In September, the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life relocated from its temporary location at 46 South Street to its original space in the Hathaway House at 135 South Main Street. In 2021, the center was displaced to make room for student quarantine rooms due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In place of the former location will be the first Vermont office for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), which already has offices in Monterey, Calif., Washington, D.C. and Vienna, Austria. The dedicated Vermont building marks the next step in a nearly two-decade long expansion of CNS. The official launch will take place in the spring after 46 South Street undergoes routine maintenance, according to several sources.
Mark Orten, dean of spiritual and religious life and director of the Scott Center, expressed excitement that the center is moving back to its original location. An official dedication will take place at the house on Monday, Oct. 13 from 4:30-6:00 p.m., where college President Ian Baucom will deliver remarks.
“We are now so much easier to find — next door to Admissions, across the street from Axinn. We have a very cozy living room with a fireplace that will be operational soon. A dedicated prayer and meditation room upstairs provides rare and needed space on campus,” he wrote in an email to The Campus. “The college’s special interest housing for multi-faith and no faith intentional living and learning — the MOSAIC Interfaith House — is next door.”
He also shared that spiritual and religious life is currently thriving on campus, which will only continue with the relocation of the Scott Center.
“Persisting over the last decade through budget cuts and staff reductions and facility relocations, the Center continues to offer vital resources to the campus community, increasingly in demand, and the restoration of the location at Hathaway House is an important part of the provision it can make,” he wrote.
Avery Goldstein ’26.5, treasurer of the Quaker Club, expressed some sadness over leaving the old location behind, but is happy that the new location is closer to the center of campus.
“More people can come to our Sunday meetings, which is exciting. I'm excited to make the new Scott Center our little Sunday home,” Goldstein said.
CNS is one of the self-sustaining programs at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies (MIIS) that will continue after June 2027. Middlebury undergraduate students have been able to work remotely for CNS from the Vermont campus since 2020, according to Jessica Varnum, deputy director of CNS. The office’s opening, along with a partnership with the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, will allow for more collaboration between Vermont students and the program.
“For a number of years, we've been looking at how could we formalize those opportunities in the Vermont location, because it's obviously less than ideal to have students just working out of their dorm rooms or in library spaces. They don't get the benefits of collaboration on site together with the other students and with faculty and staff that they might be working with on projects,” Varnum said.
Students who work with CNS engage in research projects utilizing technologies such as satellite imagery, animation, 3D modeling and open-source data analytics. According to Varnum, establishing a formal location for these students to gather, collaborate and receive in-person mentoring from CNS experts has been in the works for several years.
“In addition to providing a physical location for students, a Vermont office will enable us to start basing some of our experts in Vermont to actually work in person with students, as well as to have visiting experts from our various offices come in for various numbers of weeks or months at a time or a semester at a time to be able to be in residence and work directly with the students,” Varnum said.
In a news announcement this past August, CNS founder and director Dr. William Potter expressed excitement for this next step.
“We have seen in the past how effective Middlebury students can be as research assistants and collaborators, and we welcome this opportunity to build a more direct partnership,” Potter said.
According to Varnum, the CNS mission statement includes training and educating the next generation of people that are going to have an impact on policy, as well as providing hands-on experience in the field.
Jack Johnson ’26.5, a research assistant on the CNS new tools team, conducts open-source research with an emphasis on satellite imagery and geospatial analysis to analyze specific military capabilities of adversary countries. He believes the new office can richen students’ skills outside the classroom.
“I hope that the new Vermont office brings greater integration with Middlebury College and enables more students to apply their skills outside of classroom environments to real-world international security research,” Johnson wrote in a message to The Campus.
Maya Alexander ‘26 (she/her) is an Editor at Large.
She is a sociology major and intended French minor from New York City. She loves getting lost in her Pinterest feed and staging spontaneous photoshoots, occasional yoga and a solid iced oat milk maple latte.
