Middlebury Language Schools Award 75 Graduate Degrees at 111th Commencement
The Middlebury Language Schools held its 111th Commencement on Aug. 8 at the Mahaney Arts Center (MAC) Olin C. Robison Concert Hall with Ian B. Baucom addressing graduates for the first time as Middlebury’s president.
“Without you, I am not sure that I would be here,” said Baucom, who started on July 1. “On my first day as president, I saw signs for the Middlebury Language Pledge that you have taken; I passed companies of Language School students gathered on our lawns, walking our pathways, bringing the gift of a polylingual planet to this campus in Vermont, and I knew right awaythat, like you, I was in the right place.”
The Language Schools awarded 71 Master of Arts degrees and four Doctor of Modern Languages degrees at the ceremony. Since the establishment of the German School in 1915, more than 58,000 students have attended one of the Schools’ 13 immersion programs. Over 12,000 students have received advanced degrees, now offered in 10 languages.
“As you prepare to graduate I want to thank you,” continued Baucom. “For coming to this place, for taking that pledge, for immersing yourself, for committing yourself to knowing what it means to inhabit the world and take on our share of responsibility for the world—not only in the language of our first self, but in the language of another.”
Mark Orten, dean of spiritual and religious life and chaplain of the College, and Jesse Bruchac, director of the School of Abenaki, opened the ceremony with a land acknowledgment and invocation honoring the lives and sacrifices made by the Abenaki people.
Gina Marie Falk ’25, a Boston-based singer and French instructor who graduated from the Betty Ashbury Jones MA ’86 School of French, performed “Laurie’s Song” from The Tender Land by Aaaron Copland.
Virginia Ann Kamsky, founder, chair, and CEO of Kamsky Associates, Inc., a strategic advisory firm with offices in Beijing and New York, gave the Commencement address and received an honorary degree.
Kamsky, who attended the School of Japanese in 1973, said her mother “forced her to learn Chinese” at age 10 starting at the China Institute, followed by programs at Columbia University, Fujen Catholic University in Taiwan, and Princeton University. It wasn’t until she attended the Language Schools, however, that she felt truly challenged.
“The summer I spent at Middlebury was the most rigorous time of my life,” she said. “There is no question about—the seriousness of being in one of the language programs and signing that pledge the day you arrive speaking zero of the language.”
Kamsky planned to earn a PhD in classical Chinese poetry until her professor at Princeton told her that she “belonged working in a bank” and should study statistics and economics. She told him that he was “absolutely out of his mind.” Kamsky ultimately took his advice and was later offered a job by the chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank at the recommendation of her professor due to her fluency in Chinese and Japanese and quantitative training.
“Hopefully this is instructive to all of you to keep an open mind as to what the future has in store for you,” said Kamsky, who drafted the first foreign commercial bank loan to China as head of Chase’s corporate China division. “As a teacher you can make a huge influence on the lives of students like my professor did. You yourselves as teachers, really are the future ambassadors of the world.”
Kamsky closed by telling graduates that their language and teaching skills have never been more needed. “If ever there was a time to learn all of these foreign languages, this is it,” she said. “Crisis equals opportunity. You have in the palm of your hands a real opportunity at a time when the world needs you to step up and be able to speak the language, to understand the culture, to understand the history.”
Timothy W. Page, acting dean of Language Schools, thanked graduates, faculty, directors, support staff, and parents prior to presenting degrees. “You have made a commitment necessary to achieve advanced language fluency and cultural understanding in your area of study,” he said. “We are deeply honored to have accompanied you on this journey and are enormously proud of your accomplishments.”
Baucom closed by emphasizing the importance of learning a new language when much of the world is turning inward. “We need that commitment, that turning outward,” he said. “We need that turn, and then we need the next step, the step that you have taken. The step and the difficulty of not just hearing another language, but of learning another language. The step through the humility and the courage that that pledge demands.”
Commencement was broadcast live for graduates and their families to watch from across the world. The Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) with Licensure launched this year offering a secondary (7–12) teaching license in modern languages valid for teaching in U.S. public school systems.