Sometimes changing your location can shift your perspective.
So can getting hands-on with your learning. That was the case not only for the undergraduate students in our Study Away program this winter but also for their instructor, Megan Mayhew-Bergman, assistant professor of English at Middlebury College.
In a recent piece, she reflected on how participating in the protection of Monterey Bay’s impressive natural phenomena inspired a greater understanding of global interdependence. In January, students completed a conservation service project on Elkhorn Slough, a nearby protected marshland.
“I crave real action outside of the academy, the book, the think piece, the polemical tone of politics, virtue signaling, armchair activism. It’s as if we’ve forgotten we can do things—simple things, like feeding people, putting out water for birds, mowing lawns less, picking up trash from waterways,” wrote Mayhew-Bergman.
The Study Away at Monterey program provides undergraduates the opportunity to take graduate-level courses at the Middlebury Institute in specialized topics like environmental policy, nuclear nonproliferation, and language studies while living in the beautiful natural sanctuary of Monterey.
Read “Entangled Lives” on Mayhew-Berman’s blog, Open Field Stories.
| by Jason Warburg
Middlebury College student Finn Warner writes that he learned more about himself while enrolled in the Study Away at Monterey program than he ever had through any combination of essays, exams and discussions.
| by Mark C. Anderson
The Center for the Blue Economy’s collaboration on a recent study of a decade-long project to renew wetlands in Washington shines light on how healthy coastal habitat drive the economy, sequester carbon and reduce flooding.
Video
| by Nadia Pshonyak
This semester more than eighty Middlebury Institute students are participating in our distinguished semester-long experiential learning and practicum courses. Students are working around the globe with organizations making a positive impact in various fields while continuing their studies here at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
