About Us
Our Mission
The Middlebury C.V. Starr Schools Abroad offer overseas academic programs for undergraduates from many institutions, as well as graduate-level programs for students from the Middlebury Language Schools and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
All students at the Schools Abroad are expected to demonstrate a high level of language proficiency and a commitment to language and cultural immersion. The Schools Abroad engage students in a challenging and dynamic learning environment and facilitate an integrated experience abroad, offering rigorous academic opportunities in many disciplines. They also make use of the academic and extra-curricular offerings at our partner institutions abroad and take advantage of established resources in the host locales. Through guided independence, our students engage with their host society on a number of different levels, advance their academic and personal interests, and attain enhanced language proficiency, a solid grasp of the cultural, social, political and historical conditions of their host country, and a deeper understanding of themselves and the world.
Learning Goals
While many students come to the Middlebury Schools Abroad with their own set of academic and/or personal goals for their term abroad, the Schools Abroad has adopted three goals as core to our mission:
- Students, through active engagement in courses and with the local environment, demonstrate measurable improvement in their communication skills: the ability to speak, understand, read, and write effectively in the host country’s language.
- Students acquire the intercultural competence that enables them to recognize and respect cultural differences and value systems allowing them to engage in and analyze interactions with people from the host culture.
- Students will be able to interpret and understand the commonalities and differences between the educational systems of the US and the country in which they are studying, including the expectations placed on students.