Sustainability & Environmental Affairs

The students in Zero Energy School Design will be presenting the results of their winter term effort to design a Zero Energy Elementary School in Middlebury, VT. We will present floor plans and site drawings as well as renderings and any of our programmatic ideas. We will discuss how the building ties in with the community and why Zero Energy is an important design goal. We will be entering our design in the Department of Energy’s Race to Zero student design competition.

Location: Franklin Environmental Center (meet on Front Porch)

Join us at the Franklin Environmental Center (FEC) for the very popular Campus Tree Tour led by passionate Middlebury horticulturalist and tree expert Tim Parsons. As part of the tour, Tim will explain how he manages our rural Vermont campus as an urban forest. Stick around after the tour for a tree planting and enjoy hot cider and fresh local donuts. Meet on the front porch of FEC.

Working with members of BANDALOOP Dance company a limited number of students will be able to use climbing gear and ropes in an introduction to vertical dance. Check go/bandaloop for sign up sheet.

The shmita, or sabbatical year, is a year of rest for the land and an economic resetting for society that occurred every seven years in the ancient Jewish calendar. Join us as Grace Oedel, Executive Director of Northeast Organic Farming Association of VT, Danielle Stillman, Rabbi and Associate Chaplain at Middlebury College, and Remi Welbel ‘22, co-founder of Zumwalt Acres Farm discuss the ways that shmita can be applied today and what lessons are available from thinking about cycles of rest for the land and for ourselves.

Join Environmental Affairs, SNEG, and others for an informal “eat and greet.” There’s so much good work being done at Middlebury and during the pandemic, we’ve deeply missed having the ability to really connect to understand how we’re prioritizing our efforts, as well as how we can best coordinate with and support each other. Our goal is to celebrate the end of the semester while re-establishing, re-imagining, and building new connections across student groups, faculty, staff, and other environmental initiatives on campus.

Participate with Midd in the World Wide Teach-In on Climate and Justice! Middlebury will be joining more than 350 educational institutions around the world (in more than 50 countries and most US states) in the teach-in. On or around Wednesday, March 30, 2022, faculty will devote at least five minutes of classroom time to a conversation about climate solutions and justice. Continue the conversation from this fall’s Clifford Symposium – Radical Implications: Facing a Planetary Emergency – and engage our students, who are coming of age in an age of planetary crisis and transformation.

Looking to support your climate-related work? Get summer funding, develop skills, work with peers: join us for this info session to learn more and apply to be a Climate Action Fellow!

Looking to support your climate-related work? Get summer funding, develop skills, work with peers: join us for this info session to learn more and apply to be a Climate Action Fellow!

Have an idea you’d like to explore? An unpaid internship you’d like to fund? A desire to supplement and connect your paid internship with a cohort of others working on climate this summer and into the academic year? Learn more in this info session at go/caf. 

Join Carolyn Finney, Artist-in-Residence at Middlebury’s Franklin Environmental Center, in conversation with Sophia Danenberg, the first African American and the first black woman to climb to the summit of Mount Everest (2006).

Bill McKibben will dive into what happened at COP26 in Glasgow and what is needed as we move forward.

Students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend in person in Hillcrest 103, Franklin Environmental Center. All are welcome to attend virtually by clicking here.

Sponsored by the Climate Action Capacity Project, Environmental Studies and Environmental Affairs