Middlebury Language Schools History
Middlebury Language Schools was founded in 1915 and more than 58,000 students from all over the world have attended.
Middlebury’s first summer language school—the German School—was founded in 1915, followed by the French and Spanish schools in 1916 and 1917, respectively. The Italian School was added in 1932, Russian in 1945, Chinese in 1966, and Japanese in 1970. The Arabic School opened in 1982, the Portuguese School in 2003, and the School of Hebrew was launched in 2008. The School of Korean was added in 2015. The Middlebury Schools Abroad opened in 1949, with the first session of the French School in Paris in cooperation with the University of Paris. In 2010, Middlebury acquired the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
During the summer, courses are offered from beginning to graduate level in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, and Spanish; study is also offered in Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese. In 2019, Middlebury announced a partnership with Bennington College. Starting in the summer of 2020, Arabic, Italian and Portuguese will be taught in Bennington, Vermont. The baccalaureate curriculum offers particularly intense and varied programs in all of the languages taught at the Language Schools.