Stories and Highlights
Read these stories and testimonials from some of the students, faculty, and community partners involved in community engagement with the CCE.
Community Partner Spotlight
The Center for Community Engagement is fortunate to partner with a network of over 200 organizations, both locally and internationally. This Q&A series highlights the work of our collaborators and what successful partnerships through the CCE can look like.
The Vermont Beaver Association began in 2024 when a small group of beaver enthusiasts organized around the need to raise awareness of the ecosystem services beavers can provide in Vermont landscapes. In the spring of 2024, the Association partnered with Donovan Wood ’24, a student in the CCE’s Community-Connected Learning Course, to develop a website.
We sat down with our Community Partner, Beverly Soychak, co-founder of the Vermont Beaver Association, to talk about the collaboration, the positive impacts the website had on the association, and what made the partnership successful.
Q: Can you give some background on the website project and how it came about?
A: After creating the Vermont Beaver Association, we were like, how are we going to get people involved? How are we going to get people to find us? What are we going to do? So we started a working group - we’re up to 25 different individuals across the state of Vermont, consisting of people from land trust organizations, river conservation, ecologists, biologists, and infrastructure specialists, and colleges. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. It’s been really wonderful, but we had to have a way to connect everything and display all of the work. As a startup nonprofit, we never would’ve been able to afford a website. We were calling around getting quotes from $8,000 to $10,000.
It’s really expensive and we wanted it done right. We didn’t want something that was just hacked together because we were hoping that this stays around and that it’s a channel for everybody to go to. So the partnership that we formed with [the CCE] was just perfect timing, and we gave the student that we worked with free rein to do whatever he wanted.
New Community Project
At New Community Project’s (NCP) Sustainable Living Center in Starksboro, Vermont, a small but dedicated team of staff and many volunteers focus their efforts on finding local, sustainable solutions to address rural poverty, food insecurity, and energy poverty within the community.
Read the Q&A with Pete Antos-Ketcham, the coordinator of NCPs the Starksboro Center.
Community Engagement Organizations
The CCE supports 15+ student organizations that contribute to the public good. Read student leader reflections on how community engagement work has impacted their lives and the lives of others.
Charter House Coalition Student Organization.
The Charter House Coalition Student Organization directly supports the Charter House Coalition (CHC), a local non-profit that provides shelter, nutritious meals, and friendly faces to those in Middlebury who need assistance.
Saturday dinners at Charter House have truly been one of the highlights of my time at Middlebury. Every week, I’m reminded of the incredible sense of community here—among the dedicated Charter House staff, our wonderful volunteers, and the residents who make each dinner memorable. - H.S. ’25
Middlebury First Responders
Middlebury First Responders (MFR) is for students interested in emergency services or who are employed as first responders.
EMS has profoundly shaped who I am, but I’ve only been able to continue such tough work because of the support of my coworkers and mentors. I hope MFR can provide the same foundation for others… my ideal is to also create a space where people feel camaraderie and support. - W.S. ’24.5
Page One Literacy Project
Page One is on a mission to spread literacy and creativity and foster a love of reading in local elementary school children.
Page One is a way to share my love of reading and books with kids, an activity that I find extremely fulfilling. Reading brought me so much happiness and joy as a child. I also love the way in which Page One connects me to the broader Middlebury/Vermont community in a way that I otherwise would not be able to do. - K.S. ’26
Yellow House Community Club
Yellow House Community Club (YHCC) partners with the Yellow House Community, a residence for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
I chose to join Yellow House Community Club because spending time with the Yellow House residents always brightens my day and uplifts my spirit. They are some of the most loving, kind, and compassionate people I have had the privilege to form a connection with. Through our YHCC activities, we create moments of genuine connection that remind me of the power of community and shared joy. -E. N. ’25
The Clifford Symposium
The 2024 Clifford Symposium: Student and Faculty Reflection
Matt Lawrence, Associate Professor of Sociology and Academic Director of Privilege & Poverty (P&P) at Middlebury College, facilitates a conversation with former P&P interns Ellie Cady ’25.5 and Freddi Mitchell ’25 about their involvement in the 2024 Clifford Symposium on Home, Housing and Belonging in Middlebury and Beyond.
ML:
Hi, Freddi. Hi, Ellie. It’s good to see you again. We were spending a lot of time together over first few weeks of the semester and over the last year, really, for the, the 2024 Clifford Symposium. So it’s nice to have a chance to reconnect and to debrief and work reflect on what that experience was like.
My name is Matt Lawrence. I’m the Academic Director of the Privilege and Poverty Cluster at Middlebury, and I also teach in the sociology department. Do you each want to introduce yourselves?
EC:
Sure. Hello, I’m Ellie Cady. I’m a Senior Fab, and I’m studying psychology with minors in Global Health and Spanish.
FM:
Yeah. And I’m Freddie Mitchell. I’m a senior studying international politics and economics with a minor in French.
ML:
And we were three of the organizers for the 2024 Clifford Symposium at Middlebury it was titled to Home Housing and Belonging and Middlebury and Beyond. but we had some other organizers as well. So we were joined by Jason Duquette-Hoffman, who’s an assistant director at the Center for Community Engagement. Professor James Davis from the Department of Religion. Professor Erin Sassin from the Department of Art and sorry, the Department of Art History and Architecture and Professor Pam Berenbaum from the Global Health Department and the Global Health Program. And so we’re really focused today on your role as students in the development and the planning of the symposium.
Why don’t we talk a bit even before we get into speaking about the symposium itself just about how we all connected the ways that the Privilege and Poverty cluster in particular brought us together. How did you all become involved in the P&P cluster?
EC:
Yeah, so I had attended a few different events that was hosted at the, that were hosted at the CCE before becoming involved with the Privilege and Poverty cluster. So I was able to talk to a lot of students and former interns who have worked at a variety of different nonprofits in Addison County and had really enjoyed their experiences. And I also really liked that it had a capstone aspect to it. So it’s not just the summer internship experiential learning piece that you are able
to receive, but also you have to take a few classes that will give you a better understanding of what you’re experiencing during your summer internship. And I really like that aspect of it. Oh,
FM:
And so I hadn’t been involved in the P&P academic cluster before during my internship,
but I ultimately thought the internship was something that I would be interested in just because of the way to gain experience sort of in the field of public service by working directly one-on-one with individuals in the community. And I also had thought about a lot about going to school in Addison County in Vermont, and feeling a little bit detached from the local community. And I thought it would be a great way to get to know Middlebury a little bit more.
ML:
That’s great. I mean, that sounds like why we do in P&P especially this idea of experiential learning being really a centerpiece of a Middlebury education, that you take some classes related to some interests. You do an internship and then you come back and share what you did and learned during that internship with the rest of the community. And that, that community connection is such a big part of it. We don’t have a major or minor in Addison County Studies. So, you know, those students are trying to make those connections and understand this place.
Where you’re living for four years or maybe longer, embedding that in some kind of service opportunities. That is really what we are trying to do in P&P and what we’re trying to do throughout the Center for Community Engagement.
So the Clifford Symposium focused on this question of housing and housing affordability, housing accessibility, now something that both of you were, working on during your internships. What did you do for your internships?
EC:
So I was placed at the Charter House, which is a low-barrier homeless shelter in town. So there are a lot of individuals who were experiencing housing insecurity, substance use disorders and link other issues. And I was able to have a lot of sit-down conversations with them and hear about their own individualized stories of how they came to be at the Charter House and what their futures or what they hope their futures would look like. I also was able to work directly with the director of the Charter House and hear more about some of her goals for Addison County and some of the challenges that many of the residents and guests at the Charter House face.
FM:
Yeah, so similar to Ellie was working a lot on housing over the summer. I was working with Addison Housing Works and Addison Housing Works is a local non-profit dedicated to owning and maintaining affordable housing in Addison County. So they as an organization provide many of the people who have passed through the Charter House or John Graham shelter with a permanent home. And so I got to learn throughout the summer about the different resources available that fund affordable housing one then being the low income housing tax credit. And I did a lot of research for that on how that money was funneling down to the state of Vermont how it was, how the criteria that are set in different states in New England and how they compare to the state of Vermont and maybe what are the roadblocks to affordable housing development.
And I also want to interact a bit with their different clients. Definitely a little less than Ellie did. But I think that that is just the nature of Addison Housing Works as an organization and their role as housing developer rather than a service provider. and getting to see that and making the connection cause we lived together over the summer between our experiences and how services, but also providing permanent housing are so intertwined was definitely a major theme that came out.
ML:
Was housing an issue that you had come across in classes before the internship? Was it an issue that was interesting to you before the internship?
EC:
Yes and no. In your class Inequalities of the American Dream, which I, I think I took the year before I had my summer internship. We were introduced to or we started reading the book Evicted by Matthew Desmond. And that’s based in Milwaukee, which is my hometown. And it was the first introduction that I had into what some of the real challenges that people are facing who are housing insecure and why they became housing insecure. I had grown up, I have grown up in Milwaukee, and so I never really thought more about why someone became housing insecure. I would just drive through some of the neighborhoods and have my own assumptions. And I think that really changed how I thought about people who were getting evicted or who were experiencing homelessness. But I don’t think I became very involved with the issue of housing and still having the experience of the Charter House and hearing about how there are so many individuals there that have full-time jobs who are making more than the minimum wage but still could not get housing who still had been at the Charter House for one or two years, even if they were actively looking for housing. And that part I just could not wrap my head around. And you know, through many conversations with the guests at Charter House and with the director and with our class reflection discussions, you know, it became so apparent that these ages all were revolved around the lack of housing in Addison County and beyond. You know?
FM:
Yeah. I definitely felt like in my classes housing, it wasn’t necessarily the central theme,
and that’s just the nature of the fact that so many issues are, exist in this world. And a lot of our class at Middlebury are very theoretical and can apply to the multitude of experiences that people have, but in a, I’m an IP major So we talk a lot about the 2008 global financial crisis, and I think that’s where I became the most knowledgeable about housing,but I sort of saw it as this very, like, commodified thing. and I think it’s important to see it in yes. in an academic light like that, but also see it in the real world as a, you know, a home for somebody, a sense of belonging what it is on an individual level and not what it is in the sense of you know, creating a, like mortgage backed securities and like, you know, financial contagion and a whole mess. So definitely like I saw a difference between what I learned in my internship and what, what has gone on in my classes.
ML:
So, you both had some understanding of the centrality of housing to questions of social and economic inequality. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, both on both the local scale and on perhaps a global scale.And even with the connections to the Desmond piece. Right. One of the things that Matthew Desmond says in Evicted is that we have really failed to appreciate how important housing instability and housing insecurity are to the creation of poverty that housing, uh, instability is both a cause and an effect of poverty and that is something that came up quite a bit in our summer reflections. Right. So you mentioned that you were living together for that summer, but, uh, we also had several other interns, in our, in our local internship program, uh, as well as several interns in our, in our national program. and one of the things that I like most about working with Privilege and Poverty is the chance every week during the summer to bring everybody together to talk about how your experiences are going. And you’re exactly right then with your cohort housing kept coming up. So whether students were working on food insecurity issues or when they’re working on domestic violence issues, whether they’re working on issues related to migrant health, housing was the thing that you all kept talking about. Uh, and that’s why, Ellie or Freddie in particular, I remembered that one day that we stayed a little after one of those reflections and you said, I wanna figure out some way to share the conversations that we’ve been having with the rest of the campus. That’s really the moment that I think ofas the origin story of the Clifford Symposium.
Why was it so important to you to extend the conversations that we were having as a P&P cohort to extend into the experiences that you were having in your internship with the rest of the campus community?
FM:
I think it was important because Privilege and Poverty in my internship with Addison Housing Works allowed me to understand and not shy away from the fact that there is a housing crisis and immense housing insecurity going on in Addison County which is a, a very rural place, a place that a lot of students don’t necessarily connect with as what their home town looks like, or you know, where they call home. And so I thought that it would be a good idea to, you know, find a way to make more students aware of what was going on and how it would, how it related to their lives. I think the college can sometimes be very separated from the town, even though we have things like the Privilege and Poverty program this is one of, you know, not very many ways to get involved, and it feels hard to get involved when you’re just, you know, a student trying to get through college. And so I felt like having an event of that sort would allow people to connect what they’re learning in their classes with what’s going on in the community sort of bring Middlebury back to, um, the place that it is in, and not just wrapped up in the global, world, which we seem to be wrapped up in, in a lot of our classes but make connections between what we see as the world’s most challenging problems, and how they might be going on in our own backyard.
ML:
For those of us who know you it is probably not surprising that you took on the most ambitious version of bringing these ideas back to campus. And some of the other ideas that we knew we discussed over the summer were, were smaller in scale. We talked about just doing a library exhibit or a library exhibit. We talked about maybe doing a session during the spring student, we talked about maybe having some kind of like takeover in different classes on a day where we asked faculty for the first five minutes of their classes to talk about affordable housing and housing instability. So there were different ideas floating around. But there was something about this ambitious three day symposium That’s the, academic kickoff for the school year that felt like it really captured your imaginations. Once you knew that it was a possibility of doing a Clifford why were you, why were you interested in joining on it?
EC:
Yeah. I think especially after my experience at the Charter House and going through the, we had a reflective class, a half credit class in the fall that following fall. I felt like I, I wanted to do something. We had been having conversations all summer. I’d seen these experiences that were happening in our own backyard, and I didn’t know exactly what I could do as a student at Middlebury College. And so when Freddie began talking about an idea of the symposium, I was very interested, one, as Freddie had mentioned, I think students were already talking about housing in some kind of way, and how it was affecting our Middlebury community mainly being that, the Grill and dining hall were having different closures because they didn’t have enough staff to support their hours that they wanted to have. And so I think students already felt, I would say fairly passionate about this, but weren’t specifically saying it was a housing problem. And so I felt like this was an issue that will really engage a lot of students, but also professors and community members in a way that I’m not sure any other issue could. And so I was really excited about it and I wanted to, to become involved
ML:
The way that we convinced other folks on campus that this was gonna be an, a potential issue that students will care about, that staff will care about, faculty will care about that would engage community members off campus was for the proposal process. So unlike some of those other things that we were thinking about as ways to, to connect those conversations to the rest of campus the Clifford Symposium required a full proposal where we had to convince members of the administration that both that we could do this work and that this was important work.
So let’s go back to the development of the proposal. What were the, what were the key things that we were putting into the proposal as we, as we collaborated on it that were really important to you?
FM:
I think just I mentioned a little bit before but connecting it back to why are we at Middlebury and why are we learning about things that we’re learning about? And what are the subjects that Middlebury students care about and how are they connected to this issue of a housing crisis and a sense of home? And I felt like in the proposal, especially because it started off more being this housing idea we needed to find a way to sort of bring that back to like how that intersects with all different disciplines. So housing is not gonna be brought up in your hard science classes, you know, explicitly or in your dance class, but what every student has in common is this idea of a sense of belonging. Um, and so I felt like that was a very important part to add into the proposal, was this idea of a sense of belonging and how that is intertwined with you know, the environmental movement, the migration crisis that our nation is going through and just our lives as students living on a college campus, a residential campus, and having different Communities that we call home.
EC:
Yeah. I think it also, like you were saying about for this multidisciplinary engagement with so many students, and I, I think it’s a issue that students from many different backgrounds
and interests can collaborate on and can and feel like they have some sort of piece or some sort of contribution that they can make to it based on their own experiences. I also think that we wanted to include community voices, and so, you know, we wanted to have a symposium where it wasn’t just an academic piece, but also bring in, you know, the real lived experiences of individuals who were affected by, and are affected by the housing crisis. and I think we did a pretty good job at intertwining the two.
ML:
Yeah. Definitely. I think that, well, you, that that moment when we figured out that it couldn’t be called housing, had to be called home. That was a big day. Yeah. Because I think it really allowed us to move from this being a P&P symposium, to P&P opening a campus conversation. and really finding some way that everybody would feel, or many more people would feel like they belonged. Yeah. To double down on that idea of belonging, and community involvement. And I really do recall some of those conversations, both in person and our many Google docs where, you, you kept reminding the faculty on the organizing committee that like, this can’t just be academic. This can’t just be theoretical. Mm-hmm. And I think especially like when I… what I kept thinking about the Clifford is the opening academic program of the year. Uh, there was some way there was supposed to be that intellectual kick-off Yeah. That I wanted that theoretical piece. Yeah. but that, I think one of the things that P&P shows, the experiential learning shows at the Center for Community Engagement shows, is that real stories of people’s lives can be the entry point to theoretical conversations. It doesn’t have to go that other way. And so I think that was a really great contribution that you were making to our organizing planning committee.
What were some of the specific events as we started putting together this calendar of three days of programs, what were some of the specific events that you thought would be really appealing to students?
EC:
I would say, I would say some of the panel discussions would be really interesting for students to be able to connect with policy makers in the state of Vermont, um, professors and just so many different individuals that have some you know, involvement with this issue would be really interesting for students. And I think we saw that in the two panels that we had on Friday afternoon. There was a lot of student engagement. Just watching some of these students vigorously take their notes during some of these panels was really encouraging to see. And having students come up to me after asking for the presentation slides and, um, you know, really feeling like they, they learned something from these panels.And I, I also was really encouraged to hear some of the very thought provoking questions that students asked. And they asked of these policy makers, which was a really cool space that we had created. And so I think the panels did a really good job. Not that that wasn’t, there were other great events that happened during the symposium, but I think the panels did really well.
FM:
Oh, I definitely agree about the panels but also the specific panelists and speakers that were invited by the planning committee. I think that those were some pretty great decisions, made especially Dr. Davarian Baldwin definitely I think allowed students to really think about the context that we live in as Middlebury students in a town where the college is the, I’m pretty sure it’s the largest employer in Town, um, second to the hospital. But beyond that, I really, what I really enjoyed was this, the dinner. The closing dinner that sort of allowed people to, we came off of the two panels that day and people had gotten a lot of information but they allowed people, they allowed me specifically, but I think others to, to connect with those that were coming from different places in the whole realm. So I was at a table, um, with some local leaders, a leader, Kevin Chu, who he leads the Vermont Futures Project, but I was also at the table with someone from Vermont Humanities, and then a couple of Middlebury professors and, you know, another Middlebury students. So hearing everybody’s perspective on this, was, was really interesting. ‘cause I felt like that can be a lot of polarization and having conversations together over dinner and talking about Gather and connecting it back to, you know, the Vermont stories and, was really powerful.
ML:
There was a moment because we were running around like wild for two days, before that dinner. And I, I remember also a moment when we just sat down at that dinner and I think Professor Davis just kind of called the room to order and set a tone for that event that brought the reflection that we had done during the summer. Yeah, back to the campus. I think that’s, that was the goal. Like, there was this moment where I just thought during that dinner, like, wow, we, we pulled it off. Yeah. I think we all, we all came together and did this thing that several months before just seems like a faint possibility to be honest. And one of the things that I keep hearing from people who were at that dinner, from people who were at the panel, from people who were at events throughout the weekend is that student involvement in this Clifford Symposium student engagement in this Clifford Symposium was one of the big reasons why it was so successful. You talked a bit about why you think student engagement and why this issue of housing in particular was something that would appeal to students. But what other ideas or advice do you have thinking back now, about why student engagement was so high this time?
EC:
I think that students were really involved because many students care about Middlebury and the community and the institution, and they want to see Middlebury College doing something. And I think what we did a really great job with with the symposium is we struck a balance between not blaming the school for their inaction or for potential actions that were harmful against the community, but also providing information on what the school could also be doing. And I think that really excited a lot of students because it, it gave hope to a lot of students that they, that they wanted to do something and and two, that their institution could be doing something and also that their institution was already doing something. So I thought we did a really good job at demonstrating that balance. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of students who were really excited to become a little bit more connected with the Middlebury community in that way whether that be through some sort of student engagement club that volunteers in the community or continuing these conversations.
FM:
I think also if you compare this symposium to symposiums in years past sometimes the symposium is seen too, as like too intellectual in a lot of ways and too academic and I think it turns some students off to it because, you know, it usually happens towards the end of the week and, you know, everybody’s going through their classes and some of these topics don’t feel very real to their daily lives. But we, we formulated an idea of the three of us and the rest of the planning committee that was applicable to everybody. Just the idea of belonging and home and housing, it’s applicable to every person on this planet. And so I think that that had a lot of to do with it, but I also think Middlebury students are pretty active and care a lot about a lot of issues. And I think we did a good a job of, you know, catering to the student mood of you know, being a little bit more active and, wanting to be out there in community these days and wanting to take action on issues.
ML:
I also remember the ways that you made sure that there were gonna be multiple ways that students could be involved. So as we were putting together the proposal, it wasn’t, you know, we had two panels Like, and two pretty academic panels. But we also had a breakfast at the Charter House Club organized, I remember you being really involved with that. We made sure that the SGA knew about a lot of the events, you were really involved with that. You both collaborated very impressively on the exhibits that were up in the library and in Bihall. So even just physical entry points into the content if you’re on the science side of campus, or if you’re in the data library, you’re going to know, some of the key fact about housing based on the posters that you had, you’re gonna hear some of those individual voices you want to bring in. So even just thinking about how, you know, what are the, what are the ways that students are gonna be navigating this space during the week leading up to it and then how can we take advantage of that to be able to recruit them to the events? Your perspectives on those kinds of issues were I think really critical, as well.
So one of the things that I was struck by during the symposium, you know, I kind of went into it expecting that a lot of the panelists were gonna say, we’re not doing enough, right? Mm-hmm. We have this housing crisis and like, it’s just something that we finally need to deal with. And actually, what a lot of them said was, we’re doing a lot. There are so many things in Addison County in the state of Vermont that we’re trying to do, to combat housing instability and housing insecurity and housing affordability. But there’s still a lot more to when you think about your next steps. But when you think about the next steps that other students can take what do you want to be thinking?
EC:
You know, I, we had this conversation the other day at dinner that we went to with some other P&P interns who had also helped us out with the symposium. And at least a common theme that came up for me was collaboration. And I think we can put our best foot forward as students if we collaborate across different student organizations instead of, I know there was an idea that floated around of creating a new club, but I think it would be more beneficial to collaborate across groups that are already working in the community, whether that be the Charter House Club or Midd Volunteers. Um, there are many that already do really incredible and crucial work for the Middlebury community that could partner together and I think would be a stronger force. and I think also just recognizing some, some of the, the actions and some of the jobs that have already been, excuse me, some of the work that has already been done, for the housing crisis. And there are so many people in the community that are doing so much like the direct service providers. And I think recognizing that is also really important. And I think we, we did a great job of that in the symposium.
FM:
I mean, something that my Privilege and Poverty internship showed me is there is I mean, Vermonters have a very positive outlook on issues, and it’s really, it’s really helpful in the way that they, come together as a community, There is a lot to be done still for just making sure that everybody has a home in the community. And it definitely has factored into what I care about. And also what I want to do with, you know, my life as, I’m a senior. And also I, I’m now doing a thesis about housing regimes in Europe. And that was not my planned trajectory freshman year. Yeah, I think definitely this whole symposium has made me think a lot about how are, how is what I’m going to do in the future related to helping others and that direct service component. And am I just going to forget about everything that I did during Middlebury? Am I going to bring that into my role? Am I going to stay in Vermont? Lots of questions. And honestly, it’s made me think a lot more about like, what am I gonna do? And like, become like a little bit more, I don’t really know. But I think that’s really, I, I’m kind of embracing that these days because I, I thought
before I came to Middlebury that I was gonna like go to college, become a lawyer, and do something related to government. And while I, I do think that I still want to do something in public service, I think that I’m just sort of going to embrace where I’m needed and where I can contribute. And the symposium and P&P internship really validated my want to help people and just feel involved.
ML:
That’s great. I know that we’ve been talking about the Clifford Symposium, specifically but hearing you both answer that question I was remembering back to both of your P&P interviews instead of any Clifford-specific things we talked about. Right. And so to, to hear the kind of full circle that you have notated with the P&P experience. Going back to those days when you were just thinking about whether this was something you wanted to do to now really being the examples of how P&P students but other students on Middlebury campus can do this in the future has been a real privilege for me to be able to work with you on. So thank you very much and best of luck with everything in the future.
EC:
Thank you. And thank you, Matt.
Privilege & Poverty
The Privilege & Poverty Academic Cluster (P&P) is a learning community that brings classrooms and communities together to address the causes and consequences of poverty and cultivate lifelong ethical participation in society. P&P students are placed in internships either locally in Addison County or nationally through the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty (SHECP).
What students are saying about the P&P internship experience:
This internship was the most transformative two months of my life. Each day I learned something new about the law and its deep-rooted inequities, especially how it hurts marginalized communities in the South…The experience was especially impactful because it allowed me to apply my political science studies to real-world applications.
- P&P Intern with Georgia Legal Services Program
This summer, I had the opportunity to work as a teaching assistant in the afterschool program at Americana World Community Center in Louisville, Kentucky. My responsibilities included planning and facilitating educationally enriching activities for youths … and managing administrative tasks such as attendance tracking, course instruction, and field trip coordination. Reflecting on this internship, I believe it has significantly enhanced my understanding of poverty and immigration, and how these issues intersect with family education and youth development.
- P&P Intern with Americana World Community Center
Privilege & Poverty Intern Experience
Privilege & Poverty intern reflects on her summer internship with the Charter House.
Hello, my name is Ellie Katie, and I am an intern at the CC this fall. I also interned at the Privilege and Poverty Academic Cluster over the summer where I was placed at the Charter House, a low-barrier homeless shelter there. I worked on a variety of things, like supporting the shelter staff as well as the shelter guests. I also was able to sit in on some of the housing coalition meetings that different nonprofits across the county had, and this was really beneficial to gain a better understanding of some of the work that different nonprofits and service agencies are doing across the county to help support individuals who are housing insecure.
I am a psychology major with global health and Spanish minors, and this internship at the Charter House was something that I was initially interested in. I felt like it suited some of the skills that I already had, and I was in the process of exploring different potential careers that I might that I might have in the future. And that’s the beauty of the Privilege and poverty program because you were able to take some of the skills that you have and some of the interests that you have and find a job and an internship that really is suited for you. It really has provided a lot of guidance to me and what I want to do this fall. I’ve been able to continue some of that work as a CC intern and it connected me to so many different individuals across Addison County and in Middlebury. I felt much more connected to the town that I’m going to school in and even developed different relationships with people in the program.
When I first found out that I got the internship and I’d be in Middlebury, someone told me that living in Middlebury is during the summer is a magical time. And it really was. I was able to explore different areas of Vermont, get into open water, swimming. I’m a I used to swim and a swim team so I was able to start open water swimming at Lake Dunmore in the early mornings and explore different hiking trails and different swimming holes and also got to meet so many different people who are working here over the summer. There are so many people here over the summer, so it is wonderful. If that is something you’re worried about, don’t be. It has been such a lovely experience. It experience that I could not recommend it more. If you do have any questions about any part of the application process or even if you want to know more about the work of the Charter House where I worked over the summer, I created a comprehensive guide of the work that I did with different resources. I can pass it along if you want to review that before applying, but I’m also able to answer some more general questions as well. My email is e, o, c, a, d, y, and Middlebury dot edu. Again, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be happy to have a meeting or just answer some of your questions over email.
Good luck applying.
Cross-Cultural Community Engagement Grant Recipients
Every year, the CCE supports a wide variety of student-directed initiatives centered on intercultural service-learning, community-building, and advocacy through the Cross-Cultural Community Grants (or CCCE Grants).
CCCE Grant: Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Center
Internship reflection.
How did you hear about the CCCE grant?
Originally, I was trying to find grants for summer internships because what I was doing was pretty expensive. And I went to CCI first. But they said that they couldn’t fund an internship that was fewer than like eight weeks, I think. So CCI recommended that I find the cross-cultural community engagement grant and I read through it and I realized that it actually did apply to the internship that I was doing, and I thought it was a really great way that it was a rolling basis so I could kind of apply whenever I wanted to. I think I did it pretty late because I didn’t know about it, but it was a really easy process and I could fill out the application and then everyone got back to me pretty quickly. It was also really helpful to propose a budget. I think that was kind of nice because then it catered exactly to what I needed and I didn’t have to feel bad about having extra money left over from something else or like if I needed slightly more than what a different grant could give me.
What skills did you learn at the Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Center (WSORC)?
There were a lot of things that I learned here, not on the academic side of things, but I was living on this kind of remote island and it’s very different from any other community that I’ve been in. It’s very isolated. It’s it’s like 7000 people on the whole island. And it was just a totally different way of living that I wasn’t really prepared for, nor was I like expecting necessarily. I think that coming from New York City, it’s very wealthy. And so is Middlebury, but here it was kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. I saw some pretty extreme poverty and it’s just not as safe. So it was just really interesting to navigate being in a culture [where] … all you only use [is] cash and then if the bank runs out of money, it’s just that’s what it is. I learned a lot about how to travel as a solo person and just navigating it myself, and there are of course resources for people to help me. But I think I learned a lot about how to travel to a different country when you don’t know much about it and it’s vastly different from your own. It was also really interesting because everyone there … it was mostly locals and then maybe some people who came for diving. So it was a completely different culture. And I kind of like that too. It was something that… I’d never really been in before. It’s a different pace of life. It’s so detached from electronics and like nobody, not very many people … use their phones a lot or they even have phones. So it was an experience where I felt more connected to the ocean and the other people because nobody was on their phone all the time. And instead, it was just kind of living in the real world and it’s kind of everything but condensed into a smaller area and a smaller community.
I thought it was really fun to go exploring around the island with my friends and kind of learn about all the different cultures that exist and all these people’s different histories because some people were like locals to the island, and also a lot of people from mainland Honduras. And then there were a bunch of tourists who were like from all over. In my internship specifically, some of us were really from the US, but I also had friends from Greece and Brazil, so people from all over. So I was getting to learn about like their past diving experiences and like what they’ve done in like coral restoration and kind of their whole life story that’s completely different from mine.
I think one skill I really did learn about was how to work with somebody on their project and kind of contributing. Knowing that I’m working for them because there is one person who’s the research assistant and he was doing his master’s in nurse shark behavior research, and every intern at the end of the internship had to present a research project that they did, and you can do whatever you want. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be like conducting some lab experiment. But I worked for this person on his nurse shark behavior research, and I was looking at underwater cameras that were that were at a specific location. And I was looking at like behaviors in tag sharks and like, filling out a sheet for him. And I think it was really interesting to kind of have that dynamic of research where you’re working with somebody. You need to have time to plan, work together and meet up. But at the same time, they’re obviously the person who’s kind of in power. So everything kind of still defaults to them. And I still have to be somewhat on their schedule. And it was also interesting because as a research assistant, he was also kind of our mentor. It was an interesting dynamic of a friend, but also somebody I’m working for, but also kind of a mentor, just balancing all of those different things and figuring out like what kind of friendship and relationship I’m going to have with that person. And that was one thing that I learned.
Another skill that I learned was honestly just diving skills. We did 40 or more dives while I was there. So you’re diving a lot. And I think from before I got there to like at the end, I was a much more competent diver and I feel much more prepared to go out in the future and be able to restore coral reefs and health and more like scientific diving because I’m not just like trying to figure out my buoyancy and stuff. I can actually go out and be helpful and not just be this extra person that’s kind of disrupting it or like too focused on my own ability to dive, then be able to carry things and help put ointments on or propagate coral trees and stuff like that.
The entire internship is supposed to be marine conservation. So we did a bunch of different activities throughout that were all geared towards conserving the ocean. So I think in environmental and also community impact was we did a lot of work with locals, so we did a beach cleanup where we it was actually really sad. We were cleaning up the north side of the island and there were so many microplastics and just so much trash. And we did it for like a couple of hours. But by the end, it still looked like we hadn’t made a dent, which was really frustrating, really sad. And in the end, it’s because it all comes like the currents come and crash on the north side. So that’s where it’s all coming from. It just piles up. But the sad part is it’s also a turtle nesting ground. So it’s really tricky because there’s so much trash and these turtles are just not going to survive. Their beach is just so damaged. But I think we left. We were making an impact, even if it felt like nothing we were still helping the community, helping by cleaning it up and for the coral nurseries that are partnered with another organization. We were there on some days and then other organizations would come on different days and we’d kind of all work together to keep the trees clean and to put the corals on. So there’s a lot of work with the locals, which I appreciate because I think sometimes internships go in and they do their work and then they leave, but you don’t actually get to interact with the people who are living there.
I thought it was really valuable to be able to talk to locals, kind of hear their stories, hear their views, and the fact that my internship is working with all of these other organizations that are based in new to us so everyone can kind of communicate and figure out the problem because conservation is not just for one organization to fix. Everyone really needs to work together, get ideas and brainstorm. So I appreciated that. And I think that helped positively impact the community and also the environment. In terms of what we did, we we did a lot of conservation work in the reef itself. So I think that definitely helped the environment in that sense and the resource monitors a group of tagged corals and they have like a map of where all these corals are and they visit it once a month and apply the ointment and kind of document them, take photos to see like if stony coral tissue loss is spreading or if they’re kind of doing okay.
With that monitoring system, it’s really helpful because some of them are recovering, which is shocking because the diseases like pretty fatal, but the ointment stops the spread. It doesn’t, it doesn’t like cure it, but it stops incidents. Sometimes the coral can then recover. So I think we did a lot of good work there. And then in terms of lionfish, they reproduce so quickly they can eat a ton and nothing sees them as a predator because they’re invasive. All of the organisms in the reef just don’t even consider them. They kind of just look at them and don’t realize that it’s a predator and then the lionfish eats them. Nurse sharks in the end can eat them, but they won’t recognize them as food on their own. But if one was presented to another shark, it would eat and it would be fine. So I think that the whole goal of the internship was to do active restoration in that sense, but also the educational aspect. So when we would have lectures and stuff, a big emphasis was how are we going to teach this to other people and other communities? Not necessarily just even in New Taylor But when we get home and like talking to people at school and raising awareness about coral reef conservation, but also how humans can kind of limit their impacts on the environment at large.
We discussed at one point how to interact with whale sharks because my internship, they helped create the laws of how you interact with whale sharks and how close you can get. And it was really interesting to have that discussion because they even asked us what we thought about those recommendations and if we agreed with them if there were things that we thought should change. And I really appreciated that because we’re students, they’re experts and they were still consulting our opinions and what we thought. And it was an open discussion. And I think that kind of open discussion and collaboration in science is super important. And I thought that was a good step and a good role model for other organizations to do that and for future conferences and science to have kind of an even playing field for everyone to contribute their ideas.
How did the internship resonate with you? Did it influence the direction you want to take in your studies or career?
WSORC was purposefully my attempt to do field research after I did lab research in the coral area of study. But I think this internship really helped me choose my career path a little bit because doing this, I realized for sure that I love the field research side. I love diving. I want to be in the water all the time. Going down into a coral reef is like nothing else. Like it’s it’s beautiful. It’s just so enjoyable and it’s a different world down there. So I think this internship really taught me one more about what I want to do in the future. And I’ve known for a while that I plan to get a Ph.D., go to grad school, and have it be pertaining to coral reefs. I think this really helped me realize that I really like the field research. I like learning about coral reefs. I don’t mind going to school for a longer amount of time because it’s so rewarding to make a discovery or to learn something that will help other people combat this crisis as well. And so this was kind of just building my skills from previous summers, and it kind of all stacks up as stepping stones towards where I’m going to go in the future.
Now I’m planning to start my thesis during Jay term, but this summer I will be doing more field research and doing the research aspect and collecting data for my thesis, which is on tissue loss disease in to genuses of coral … in Hawaii, but there hasn’t been a lot of research on tissue loss disease. But also these two genuses are never mentioned in literature. So the goal for this is now to take all the skills I’ve learned in the past few years in research in the lab and research in the field and tie it all together for my thesis, where I’ll be able to do some lab research, go in the field, collect data, refine my methodology, and then hopefully produce a paper that has some findings that are relevant and helpful for the scientific community.
So I think all of the diving skills that I’ve learned, all the classroom skills, of course, all the baseline knowledge about coral reefs and about different marine ecosystems and how they interact are going to be helpful and especially learning a little bit about tissue loss disease from two years ago and then last year because not much is known about it. We think it’s bacteria born. Then there are some pieces of literature that kind of contradict that. So there’s a big mystery about tissue loss disease. So there’s a lot of room for discoveries and to research it. So I’m really excited to start the summer and I think that the work helped me and prepared me for my thesis.
What advice do you have for students interested in applying for a CCCE grant?
Advice for applying for a CCCE grant I would say is to find an internship that you’re really passionate about and that you’re excited to write about because in the application process, you really want to have something to say, but that you truly mean. And I think that when I’m writing, I know the difference between when I’m writing something, I’m like, I have to write about this topic, but it doesn’t interest me versus when I’m writing for my heart and writing about things that really matter to me. And I think for this grant there are a lot of essay questions and prompts that are asking you to reflect on yourself and how this internship will affect you and the people around you. So I think having an internship that you’re excited to go to and you’re very open to learning new things, having new experiences, being uncomfortable and reflecting on that in the application creates a way more genuine application where the reader really gets to know who you are and what you’re passionate about, your values and those are all really important to share.
I think the application process overall went really smoothly. I think having a rolling basis is really helpful because whenever you get your internship and you confirm it, then you can go and apply for the grant so you don’t have to wait a long time or like be stressed about a deadline. It also kind of incentivizes getting it done early to be one of the first people to apply. Knowing that I was someone who was applying really late last year, I still was able to get funding. So I really appreciated that. It wasn’t all gone by the time I was going to apply. It was also really helpful to reach out to the people who could help me and answer my questions. So I would email a lot and I would get really quick responses that would help me with my application. And then you propose a budget, which I thought was helpful because it made me do a really solid breakdown of how much I would actually be spending there, which is helpful for myself. Anyway, it was also great because I could ask for an amount of money that was appropriate for my internship so I wouldn’t have leftover money that I didn’t know what to do with and felt badly about because I took it away from somebody else. But also if I needed slightly more money than some other grants, I was able to ask for that and it made me feel more confident, confident about doing my internship because I knew I had support from Middlebury and the CCE. So I would say start the process early because that’s always important and be in touch, be excited, and write from your heart and write what you think is important to you. I always find it easiest to write everything out on paper and then go and refine it afterward because some of my most genuine thoughts are the first things I write. So that would be my advice. And then there’s a budget template. You can look at that, but if you need help, I always ask either my parents or I reach out to the office and they’ll gladly.
Newman Civic Fellows
Shivapriya “Priya” Nair ’24
2023-2024 Newman Civic Fellow
Priya’s first experience with community engagement at Middlebury College was through the CCE’s Community Connected Learning course, where she helped run student groups at Mount Abraham Unified High School in Bristol, VT. Priya was also involved in Language in Motion, and was a Community Connected Project Assistant for an Environmental Studies course. She won a Public Service Leadership Award in 2022, and was named Middlebury College’s 2023-2024 Newman Civic Fellow.
“Throughout all these experiences, the real shining impact in my life was all the impressive and uplifting friends and mentors I was meeting. I had electrifying conversations about social, environmental, and health justice with people who became my best friends.”
Alumni Stories
Alumni Stories: Language in Motion
I think that if you step outside and become part of the community in a bigger way, you’ll find that your world widens even more and you can get even more experience beyond just the campus. - D.S.
After I came back from studying abroad in Ferrara, Italy in the spring of my junior year. And I think I came back and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after graduation and sort of became interested in teaching and heard about it I think just from an email from the CCE or some kind of advertisement, and I thought it would be a good way to, you know, kind of reflect on my experiences abroad and also get some experience in the classroom and figure out if that was something I was interested in. I was excited about the idea of kind of taking some of the things that I had learned while studying abroad about language. And I especially focused my lessons around food, which was something I was really excited about exploring while I was there and sharing it with some local students in Vermont. I know that travel is a really helpful way to kind of broaden your view of the world and the idea of taking a little taste of that to students in Addison County sounded like a great experience, along with kind of testing out if being in a classroom and teaching a lesson was something that I enjoyed. I went to a high school classroom and it was a bunch of different language students who opted in to come here the presentation, I was really nervous ahead of time because I’d never done any sort of lesson like that before, and the kids were super engaged. It was a lot of fun to share these things with them. They had a lot of questions and I just remember leaving feeling really comfortable and the teacher who had been in the room there, like told me I did a good job, and that kind of boosted my confidence too. And it was a lot of it was a lot of fun to share that with those kids. I think it’s really important for kids to learn about all kinds of different cultures and places, and my experience that I was sharing was about a culture that I had visited and gone to live in for a short amount of time. But I met a lot of other cool people through Language in Motion that I wouldn’t have met otherwise lot of international students and it was really cool to see them share their experiences living in other countries and growing up other places And now that I’m teaching, I’m teaching a lot of global history and it’s really cool to see kids kind of open up their imaginations and ideas of the world to places that are very different from Vermont and very far from Vermont.
And to see them kind of think about those ideas and make sense of them. And it just sparks a lot of curiosity and desire to travel and learn about the world and I think care for an understanding of those who are different from them and getting students that exposure to all kinds of cultures and people and languages from a young age I think can create a lot of empathy and understanding in them. It was the first time that I ever had to create a lesson. And going through that process and having support from the CCE to go through that process was super helpful, especially not being at an education major, an education major, wanting to maybe do that after graduation was that was a really helpful experience and it made me think about how to engage students and like that underlying kind of push of getting students to think about the world outside of them, I think definitely informs the content that I’m teaching now and the ways that I try to engage students in it. When I graduated, I wasn’t a certified educator and I still wanted a little bit more experience before I really took over my own classroom. So I did in AmeriCorps program in Newark, New Jersey. And I was working at a middle school there tutoring students in small groups in math, actually, which was a fun experience to kind of get into the classroom.
And then I joined Teach for America after that, and I was placed in Colorado Springs and taught high school psychology for a year and then English for a year I would say get involved as soon as possible. I didn’t enjoy Language in Motion until my senior year and aroundthat time I started to kind of look back on my first few years and I was busy doing other things, but I wished I would have gotten all of the CCE initiatives and programs.
And I think just to really put yourself out there in the community. It can feel like Middlebury, I feel like it’s a little isolating at times, like it’s a really great community and it’s a lot of fun and it can feel really fulfilling to be a part of it. But I think that if you step outside and become part of the community in a bigger way, you’ll find that your world widens even more and you can get even more experience beyond just the campus. The more that you do and expose yourself to in college, the more experience you get, of course, and continuing with that advice, try as many different things as possible and then you’re more likely to land where you want to be after graduation.
Alumni Stories: Community Friends
[Community Friends] actually helped Middlebury feel like home because it was a little bigger than yourself. You kind of got to not worry about yourself for a couple hours a week … -K.W.
What’s it like being back in Vermont?
It’s wonderful. I mean, I loved my four years in Vermont, but I’m not a huge fan of the cold. So being back in California is great. And I think in my adult life, my experience and I get to explore totally new nooks and crannies, California is huge.
What is it like being back in Vermont to teach a J-Term Course?
It feels like returning home in a different sense. I think Middlebury is a very special place where exactly like you said, you see the same faces. You have a lot of the same experiences but with a little more perspective. And then you do it sort of from a different angle. So it’s been wonderful to be back and teaching Middlebury students it’s, like nothing else, it’s a really special, engaged group.
How did your time at Middlebury and involvement with Community Friends inform what you are doing now?
So at Middlebury, I was a geology major. Now, I think they expanded the departments to Earth and Climate Science, but that’s the department I graduated from. and a lot of my work in the geology department and my work was set up for community engagement. Community Friends sort of oscillated between hard science and also environmental justice and society impacts and sort of trying to create that bridge between the two.
So my senior thesis was looking at groundwater contamination, in Costa Rica and now my PhD dissertation is also focused on water quality issues but in a place a little closer to home and in California, the overarching theme being there needs to be a chemist or a geologist who’s going to do the science so that it can inform policy and change, and make sure that there’s, you know, simply a human right to drinking water.
Did you feel prepared for your PhD program coming from Middlebury?
Absolutely. Yeah. I think, primarily the senior thesis focus is really a unique experience. It’s like basically a master’s thesis. You work for, like, over a year on a project, and you’re advised by a faculty member, but it’s student-driven and, research and fieldwork and lab work and questions and all those. So I think that really set me up. And then also like knowing sort of what pockets of campus to go to for resource accumulation, especially at Middlebury when there are so many wonderful things available. I think that’s a really powerful tool in grad school.
Did you know what you wanted to study when you started college or did you figure it out once you were here?
Absolutely I figured it out in my time there. Yeah, I think I came here with the goal of being a chemistry major, which is in line with the STEM science side of things. But I took Natural Hazards my first year, which is sort of like the intro level geology class, with Professor Kristina Walowski, who showed me a really cool way to look at science through the human perspective.
So, yeah, thinking about hazards, you know, they’re caused from Earth’s natural earth cycles. But they impact people on an everyday basis. And I think that bridge, sort of swayed me away from chemistry, which I couldn’t quite see as [being as]impactful… [I] just fell in love with the geology department. Yeah, I sort of went from there… And you get to go hiking for labs and things like that. So that was a really cool way to explore Vermont.
How did you get involved with the CCE and Community Friends?
So I had always worked with kids in high school. I was a varsity coach in the summers and, before college I worked at a summer camp. And I just like I’ve always said, my favorite job in life is being a summer camp counselor. Yeah, like, that’s where I’m the happiest. That’s where I think I’m the best. I do bring that a little bit down to the professor. My freshman year in campus, one of my teammates lived with a swimmer who was named Melissa D’Annunzio, who was another community friends, student coordinator alum. And she just told me about community friends. And it was this program she does, and I was like, oh, that’s really cool because I was looking to connect more, with, yeah, young people in the community.
So I just, I started off as like, I’ll go to the info session and see what it’s about, and then quickly sort of got roped in and, fell for it, fell in love with community friends and was a mentor for a year. And then, jumped on the board. I think pretty soon after my first year. And then the spot opened up to be a collegian coordinator, when Alyssa left. So she actually the person who pulled me in initially kind of also was my, leader.
In that transition to especially as an athlete on campus. I sort of felt like my main social in time, sphere was in the gym athletic department and in geology and doing school stuff. But I was sort of looking for that third kind of connection to Middlebury as a town, outside of sports and school. And I think Alyssa exemplified how to do that really beautifully with community friends.
I think a lot of it was I loved the individuality of my relationship with Maggie, who was my community friend. And, you know, we were so each other every week for two hours, like, we were so good. It was so great. But I think, I love community and I, you know, community friends was like, bigger than just the one on one relationship for me. And so maybe I saw a little bit of opportunity in how I thought community friends could actually change. And so the pull was like, desire that, like, this is the best thing ever. And I’m, it’s serving me so much, but, like, we can do more. Yeah. And so I think that was like my first pull. and Megan briefly, who was the head of the at the time, was just really wonderful to and I think, a really fun person to get to know and work with. That relationship, I think she was like, well, this part’s open. And, this felt like a natural transition. I was a sophomore also, and, all the juniors were going abroad. So there was also sort of a natural sea opening up. and. Yeah, so grateful for that.
I think they were like, paramount to my, happiness and success and engagement in Middlebury. I think now, like I said, I had this, like, sports world in this really focused school world where, I loved it all, but, like, it just I wanted and I think I said this in the beginning of just chatting like that, coming back to home, I think many friends.
It actually helped Middlebury feel like home because it was a little bigger than yourself. You kind of got to, not worry about yourself for a couple hours a week or for me, you know, several hours a week with everyone else. But, you have to focus on something that was going to continue on, I think, like even coming back and seeing it now, you get to see the longevity of that, throughout time and also, I think college students, we take ourselves so seriously, as you know, at MIDD. Especially at Middlebury, like in basketball too. It’s like, you know, my body was exhausted and my brain was exhausted. But like, I got an opportunity to be a 17 year old kid for two hours a week, which I think was, looking back, one of the most important things in terms of maintaining a sense of, self-assurance. And just like an okay, this is a time to just kind of forget about the school and the sports. And just like, relax and be a kid. And also, you build this new appreciation of, like, the mundane things of Middlebury, like. Yeah. You know, for me, by Hall was a place they work every day for class and studying. But for Maggie, it was a place you would run up the stairs and throw paper airplanes and run back down and try and catch them. And just like you, you looked at physical spaces really differently, too.
Or like she found this room. And I think McCullough students in her that had like curtains everywhere and I think was like a room for a specific purpose, but we had no idea what it was and would play there for hours every week. So I think that, like, you got to experience this and nowhere to feel small. Yeah, I but you got to sort of like put a different filter over it when you’re with them, so
I think, yeah, I said this before, but I think that, like, balance of college is, really difficult and really tricky, and it can burden people out really, really fast. And, well, multiple reasons, I think, for the college student, passionate because it’s an opportunity to get outside your body, get outside your mind, engage in a totally different way that I think is like we should all be doing regardless of if we’re hanging out with a kid or not, but we don’t necessarily think we have the time or it’s a waste of time. But I think like building it into your daily schedule is really important for mental health and physical health. And, so that’s one of the reasons I’m passionate for the students life. And then we haven’t even talked about really the mental side of things, which is like such a unique relationship and experience for so many kids. And Addison County to get to experience, like, you know, what could be seen as this prestigious college on the Hill, but sort of debunk that myth a little bit, because when they’re when they come on the campus and they’re eating in the dining halls with all the other students, it’s just like the most fun, cool place ever. So taking the veil off of what, like the liberal arts college in their town has maybe over it, I think is really important. Yeah. And to build that trust between the college and the community, is, is an important part of part of. Yeah. Why? I’m passionate about it.
And I’m not from Vermont, so like and most of my friends in Middlebury were at Middlebury College, weren’t from Vermont either. I think I had one close friend from Vermont. And so I’m kind of an outsider moving to this place that I don’t really know. So I got to learn a lot about the place that I now call, you know, a second home from a seven year old. Because it is her home and it is where she, it’s from and continues to live. So yeah, that’s a cool. yeah. Just a way to see a new but familiar place. Kind of a few pockets. The first would be as a mentor and that one on one relationship, I think, like the simple joy of like, maybe childish or like young activities like now, in my I think they teach Intro to Water science class and like we do like a fill in the like, color by bubble thing of like the water cycle and like, just does like a first day introductory.
But these are 20, 22 year olds. But there’s something really inviting about, like returning to like, elementary activities. Yeah. at any age. So I think that skill I like bring with me, like, okay, it was actually really fun for me to do those, like, I can’t remember the name, but like the beads that you iron on for like hours on end and like, just because we grow up, we don’t necessarily lose the joy.
And now we just, like, get a little like maybe just. Yeah, so would be one thing. And then on the leadership side of things, I think, I learned so, so many skills I brought with me, for people management. I think being on the board and then being a leader of the board, I learned, yeah, from a pretty young age on how to, like, actually, like, manage people. I worked with Kylie, very closely. But then I sort of was like responsible for this group of ten people, some of which were older than me, some were younger than me, that were then responsible, you know, for 30 people themselves. But we I developed a way of, learning how to work with people, how to work with different kinds of people.
knowing that board meetings weren’t the place for everybody to share their ideas. and so the power of those one on one relationships, and in the organizational broader picture, and then the last thing I’d say also on the leadership team is that if you have an idea, just try it out. Yeah. And if it doesn’t work, you’ll deal with that later and obviously think through. You know, always talk to someone who’s more knowledgeable than is. So for me, that would be the, the faculty or the staff leader of your new friends. But like, we can’t. Kylie and I just came up with match day because we were like, there’s too many matches we don’t know what to do with. Yeah. and we tried it off and it worked.
It was awesome. I think that was sort of a skill I learned is like, if you’re in a leadership role, like be willing to shake things up, you willing to like go with the flow. And if there’s a lot of numbers, do something with the numbers. If there’s not a lot of numbers, you can go back or whatever it is.
So that sort of like, managerial, organizational, freedom, I think was a cool skill to learn from. My experience was, I was invited back by, Pete Ryan in the Earth and Climate Sciences department to co-teach a month long term class called the Geo Hazards of Costa Rica. and we. Yeah, dove in. It just ended yesterday. So we dove into, all the different hazards related to from the rich tectonic and geologic environment of Costa Rica and earthquakes and volcanoes and, tsunamis and coastal erosion and all the sort of things I don’t have to get into.
But, we worked in Middlebury for about a week, sort of doing student led discussion, and then got to travel to Costa Rica for almost two weeks, which was incredible. and then just returned back a couple days ago. So, yeah, I mean, so many, so many lessons learned and skills brought with me. I think the main one that stands out is actually what I just said. And response to your last question is sort of like, if you have an idea like, give it a shot. and so Pete and I worked really closely on designing this class, but he also gave me a sort of a young new, teacher a lot of freedom in designing the syllabus and and designing sort of the arc of the class. I think those are definitely skills I learned from time, community friends. And I’m just tired of Middlebury. Yeah. so that would be one thing. And then, yes, tying into community friends, too, I think just the power of experiential education. yeah. Is, you know, you can’t learn about rocks without being with rocks, or you can’t learn about a volcano without being on top of volcanoes.
So I think I got to see that really come to fruition and to see it in the evolution of the students understanding to which was one of the first times I got to witness that sort of firsthand, from the other side, like, see, you know, like geothermal energy, really click for a student. When we were standing under a huge 2000 meter deep. Well, so I think it was like, yeah, the you need to see it to believe it is sort of the the outcome, which I think ties into community friends in terms of just like, having those experiences, even talking about young kids coming to campus and have experiencing something for themselves, to be able to be like, oh, I could be a college student one day, or I could go to Middlebury and sort of that, that like experiential education.
Whether it’s community friends or not, there’s so many programs and wonderful organizations that are housed at the center for Community Engagement that, and that staff is so awesome that, like, if you have an idea or like, I’m interested in this, like there’s a way to figure out something that’s already going on or, support students and, you know, independent explorations outside of the organizations already in place. So like my first step would be on down to the CC.
Then beyond that, I think something I learned and yeah, it’s I said earlier, like I came from California to Vermont, I didn’t really know how this community work. They didn’t have a ton of experience in a small town from a big city. so just being willing to ask questions and whether that’s of the staff that you’re working with or of the kid you’re working with. Maggie taught me more about Vermont probably than like, any class I could have taken or about Ripton or Middlebury than any class or field trip.I think like being willing to be really curious and maybe like reverting back to the like I’m in a new place and I just want to connect sort of simplicity, I think is, is a powerful tool.
My third piece of advice would be do it with your friends. Do, something you’re interested in and recruit your friends to come along, because that always makes things more fun. Yeah. and I remember, like, by my senior year, I had gone, like, half the basketball team to be community friends. So then, like, at our big games, there was like, five kids there with their parents and cheering us on.
And, finding community within community is a is a cool thing that Middlebury splits up.
It was very abrupt. You know, we had you guys for 48 hours get off campus. So everything sort of happened very quickly. I don’t think I ever got, like, a full, like, a goodbye session with my mentee. I think we talked on the phone once.
I went back to California, but, and just emails and stuff, and she would tell me about what she was doing in class and things like that. But a lot of that magic and a lot of that closure sort of had to, yeah. And abruptly, which was which was really sad. I think, you know, it was a relationship.
I was super invested in for four years. So to not have like a final garage was that was a bummer. But, now she’s like almost 15, so we’ll see. but what else? I think, there was so much going on that community, friends, was such an important time for so many of us, and also because it was such a strong foundation, we could, like, set it aside a little bit.
So I don’t know exactly, but this is like the right answer. But like we we knew that community friends wasn’t going anywhere. Yeah, in the pandemic, we knew it would come back, whether that be in a different form, which I think it did. When you guys return to campus, or a few years later, which, like I see on campus now, it’s bigger and better than ever. That’s because of the 60 plus years of work people have put into it. Yeah. So unfortunately for, you know, six months, a year, maybe two years, it sort of had to be set aside. But once we return back to it and once, Maddie McKean and others, came back around, it just got bigger and better and stronger.
So much greater than me, it’s and that’s I think the first thing about community friends, it’s never one person. but it’s the board. It’s the staff at the CC, which really is the, the glue, keeps it all together. but yeah, that’s a that’s an analogy. I was going to use earlier is like the board is the glue.
And yeah, all the mentors are sort of the glitter and the, the part that makes it shiny and awesome. but for four years, you know, you get to work on building, you know, just building, you know, the library of community friends, bigger and bigger and bigger. some of the changes we made during my time here was introducing Match Day, which was really awesome.
And I will be honest, I came from a place of being overwhelmed. Our board was a little smaller. There was I was the only lead student, student coordinator, and Kylee was brand new to, I think that was a huge part of why Kylee and I sort of got to be a little bit visionary, because we were both like, you don’t really know what you’re doing.
I don’t really know what I’m doing. So let’s just do it the way we can, you know, within bounds. And Kylie gave me a lot of freedom and we just work together to drop these big ideas and really relied on the board to help follow through. and so, yeah, that match day, we increased our community friends, the team into our relationship almost double, I think in our first year together, and match day, I came back to what I said earlier around finding community within community.
One of our big goals, which I, I like to think was the legacy of the board that I was on, was actually creating a community of mentors, rather than just slipping these individual relationships. But like, look, there’s 150 or whatever other number of mentors on campus, who might have similar difficulties, but their mentees might have great ideas for how to work with a kid that hit sports, or a kid that hates eating in the dining halls and like there’s actually so much knowledge that can be shared and fun that can be shared, within the community of mentors itself.
So we tried to do that through the match day and just like some visibility around, here’s other people working with other people. Yeah. we tried to, encourage like we have like, dinners. And I lived in one of the big houses on campus, so got to kind of use the downstairs basement as, like, parties and dinners and, events and things like that.
So, yeah, create more of that relationship. Yeah. and then I think we also the other thing on more of the like logistical fundamental side, we, we started to include like identity based or affinity based matches in, our questionnaire. And I think that in the end that proved to be really powerful for a lot of, young kids, that is a, pretty homogenous place in terms of identity.
So the few kiddos that maybe, didn’t fit into that were able to come to us and say, we’re looking for someone with this identity or who has this experience or is from this place. and we made several matches within the first year, on identity and affinity based relationships. And I remember seeing that as a really powerful, sort of next step to community friends as you’re not matched with just a random person, but the kid in the family actually get a little more agency in who it is.
And not only comes because Middlebury students, they’re so awesome and from all over the place, they, we had enough of a, sample size to pick from. Yeah, to make that up. Yeah.
And I think it actually made for relationships that spoke longer. you know, there was a lot of times and this is early on in my maybe freshman and sophomore year when we had to redo so many matches because we hadn’t done enough pre work, preview work. and I think that, yeah, it required more from the board and required more from Kylee and I, but I ended up, you know, requiring less after the fact because we had matches that stuck for 3 or 4 years.
Right. just a semester. Just a year. So yeah, I think that would that would be my other piece of advice, going back a little bit and just be more intentional about the match making process.
Yeah. Besides, keep doing what you’re doing. It seems like. Yeah, I got to chat with you a little bit, just like the program is expanding. that continues to expand, which, you know, can be hard. Yeah, but is really a beautiful opportunity. for. Yeah, it comes back to this connection with the college and the community that is so important for all of us. You know, the college wouldn’t exist without the community. and I think that it’s not just giving back. It’s not just the generosity of students, but it’s really like thinking of it more as this bridge and of this relationship where it’s the generosity of the kids and the families in the community and of the students on campus sort of coming together. and I think, yeah, thinking about it more as, maybe less of charity, but more of, community work or not service. And I think that there’s a wonderful, future of community friends. We’re just every Middlebury student is inside a mentee when they mentor, nation grows, and then on the yeah, mentee mentors side, I think, like, you know, you can meet with your mentee, you know, ten times in a semester and you might run out of ideas. but know that the kid just wants to be with you.
At the end of the day, if you bring a Frisbee or a piece of paper and a pen, like, that’s good enough or nothing. Yeah, you know, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and how to hang out with an eight year old. You can just go for a walk on the team or use the resources that the season already has.
Yeah, I think just, you know, learn from this experience and don’t take yourself too seriously. I think, you know, even now in the role of like, talking to college students and not being the college student, the more you can just really even kind of revert back to that childlike or kid like self and, engage in that sort of silliness. And fun is a really powerful tool that I definitely learned from working at Community Friends. Yeah, bring that, bring that with you for forever. But yeah, my advice.