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Excellence. Purpose. Joy.

The Middlebury Labs

Students present findings at the Vermont state house.
Students from a Health Economics and Policy class present their findings at the Vermont State House.

“Times change, values do not. This is core value, and we will be a values-driven institution in all times and always home to that free pursuit of truth that is at the heart of the liber of the liberal arts.”

Initiative Six: The Middlebury Labs

We are going to:

  1. Launch the Middlebury Solutions Lab. The Solutions Labs will be organized around a rotating series of time-limited projects drawing teams of students, faculty, staff, artists, and practitioners across disciplines to solve complex problems of public concern through research, policy recommendations, arts initiatives, and new academic clusters.  
     
  2. Launch the Liberal Arts and Artificial Intelligence Lab. The Liberal Arts and AI Lab will provide opportunities for makerspace-style experimentation with AI technologies to our students, faculty, and staff to explore how they can enable creative new forms of teaching, learning, and discovery. It will foster course development, active learning, scholarship, arts, and research. The lab will also provide a venue for exploring the ethical implications of AI: how we need to be thinking about its capacities both creatively and responsibly, including through deliberate considerations of the impacts of AI on the future of our climate. 
     
  3. Launch the Career and Life Purpose Lab. Working closely with the Middlebury Plus One initiative, the Career and Life Purpose Lab will pair each student with a dedicated mentor from their first year to graduation, guiding them as they seek internships, fellowships, and graduate experiences and leverage Middlebury’s global network. This program will seek to bring students to their full potential and help them define their purpose as they prepare for life after college.