Last week, Middlebury students and faculty participated in the 18th annual Spring Student Symposium, which highlighted over 200 student research projects. The symposium spotlights undergraduate research at Middlebury at a time when the Trump administration has been cutting the funding of projects at large and small universities alike. Since the college heavily promotes the possibilities for student researchers on their website and on tours for prospective students, it’s worth debating what priority the institution should give to providing these research opportunities.
While research is an essential component of many departments at Middlebury, most notably the STEM fields that reside in BiHall, in conversations about research the college cannot omit its core focus: the liberal arts. Independent scientific inquiry means little if students cannot write about it in an effective and compelling way, or if research opportunities pop up sporadically for only a few Middlebury students.
In the ongoing discussions about the value of threatened research, the college should also reassert basic principles of writing and rigor that are currently lacking from its curriculum. The values of a Middlebury education need to be instilled in students from their first semester: We must revamp the first year seminar requirement to implement standardized assignments. Every first year student should know how to write a 10 page paper; the College Writing requirements need to have standardized expectations for their amount of writing too, which would ensure everyone graduates with experience writing longer papers.
Departments in the humanities and sciences alike should take steps to facilitate more independent student research, including the option to take a thesis. Research opportunities should be a component of our education that are more widely accessible, but pre-professional research experience is not the capstone to a Middlebury career, despite what the Spring Student Symposium may suggest. While we’re defending the value of student research and scientific exploration, why not use that stage to recommit ourselves to the basics: writing, reading and critical analysis.
We do agree with the general principle that independent, creative student-led research is a fulfilling experience made possible by attending a liberal arts college. While Middlebury student researchers may not be at the forefront of groundbreaking scientific research, focusing on a specialized area through research is a way for students to develop their academic skills, relationships with professors and explore a new, exciting idea.
Yet, depending on the department, it can be difficult and sometimes downright discouraging to try to complete undergraduate research or a thesis. Recent budget cuts and over-enrollment affect professors’ capacity to advise a large number of students in independent projects. Humanities students are often given fewer opportunities to conduct research than their peers in BiHall. Meanwhile, STEM students can find themselves siphoned into conducting research in a faculty member’s lab rather than pursuing their own independent research, which takes significant planning and bureaucratic knowledge to complete.
We are not advocating for professors taking on heavier workloads to advise students — especially in light of recent cuts to their compensation — but we believe that research opportunities should be accessible to all parts of campus. Like it is the college’s responsibility to provide us with a liberal arts education, it is also their job to give professors the full support they need to meet their students’ needs for independent projects. Increasing enrollment without a parallel increase in faculty is certainly not the way to do this.
This is just another reason why the college should reverse those budget cuts and restore faculty’s morale in the process. An additional way to improve Middlebury’s academic environment would be to commit to replacing lost or frozen research funding targeted by the federal government. In a time of internal and external upheaval, our research opportunities should not suffer.
This time of uncertainty for scientific inquiry should also prompt some soul-searching about the sum of our academic environment. Although some may point to bias from a group of students who write and edit for fun in calling for more rigorous writing requirements and projects in classrooms, we are in danger of losing basic skills. No one can deny the growing threat of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to college students’ writing skills. Expectations across first year seminars and the college writing credits are inconsistent, and standardizing these requirements to force us to write longer papers or conduct deeper research in niche fields of our own interest would hamper the perilous crutch of A.I. — it’s a lot harder to write a strong 10-page paper with “unauthorized aid” than a four-pager. These are serious concerns the college should be thinking about as it admits more and more classes of students who have had access to ChatGPT since their sophomore years of high school.
As part of our reordering of the college’s academic landscape, we must emphasize the role of independent senior work, especially the senior thesis. A student who has only ever written at most a 4–5 page paper can easily fulfill their graduation requirements, but they are unlikely to elect to write a serious senior thesis or to participate in research. Let’s restore a bare minimum of academic rigor to our course load. The possibility of writing over 40 pages for a senior project won’t feel as intimidating if students are conditioned to write longer papers earlier in their time here; everyone should be capable of doing a senior thesis in any department if they feel passionate and have the time to do so.
Like many issues at our liberal arts college, student research is entangled in the institutional underpinnings of budgeting and bureaucracy. We must ensure Middlebury College is upholding its principles of academic integrity and scientific inquiry through college-wide support for students and faculty. A widespread guarantee of research opportunities and writing standards would be a positive step forward for current and future Middlebury students.
