New center expands to accommodate student needs

The offices of Career Services, Student Fellowships and Health Professions and Alliance for Civic Engagement (ACE) have all moved under one roof into Adirondack House and joined together to become The Center for Education in Action: Careers, Fellowships and Civic Engagement (EIA).

Lisa Gates, associate dean of experiential education, assessment and planning explained that the goal of the new alliance is to give students better access to all the resources that the individual offices have to offer by working together on points of overlap in student interests.

"EIA will help our different areas communicate better internally, even with something as simple as a referral. We want students to examine not just the ‘here and now,’ but also to apply their interests to what [they] do after Middlebury,” added Gates.

Dean of the College Shirley Collado praised the move, describing EIA as “huge in terms of one-stop shopping for students to really address their needs for internships and certainly what they do beyond their time at Middlebury, in terms of their careers, fellowships and graduate school work.”

The idea to create EIA was first introduced last spring. According to Gates, “important commonalities” between the three offices led to the discussion of moving ACE staff to open offices in Adirondack House, when plans for the renovation of Meeker House caused the ACE offices to move out of McCullough Student Center in order to make room for the Dean of College offices. Other factors contributed to the move, including staff reductions through early retirement and voluntary separation programs in addition to campus-wide shifting of staff offices during this “time of change,” said Gates.

“Bringing these offices together also helped accommodate for some staff departures from Career Services, [but] we have not discontinued any core programs,” said Gates. She also emphasized that no staff were cut as a result of the move. “We wanted to bring offices together that some strong commonalities but may not have had as many professional interactions as separate offices.”

Staff from ACE, Career Services and the Office of Student Health Professions and Fellowships worked together over the summer to familiarize themselves with the duties and resources of the other offices. The staff also worked to create a title and a formal mission for EIA.

Although EIA is just at the beginning of the process of integration, cross-referrals have already increased dramatically this fall. Gates encouraged students to use EIA in order to “access more meaningful opportunities outside the classroom and build towards what they do after Middlebury. [EIA] can help students find funding for internships and projects, connections through alumni and volunteer opportunities in Addison County, nationally and abroad.”

In addition to developing collaborative programs, future goals of EIA include creating stronger ties to faculty and developing mechanisms for student feedback on the organization. Many students consult faculty mentors for career guidance through the academic advising program. EIA hopes to work more closely with faculty members so that advisors can better help their students find opportunities to match their interests.

EIA welcomes student input about its operations, and hopes to develop methods that allow for students to voice their opinions about what they feel would be most beneficial for them.

“The challenge for us right now is to find time within the work we do on a daily basis to continue to focus on ways we can come together as offices,” said Gates. “We all seem to have more to do and need to find ways to make our collective work manageable."