and biomass to heat and power the campus.
Now the second thing we did is we permanently conserved 2,100 acres of forest land.
By preserving the Bread Loaf Lands last year, will be credited towards our carbon reduction, instead of buying carbon credits somewhere else.
Along the way, there were dozens of things that we looked at and tried.
We had to really spend a lot of time figuring out how to make the biomass plant work well. Today, it works really well. It works better than the manufacturers specifications for it.
The biomass plant came online in late 2008, and the intent, the original design intent of the biomass plant was to displace half of that number six oil, a million gallons a year.
With 20,000 tons of locally sourced renewable wood chips.
So the actual operation plant had a bumpy first year. There were a lot of technical obstacles we worked through. But by about 2010, we’d shattered those barriers, the plant was up and running. We’d reached our goal of 20,000 tons a year.
And as I reflect back now through those times, I mean last year nearly 24,000 tons of wood chips, only 600,000 gallons of number six oil received. So it’s really moved forward.
So here we are today, we’re carbon neutral by virtue of having switched our fuel to biomass, done efficiency projects invested in renewables.
And we’ve conserved 2,100 acres of land to do that. And I think in the process we’ve created our own internal form of offsets. We’ve done this by taking advantage of the assets, and the resources we have within the college to do it. And I think we can be really proud of the way we’ve gotten there.
When you look at the past decade that we’ve been talking about this, you really see that although individuals have changed, and students have come and gone, the commitment, and the methodology to embed this decision making process, and higher learning, and in problem solving, is that’s the golden nugget.
An awful lot of carbon neutrality is definitional. If by some definitions, there’s plenty of work still to do.
What else is out there? What else can we do to continuously push the envelope? I think our success is due to, we don’t stop. We, new students, staff, faculty, the facilities, the operations of the plant, always looking to push the envelope.
For us, it gave us this experience of leadership, and asking for something of the President and getting the answer that we wanted. Which for when you’re getting involved in activism, that’s kinda the best thing you could hope for, is that through your work the decision maker says yes to what you’re asking.
And so I think that helped make a whole generation of Middlebury students really active leaders on the climate movement.
We’ve created a pathway that other institutions can learn from. And I think it demonstrates that an institution can really do something on its own to contribute solutions to this problem.
As I’ve experienced this community, we can do almost anything creatively if we put our mind to it. Particularly when it comes to environmental goals, and environmental ethics. So I’m delighted that we are as an institution now thinking about next steps beyond carbon neutrality. And I want everyone to stay tuned as to what we do for the future.
I really believe that carbon neutrality is a continuum that we’re on. And it’s just part of something more that we’re going to be doing. That it is a place that became catalytic, and brought this community together at its very best. While this seems like a milestone, and an endpoint, it’s not at all.
We’re probably in infancy of what Middlebury is gonna be doing. And that’s even more exciting.
Using Charts
This is one of the chart options available for showing information. In this version, we created a chart group of three numbers charts.
178
Students in the major
40%
of majors working in the field
$2483
grant funding
This is a visual way to share statistic information.
Statistic Block Example
- 95%
- Statistic number one
- 7.543
- Statistic number two
- $538
- Statistic number three
Meet with Faculty
A Call to Action (CTA) group component directs users to specific areas of interest or importance within the website.
Faculty Office Hours