General FAQ

Middlebury will complete the spring semester remotely, continuing the approach to teaching and learning our faculty and students have already begun. Only a small number of students remain on campus and only essential staff are working on campus to ensure the health and safety of those students, and to ensure academic continuity as we move forward. Essential staff and services include:

• Health Center operations
• Public Safety activities
• Facilities Services, including custodial, plant, and other maintenance roles
• Dining Services
• Residential Life
• Information Technology support for our network and infrastructure
• Faculty and staff providing instruction and/or supporting remote teaching and learning that must be done on campus

The spring semester will be completed through remote learning and, unfortunately, students will not be returning to campus this spring.

Remote Programs

The Middlebury Language Schools and the Bread Loaf School of English will be mounting versions of their programs remotely, recognizing that our students want to gain further proficiency in the languages they are learning, make progress toward their MA degrees, and engage with their faculty and fellow students. The Bread Loaf School of English, for example, will offer new credit-bearing opportunities that fulfill degree requirements and allow students and faculty to work together at close range, even though at a distance—building in unique ways on their collective talents.

Several other programs will also move forward this summer, remotely, including the Middlebury Institute’s English Preparation for Graduate Studies program and the Institute’s Monterey Summer Symposium on Russia, the latter fully funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. We will also offer MiddCORE remotely.

Cancelled

Several programs have been cancelled, including: the School of the Environment’s China program, the June conferences of The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, including the Translators’ conference and the Environmental Writers’ conference. The Center for Social Entrepreneurship’s June Forum will be cancelled. Several other undergraduate programs will not run, including the Museum Studies program run through our School Abroad in Oxford, and the summer study program on Performing Arts and Community Engagement that was slated to run in Uganda. Finally, there are a number of Institute summer programs that will be cancelled or postponed, while some others will run remotely. Students scheduled to take those programs will be contacted separately.

We will make a decision about the August Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in June.

We will not be offering in-person Admissions tours, but we are offering a diverse array of virtual sessions and hope you will join us if you are considering applying to Middlebury. You can find details on our Admissions website.

For the time being, no visitors, including prospective students, alumni, speakers, job applicants, performing artists, etc., will be permitted on campus. We are working hard to conduct visits and meetings online.

We will not hold our traditional Commencement in May, but we are developing an innovative plan to honor our graduates.

• A virtual celebration will take place the weekend of our regularly scheduled Commencement.
• A second, in-person, traditional Commencement ceremony will take place sometime in 2020 or 2021: held outside, families present, speeches given, honorary degrees awarded, student degrees awarded, and not combined with another graduation. We will do everything we can to make it affordable and equitable for people to return to campus. Details to come.

We have made the very painful decision to cancel Reunion in June and will be working with Reunion committees for the classes ending in 0 and 5 to plan other ways for meaningful Midd connections.