Prospective Student Fall 2020 Online Discussions
Stay up-to-date on our fall 2020 plans through our online discussion series.
Watch the Recordings of Past Sessions
Online Discussion with Dean Dayton-Johnson: Fall 2020 Plans
Dean of the Institute Jeff Dayton-Johnson shared our current, evolving plans for the fall 2020 semester in light of the global pandemic in an online discussion with admitted students.
Admitted Student Online Discussion with Dean Dayton-Johnson
Devin:
Hello and welcome to this online discussion for admitted students. My name is Devin and I will be your host. Thank you all for joining us live today. We’re very glad to have you and also thank you to those that are watching this recorded later on. First of all, I’d like to start by saying, congratulations on your admission. It’s a great accomplishment and we’re so excited to be able to work with you in the future. Before we jump into the meat of this presentation, I want to go over a few of the technical details. If your video is not already on and I see that many of you have it on already, please feel free to turn it on.
It’s great to see, everyone join us but please keep your mic muted while the presentation is under way. In fact, we may keep you muted to ease the Q and A and we’ll be using the chat box for all the questions. Some of you have already emailed me some questions, thank you for those. If you do that during the presentation, I may not see them so the chat function is really the best way to do that. We’re anticipating a good number of questions and actually, we have some colleagues in the room as well that may be able to answer some of those questions directly in the chat.
Just to test out that chat, this is something that I enjoy doing just because I like to know where people are joining from. If you could just say, where in the world you’re joining us from today in that chat, at the lower part of your screen, that would be great to get us started. While you’re doing that, a disclaimer especially for those that have seen some of our online events already, we really appreciated your patience with us, if we have a spotty internet connection or if you hear any of my doodles, our dogs barking, baby crying, whatever the case maybe. Please forgive us as we’re all working at home during this pandemic.
All right. So, it looks like we’ve got a lot of responses in the chat. Boulder, Utah, Boise, Michigan, New Jersey, Berkeley, Brooklyn, Oxnard, Cambridge, Kosovo, Chico, Santa Cruz. I’m not going to say them all. We’d be here for a little while but great to see everyone coming from all over the world. It’s nice to have you here today. Today, we’re joined by the vice president and dean of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Dr. Jeff Dayton Johnson. Dr. Dayton Johnson, I’d like to turn them over to you.
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Excellent. Thank you. I’ve been unmuted by the host. This whole new Zoom era is so strange and let me just say, I’m so glad to see where everybody is joining us from. If I had to pick three places in the world that would best encapsulate our target audience, it’s something that Devin said, Berkeley, Brooklyn, Kosovo. If we could just focus on Berkeley, Brooklyn, Kosovo, I would be super happy and all the other places that were represented in that list adds so much more breaths to this. I’m really honored and delighted by your interest in becoming part of the Middlebury Institute Community and really looking forward to this discussion and answering some questions that you may have about your decision to come here and join us.
Before we start with the Q and A, I wanted to make a few more general remarks. The first is to echo what Devin said at the outset of this meeting, that’s congratulations. Congratulations on having been admitted, to be part of the Institute Academic Community. That’s an achievement of many more achievements to come for all of you and we hope that we’ll be a part of that and that you’ll be able to join us. The second is to acknowledge that this is a time of great uncertainty and indeed, it’s a time of great uncertainty that for me, underscores the relevance of the Middlebury Institute.
I think, when I look around the world at what our alumni and our graduates are doing right now, an unusual number of them are working to address this coronavirus crisis. Whether it’s at the local level responses or global cooperation, or providing the supporting infrastructure of translation and interpreting that makes it possible for different countries and communities to work together, whether it’s crisis response. Our folks, our graduates, our alumni are out there, in their way addressing this global challenge. If you broaden the aperture a little bit, you’ll see our alumni working to address an even broader range of challenges, like climate change, like the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, like intercultural dialogue and understanding.
This is for me, the greatest demonstration of how relevant a Middlebury Institute Education is and that’s why despite all of the uncertainty and complications that this crisis is causing for us and for you, I’d like to suggest that this is the time for the Middlebury Institute. This is our time and this is a great time for you to be a member of our academic campus community. That said, that level of uncertainty, which is very much laying upon all of us right now is probably complicating your decision making. Will you be joining the academic program to which you’ve been admitted in the fall? That’s the question that we’re here to help you answer.
I want you to be aware of a couple of things. The first is that like most colleges and universities across the United States and most of them around the world, in fact, right now our classes are being offered in a remote format. In the middle of the spring semester, we rapidly transitioned to remote instruction. Our students and faculty are now working to complete the semester online, by and large online with a mixture of different tools and approaches. Like many other colleges and universities, that means that we are right now, planning. Planning intensively for a return to campus protocol.
We’re putting into place the stages by which we can return to campus. Like the state of California, like lots of other jurisdictions around the world, the return to work, the return to something like normalcy is happening in a sequence of stages and in that sequence of stages that we’re planning for here at Monterey, we’re being guided a lot by what our state governor says here in California. What the County of Monterey says. What the federal guidelines are that coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We’re also looking at our own capacity to ensure the safety and health of everybody that’s a part of our campus community and the local community more generally speaking.
We’re looking at our capacity to ensure the integrity of our academic programs. So, we’re keeping all of this in mind as we’re putting into place a protocol to return to campus. I say that because we don’t know where we’ll be in the fall right now. We don’t know where in that sequence of stages we’ll be. A lot of this is outside of our control. A lot of this depends on the evolution of the disease environment itself. What happens with the case load, the number of cases, the evolution of COVID-19 here in California, here in the United States. A lot of it has to do with the policy environment.
How the guidelines and restrictions and regulations change and as you’re watching the news, you’re seeing that they’re changing a lot all the time and that there’s been a move to loosening a lot of restrictions in California as well as in other parts of the United States and around the world. All of this is in place and we will be in communication with you continually to update you on where we are in that sequence of returning to campus stages that I described. In particular, I want to highlight that on June 15, we’ve committed to communicate to all of our stakeholders, people on campus and the students who have been admitted to join us in the fall with more details about our fall 2020 semester plans. We’ll be able to answer more questions at that time.
That doesn’t prevent us from doing the planning that we need to do now and from answering your questions today as openly and honestly and completely as possible. Another point that I want to make is that no matter what happens in the fall, we are committed to providing you with all of the elements of the signature Middlebury Institute Education. That means that it will be professionally oriented. It’s an education which is meant to provide you with the tools and competencies to increase … I’m sorry, I’m going to use … you should all know, I’m an economist so I’d love to use this quantitative metaphors, which nobody appreciates.
We want to steepen the trajectory of your professional advancement by helping you acquire the tools of competencies that will provide you with more professional opportunities after you’ve left the Middlebury Institute. Whether we’re online, whether we’re on site and in person or what’s more likely some combination of the two, you will have that component of the Middlebury Institute education. The Middlebury Institute Education is experiential. You’ll spend a lot of time in classrooms, whether it’s a virtual classroom or a physical classroom.
You’ll spend even more time in the field, working with groups, working often with real clients on real deliverables that add to your education but also add to your professional readiness to get out there in the professional field of your choice and most importantly tying back to something I said a few minutes ago, your Middlebury education will be directly linked to addressing the world’s most challenging problems, whether it’s the response to a major public health emergency like we’re living through right now, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s international security, international education, development and economic progress, language teaching and interpreting and translation, localization management.
There’s a whole range of professional skills, all of them share this characteristic that they address the world’s most challenging problems and that will be a part of your Middlebury Institute Education, no matter where we are in the fall and you have our commitment. The final thing that I’ll say before we move on to Q and A and that is given all of the uncertainty, the higher than usual level of uncertainty that’s out there right now, we want to be as flexible a partner as possible as you arrive at your decision about what you want to do in the fall, in the fall semester. There’s a lot of deadlines.
There’s a lot of points at which you need to make a deposit or you need to declare your intentions through this or that. You maybe wondering, if you can defer your offer of admission to a later semester, we’re going to be more flexible than we usually are in recognition that this is a more uncertain time for you, for all of us in fact. We’ll talk a little bit more specifically about the types of flexibility that we’re introducing. A lot of this will happen after the June 15th announcement that I alluded to a moment ago. As of June 15th, we should all have a lot more clarity about what our fall 2020 semester is going to look like and that I hope will inform more precise decision making on your part.
At that point, if you need us to be more flexible about deadlines or deposits or something, we’ll consider it on a case by case basis. So, this is the time for the Middlebury Institute, this is the time for you to make a difference in your professional trajectory but also in the world by joining us. We don’t know exactly what joining us is going to look like but we’re planning from all of the possible contingencies that might await us in the fall semester and one thing that’s common to all of those contingencies is that we will deliver the hallmarks of a Middlebury Institute Education and we’ll do so in a way that is collaborative with your professional and academic expectations and objectives.
Let me stop there. Once again, thank you so much for your time in joining us, I was going to say this afternoon but I don’t know what time it is across the world or other parts of the world where you’re joining from. I know what time it is in Brooklyn. I don’t know how many … so, my daughter was in Brooklyn so I have a real fondness for Brooklyn. God bless you here if you’re joining us from Brooklyn or any of the burrows of New York or anywhere, where you are in the world. It’s wonderful to be having this conversation with you. I’m going to turn it back over to Devin, who’s going to be facilitating the Q and A in a way that he described and we’ll start answering your questions.
Devin:
All right. Thank you so much, Jeff. I appreciate those remarks. So, now, it’s really your turn. In that chat function where everyone said they are coming from, feel free to put in some questions there and we’ll do our best to answer them and again, like I mentioned at the beginning, a few of my colleagues, Jill Stoffers, Kelly O’Connell are also available to help answer some of these via chat and we’ll do our best to ask generally the questions that apply to the most people. In some cases, questions might be fairly specific to your individual case and we’re happy to take those offline or through the direct message feature of Zoom.
Let me jump into some of the questions. So, Jeff, you mentioned flexibility and historically, deferrals have not been a possibility. So, can you confirm that they are a possibility this year and how might that affect scholarship?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Sure. You’re right, Devin that deferrals are possible. If you’ve been admitted for the fall semester and you want to defer your start date to a later semester, you may do so. If you’ve received a scholarship offer, a financial support, that goes with you as well. The particulars of your scholarship offer, you carry them forward to the date at which you begin a program, and if you have questions about that, you can talk to our colleagues in the admissions office about how to implement that, but absolutely 100% you can defer admission.
Devin:
Okay, excellent. Thanks, Jeff and just on a similar note, some students maybe … have a May 15th deposit deadline coming up and I’ll just jump in, because there have been questions about this. In some cases, students may want to hear more about what that June 15th announcement is, so we’re actually extending that deadline to June 22nd, if you like that extension. Of course, you’re welcome to commit now as well but we just wanted to know that you know, that there’s that flexibility out there. Related to deposits, are deposits refundable? Jeff, I’m happy to answer that but if you want to address that, you’re welcome to.
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Please do Devin.
Devin:
Yeah, so the answer, of course is yes, but on a case by case basis. The admissions team will be entertaining any of those deposit refund requests, similar to a deferral request after the June 15th announcement and they’ll have a process that they’ll share with everyone about that. All right. There’s another question, if I’ve been offered a guaranteed graduate assistantship, GA position with one of the research centers, are those GA positions still guaranteed in a remote fashion?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
That’s a good question. I can’t say with certainty but those GAs, those graduate research assistants who were employed this semester at the point at which we had to move to remote instruction, were able to keep their employment. That is to say, if they were working for one of the research centers, they could continue to work remotely. All of the work of our research centers has moved off site in response to this emergency and student employees have been able to take their employment off site. So, nothing prevents us from doing that and in particular, part of your offer of scholarship support and other types of support includes a graduate student research position.
We find ourselves online in the fall, you should be able to do that, but I need to confirm with each of the research centers, but I don’t see any reasons why that would not be the case.
Devin:
Yeah and just to add a little bit to that, we have some graduate assistants working on our admissions and recruiting team right now. There’s been traditionally, federal guidelines have required, that they’d be on site under our supervision and those have been able to be loosened so they can also work remotely, currently. So that’s an important side note as well. This next question that comes up, and this is a classic question for our incoming students, it’s about housing but do you recommend holding off? I’m looking for housing until June 15th.
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Yes, yes, I think it would be prudent not to make a substantial deposit toward rent before June 15th, given that it’s possible, you may discover you don’t need to move here in the fall. I’m saying it’s possible. I’m not saying that’s going to happen. We tried to set a deadline for ourselves to communicate to you early enough so that if you wait until June 15th, there’s still be time for you to find housing afterwards. So, I think it’s a prudent thing to do to wait on decisions like that, especially wait on expenditures related to housing until after June 15th.
Devin:
Excellent, thanks for that and I’ll mention it’s not a bad idea to start understanding the market either so doing research from home looking at the housing resources that exist in my community would also be worthwhile as well, just so you can kind of gauge what that looks like and I’d also say that it typically doesn’t help too much to have too early of a start before a move date to do the housing search in this particular market. It turns over pretty quickly so you’ll find that you can often search too early for housing. The next question is about the academic experience. Are weekly classroom hours the same in the virtual format, as they would be in real life? Jeff, you’re muted. Sorry.
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Okay. Thank you. Thank you host for unmuting me. I’m not sure who the host is but host has been very kind to me during this meeting. The question is will classroom hours be the same as they are for on site in person instruction if we are in remote format and I don’t know the answer to that question for the fall. Right now, they are and we’ve learned a lot from that. Obviously, it’s a problem for people in other time zones and there’s some time zones, which are really hard to coordinate with. So, that’s something that we would need to keep in mind.
The other thing that we’ve learned fairly quickly this spring semester is that even if a course has four hours of lecture allocated to it during a normal week, it’s not always optimal when you move to remote instruction to spend those four hours doing Zoom lectures. Many of our instructors have found and the students would agree that it’s more effective to reduce the number of lecture hours and maybe increase the number of chat type hours, which is more interactive or even increase the amount of time that’s spent doing things that are asynchronous, like watching a pre-recorded lecture or listening to a pre-recorded podcast lecture and increase the amount of time that you spend on Q and A.
Certainly, we’ve already seen that it’s not optimal to just move the class schedule that was designed for an on site experience to remote. So, what we’re trying to do as we prepare for the fall is to have a more intentional type of planning that allows for being prepared, if we find ourselves having to offer the classes out remotely. I think the biggest issue that we’ll face is … or the biggest issues are the ones that I’ve talked about, time accounting and accommodating for timezone differences and accounting for differences in effectiveness when you’re in a remote format.
That two hours of Zoom lecture begins to exhibit diminishing returns, as we say in economics, pretty rapidly. So, it’s not the best way to organize a class but we’ll have … I mean, we will have much more detail about that if that’s the eventuality where we arrive and we’ll keep in communication with you about how that will be organized.
Devin:
All right, excellent. There’s a couple questions coming in regarding students from abroad regarding Visa paperwork, student loans, et cetera. So, I recommend that you contact isss@middlebury.edu and Kelly, maybe you can drop that into the chat as well so people have that contact detail because those can be very specific to individual cases and Kelly is also available for direct chat if you have specific questions there. Jeff, are you aware of any potential changes to the online TLM program, as a result of everything that’s happening in the world?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
No. We had been planning well before the COVID … Sorry. Okay, now, I started to speak while I was still muted. We had been planning well before the COVID-19 crisis to offer our TLM advanced entry degree fully online and we’ve been planning and designing the courses for that, over the last couple of years. We’ve been recruiting students to start in that program in the fall and I hope that some of you are among those students. Our plan is still to offer that program online in the fall as we had originally designed so there’s no changes in the structure format or design of that program that I’m aware of.
Fortunately, it was one where we’d had much more of a head start in getting it online compared to some of the other programs, which were in person this semester.
Devin:
Great, and this is a question that came through, even before the session started via email, but I’ll ask it now and I know it’s probably hard to answer because the information may not be in but how have internships been affected by the pandemic and post grad hiring as well? Given graduation is this weekend, it might be a little soon to tell, but any trends that you’re aware of or seeing at this point?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Yeah, that’s a really important question. It’s an important question for us because we’re professional graduate school. So, it’s probably even more relevant for us than it is for your average college or university. I haven’t seen any kind of quantitative information about trends in internships or about what’s happening for employment opportunities for our graduates and the graduates who are going to be entering the labor market later this month, but the qualitative information is that there’s a lot more uncertainty. So, I’m hearing a lot of accounts on the internship side. I’m hearing a lot of accounts of internships that had been set up but then fell apart once the COVID crisis struck.
By the same token, I’m hearing a lot of accounts of remote internships which have been made possible by this. There’s some organizations for which our students were not able to organize in person internships but internships in a remote format were possible. So, there are some opportunities which are opening up because the remote format actually makes some things possible that weren’t possible before. As far as employment, it really is an unusual time economically, an unusual time in the labor market in this country. You all know the macro indicators, the macro indicators of unemployment are staggering and sobering. What we need to look at here are the micro indicators of the particular job markets where our students find employment and there, the picture is much more mixed.
Again, I don’t have a quantitative sense of how many of our students have an offer in hand right now, for example. I would love to know that but we are seeing that there are sectors of the economy where more work is emerging and more offers are emerging. There’s lots of other sectors where jobs are not … even jobs that had been underway, job searches that have been underway have been stopped. So, there’s a mix and it requires a lot more legwork on the part of our students as they’re out there looking for jobs post graduation than was the case in the past. We have … I just want to underscore, we have a really nimble team of career advisors here.
They’ve been putting together a lot of resources about looking for jobs in this changed labor market. There’s a series of podcasts that’s been done by my colleague Winnie Heh, who talks about looking for jobs in uncertain times, and has been interviewing a number of professionals and people who have something to say about how to adapt your job search skills to this particular economic crisis that we find ourselves in the midst of. So, it’s a mix, it’s certainly sobering. I don’t want to sugarcoat the situation but it’s also, unusual opportunities have emerged in the midst of this crisis, both for internships and jobs and we’re here to help you identify those unusual opportunities as you progress through your academic experience.
Devin:
Excellent, thanks. I also want to thank some of our other colleagues. I’m seeing some in the chat from the Center for Advising and Career Services, answering some questions about internships and how many remote internships have also become available and I’d like to thank Regina Garner as well from our financial aid office for answering some financial aid related questions and clarifying some points. The point that I made about, remote work being possible. That’s for students that are located in the United States, so that’s a clarifying point that I should certainly add there.
A couple questions are coming in about the deferment process and again, there would be more information about that process after June 15th, but related to the deposit, if someone defers, we’ll hold on to that deposit so that it wouldn’t get refunded but applied to tuition in future term, so that’s an important note to make. Then, another … related to some kind of professional development experiential opportunities, is I’m looking forward for all the opportunities that MIIS offers. Will J-term or January term opportunities be affected or canceled due to the pandemic?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
That’s a good question. We’re working on the far right now and I think, “Yeah, my gosh, it’s January.” In general, January has been … for those of you who don’t know about J-term, an unusual inter-term space where we’ve been able to do intensive and innovative types of courses and for many of our students, I think they would say that some of the most rewarding experiences that they’ve had have been in these J-term courses. So, we’re clearly would like to continue to take advantage of that J-term space for new and innovative courses, as well as some that we’ve traditionally done during that time.
As we extend the time horizon of our planning beyond the fall semester, we’ll need to start looking at J-term and the spring semester with greater focus and we’ll be able to say more about that then. It seems to me quite possible that some of our J-term, regularly scheduled J-term events might be modified or postponed but our general principle is that we want to continue to offer the full range of academic and professional opportunities that we would have before this crisis struck us. We just had to adapt them to the new circumstances and that includes a J-term opportunity. In one form or another, it’s my hope and conviction that we have as many of those J-term opportunities available for you in January 2021.
Devin:
Excellent, thanks, Jeff and another question related to kind of some of the unique aspects of our approach here is how has this transition to online learning affected language learning specifically? Do you have any sense of that?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Yeah, that’s a really important question for us because of the centrality of language learning to so many of our students’ degree maps and to so many of our degrees in general. Language poses a special problem for making this adaptation because it’s much harder … it’s so important to have that face to face, whether it’s virtual or not, contact practice conversation in acquiring language skills than it is, for example, if you’re teaching economics or educational management, or any of the other topics that we might do, so language poses a special problem for instructors and students alike.
One of the things that I’ve been hearing, again, more anecdotally than systematically is that it’s been harder to transform language courses into an asynchronous … it’s been harder to create asynchronous content. It’s still really important to have that in class face to face conversation with the other students in the class and with your instructor. We do have a lot of … Unlike I would say a lot of institutions, we have a relatively high proportion of pretty innovative language teachers, not only do we have a full range of professors who teach in language but we also have the TESOL, TFL program and I hope that some of you are admitted to that program, which is a program that trains people to be language teachers.
All of the faculty and all of the students in that program are experts in teaching language, and that’s an expertise that we’ve been able to draw upon as we make this transition, and as we look towards the fall semester and the possibility of having to continue remote instruction, we’re drawing upon that expertise of the language teachers to be able to do the best possible and the most innovative and up to date methods for teaching language online. It’s a particular challenge. We have a really interesting language courses that I’m quite fond of which is called the team tandem. This is a program for Spanish, for people who are learning Spanish.
As many of you may know, maybe you don’t know, Monterey County where we are situated has one of the highest proportions of households that are … whose first language is Spanish of counties throughout the United States. There are a lot of first language Spanish language speakers in this county. A lot of those folks want to learn English and there’s a huge socio economic divide as well within Monterey county that makes it a really fascinating place to look at a lot of the questions that our students look at. Language is one of them.
In the team tandem class that I’m talking about, our professor, Professor Gabriel Guillen takes his Spanish learning students to Salinas, which is … and they’ve gone to other places as well, where they have partnerships with adult ed programs, where folks in the community are learning to speak English. So, it gives our Spanish learning students the opportunity to practice their Spanish with native speakers of Spanish but it also introduces a bit of humility that they become … they become English teachers but they’re also Spanish language learners. It’s a remarkably effective way for language learning to take place.
We’ve been able successfully to move that community embedded language learning program to a remote format. Those English language learners in the community are continuing to interact with our Spanish language learning students, it’s just one example of the way that we’ve been able to make that transition.
Devin:
Right. Thank you for that. Thank you for that, Jeff. Another question that has come in, how are students communicating with their academic advisors in addition to professors? Are there Zoom office hours that students can schedule if needed?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
The answer is yes, that we do use Zoom for a lot … right now, we use Zoom exclusively for academic and career advising and our academic and career advisors have a full schedule every day of meetings with students to talk about all of the concerns that they might have. This was something that was true before the crisis as well, we relied a lot on Zoom meetings for our students to access their career advisors. In many cases, it was more convenient for students to do it that way anyway, so we had the infrastructure set up, but it’s still going strong and it’s still the way that our students are able to access those resources in this new remote instruction format.
Devin:
Thanks, Jeff. That’s just a note, there’s also many question, is Zoom the primary platform used for online lectures and my understanding was yes. Is there anything to add to that Jeff?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
It is the primary platform. There are some areas where … So, I would say Zoom plus Canvas. Canvas is a platform for creating course sites. Many of you have used Canvas at your undergraduate institutions. If you haven’t, you probably use Moodle, which is similar. So, I would say that it’s a combination of Canvas and Zoom, but a lot of our instructors have also explicitly put in place, Plan B, Plan C, so that if there are problems with the connectivity, if there are problems with the quality of the connection with Zoom that you go to the Google Hangout or whatever it’s called now, that you go to Teams and different Microsoft Teams and different classes are using different backup plans for their … to ensure the continuity of the teaching in case something goes wrong with Zoom.
Zoom has been pretty robust. I have to say we’ve had fewer glitches, although my colleagues in the enrollment office and I had some glitches this morning, we said, “Oh my god, what are we going to do when we have this webinar with the admitted students,” and so far it’s done okay, but in general, Zoom has been pretty robust and we’re pretty pleased with it.
Devin:
Right. Thank you for that and I noticed there’s been a lot of questions also about health insurance in the chat and thank you, actually, Rocha, from our Student Services team for answering some of those, I should put into the chat, a link that actually is already shared with resources related to health insurance, so you can see that chat. We’ll also follow up with information about that in a correspondence later on and I should say, we are recording these questions as well. We’re looking for patterns and we’re developing updated FAQ pages based on these questions, so thank you so much for asking them. I’m hoping that we can get to most.
So, Jeff, another question for you. If the institution moves forward with in-person on site learning, will there still be an option to approach the fall semester virtually for those who choose to?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Yeah, that has not yet been decided but that’s very much on our mind, because we are worried that if conditions allow us to open the campus for instruction, that not everybody will be able to make it. There may be complications for international students. We just don’t know what kind of delays there may be in Visa processing or I don’t know, at this point and I think we need to plan for that eventuality. There may be students who for reasons of their own health status, would prefer to follow the courses online. We are looking for ways … In that scenario in which we opened the campus, we’re looking for ways to complement that with online instruction for students who are not able to be here.
There are some other … I mean, if you guys are reading about what is being discussed at higher ed institutions across the country, there are a lot of permutations that are being discussed and a lot of them are based on that idea that some students are online and some students are on site and there’s some mix of those things. Part of it is because a lot of campuses won’t be able to, even if they are open, handle the full capacity, number of students for which they were built. That for reasons of social distancing, they might need to have fewer campus … fewer students on campus and that would mean that more students could be using online as a way to reduce the number … reduce the density on campus. Most definitely, this is something that we’re building into our contingency plans.
Devin:
Excellent. Thanks for that. Then this is just, I think a general recommendation potentially from you, Jeff, what resources/opportunities do you recommend admitted students pursue this summer in general to be prepared for starting this fall? Big question.
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Yeah. So, I would be tempted to answer that question with respect to particular degree programs. I think that there are things that students can be doing … that admitted students can be doing over the summer to hit the ground running when the semester begins in the fall but they’re often very specific to the academic program to which you’ve been admitted. So, I would encourage you to put this questions to faculty in your programs or to your academic advisor or start with your academic advisor on my community and they can connect you with faculty. I think a lot of them would say you should read this book, you should do these exercises, you should become familiar with this software.
There’s a long list of things that I imagine our faculty would recommend but I don’t have a single recommendation for all of you. The only thing I would say to all of these, take good care of yourself because we want you to start your program in good health and good spirits.
Devin:
Great. If anyone needs help connecting with a faculty member or advisor, you can contact us, contact your enrollment advisor if you’re in touch with them already. If not, you can … Jill if you can put info@miis.edu into the chat, you can start there and we’ll get you connected. Let’s see, if the fall semester will be virtual, will the cost of attendance would be adjusted?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
This is a question that’s being discussed, I would say across the country right now. We’ve been pretty clear that we need … Well, we need to look at this very carefully in our planning but it’s not as simple as reducing the cost because our financial structure as an institution is built on two numbers, what we pay our faculty and staff and the net tuition revenue that we collect from students. There’s additional revenues, there’s some additional costs but those are really the two big financial variables that we have to look at. This semester, as we’ve made the transition to remote instruction, all of our faculty, all of our staff are still working.
They’re still taking all of their classes, they’re still doing all of their work so we haven’t done anything to reduce the expenditure side of our finances and as a result, we haven’t made any adjustments to the revenue side, we haven’t reduced the cost of attendance this semester. That said, I know a lot of people are saying that if we … a lot of students, a lot of folks like you across the country and around the world is saying, if we’re going to be students in an online program, even if it’s an excellent online program, we’re not prepared to pay as much. So, what we’ve been doing in the meantime to prepare for that eventuality is we’re doubling our efforts to build up the scholarship resources that we can offer to you.
We want as we’ve always done, to make it possible for you to pursue this education financially and to do that by means of the scholarship support that we provide to you. So, what that may mean, if we can do it is that we provide higher than usual levels of scholarship support, in the case, for example, that we’re entirely online. I do acknowledge that that means that we are also going to need to be reducing our expenditures on the expenditure side, that’s part of the planning as well, in order to balance those two parts of the financial equation. We are working on both sides of that equation right now.
We’re actively looking at ways to reduce the out of pocket expenditure to you, but I don’t have all, those details in place right now.
Devin:
Thanks for that. Jeff, I think you mentioned this in another meeting that we had recently, but what will campus protocols be if the campus reopens and a student does get sick?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Yeah, the general protocol that we, like most campuses are falling is that we need to be able to do … we need first of all, to be able to tend to the needs of the student or faculty or staff member for that matter, who falls sick and to make sure that they can be connected to the healthcare resources that are available here in the community and get the help, the medical help that they need. We don’t have a medical center on campus. We don’t have a physician on staff. We need to have a really good connection to local health resources. That’s the first part of the protocol is to provide for the person who’s fallen sick.
The follow up elements of the protocol is to track the contacts of that person in order to make sure that we can identify how many people might have been exposed to that person. That’s the part that we’re working on right now. I should mention that Middlebury College, which in many ways is our headquarters back in Vermont, Middlebury College, does have a health center. We do have a college physician, and that staff, and that office, and that position have been helping us a lot to develop a protocol for dealing with cases should they arise on our campus that’s adapted to our capacities. That is to say, we don’t have a hospital.
We don’t have a place on campus where we can take care of people, but we do need to make sure that we can address this in a way that minimizes the risk to people on campus to the maximum amount possible. A lot of that is ex ante. A lot of that is before the fact. A lot of that is intended to reduce the probability that cases do arise on campus. We certainly also need to be prepared for cases if they do arise on campus. The response ranges from establishing some kind of isolation and quarantine protocol for people who may have been in contact with someone who test positive for the virus to moving some parts of our operations back off campus again, as we did this spring.
That we’re working out the details of our updated pandemic protocol right now so that we’ll be prepared for that when it happens.
Devin:
Great, thank you. Jeff one question is … coming in, I think it’s really relevant to all of us now, but how have students felt mental health wise with virtual classes, virtual internships, possibly virtual work, plus hours of reading and writing online and the possibility of many, many hours of computer time and relative isolation per day, without the same balance of that in person interaction that our community can provide. Have you heard anything related to that?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
I’m smiling at the question, it’s not a funny question but I’m smiling because just the way it’s framed makes me tired and I think that that’s the response to a lot of people have had. This is exhausting. It’s exhausting because the ambient level of anxiety and uncertainty is exhausting. We’re all dealing with this extraordinary amount of uncertainty that comes right down to a very personal question, will I get sick? Will someone I love get sick? There are all kinds of economic anxieties and uncertainty. So, all of that is in the background, weighing upon students’ pursuit of their schoolwork.
There’s also an exhaustion that many … and I’ve heard it and I’m sure all of you have heard it as well from your personal context, an exhaustion associated with this transition from a chiefly face to face type of in person, academic experience to remote one, that … and I found it myself that eight or nine or 10 hours of meetings a day where I’m in an office is not as exhausting as eight or nine or 10 hours of Zoom meetings a day when I’m looking at the screen all day. There’s just something about that transition, but also, there’s something about this new format that we all find, I think pretty exhausting.
There’s a lot of … I think people are sharing that experience a lot. One thing though, that was suggested by your question that I do want to emphasize, a lot of our instructors, a lot of our faculty have reported that they’ve made … they found that it’s been effective to make a kind of substitution, away from an hour of lecture, so to speak but substituting that hour for that hour of lecture, an hour of personal contact with students. So, in a variety of ways our faculty have been opening up office hours, but a virtual office hours, but office hours that might extend a little bit beyond purely academic conversation topics.
So, it’s not just like when you go to visit your professor in his or her office to ask questions about a reading. Instead, it’s connecting, it’s maintaining that connection among students and between students in their faculty and that it requires some scheduling. It requires some scheduling. I’m going to … and some of our faculty for instance have said, I’ve got a Zoom address during these hours of the day. I’m going to be there. You can drop in and students and faculty alike have appreciated that possibility of maintaining a connectedness, maintaining a sense of community, even using the Zoom platform.
To some extent, I think it has offset a little bit of the isolation and loneliness that people feel but more generally, I will acknowledge that people … When I connect with people on Zoom, they want to talk and in fact, this is one of the funny things we’re finding too, is that everybody is available now, right? So, even high ranking people that we could never get to come here and speak and so forth, they’re available now. You write them an email and say, “Would you like to speak to my class?” Five minutes later, they said, “Yes, when can I … can I bring my friends too?”
So, people are lonely. They want to talk. We’re all seeking that kind of connection as well and the longer we’re in this phase, I think the more helpful mechanisms we’re developing to deal with this new kind of format. I mean, it’s an excellent question, it’s an important question and it will be with us again in the fall if we find ourselves online again in the fall, we’ll need to be prepared for it.
Devin:
Indeed, and I should note again, Ashley, again, part of our Student Services team is putting some resources into the chat related to this topic as well, so please take a look at that and then, we can also follow up and there’s some other questions that have come in about making accommodations and the Student Services team would be the point of contact for making accommodations as well. So, Jeff, a question about campus resources, how will access to resources such as a library take place remotely?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
For their phased reopening of campus and return to work. I think fairly early on … Sorry, I should say that right now, although access to the library is restricted, you can’t go into the library, we’ve instituted a so called chat with a librarian feature where you can speak via chat directly with one of our librarians who can frequently do a lot of troubleshooting for you to track down a resource if you need it. They’ve been able to help a lot of … our faculty colleagues as well as students to find resources in an electronic format.
Library has also been working at the beginning of our transition to remote instruction, to put all of the course reserve materials into an electronic format so that if you’re taking a class and you need to consult something, which is put on reserve in the library, normally, you would go in there and check it out for two hours. You read the chapter at question. Now, that chapter is available electronically, so there is access to library services right now even as we speak. As we return to campus, one of the early stages that I imagine would happen is that the staff of the library would be able to return to work, even though the library was not open.
That would broaden even more the library services that are available to students. Right now, just to give you an example of what I’m thinking, right now at the state of California, many, many types of work are still not able to be done. Many workplaces are still not open, but just this week, we’ve been hearing from the governor, ways that we might … a number of businesses can be open now for curbside pickup and when I heard that, I said, “Well, that’s great.” There’s nothing we do that is amenable to curbside pickup. You can’t do a curbside class teach where someone comes and says, “Talk to me about evaluation methods for five minutes on the sidewalk.”
There is one thing that definitely we could do a version of curbside pickup and that is library services, so that if you are in a class and you need some resources, you can forward those … this is what I’m thinking we’ll be able to do fairly soon, as soon as librarians are able to return to work. They can get the materials in the library and you can come pick them up for example. I think that there’ll be … and a library is an excellent example of how, as we implement a return to campus protocol over the next several months, we’ll be able to increasingly offer more and more services to support your studies and the library is a great example of that.
Devin:
Thanks, Jeff. There’s been a couple questions that have come in related to the institute and Middlebury’s finances. Some I’ve read on MIIS’s website about some financial difficulties the institute is currently undergoing, should we be concerned?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
It’s my job to make sure that you don’t have to be concerned. As students of an institution, you should be informed. As students, many of you who are interested in management, whether management of nonprofits or educational management, you probably have a professional interest in the finances of this institution. Every year in the spring, I do a presentation with the student council of MIIS finances 101, where I talk about the basic structure of our income and our expenditures. I talk about the trends, because I know a lot of our students are interested for a variety … for the reasons I’ve just described.
So, you should definitely feel entitled to know about this. You should also be aware that higher ed in this country is facing an extraordinary amount of financial uncertainty and some institutions are in a more precarious position than others. I don’t want to presume or lead you to believe that everything’s fine here at Middlebury. We have some real tough choices to make about how to best use our financial resources as we navigate through this global health crisis. We are blessed with some assets that not all educational institutions have. Among them, a large endowment which generates a certain amount of revenue every year to be used, to finance our operations. Other institutions don’t have that.
We’re a private institution which has its pluses and minuses but right now, it’s a big plus that we’re not dependent upon public revenues from state budgets. State budgets are under terrible, terrible pressure right now and a lot of really excellent public universities around the country are having to deal with sizable cuts of their funding or the prospect of those cuts in the very near future. We don’t have that problem but we do face the problem that a lot of higher ed institutions face, which is that a lot of students are looking more carefully at whether or not this is the time to pursue a higher education degree.
That hits the bottom line financially along institutions, and that’s why we’re doing our best on being completely transparent to ensure that whatever state of the world we find ourselves in, we’re using our educational assets as effectively as possible to promote your professional objectives, whether we’re online, whether we’re on site or whether we’re somewhere in between. It’s because we want to continue … because we believe that our students make a difference in the world and the world’s most challenging problems, the list just keeps getting longer and longer.
At the same time, we believe that this is a time where we can help you make a difference in addressing these problems as well, so we want to continue working with you and because it’s the way to safeguard our financial security as well.
Devin:
Great. Thank you, Jeff, for that and I know we’re coming up on time. We technically have two minutes left in the session. So, just a couple more questions and hopefully you have time to answer just a few more. I should note that we’re also getting a number of questions about the Summer Intensive Language Program and the transition to the Middlebury Language Schools Online Version about scholarships transferring which they will and a need for the deposit which your deposit ends up being waived if it’s required for your degree program, but you should be contacted directly in the very near future about your decision in that decision timeline, so look for those communications shortly.
One question, Jeff, what are some of the main indicators you’re looking at with regards to making a decision about on campus versus virtual classes for the fall?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
Probably the most immediate set of indicators that we need to be worried about are the guidelines which are established by the county of Monterey and by the state of California. The county is more or less following the state but in both cases, the state of California has outlined a sequence of stages of reopening the economy in the state and we’re looking at those guidelines very carefully to see where we fit in. Right now, there’s a sequence of stages, you can look it up online, if you haven’t, it’s a really important set of documents. We’re not in there yet. Most of what we do is still not under the umbrella of things which are allowed to reopen now.
There’s a lot of time between now and September, so we’re trying to gauge when it is that we might reach a stage, where we can broaden a set of activities that we actually do on campus and what’s happened with California that’s probably happened with other states as well, is that they haven’t spelled out all the details of the later stages, right? The biggest indicator we’re looking at is what does the California State Guidance and Regulation allow us to do and when? That’s the primary one. A second one is what is the best practice for … what’s the best protocol that we can have in place to deal with a pandemic, which is still happening and run our business here on campus?
This gets back to a question which was asked earlier about what do we do if a case arises on campus, if a student falls ill with COVID-19, for example? We need to make sure that we understand what we need to do, what we need to be able to provide the students and employees should they get sick and make sure that we have that in place before we open. One of that has to do with the supply of protective personal equipment. One of that has to do with training of a number of people on our staff to be able to deal with these situations as they develop. We have to have that in place before we can open.
I think those are the two most important is the state guidelines, the protocols for dealing with a pandemic, a lot of which has to do with the CDC and other agencies as well. Those are the most big because as I said at the beginning, we will reopen the campus. The question is, in what sequence and over what time frame and a lot of that is guided by looking at these external indicators.
Devin:
In a related sense, a question came in, can we, the admitted students become a part in assisting the plans or decisions made for this potential fall?
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
That’s an excellent suggestion. You are after all stakeholders, important stakeholders. Let’s explore how we might do this. I mean, I think we have the infrastructure. We can use my community as a way to be in contact with admitted students, let’s take that question on board and we’ll get back to on my community about a way to do that, for those of you who want to be a part. Let me say that regardless of what happens, you will be informed and you will be kept in the loop, but if you want to have a more … the opportunity for more interactive participation and this kind of deliberation, let’s figure out how we can do that. I love that question. Let’s do that.
Devin:
Great. Excellent and we are a little bit over time. There’s been a few other questions about when jobs will be posted for graduate assistantships, et cetera and typically those are posted in July and August. Regina, thank you for posting an answer to that. Those students don’t start working until the first day of classes. Then, I also … the question that might be nice to end with Jeff is a little out of the blue, pun intended, but can you tell us a little bit about the artwork that’s over your shoulder.
Jeff Dayton Johnson:
My wife painted that. My wife is a painter and a printer and an artist in many media and she painted that during a period where she was very influenced both by abstract artists and by quilt makers. There’s a kind of quilt like design to that Basically, we have a lot of this in the garage and I was cleaning up the garage and I said, “Why do I put this up in my office,” and there you have it. That’s the story. Thank you for asking.
Devin:
Of course. It wasn’t me. Thank you, Seth. Thank you so much for taking the time today, Jeff, to answer these questions. Everyone, I know that we didn’t get to all of the questions but we don’t plan on this being the end of our communication with you. We’ll be in contact via regular email updates, my community announcements and of course, we’re going to gather all the information, questions that we received from this session and build an FAQ page from that, so that will be a resource as well. I’ve also … some of these questions or themes have seeded an idea about potential future online discussions like this.
That we might be able to host that dive into more specific topics and we can get some of the experts that have been thankfully on this webinar, answering questions and chat to maybe do a deeper dive into some of those topics. This isn’t the end, but we really appreciate everyone taking time today. We are going to post this recording in the next few days, so you can refer to that as well. Thank you so much to everyone. We really appreciate you being here.
Scholarships and Financial Aid for U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents
Sadia Khan, Director of Admissions, and Regina Garner, Director of Student Financial Services, answer questions around financing your education.
During the Q&A, a few prospective students asked about continuing to collect unemployment benefits while studying full time if we are remote this fall. Each state administers their unemployment benefits so we encourage you to research all of your unemployment-related questions through resources provided by your state to make sure you are getting accurate information.
Scholarships and Visas for International Students
Sadia Khan, Director of Admissions, and Kelly O’Connell, Assistant Director of International Student and Scholar Services, answer questions around financing your education and visas.
Scholarships and Visas for International Students
Devin Lueddeke:
Well, hello and welcome to this online discussion about Scholarships and Visas for International Students. My name is Devin Lueddeke, and I will be your host today. Thank you for joining us live today. We’re very glad to have you. Of course, thanks to those that are watching this recording later on. This morning, we’re joined by members of the Admissions team and the International Student and Scholar Services teams, who I’ll ask to introduce themselves briefly. Sadia, would you like to get us started?
Sadia Khan:
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to my house. But it’s wonderful to be able to connect with you directly. Some of you, I have probably already met during the interview, and others who I have not had a chance, because you interviewed with another one of my colleagues, wonderful to connect with you as well.
Today, I’ll just be going over some of your questions regarding admissions and scholarships, but then I’ll let the rest of the team introduce themselves next, please.
Kelly O’Connell:
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. I see a couple of names that look familiar on the screen, because I think I have been in touch with you, either via Zoom or by email. My name is Kelly O’Connell. I work in the International Student and Scholar Services department, and my department helps international students not only navigate the visa application process, but we’re here to support you during your program of study and advise on the F-1 and the J-1 status.
Devin:
Excellent. Thank you so much, Kelly. I should also note my colleague, Jill Stoffers, is here, and she’s going to be helping with the Q and A, just a little bit in the background. I won’t force her to speak this morning.
Great to see everyone in the chat. It looks like we have folks from all over the world. I see Dubai, China, Mexico, Russia, Utah, Zambia, Chile, UK, Ohio, Marina. Thanks for dropping those into the chat. To get us started, Sadia, can you give a little overview of what the landscape looks like in terms of scholarships for international students?
Sadia:
Yeah, definitely. Thank you, Devin. In terms of what we’ve been trying to do this year, I mean, we were very fortunate to be able to get some donor funding this year, and that allowed us to be extremely generous with our scholarships. It has also enabled us to be able to navigate this uncertain time and uncertain situation we’re all facing, by trying to be more generous with our scholarship offers, and really working closely with each one of you on a case-by-case basis to really get to understand what your financial situation is. What we can do to be able to assist in any way that we can. We still have a limited amount of money, but we are trying to work with each and individual student, to really get that, get to understand what your situation is and how we can make the program a little bit more affordable, and also to be able to assist you in any way that we can during this very challenging time.
One of the things that I always recommend, when any of you have talked to me directly during the interview, and many of you who have been in touch with your enrollment managers, the goal is to make sure that we can work with you directly. Please just feel free to be in touch with any of us. Reach out to your enrollment manager. Feel free to connect with me. If there’s anything that I can do to assist, in terms of helping with financing, or just other questions regarding admissions, or any concerns that you have, more than happy to address that.
This has been a very, very challenging time, not only just for the student body, but of course for the staff and the faculty, and we are doing our level best to make it as smooth as we possibly can. Then, in regards to what the year is going to look like, there are a lot of things that we’re working on at the moment. We will be making an announcement on June 15th regarding the outlook for fall. We will work with you, again, as we said, on a case-by-case basis, to make sure that whatever your decision is, that we can come up with the best solution for you.
I’ll pass it on to Kelly next. Then Kelly, can you talk a little bit about the visa situation, and then what’s the outlook for that? Thanks.
Kelly:
For students that have been admitted, regardless of whether or not you paid a deposit, you’ve most likely received an email from International Student and Scholar Services, ISSS. If you’ve been admitted and haven’t received an email, please make sure to check your junk or clutter. We do include some hyperlinks in there, so sometimes the emails get rerouted. But that email will talk about the next steps to obtain your I-20, which is the document used for the F-1 visa application process, or the DS-2019 for the J-1 visa process. The normal process would be a student is admitted. They pay a deposit. They submit documents to ISSS. We generate an I-20 or a DS-2019, mail it to the student, and then they can start the visa application process.
As many of you may be aware, there are some … on March 20th, all U.S. Embassies and Consulates suspended routine visa processing. I have heard from quite a few students they are concerned about the visa application process. ISSS is aware of this. We are watching for government announcements. I also really encourage you to watch any kind of news put out by your local U.S. Embassy or Consulate, because at this time we don’t know when, if they’re going to open all at the same time, or if they’re going to start opening up as countries allow, so it is important to keep an eye on that information. ISSS is also doing that, but we do understand that right now, there is a lot of concern about being able to secure a visa appointment.
We’re also dealing with travel restrictions from certain countries or certain places, and we are also watching that information, as well. I know I’ve heard from a couple of students as well, that they are concerned about being able to enter the United States based on where they’re from. ISSS is watching that information and will contact students once, hopefully, we know more.
Of course, if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to ISSS@middlebury.edu. I’ll put the email in the chat box too, because sometimes it’s just easier to connect with you one-on-one and talk specifically about your questions.
Devin:
Great. Thanks so much, Kelly. We’re actually going to spend most of the remaining time with your questions, so please feel free to use that chat box and type some of your questions in there.
I’ll add a little bit of a preface here to our answers. Of course, this is a rapidly changing landscape. There’s a lot happening in the world that’s outside of our control, certainly in terms of government policies, regulations, that are outside of our control. We’re getting news in real-time that affect our answers. We’ll do our best to answer these with the knowledge available, but keep in mind that we’re planning to be in touch with you, create Frequently Asked Questions pages, and send those questions out to you as well, so please stay tuned as updates come along.
Of course, we’re going to do our best to answer a lot of these questions for normal circumstances, where we’re having an onsite program here in California, as well as a possible eventuality is that we need to do remote learning for the fall semester, for example. We’ll try to answer questions based on that as well, at least to the best of our ability and knowledge.
With that said, if you want to type in questions, feel free to plug them into the chat box. We can wait for that. While we wait for some of those questions, one that’s come up in some other discussions is if students are considering, and Sadia, this is a question for you, considering a delay to the start of their program, how does that affect a scholarship?
Sadia:
I mean, at this stage, we are working with our finance team to be able to come up with a solution. As I mentioned, we did receive a large amount of funding from a donor, and that funding was directed towards us being able to spend it this year. We are trying to make sure if we can transfer that over to next year, so if we do have students who would like to defer, our goal is to try and get that funding moved over to next year. However, you do have to pay your deposit in order to secure that funding.
Deferrals will be available on a case-by-case basis, because there are so many other components to your applications that can’t be automatically transferred over, such as the language and skills tests, sometimes you have to take that, for students who are in the Translation and Interpretation programs. There are little processes that we have to go through before we can defer those, but generally speaking, we are working with the Finance team to come up with a good solution for our students.
Devin:
Okay, excellent. Then, how difficult would it be for students in the T and I, Translation and Interpretation program, to start their first semester, if courses are moved online? I know that’s kind of a tough question for you, Sadia, since you’re not teaching in that program per se, but would you like to hazard a guess?
Sadia:
What we’re trying to do is we’re working … I mean, the semester previously, I mean over the spring semester, we didn’t have a lot of time to be able to move courses online. However, the faculty have had an excellent opportunity to really understand what the process needs to look like, what the teaching methodology needs to look like, what kind of software and tools that they can use to be able to offer online courses in the T and I program. I believe they’re working very closely with the Dean.
We are also, in terms of our teams, we are in touch with the deans, especially Laura Burian, who’s the Dean of the Translation and Interpretation or Language Education programs. I know that the goal is to be able to offer something that is, in quality, as excellent as what we offer here on-site.
Devin:
Excellent. Sadia, sorry, one more question for you. Can a student defer, even if the Institute decides to open its doors in the fall? Do you have any sense about that?
Sadia:
Yes, definitely. I mean, our goal, like I said, is to make sure that we work with individual students, really addressing their concerns. At the Institute, I’m sure a lot of you have connected with the Admissions team, the International Student office, Financial Aid, whichever department you have worked with. You become part of our MIS community the moment you get admitted into a program, and our goal is to make sure that we come up with a solution that works best for you. That’s why I’m saying we will work with students individually on a case-by-case basis.
We will connect with you. We’ll make sure that this is the best option available for you, given your circumstances. I like to have a conversation before a student defers, just because there are certain components such as scholarships, career options, and things like that, that I would like to be able to discuss with the student before we grant that deferral. However, we will work with you on an individual basis to be able to make sure it’s the best option for you.
Devin:
Excellent. Thanks. Kelly, question for you. How can someone best prepare for the visa process and specifically their visa appointment?
Kelly:
We are encouraging students to submit their documentation as soon as you have it. ISSS will be generating I-20s and DS-2019s. Once that document has been generated, I’ll be sending an email to you with the SEVIS number, and the school code or the program number, which will allow you to start the process of scheduling of these appointments.
We will be waiting until after June 15th to mail out hard copies, because we do need additional guidance as to what will happen in the fall, but you can start the process once you’ve deposited. Once you’ve submitted your documentation, ISSS will start issuing I-20s and DS-2019s in next couple of weeks, and then we’ll be sending out additional information that will allow you to start the visa application process.
Devin:
Great. Kelly, just to clarify, should someone wait until June 15 to apply for the visa, or should they apply now and pay their fee?
Kelly:
Right now, U.S. Embassies and Consulates are not engaged in routine visa processing, so it may be difficult for students to schedule a visa appointment. However, if you’ve submitted the documentation for the I-20 or the DS-2019, which again are documents needed for the visa application interview, if you received an email with your SEVIS number and the school code, then once your local U.S. Embassy or Consulate that is starting to resume normal visa processing, you would be able to schedule a visa appointment.
Devin:
Excellent. Excellent. Then, for some of you, I imagine that you might have very case-specific questions for Kelly. I just want to highlight that Kelly did put in the email address, ISSS@middlebury.edu, into the chat. You can take that down. I’ll do a quick repost in the chat, as well, so you have that available to ask about your individual cases.
Is it possible, and Sadia, this is a question for you. Is it possible for a student to start physically here in the spring, if they can’t get to Monterey for any reason this fall?
Sadia:
It is possible. Let me just clarify that question, Devin. Do they mean that can they delay the start of their program to spring, or if they can continue working remotely on their courses, and then get here for spring?
Devin:
Let’s say delay the start of the program to spring.
Sadia:
If the program has a spring start, then it’s not a problem, but if it doesn’t, then you will have to wait until the next fall. So most of the Translation and Interpretation programs, Translation and Localization Management programs, the International Trade and Diplomacy program, I believe those all have a fall start.
Devin:
Okay. Thanks for that. I should note that, in terms of the … Hopefully you were able to see our Dean give a presentation recently about the possibilities for fall. But of course, we’re trying our level best, to borrow a phrase from Sadia, to make sure that we can have a safe on campus experience, but there are possibilities that that isn’t able to happen because of COVID-19 and the variety of issues that it’s causing.
They’re looking at a variety of different options at that point. Some of those are exploring remote or online learning, or for some of those programs that only provide a fall start, actually looking at them for all the programs. Hopefully we’d be able to find an option to keep people on pace to complete their degree in the same amount of time, even if we have to go to remote learning.
I think a few other questions are coming in. Let’s see, does the Conference Interpretation program start in spring as well, or only in fall? I think you mentioned that Sadia. It’s just a fall start.
Sadia:
It’s just a fall start.
Devin:
Excellent. Then, is it recommended that students who have been admitted pay their deposit now, or should they wait until a June 15th announcement?
Sadia:
I’m leaving it to individual students, but generally speaking, it’s best to be able to deposit as early as you can. Because as Kelly has mentioned, and of course, as in terms of other departments, once you pay your deposit, then you do get access to a lot more resources. You get connected with the International Student office. You also secure your spot in the program, especially for some of the more competitive programs, that we do have wait-lists in those programs, and you should deposit so that you can secure your spot in that program.
But other than that, I mean, it’s up to you. We have no problem if you decide to wait, as well, and we will let you make that decision on your own. However, please do note that for students who want access to different departments, and different resources on campus, and things like that, then it is ideal that they deposit as soon as they can.
Devin:
Great. Sadia, can you talk a little bit more about how the deposit works? Sometimes there’s … typically it’s a nonrefundable deposit, but does that deposit go towards a student’s tuition? How does that work if a student ends up not being able to attend this year, but attend in a future year?
Sadia:
In terms of the deposit, generally, the deposits are nonrefundable unless somebody has their visa get denied. Then we are able to refund the deposit, or what we can do is the deposit, obviously, it goes towards your tuition. We can keep it on your file, and then if you apply for the visa, in the second round, and you’re able to come in a different semester, we will apply to that particular semester.
This year because of the Covid situation, we are going to be allowing students to have the option for deferring. We will keep, the deposit on your file again, and it will just get transferred over to your next semester. It always gets applied to tuition directly. Yeah, so you don’t really lose the money. It gets applied towards your tuition.
Devin:
Great. That’s very, very helpful. Then Kelly, just a question for you. Do you have general advice for students that are considering this fall about where to look for information to keep abreast of any policy changes, et cetera?
Kelly:
ISSS will be in touch. I mean, as soon as we know what’s going to happen for fall, we’ll be sending out emails to all students that have deposited and/or have I-20s or DS-2019s issued, to explain how the fall semester decision may or may not impact the I-20 or DS-2019. I would encourage you to check the U.S. Embassy or Consulate website for information about when visa appointments may resume. You can do that at u s embassy dot G-O-V. There’s also the travel.state.gov website, which has a lot of the proclamations. It talks about the travel restrictions, so that’s also a good website to take a look at. Of course, you can always email ISSS@middlebury.edu.
Devin:
Great. Thank you so much, Kelly. It looks like we’re close to wrapping up, as questions have slowed down a little bit. One quick one before we do that, from Wendy: “If we are awarded with scholarships, will it be automatically applied to our tuition?” Or how does scholarships work in general, Sadia?
Sadia:
Yes, scholarships basically get applied towards your tuition, and then you are billed the remainder. Let’s say your bill is $20,000. $10,000 of it is covered by scholarship. You will be built $10,000. Automatically, that gets applied first, and then whatever’s remaining is what you are required to pay.
Devin:
Excellent. Thank you so much. Vincent, it looks like there’s a question on programs, and we can send you some links to programs related to International Policy and Development, and Trade and Economic Diplomacy, which those you might be referring to there. Happy to get you that information. All right. Any closing thoughts from the panelists before we say goodbye?
Sadia:
I mean, I would just like to add, I mean, one of the advantages of applying to Middlebury is the fact that all of us are available to help you, assist you, guide you. We are an excellent resource to be able to navigate this very complex, very difficult time. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to any of us.
The reason we’re doing these sessions is, again, to be able to connect with you directly, so you know who you’re emailing with. Who are you connecting with? Because sometimes it’s very difficult for us to be able to set up a face-to-face appointment. Email is the general way that people communicate these days, but I prefer to be able to connect with each and individual student, just to be able to understand what your concerns are. If we are able to assist in any way, please don’t ever hesitate to connect with us. We are more than happy to help.
Devin:
All right, one last question. Sadia, are there full scholarships?
Sadia:
I wish there were, but we don’t have full scholarships available. It is because of … We have a limited amount of funding. We try and spread it out as much as we can, so that we can help as many students as we can to attend this particular program. We are a smaller school, so we don’t have obviously the same kind of resources as some of those bigger schools do, or some of the big state schools who have a huge undergraduate population that can subsidize some of the education for graduate programs. But as I said, we try, and especially this year, we’ve been trying to be very, very competitive with scholarships. Unfortunately, we don’t have those full scholarships available for most of our students.
Devin:
Yeah. Well, thanks for that answer, and though there aren’t full scholarships, I glance at scholarships awarded often, and have seen a lot of generous ones this year. Sadia, thanks for opening the bank account, or purse strings, a little bit, and awarding as best you can.
Well, thank you to the panelists, and thank you so much to the audience this morning. Really appreciate you taking the time to join us. Keep in mind that we are hosting a few more of these events later on, and I can post that link in the chat. Especially next week, I think, is a very interesting one from the student services team, and they can just talk about student life, health, wellness, and of course housing. Then the following week will be a lot on careers and internships. Be sure to tune in for those events, as well. Otherwise, I hope everyone has a great remainder of their week. Thanks again for joining.
Student Life: Community, Housing, Health, and Wellness
Alisyn Arrocha, Associate Dean of Student Services, and Alisyn Gruener, Assistant Dean, Student Life and Engagement, discuss student life.
Upcoming Discussions
In order to go into more depth on some of your questions as we lead up to the June 22 announcement on the fall 2020 format, we will be hosting several online discussions around key topics like financial aid, scholarships, international student concerns, and internships and careers. Recordings will be shared with everyone who signs up. Sign up now.
To join an online discussion that you have already signed up for, click on the link in your confirmation and reminder emails at the time of your event.
FAQs
Review our fall 2020 FAQs for prospective students. We will be updating these regularly.