
Experiential Learning
Leadership, creative thought, and intellectual risk taking: these are skills Middlebury students are eager to develop throughout college and beyond.
At Middlebury, we support student creativity, engagement, citizenship, and career and life preparedness by equipping students with the knowledge, attitude, optimism, skills, and experience they need to launch successfully into a life of meaningful and rewarding work and purpose. Our staff are educators, advisors, mentors, and connectors.
How will you apply your liberal arts learning?


Center for Careers and Internships

Innovation Hub
A Week in the Life
The Experiential Learning Centers support students in engaged learning in and out of the classroom.
What does that mean?
The Center for Careers and Internships (CCI), Center for Community Engagement (CCE), and Innovation Hub share glimpses into their wide-ranging work with students, faculty, and community partners.
A Week in the Life

The #MiddVantage program features students interviewing alumni representing a broad range of career roles and organizations about their career fields, paths from campus to career, and career advice they have for current students. A great example of student and alumni collaboration. Highlighted are a few of the 40-plus student interviewers who make these programs possible: Courtney Gantt ’22, Charlotte Gray ’21, Sophie Bardetti ’22, Eli Horton ’22, Eva Morgan ’22, and Katherine Morris ’21.5. go.middlebury.edu/MiddVantage

Experience summer in Vermont with one of the MiddWorks for Vermont PAID internships! CCI works closely with Vermont employers to offer summer internships for students to gain the knowledge and skills needed to be successful in making lasting change at the local or state level while working to further the missions of the organizations they are serving.

We are excited to announce that CCI has a NEW HOME in Kitchel House! Stay tuned for more information as we plan our move and settle into the new space this summer.

CCI Peer Advisors Cindy Cardona ’22 and Zoey Ellis ’22 approve Nicholas’s résumé after providing help during Quick Questions. Come visit virtual Quick Questions at go.middlebury.edu/qq for résumé and cover letter help!

Page One Literacy started a new collaboration project with the students of Mary Hogan Elementary School. Members of the club sent home book-based craft and literacy kits to its young participants to engage in educational activities this spring.

Language in Motion (LiM) members hosted a weeklong virtual Youth Citizen Summit for Addison Central School District and created workshop plans to explore how governments promote or deny human rights. LiM students also developed a friendly interactive “Global Expo” website where LiM participants can share customs, activities, and languages from areas of the world where they have lived, worked, and studied.

This spring semester, Community Friends started its Story Hour book activity for mentors and mentees! Each coordinator on the board took turns reading a book selected from the Social Change Books: Teaching for Change booklist every Saturday of the semester from 11 a.m. to noon. Mentors and mentees joined in to listen to a read-aloud and participate in a short activity.

MiddVolunteers have been serving on multiple projects this semester. For their first in-person volunteer event, students helped WomenSafe with a mailing project by helping stuff, seal, and stamp envelopes.

Daniela Morales ’21, Marissa Smith ’21, Mollie Ockene ’21, and Cathleen Huang ’21 work as a team to analyze data from the 2021 Community Health Needs Assessment, a collaboration with Porter Medical Center and other local organization partners. Daniela is leading the effort as a teaching assistant through CCE’s new Community-Connected Project-Based Learning pilot program.

Nutritional Outreach and Mentoring (NOM) continued its monthly Zoom cooking class this semester. The program also received funding from the Center for Community Engagement’s Flex Fund to expand their cooking class to more Mary Hogan Elementary School families! They provided a record number of 22 families with meal kits to cook together.

As my project consisted of learning about COVID-19, its outcomes, and its impacts on the Indonesian community across cultural backgrounds, I was connected to Ms. Tri, who works as a community health worker. Her expertise gave me the opportunity to speak to many individuals, primarily women and girls, who are currently faced with the realities of the pandemic and the inaccessibility of medical services in rural West Java.

Trishabelle and two of her executive members for their startup organization, Project PUSO, aimed to bridge community and solidarity among Pilipin@/x/- peers. They met to discuss monthly game plans, membership involvement, and the upcoming second annual virtual conference in August!

As part of the Middlebury Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, we all had the opportunity to reflect and share our project’s progress! I had a chance to discuss my project, Higher Ed Meets Hiring: Disability Wisdom for Bridging the Gap between College Students with Disabilities and the Workforce.

Daniel Gutierrez ’23 founded Iluminar Coffee in January of 2020. The idea was simple: provide amazing coffee without breaking the bank and highlight the producers that make our bean juice possible. With this relaunch, thanks to you, we are able to give a quarter of our proceeds to organizations that foster community, support, and empowerment; they will be announced when the web store opens on May 1.

Sam Kamau ’21 has spent his time as a Social Entrepreneurship Fellow fostering innovation in Kenyan high schools through Ridhika, a youth empowerment program he started the summer of his first year at Midd. Through its school chapters and a blended curriculum of coding, leadership, and design thinking, Ridhika seeks to create and nurture East Africa’s next generation of innovators.

Students from the MiddCORE J-term 2021 cohort Zihao Yuan ’24, Tinglin Shi ’22, and Derek Ban ’24 get together for a meal in Ross. Zihao and Derek have stayed close after working together as members of the same Life Prototyping groups!

TEDx Middlebury board members Jackson Mumper ’22, Irith Fuks ’21.5, and Sophie Lavine ’21 prep for the Student Speaker Competition.

TEDx Middlebury board members and judges check in during a break at the 2021 Student Speaker Competition.

Anujin (AJ) Byambasaikhan ’24 gives a five-minute speech at the TEDx Middlebury Student Competition.

Mini-workshop: Andrew Juarez ’24.5 participates in an oratory workshop run by a team of Oratory in Action classmates.

Oratory In Action: Gillinda James ’21, Ciara Carlson-Healy ’22 and James Flaumenhaft ’24 prepare for a series of in-person presentations.

Zack Einhorn ’21 and Ben Yamron ’21 review designs for Eat Local VT, a mobile guide to over 200 local farms and food producers they helped create alongside the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACORN). The student-run project is the first for the Middlebury Development Club (MiddDev), a new student group on campus.

Nestor Orozco-Llamas ’23, Hannah Brady ’21, and Michael Gallagher ’21 of the Middlebury Development Club (MiddDev) look over the code for the Addison County Community Table, a student-run project that aims to provide a centralized online ordering system for local restaurants.