Prepare for Our Future

To prepare ourselves, our students, and our world for that future, we must embrace a spirit of agility and innovation while staking out a distinctive position in areas where Middlebury has the demonstrated capacity to lead.

Initiative Six: The Middlebury Labs

We embrace a spirit of creation and interdisciplinary problem-solving to deploy the full power of the liberal arts in addressing the most urgent matters of history and the future, and to ready our students for agile and purpose-filled lives and careers. 

To do so, we will:

1. Launch the Middlebury Solutions Labs—rotating, time-bound (three- to five-year) projects drawing teams of students, faculty, staff, artists, and field experts to solve complex problems of public concern through research, policy recommendations, arts initiatives, and new academic clusters with a goal of two to three new labs per year.
    
2. Launch the Liberal Arts and Artificial Intelligence Lab. The 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 consideration of the impacts of AI on the future of our climate.
    
3. Launch the Career and Life Purpose Lab—pairing every student with a dedicated mentor from the first semester through graduation, building a portfolio of experiences and career-readiness learning opportunities, and leveraging Middlebury’s global network for internships, fellowships, graduate pathways, and career futures. (Works in close coordination with the “Middlebury Plus One” initiative.)

Initiative Seven: The Planet’s College

Middlebury knows the planetary crisis of climate change is intense. We are home to the oldest undergraduate environmental studies program in the country, and our Energy2028 initiative is leading our transition to renewable energy. 

We now have an opportunity to further reenvision our campus as a living laboratory where teaching, research, operations, and partnerships advance climate solutions: For our town, state, nation, world, and planet. 

To do so, we will: 

1. Develop a comprehensive new climate action and resilience plan building on Energy2028, aligned with operations, capital planning, facilities, dining, transportation, and technology—updated every five years.
2. Support our faculty in strengthening climate and energy education across the curriculum; engage Middlebury’s local-to-global network for climate solutions, community partnerships, and policy and technology innovations.
3. Explore a reimagined School of the Environment as a School of Climate Solutions for students and working professionals integrating science and technology to inform effective climate policy and implementation.