Middbrief: Brainerd Dean Pacholec announces departure from Midd

Dean of Brainerd Commons Matthew Pacholec announced that he will be leaving Middlebury College at the end of the academic year, the second commons dean to do so since the beginning of the spring semester.

Pacholec’s decision comes just weeks after Dean of Cook Commons Karl Lindholm made public his plans to retire this December. When asked about the reasons prompting the move, Pacholec was candid.

“After three meaningful years at Middlebury, I feel a pull to pursue other professional and personal opportunities,” he wrote in an e-mail. He did not respond further.

Though still relatively new to Middlebury, Pacholec has played many roles around campus. Aside from being a dean, he teaches in the Philosophy department and co-chairs the Community Judicial Board.

As with Lindholm, the College will lose a strong advocate for the decentralized commons system in Pacholec. Wherever he may find himself in the future, however, his enthusiasm for Middlebury’s structure is unlikely to wane.

“I remain keenly interested in the residential education exemplified by the College and the commons,” he said.

Pacholec received his doctorate from DePaul University in Chicago in 2000, and taught there and at Grinnell College in Iowa. His former students from Grinnell remember fondly their time with him in class, with one going so far as to say that he “knows everything” about philosophy.

Pacholec’s academic specialty is the study of Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century philosopher whose image adorns the wall in his Stewart Hall office. While teaching at Grinnell, he presented a paper entitled “Kant on the Imagination and Delirium,” in which he argued that the “Kantian sublime can be usefully viewed through Freudian lenses.” He has continued to study Aesthetics and Continental Philosophy, along with the German enlightenment thinker at Middlebury.

The 19th-century engraving of Kant in his office afforded the only certainty Pacholec could share about the future. “I will be taking it with me,” he said.

Students in Brainerd Commons will remember Pacholec for his efforts to know them personally.

“He still asks me about the stitches I got from playing Quidditch in October,” said Brian Clow ’13. “He has been very helpful when I needed him to be.”

Nial Rele ’12, a First-Year Counselor in Stewart, agreed. “He plays his role by the book, while also having a consistent presence at Brainerd activities.”