VPAA Update February 2026
Dear MIIS Students, Staff and Faculty
We are in the third week of the spring 2026 semester and we welcome back continuing students, as well as new in-person and online students. I write with updates on several fronts.
Commencement Speaker. I’m pleased to announce that Senator Bill Monning will address the graduating class at our Spring Commencement exercise on May 16, at which time we will confer upon him an honorary doctorate degree. Bill, a one-time MIIS faculty member, is well-known to many of you (including those of you who so persuasively nominated him to be our speaker), and has made valuable contributions to the struggle for peace and justice on the Central Coast, across California, nationwide, and at the global level. You can consult our speaker’s bio on our Spring Commencement webpage.
Student Achievement Highlighted at Board Meeting. Last month, we welcomed the Institute Board of Advisors to campus for their annual on-site meeting. A highlight of the meeting was a series of presentations by current students about a sampling of the vital activities that took place at MIIS during the fall 2025 semester. My heartfelt thanks and admiration to:
- Jake Lopata, Michael Nevarez, Lailah Khalil, discussing the Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge
- Judy Dong, who described student networking and learning opportunities at the LocWorld conference of localization professionals
- Amany Darkaoui, Emma Holm-Olsen, McKenzie Ploen, reporting on students’ experience at COP30, the UN Climate Change Conference in the Brazilian Amazon
- Juancruz Montalvo Rivas, who shared highlights of the annual Fall Forum organized by our Translation & Interpretation programs.
New Student FAQs. Institute students also engaged in dialogue with Middlebury leadership, including President Ian Baucom, and the leadership of the Middlebury Board of Trustees. We’ve collected some of the questions from that discussion, along with answers, and added them to the MIIS Teach-out FAQ resource. This webpage is continuously being updated and we encourage you to consult it if you have questions.
Career Change Resources for Faculty and Staff. In January, we said goodbye to a number of staff colleagues whose positions have been eliminated as part of the teach-out process, and last week, a second group of colleagues received notice that their positions will end on June 19. We are mobilizing resources to help each other as we prepare for the next stage of our career paths. Middlebury Board of Trustees Vice Chair Leiliani M. Brown, author of the free e-book,Your Next Giant Reset, a resource for facing unexpected career changes, will be on campus February 25 to lead a workshop. Stacy Roth-Guyette will be sharing more information with staff and faculty about how they can participate later this week. And please contact Meili Chen, our HR Business Partner, if you have questions about the range of resources and services available to you.
Threat Intelligence Chair. While our colleague Professor Kate Petrich is on leave this semester, her responsibilities as Chair of the Threat Intelligence degree program will be covered by Associate Dean Toni Thomas and myself, complementing the work of Professors Karen Nershi and Jason Blazakis as academic advisors for the program. Toni and I will work to ensure effective information sharing and community building among the students, faculty and many collaborators of the Threat Intelligence program during Professor Petrich’s absence.
My thanks to all of you for the hard work you do – as teachers, students, mentors, contributors to the mission and spirit of MIIS.
JDJ