New Video Series Features Faculty Stories

The Middlebury Institute has released a new series of videos capturing some of the compelling personal stories of its faculty. Taken together, they portray a remarkable breadth of life experience, from Anna Vassilieva’s tale of teaching impoverished, yet dedicated, students in the Soviet Union to Jeff Langholz’s heart-rending story of a West African toddler dying in his arms from starvation. As many of the faculty members note, their past experiences—whether sad, joyful, or profound—inform how they teach today’s students.

Professor

program for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.

Assistant Professor

teaches courses in his native French. As a young college student in Senegal, Coly and his friends started a free summer school for underserved students to prepare them for college entrance exams.

Professor

(TFL) degree programs from 1981. She shares the deep emotional rewards of the promise fulfilled by graduates.

As a young Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone, Professor

program.

Professor

degree programs.

Professor

. She is still inspired by her first students at a school in a small town outside Leningrad in the communist Soviet Union, who despite often horrible living conditions, came to school prepared and eager to learn every morning.

Assistant Professor

degree program. He shares with students some of the unexpected lessons he has learned while working in the federal government and serving on a White House delegation on Syrian chemical weapons.

Dean

of the Graduate School of International Policy and Management shares a story of an important mentorship from the beginning of his 30-year career as a development professional in Africa. He says it is his job to replicate the spirit of that mentorship and “make every student who comes into the classroom a better development professional than I ever was.”