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(04/24/14 12:40am)
Bakery at Crossroads Cafe
The school bake sales as you knew them pale in comparison to the kind of creative baked goods the student-run Crossroads Café are selling. From lemon-frosted blueberry cake to banana peanut butter finger cake, from white chocolate sweet potato cake to pumpkin bread, the range of pastries conceptualized and made by the baking team at Crossroads never stops expanding. Head chef of Crossroads Sandra Markowitz ’15.5 said, “Once we had an overabundance of coconut flour and so we wondered, ‘what are we going to do with all this?’ and so then we found a coconut banana bread chocolate chip recipe,” a melting pastry that now sells over the counter.
Creativity cooks here even without a kitchen. “The main difficulty is that the kitchen we have access to is the Grille’s—which isn’t a baking kitchen,” Markowitz said. “They’ve been really helpful in supplying us with the things we need. They have a good oven, they have whisks, and I’m hoping next to ask for bundt cake pans!”
Pastries sell by the slice here, but they can also be bought whole. Because it takes four hours to bake a cake, chefs would optimize and take to baking three cakes on Sunday—two of them decorated for Crossroads and the third replica would be sold whole. Markowitz says that the difference between buying here and buying pastries at Carol’s is that “you don’t know the person baking them. It’s a chance to support someone and their passion here, and I think that’s a really great thing.” Food, and all the creativity that goes into it, doesn’t get any more local than this.
Prices: $1.25-$3.25
Contact: smarkowoitz@middlbury.edu
Team Members: Sandra Markowitz ’15.5 (Head Chef), Mariah Levin ’16.5, Georgia Wei ’16, Birgitta Cheng ’17, Connor Bentivoglio ’15.5
Wash & Carry
Since 1987, Middlebury men’s hockey team has been running Wash and Carry, a laundry washing and delivery service. Serving about 200-230 people per year, Wash and Carry picks up your laundry once a week in a special bag outside student’s doors, transports it to Mountain Fresh Cleaners where the laundry is washed, dried and folded, and returns the laundry in the evening. This one-day service takes about nine players doing ten shifts to get the job done. Wash and Carry is not exclusively a hockey team job but the company was founded by a men’s hockey player and since the ‘80s has been passed down through the team because, in the words of current head Thomas Freyre ’14, “it’s easier to trust someone to do their job when they’re a teammate and close friend.” Freyre, who will be passing his leadership on to David Loughborough ’16 next year, says, “Sometimes things take longer than you’d like but mistakes are part of learning how to run a business. I like to think at the end of the day people feel like we tried for them and they had a positive experience.”
Prices: $425 for laundry service once a week for the year; $290 for every other week for the year
Contact: dloughborough@middlebury.edu or visit middleburywashandcarry.com
Team Members: Middlebury Men’s Hockey & friends
Summer Spillane Haircuts
Summer Spillane ’15 has been cutting hair since her first year on campus. A self-taught cosmetologist, Spillane started learning the trade of haircutting through YouTube tutorial videos before she decided to pick up a buzzer and cut clean the hair of her male friends. But since then, she’s gotten more practice. “I started out with close friends who trusted me with their hair but have expanded my client base as word spread. I have more experience with short styles but I really like working with long hair.”
She has dealt with a client range of personalities from laid-back to people very particular about their hair. “I’ve invested my name,” she said. “My name is going to be attached to the style, so as much I love talking and getting to know people I’ve never met, I focus. I always want them to like it.” Students who don’t want to trek out to town go to Spillane for a cheap cut. Since she is not a licensed professional, she accepts tips. For a small tip, you’ll get “the full treatment, blow-out and finished product.” Want the view from a barber’s chair and the full experience of the wearing a plastic styling cape? She’s got that too.
Prices: $5-$10 (plus tip)
recommended
Contact: sspillane@middlebury.edu
Team Members: Summer Spillane ’15
Otter Delivery
“I hatched the idea while assembling a TV stand early in the school year,” said Teddy Gold ’16 of the nascence of Otter Delivery, a new student-run delivery service launched this semester. “I realized that the stand needed a screwdriver and I, along with the entirety of Gifford, did not have an adequate screwdriver.”
Though in this incident, Gold fell prey to the ease of Amazon delivery, the situation sparked an idea and has grown ever since.
Otter Delivery’s business model took its full shape in Gold’s J-term class, Midd Entrepreneurs, with the help of visiting Professors Andrew Stickney and Dave Bradbury, as a simple call and response system. Customers email or call in orders—Gold cites “diapers, a birthday cake, brownie mix, shampoo, local cheese from Scholten family farmstand or pizza at an hour when Ramuntos doesn’t deliver”—and items are delivered by around 5 p.m., with a $5 surcharge per business visited.
Otter Delivery receives ten to fifteen orders a week, which are handled by Gold and Brandon Gell ’16, the company’s marketing director. At this point, the business is manageable with two “otters,” or deliverers, but Gold hopes to expand in the near future.
The next step is developing a website and app through which customers can place orders, and which can then allow the franchise to expand to other NESCAC schools, where friends of Gold are interested in drumming up business.
Gold and Gell believe the model is sustainable and beneficial to small town college life.
“Amazon is easy, convenient, and omnipresent,” Gold said. “But nowhere in the Amazon equation does anyone account for the brick and mortar, mom and pop shops that drive local economies. At the very heart of Otter Delivery is convenience for customers and support for local economies.”
Prices: $5 per store visited (plus cost of item)
Contact: Teddy@Otterdelivery.com
Team Members: Teddy Gold ’16, Brandon Gell ’16
Middorm
Extra long twin size beds seem to be an unavoidable aspect of residential life on campus, until you meet the minds behind of Middorm, Jack Steele ’16, Dylan McGarthwaite ’17 and Eliot Neal ’17. Inspired by a friend’s similar endeavor at Dartmouth College, Steele co-founded the bed buying business at the beginning of his first year. The company rents full size beds and futons for semester or full year terms.
“Crazy comfort” is the company’s goal, according to Steele, and its one that has found great success across campus, as rentals almost doubled this year. Middorm’s model is simple: an all student email over the summer informs Midd kids of rental options, and the team delivers the order at the beginning of the term.
With business growing steadily, the company is committed to consistent comfort across campus.
Prices: full size beds at $250 for one semester or $399 for the year; futons at $150 for one semester or $250 for the year.
Contact: middorm.com
Team Members: Jack Steele ’16, Dylan McGarthwaite ’17 and Eliot Neal ’17
Morning Glory
Ever find that dining hall brunch simply won’t cut it? Morning Glory seeks make breakfast a gourmet experience. A Gamut Room gig started by Olivia French ’16 and Caroline Decamp ’14, Morning Glory sells breakfast sandwiches from 11 am to 1 pm on Saturday mornings for only a dollar! Morning Glory was born last spring out of French’s sampling of regional cuisines abroad and the desire on behalf the former roommates to spend time together in a new way. Now, the pair serves up savory breakfast sandwiches such as the Cleopatra (a breakfast sandwich with roasted red pepper and eggplant, garlic yogurt sauce, fried egg, feta, and cilantro) and Pillow Talk (bacon, caramelized onion, arugula, maple vinaigrette, fried egg, and cheddar), debuting new recipes each week inspired by food blogs, travel and their favorite restaurants.
“It is important to us that each recipe is original,” emphasizes French, however, who wrote a local foods inspired cookbook for her senior thesis. “We have a lot of fun deciding what veggies, cheeses, herbs, and meats to use on our sandwiches each week, and make sure to change it up--for both our customer’s enjoyment and our own.”
The pair, which describe breakfast sandwiches as “a wonderful canvas to experiment with new flavor combinations,” concoct about 50 handmade creations each Saturday to sell. French and Decamp have no plans as yet to continue Morning Glory after their graduation this spring. Students interested in keeping up with Morning Glory’s gourmet recipes, however, can check out the blog French is starting this summer called the Foodie and the Farmer, featuring photojournalism profiles of food workers like farmers and chefs and original recipes based on their stories. In the meantime, hit this delicious deal while it lasts!
Prices: $1 per sandwich
Contact: ofrench@middlebury.edu or edecamp@middlebury.edu
Team Members: Olivia French ’14, Caroline DeCamp ’14
(02/13/14 12:18am)
Jack and Nicole have spent every weekday of the last five months together. At 7:45 a.m., Nicole picks Jack up at his house. Most mornings, they stop at Ferrisburgh Bakery on the way to school, so Nicole can get a breakfast sandwich; if she is in a good mood, she will buy Jack a cookie, too. At school, the two spend the morning going to classes, eat lunch together and cook in the afternoons. After school, Nicole usually drops Jack off at home at 3:15, but if he is lucky, Nicole takes him to the train tracks. Last week, they stood by the tracks for 45 minutes in the rain, playing I Spy while they waited for the train.
But Jack thinks Nicole is going to hell. Jack is the son of a devout Christian father; Nicole is into Buddhism. Jack has memorized the rules of Christianity and repeats them often. It is hard to tell if he understands what he is saying, but it does not matter; he is convinced. He will go to Heaven, and Nicole will not.
Jack is fourteen years old and in the ninth grade. Nicole is his personal behavior interventionist. Jack has long, thin fingers and Nike sneakers that are too big for his feet, so they bounce against his heels like flip-flops. His clothes are usually wrinkled, and he often tugs at the belt loop of his jeans to keep them from falling down. He is tall and fair-skinned with light blue eyes and buzz cut blonde hair that is prone to cowlicks. Most of the time Jack is either moving or making noise, often both. When he speaks, his words come out like train wheels hammering over tracks, one-toned and pounding one on the end of the other, stuttering and spewing thoughts that come faster than his lips can move; but when you ask him something, redirecting his train of thought, his voice gets soft, and he chooses his words carefully. Jack, whose name has been changed for this article, is speculated to be on the autism spectrum.
Jack goes to school at the Diversified Occupations Program (DO), a high school for special needs students in Middlebury. I visited the program and met Jack at the beginning of January and spent time with him throughout the month.
When I first met Jack, he was in the kitchen fiddling with the arm of an electric blue mixing bowl. His apron was crooked, his t-shirt caught in the knot around his hips. When his teacher Ms. Lynch told him to come say “hi” to me, he walked over slowly, one finger in his mouth. He offered me his left hand, placing it gently in my right, but Lynch corrected him, and he lent me his shaking hand instead.
“Are you Indian?” he asked, looking over my shoulder. His voice was high and loud, coming from a thin-lipped mouth ringed with faded acne marks.
Lynch interrupted. “Is that a firm handshake?”
When I responded, smiling, that it could be firmer, Jack tightened his grip. Then he looked at my eyes. “Can you be my friend I don’t know if you can be my friend,” he said in an even tone, as if it were one word.
“I can be your friend,” I answered.
“I don’t know if I can be your friend, can you be my friend?” His hand was still in mine, bobbing up and down evenly.
I repeated my answer and Jack continued to grip my hand lightly until Lynch broke the bond apart.
Jim Doolan and his wife Kay, both current substitute teachers, founded the DO program in 1970, spurred by the mid-60s formation of the Vermont Department of Education, which emphasized increasing special education opportunities. Uniting two small Addison County, Vt. special education classes, one based in a church basement and the other in an elementary school, and housing them in a closed-down Catholic School, the pair effectively cut the ribbon of the DO program, though the model looked different than today’s. At its inception, DO focused foremost on academics and secondarily on daily living skills such as home economics and shop. Now the classes are centered on practical learning, and the students are more involved in the community. Programs like bird banding, an annual trip to D.C. and vocational opportunities have developed over the course of the program’s life. These varied programs sprung up out of necessity to cater to a variety of individualized needs; DO students span a wide range of capacities, and DO prioritizes individualizing education so that each student graduates with a job and the skills they need to live independently.
Today, the program has 35 students in ninth through twelfth grades. They come from four area junior high schools (Vergennes, Mt. Abraham, Middlebury and Otter Valley), suggested for DO by their junior high case manager. Most of the students are learning impaired, which means their IQs are 77 or below (the average IQ is around 100); the rest test just a few points above 77. In the old days, said Lynch, this is what people called mental retardation. But Rosa’s Law, signed by President Obama in October of 2010, replaced the term “mental retardation” with the phrase “intellectual disability” for use in federal health, education, and labor policy. Though the change has been gradual, the “R-word,” has been essentially phased out of use nationwide, and is never heard at the DO program.
But the medical condition remains the same; learning impairments land most students entering the DO program at a third grade level of academic comprehension. Even in light of this reality, DO does not prioritize expanding academic knowledge. Instead, the DO staff asks: “How do you take a third-grade level and translate that into adult functioning? What do [students] really need to know?”
The answer, according to Lynch: “You don’t have to know physics, you don’t have to have geometry, but you should know how to add and subtract. You should know how to do a budget, you should know how to be able to pay your bills and have really good work skills so you can have a job.”
With 19 staff members working to specialize lessons for 35 students, DO’s financial responsibility is astronomical. Tuition comes in at $25,000, funded by the student’s home school, 55 percent of which is reimbursed to the school by the state — “a deal,” Lynch said, compared to other specialized programs, such as those for emotionally disturbed youth. But at such a low price, funding the program can be a struggle. Recent dips in enrollment – four or five fewer students than usual – necessitated cutting drivers’ education.
To Lynch, it seems incredible that this operation succeeds so smoothly for such a low price, especially considering the caliber of staff members currently employed. In several different conversations, Lynch expressed her awe of the people she works with and the effect they have on their students.
“We have some really quality people right now working with kids,” she said. “That’s not always the case in public schools.”
During my first visit, Jack and three other students were baking in preparation for DO’s fully-functioning Friday afternoon restaurant, the TGIF Cafe. In the kitchen, I asked him if he was happy with how his cookies turned out.
“Why is your face clear?” he answered.
“I asked you about the cookies,” I said.
“You don’t have any bumps on your face, like most women do.”
“The cookies, Jack,” Nicole interjected.
He stared at my face. “You don’t have any bumps on your face, you musta had acne treatment.” He pointed at Nicole. “You have bumps on your face.” She bit back a smile and shook her head.
“I know, Jack,” she said.
Jack made a “g” sounds in the back of his throat.
“What did you do this morning?” I tried again.
“Kicked my own butt.” His hands were elbow-deep in dough. Nicole gave him her look. “Stupid Jack,” he said, smiling.
Later that day, Jack stood at the mixer at his assigned cooking station, stirring the ingredients as Lynch had showed him.
As I watched him pack brown sugar into a measuring cup, he asked me again if I could be his friend.
“I can be your friend,” I answered. “Can you be my friend?”
“I don’t know if I can be your friend I don’t know.” He looked down at the mounds of sugar in front of him. After a moment he looked back up. “Would you be my friend if I punched you in the face?”
“Probably not,” I answered.
He smiled for a second. “Probably not, no.”
Jack is just beginning to figure out what it means to have friends – the “can you be my friend” mantra is a recent development. At Vergennes Middle School, he had some friends, but at DO he doesn’t think he has any.
“He’s got more issues, I think, than the other kids, so they don’t really know why he does what he does and what to make of him,” Nicole explained.
At lunch, which the DO students eat in the Middlebury Union High School cafeteria, Jack sits with Nicole, and usually no one else. He likes to watch the high school students because he likes the shapes of their heads. But they are not his friends. It is hard to get Jack to explain why they are not his friends, though he is convinced of this fact.
When I asked, he told me it was too hard to explain and that he was confused, but sometimes he says it was because the other kids do not look as young as him. I asked him if this was the only thing that mattered in friends.
“It matters nice and have fun with them,” he said, then shook his head. “It’s too hard to explain.”
I didn’t let it go, and finally he told me, “Maybe I’ll be too jealous of them because they have too deep voice and I don’t have deep voice. I wish my voice changed, I wish I was in puberty. Like a year ago I was saying,” – he made his voice high – “Mom, when will my voice change?’” He laughed.
One day, Nicole and I stood in the corner of the kitchen, when Jack scuttled over and leaned in between us.
“I have a question,” he said, staring at my nose. “Are you a Christian?” His eyes were wide and serious, his words coming quickly. I nodded.
“So that means you believe in God?” I nodded again. “So that means you believe in Jesus?” Nod. “So that means you believe he died on the cross for our sins? So that means you believe you’re going to heaven?” I was overwhelmed. I hadn’t thought about these questions for a long time, but I nodded again. “That’s good,” he said, bobbing his head violently up and down. “I’m happy.”
Jack used to talk to Nicole about Christianity all day, until Nicole told him one day they weren’t going to discuss it anymore. A few times, Nicole tried to explain her views to Jack, and after listening to her talk about reincarnation for a while, he started to nod along. Then he said, “I believe in Jesus,” and told her reincarnation is the work of Satan, his Dad’s views coming back through by heart. From time to time, Jack asks Nicole if she believes in Jesus now, but she never does. It disappoints him for a moment, but does not seem to affect their relationship otherwise.
One-on-one, Jack seems easier to talk to, but his thoughts and ideas always surprise me as they come out percusively and quickly.
After baking cookies one morning, we were sitting together in the planning room, when Jack spotted a doodle in my stack of loose papers. It was a green pen dinosaur. He stopped mid-sentence and sat up straight.
“Did you draw that?” he asked. I said yes, and he laughed, grabbed the paper and took my pen to the sheet.
“Hey, that’s my paper,” I said, trying to get him to stop. He giggled mischievously. “It’s not nice to take people’s things and draw on them.” I couldn’t get his attention; he was absorbed in the cartoon creature. After a second, he held the paper up and looked at me, a full smile on his face. He had drawn a speech bubble coming from the dinosaur. “Hi Jack.”
I smiled. “Ok, I’m not mad anymore.”
But that same day in Social Skills class, he was less charming. “Can I draw now? Can I draw can I draw?” he repeated, banging his hands on the table, while the rest of the class tried to focus on the problem-solving exercise at hand – Mr. O’s daughter was sick at school, but how could he help her if he has to stay at work?
“Can I draw now? Can I draw now? Can I draw now?” Jack said. He was bent at the waist and his shoulders smushed against the edge of the table. “Can I draw now? Can I draw now?”
Mr. O took the opportunity to redirect the class discussion. Jack’s desire to draw and his inability to do so during class became the new problem the group had to solve. The other students immediately engaged in the issue at hand, paying no attention to Jack’s antics. Jack did not so much as look at Mr. O. Mr. O began to write out Jack’s various options on a bullet-pointed worksheet. Jack could either: 1) keep asking, 2) start misbehaving or 3) negotiate.
“Stupid eee crap.” Jack’s forehead hit on the table, and his signature high-pitched “e” sound filled the room. The other students did not react, focused on Mr. O’s words.
“Stupid eee crap.” Then Jack was up out of his chair and at the glass door that leads outside. “I think there’s a train.”
A moment later he was back at the table. Class discussion had not paused. Thirty seconds later, Jack said he thought there was a train again, and this time was out the door, into the negative eight degree morning. Mr. O did not pause the lesson, trained instead to let Nicole and Jack sort out the issue while he worked with the other students.
Later that day, I sat next to Jack at the beginning of math class, and he babbled throughout Lynch’s instructions.
“Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross? I like you. Do you know the m word? Are you my friend?” I put my finger to my lips, and he responded with a ‘b’ noise, bouncing his lips against each other. Across the table, Melissa, blinking her big brown eyes and pursing her small but usually smiling mouth, asked him to stop, and he did. Deep down in the train tracks of his brain, he knows how he is “supposed to” behave.
Nicole doesn't know if Jack will be able to hold a job when he graduates from high school. It will take him a while to learn how to interact with people socially.
“Even if he bagged groceries at the supermarket, he needs to learn not to get in people’s faces and not to ask a million questions,” she said.
DO’s ultimate goal is to place their graduates in steady jobs, but Jack’s ambigious future is not an exception among the pool of DO alumni. “Success” seems an almost irrelevant qualification for DO teachers – their students are too varied and individualized.
About a third of DO alumna hold full-time jobs and live completely independently. Others work part time and live with family members or friends. Graduates who test below 70 IQ points qualify for adult services, and receive formal assistance, usually through Counseling Services of Addison County (CSAC). In 2012, DO had ten graduates, eight of whom had 20 to 25 hours per week employment and two of whom declined employment because they were moving out of the area. In 2013, all four of DO’s graduates had paid employment upon graduation — one was full time, three were 20 to 25 hours per week. Overall, Lynch estimates that half of her students graduate with adult services requirements.
As for Nicole, she won’t be with Jack next September. The center is an hour-long commute from her home in Burlington, an unsustainable commitment, she told me, with clear sadness in her eyes. “I don’t know if there’s anywhere else like this. This is a very special place.”
For now, Nicole and Jack will continue to hang out together, watching trains and baking cookies, even though Nicole is not a Christian, and Jack is not sure if she is his friend.
One day I asked Jack if he ever tried to make friends with the other kids at DO.
“I don’t really have friends here,” he answered. “But you’re kind of my friend.” He looked away and scratched his head. “I don’t have that much – I don’t have – much friends – here much friends – I think you’re my only friend here.”
I was curious. What made me different than the other students?
“Because you’re a Christian,” Jack answered. He held my pen in his fist, clicking the end of it against his head. I told him lots of people are Christian.
“Uhh…I like the sound of your voice,” he said quietly. “Your voice sounds calm and kind. You’re a Christian which is good, it means you’ll go to heaven some day.” His voice was slow and soft. “And you’re a nice person.”
I told him he is a nice person too.
(10/09/13 4:00am)
Ruby and Roman each carried a white paper bag overflowing with freshly picked apples and a tooth-splitting smile last Saturday morning as they clambered to sit atop the stone wall in Adirondack Circle.
“I got a bunch of tiny little apple ‘thingies,’” Ruby said, drawing an apple smaller than her nine-year-old palm out of her bag.
Giving Ruby a boost with one hand, her mentor Greer Howard ’16, used the other to save an apple on verge of tumbling onto the sidewalk.
“Roman got bigger ones,” Ruby said as she reached into the batch of apples collected by her brother, who was running circles around a nearby tree trunk.
“I want to make apple pie,” Roman interjected, a honey stick between his teeth, while his mentor, Emily Funsten ’16, attempted to roll up his too-long sleeves before he ran away again.
Ruby and Roman have been coming to the College since last fall through the Community Friends program. The siblings spend two hours every week with their mentors, Howard and Funsten, swimming, making gingerbread houses, doing arts and crafts or playing games.
“They don’t really care so much what they’re doing,” said their mother, Gillian. “It’s just that they have a special someone in their life.”
Such is the aim of Community Friends, a volunteer mentorship organization that has matched over 2,000 College students with six- to 12-year-old children from Addison County since its inception in 1960. Originally run by the Counseling Service of Addison County, the program is one of the oldest service organizations involved with the College. But after budget cuts in 2002, the College took over the program, which has since been run through the Community Engagement office.
Nestor Martinez came to the College last year via an AmeriCorps VISTA grant to run Community Friends. He now works as the Program and Outreach Fellow in the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs.
Last year, Martinez visited eight of 18 elementary schools in Addison County to talk to guidance counselors about introducing children and families to the program. At one such school, Bristol Elementary, the guidance counselor brought Ruby and Roman into the program and from there the organization matched the two with Howard and Funsten.
“I don’t know why we were chosen,” Gillian said of her family’s involvement in the program.
This is nothing out of the ordinary for Community Friends. Mentees are often referred to the program by a guidance counselor, clinician or social worker without parent involvement.
“A lot of times guidance counselors sign kids up if they see problems at home or [if] the kids clearly need extra attention or a positive role model,” Samantha Wasserman ’14, lead student coordinator, said. “They might be acting out in school or they’re a little shy or they have some behavioral issues.”
Martinez added that more of than not, their families lack a role model.
“Especially for boys coming in, it’s usually a lack of a male figure, or at least a positive male figure,” Martinez said.
Parents can also apply on their child’s behalf, though these applications usually focus on activities and interests, rather than behavioral or social issues.
“Sometimes you do get kids from —and I hate to use this word — perfectly adjusted families,” Martinez said, specifying the reason parents sign their children up as a child’s interest the family does not have time to nurture.
Last year, for example, he received an application from a counselor in Bristol advocating a child who spent his weeks with his father and weekends with his mother.
“The father worked so many hours and wasn’t around a lot, and [the child] was really showing an aptitude for music,” Martinez said. “He wanted to find someone who could provide an outlet for music but also had experience working with children and when challenges arose could support him.”
A Perfect Match
No matter how the child becomes involved with Community Friends, the first step coordinators take is to match them with a mentor who has been through a similar application process. Wasserman said the mentor’s application and interview process work not as a critical assessment of the applicant, but instead aims to get to know the soon-to-be mentor find them a suitable mentee match. Rarely are students denied a mentorship position; the obstacle is generally one of logistical or scheduling difficulties.
Matching mentors and mentees depends foremost on transportation availability — coordinators need to make sure that either the mentor or the family has a way to reach the other. With this base covered, the matches are then based on common interests or activities, and the age and gender that the mentor specified in the application.
“It was pretty common practice to match males to males, females to females,” Martinez said. “Sometimes college-aged females with little boys, but never college males with little girls.”
And finally, the personal connection can be fostered. Though their first meeting is in the company of a student coordinator and the mentee’s family, the Community Friends pair is free to make their own fun and establish a unique relationship.
“It’s mostly an individual one-on-one program, which is something that makes it a really special and important relationship between the mentor and the mentee,” Wasserman said.
In addition to weekly pair get-togethers, coordinators also host several program-wide events and optional gatherings for mentors and mentees to get to know others involved in the program. Autumnal crafting parties take place in the fall, and the pairs attend a scavenger hunt-picnic event in the spring, but the paramount event has remained the J Term pool party. Though events like these do not appeal to all the mentees, the pool party usually draws the biggest number of party-goers — about half the pairs show up.
Wasserman has also been working to host more mentor-only events.
“[These events will] create a network between us college students to help each other and discuss the issues we’re facing in our matches,” Wasserman said.
Participation Fluctuation
Student coordinators have managed to bulk up the mentor-training program, which in the past has been insubstantial. The program now features a local speaker who addresses issues students might see in Addison County, a staff member from Community Engagement to discuss the guidelines of the program and small group discussions.
Wasserman said her focus is to increase the support and training for the mentors. Pushing to better educate mentors has proved a two-fold effort — the program first needs to recruit said mentors.
“Participation has waxed and waned over the years, depending on funding and on staffing,” said Tiffany Sargent, director of civic engagement, who has been involved with the program since 1985.
Lack of participation often results from the inability for students to find time in to take on a mentee; the responsibility consists of a two-hour meeting once a week and a minimum commitment of one academic year.
“More often than not, [students] continue [their relationships] beyond a year, but some do cut it off after a year,” Martinez said.
Most of the relationships end because of scheduling conflicts, though some end because the connections between mentor and mentee have not worked well.
Currently, there are about 65 active Community Friends pairs and a handful more pending. Last year’s final count was between 75 and 80 pairs, but Sargent guesses it ould reach 90 this year.
Thirty-seven children from Addison County, however, are still waiting for their mentees.
Clearly, the program is in need of volunteers and, as Wasserman, Sargent, Martinez and Howard all emphasized, the lack of male mentors in particular has posed a consistent problem.
“Females are just more willing to volunteer across the board,” Martinez said. “Perhaps females in general are more willing to be with children than males.”
Discrepancies between male and female participants have followed a common pattern throughout the years. Generally, 75 percent of the mentors are female.
This trend heavily affects the kids’ ability to be matched with a mentor; midway through last year, Martinez remembered, the waitlist was all boys.
The Power of Friendship
To Ruby and Roman, however, these logistics matter little – for them, it is just fun. Roman’s favorite part about spending time with his mentor is that he “always beat[s] Emily at tic-tac-toe. In really tricky ways.” Ruby settled on, “Mostly all of it.”
Though her fourth grade self may not realize it, Ruby’s childhood has been altered because of her involvement with Community Friends.
“Last year, Ruby had an issue, something had gone on with her family,” Howard said. “After I met with her, her mom texted me saying ‘Thank you, I don’t know what she would have done if she didn’t get to see you that day.’”
Connecting with someone of a different age, background and perspective can change the way a child matures. Many parents alluded to a noticeable growth in their children in the 2012-2013 survey, saying their self-assurance and sociability had developed and flourished.
“She was pretty shy when we first started meeting,” Wasserman said of her mentee with whom she has been paired for three years. “She’s much more confident than she used to be.”
Whether this is a direct result of a relationship with a college student, or just a product of growing up is hard to say, but there is no doubt that the relationships nurtured through Community Friends had a lasting effect.
During her time abroad last spring Wasserman exchanged emails and postcards with her mentee, and on her one-day visit to campus this summer, the pair got together.
“We’re very close at this point,” Wasserman said. “She’s something that’s really important to me here at Middlebury.”
Wasserman, Funsten and Howard all noted that they have learned and grown along with their mentees, too.
“Patience is a big part of it,” Howard said. “And being understanding.”
Mentors become indispensable role models for the children they meet, and their company carries much more weight than just catching falling apples or rolling up sleeves.
Though the program is not intended to provide a tutoring service, Martinez recognized the importance of mentors imparting the importance of schoolwork, recalling several mentee applications that requested the child be exposed to good study habits.
“I like them seeing the college environment,” Gillian said. “We live in a small town – Bristol – and a lot of people don’t go to college, so it’s good for them to be on a college campus and learn what a dorm is and all that stuff.”
But the mentor-mentee connection teaches much more than educational lessons. For mentors, the philosophy behind the program emphasizes the opportunity for mentors to burst out of the Middlebury bubble.
“It gets people away from the 18-22 age group,” Funsten said. “It gets them into a different mindset and it’s an outlet from school. It’s also nice to get involved in the community and to have a family that we know and are decently close to in Bristol.”
Understanding the surrounding community remains a goal of the Community Friends program.
“I think it’s really easy to be on campus in this very academic climate and to think of Middlebury College as Middlebury, Vt. and even Addison [County] by extension,” Martinez said. “The reality is that poverty is pretty prevalent and children in poverty are pretty prevalent, and it’s more of a challenge here because it’s rural.”
Though they might not realize it, mentors are often deeply affected by the people and places they encounter. When asked in their applications why they want to get involved in the program, most students cite their desire to work with children or recall their own experiences with mentors.
But Martinez pointed out that he would hear a lot of students say, “I didn’t think of the kind of life this kid is leading here as a normal scene.” He recalled a conversation with one mentor just after she met her mentee.
“She came to me and said ‘We visited them at home because the family didn’t have a car, and the house really smelled of smoke and [the mentee] smelled of smoke and I didn’t know what to do,’” Martinez said. “I think that was a shock for her, and that’s just part of each of their lifestyles.”
Though many applicants have experience working with children, most of these come through camp or school, which don’t involve behavioral therapy or intervention, said Martinez.
For both mentors and mentees, the program opens doors, teaches lessons and provides a meaningful connection that would not otherwise be made. While raising money or packaging food can greatly benefit people in need, mentors believe having a personal connection with someone creates an entirely new dimension.
“There’s a direct impact you have on these kids’ lives,” said Howard after Ruby had hugged her goodbye and gotten in the car with Roman and Gillian.
(10/03/13 3:03am)
This week, the Campus sat down with Amari Simpson '16, a Posse Scholar and Neuroscience major from Chicago who is active in the Student Government Administration and has also done cancer research.
Middlebury Campus: Tell me about yourself and what you do on campus.
Amari Simpson: Most of the time I go from doing something that gradually leads to me being the face of something. As a freshman in high school, I started in a simple position in student council, which gradually led me to become vice-president of that and vice-president of my class year. I remember one of my goals then was to meet as many seniors graduating with me as possible, so that was 483. Out of all of the seniors, I met 450, knew their names, face and what they were considering for a college choice. I worked on trying to meet them past the superficial. So I really appreciate genuine relationships and I try to carry forth with that in everything that I do.
MC: How do you like being the Director of Student Organizations?
AS: I report to Rachel [Liddell] but ultimately it is like taking the president position of a specific position. I love what I am doing but at the same time I am like, “Let me tell someone else to do it!” But being able to be in a key position and being responsible for a number of things is inspiring.
MC: What do you like about neuroscience?
AS: I love astronomy because we are learning about something that is so far out of our reach but we put so much effort into learning about it. I feel the brain is also its own little universe and we’re trying to get in so many nitty-gritty details about how it functions and how we are as we are. I find that that study, right now, can never end because there is always something new to learn about it. The drive leading us to find everything we can is what is most fascinating. I don’t think about the end point, I think about leading up to it.
MC: What was it like coming from Chicago and moving to Middlebury?
AS: I’m a Posse scholar from Chicago and so we had a lot of conversations about going from an urban city life to something that might appear slower or might come off as different than you’re used to. I’ve done research in Bethesda and Philadelphia and I’ve gotten bits of life outside Chicago. I realized there is a range of fast-paced and slow-paced life and that I am very adaptable. Going from Chicago to here, yes, it was extreme…But I have made things work as best as I can in terms of making sure I am staying involved with past relationships I’ve had, making sure I’m active in trying to form new relationships and maintain what I create with those.
MC: What was the research in Bethesda?
AS: The research that I did was at the National Cancer Institute, specifically at the Tissue array Research Program. Formalin at that time was known to be a solution that after we extracted a tissue or brain we would place that organ within that solution and we would prepare it to be preserved for long-term use. It was important because a lot of cancer research involves researching patients that have passed away as a result of some invasive or very malignant related cancer. So our goal was to make sure that we are able to preserve whatever tissue or organ that the cancer impacted and we are able to better see how it evolved, why did it become as problematic as it was and be able to go forward and have better research applications.
MC: So 2016 was the first Chicago Posse class at Middlebury –what was that like?
AS: We were really nervous having New York as a partnership because we were worried about our dynamics being very conflicting because Chicago has its own ego, New York has its own ego. In so many ways they don’t compare and do compare, like pizza, style, rappers, etc. A lot of my Posse concerns were about not being able to connect with New York Posse. But now being on campus and seeing how close we are, that’s something that we’ve really loved. It’s similar to the idea of MTV’s Real World – you’re taking 12 random strangers, putting them together in a group and expecting them to rely on each other, respect each other. We’re always concerned that might not happen and we’ve become very open-minded that if that wasn’t to happen it’s okay to have differing Posses. As long as we’re the best individual people we can be, that can resonate in being a leader for people who are younger than you.
MC: You are also interested in photography, isn’t that right?
AS: I feel like pictures can say so many words just by capturing an event or two people talking. I love photography because it is a visual reminder. [Simpson shows a photo on his phone wallpaper of Battell Hall]. Battell was my first year dorm, so many good things happened there in terms of making friendships and sustaining that through Wonnacott commons and being an RA. That is something that I like to do in terms of photography, capturing memories.
(09/18/13 11:57pm)
Middlebury Foods is a not-for-profit, social entrepreneurship endeavor that aims to bring healthy food at an affordable price to Vermonters. Recently incorporated by the state of Vermont, the business, run by seven juniors, has come a long way since winning the $3,000 MiddChallenge grant in March of 2013.“We cut out the supermarket and we cut out the cashier and we cut out the overhead costs associated with distribution, advertising and marketing,” said Harry Zieve-Cohen ’15, MiddFoods director of operations, of the company’s business plan.The idea, selling a $35 cardboard box filled with a week’s worth of healthy meals for a family of four, came from a similar organization called Top Box, based in Chicago. However, the rural settings of Middlebury and Vermont meant that the team had to adapt the model to fit its environment.“Distance is a huge factor,” said Eddie Dañino-Beck ’15, director of human resource. One of MiddFoods’ biggest hurdles has been finding the means to deliver food to a variety of customers, a feat much easier in a population-dense, urban location.
Cooperating with an array of community members, therefore, became a key effort in the team’s endeavor and allowed them to work with the geography of their location instead of letting it hinder their idea.
Earlier this summer, the team sent feelers out to members of the Middlebury community: from H.O.P.E, a poverty relief agency in the town to the Middlebury Chief of Police to local food providers and churches, attending community suppers and even holding their own lunch for residents. They have since worked with the current and ex-governor of Vermont. At this rate, they hope to expand their business into Rutland and Burlington counties by the end of the year.
With their expansion from the College into town, however, came a sense of hesitancy.
“We were really careful from the beginning, knowing that we’re a group of college students who didn’t grow up in Vermont, bringing something to a population that has needs that we might not be aware of,” said Zieve- Cohen.
The team also feared resistance from other local food providers or hunger relief organizations. Their worries were quelled, however, as they began to talk to community members and explain their plans.
“We were originally told we would see a conflict with us joining the market and maybe taking away from some of their business,” Oliver Mayers ’15, director of public relations and media, said. “[But] what we encountered when we spoke to the people at H.O.P.E. is that people actually supported us. They wanted us to go forward with the project.”
Soon after their initial outreach efforts, partnerships with H.O.P.E, Score (an organization that mentors start-up companies), Black River Produce, Sunrise Orchards, and relationships with citizens of Middlebury grew and solidified, as the team worked on campus this summer. Negotiations to partner with the College itself are still underway.
Though the company is still in its early stages, working toward their first sale date on Oct. 4, they are confident in the fruition of their idea and look forward to its growth.
“I think when you look at things that succeed and things that fail these days, things that succeed are simple ideas, and this is a relatively simple idea,” Zieve-Cohen said of the group’s success thus far. “People get [our idea]. When we go and talk to them about it, they understand what we’re doing. No matter what is going on we know where we’re headed, we know what needs to be done. It’s very easy to see how it fits into the big picture, because the big picture isn’t very complicated.”
Eating local should be easy. This box embraces the locavore movement with only the simplest, drawing greens from exclusively in-state food distributors — including green beans from the College’s organic farm – “which is about as local as it gets,” said Mayers.MiddFoods hope that this focus is what will launch them from the small Middlebury community to a venture that embraces the whole state in the swing of a national locavore movement, a movement the team believes has several different advantages.“We think it makes an important statement about the environment and about supporting local economy,” said Zieve-Cohen. “If we’re buying from local farmers who often have a hard time finding customers, then we’re supporting the local economy in a way that we’re not if we’re buying from a farm in California.”But the team continues to prioritize affordability over their drive to stay local.
“If the lettuce from a local farmer is going to be twice as expensive as the lettuce from California, we think we have a duty to our customers to sell them the cheaper lettuce,” he said.
While the idea seems to have universal appeal – who wouldn’t want healthy food for a lower price – the team has had to consider the habits of their targeted consumers.
“People don’t necessarily want a vegetable they’ve never heard of,” Jack Cookson ’15, Director of Sales and Local Affairs, said. “Even if it’s really healthy, they don’t want quinoa salad. They want these staples of foods that they feel comfortable with.”
Thanks to network ties with the area, Middlebury Foods was able to work with H.O.P.E. to survey their audiences on what foods they need, helping to serve weekly meals at the organization’s center to learn more from the potential customers themselves.
Though simplicity is their mantra, food education is also integral to Middlebury Food’s operations: boost healthy eating habits with local, organic food. Local restaurant and food operators such as Sama’s and the Middlebury Co-op have contributed their own recipes to the box, as has world-class chef Michel Nishan, who specializes in sustainable cooking. The seven team members have even been toying with sharing their own culinary concoctions inside the box.
This smooth learning and teaching network in Vermont is what this makes green mapping this social business so ripe for success. Community-supported agriculture is working here, because a strong community network coupled with a plain and simple idea comes together to form a unique energy. Such an ingredient is what makes this idea so good.
(09/12/13 1:00am)
It is a rare feat to find 140 college students spending their Saturday night playing cards, board games or doing puzzles – and liking it. But the Common Ground Center found nothing less on Saturday, Aug. 30, as 140 soon-to-embark MiddView leaders whiled away the last night of their retreat in a mountainous valley, puzzling wintery scenes, mastering Settlers of Catan or slapping Jacks until their palms reddened, with little cell service and no distractions from academic or social stress.
The four-night retreat began on Wednesday, Aug. 27, and offered workshops on mentorship, health and wellness, community building, reflection, risk management and hard skills to the volunteer leaders. Guests such as Director of Health and Wellness Education Barbara McCall, Director of Civic Engagement Tiffany Sargent and Atwater Commons Dean Scott Barnicle lead the group in conversations and exercises, building leadership skills and fostering community among the group.
“This project as a whole has a thousand things going into it,” said MiddView intern Rod Abhari ’15. The retreat was the culmination of his summer’s work. “It was cool to see most of the things aligning perfectly; pretty much the only problem we had was having so much we wanted to do.”
Though the retreat offered an abundance of reflection, bonding time and ice breaker games, several leaders, questioned the necessity of such an extravagant and extensive training model, considering the financial effort the College had made for the trips themselves.
“When it actually came down to how I lead on my trip, I think [the training] was probably a little superfluous,” said MiddView leader Jordan Collins ’15.5.
“It helped me get into the mindset of a first-year student, but I think it could have been one or two days, especially because it was probably a lot of money they were spending.”
The intra-leader connection proved perhaps the most valuable aspect of the training. “It helped me see different ways leaders approach certain roles, and it inspired me to be a better leader in ways I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise,” said Collins.
Since the beginning of last spring semester, Derek Doucet, director of outdoor programs and club sports, Amanda Reinhardt, orientation trips coordinator, MiddView interns Jack Peisch ’15 and Abhari, have been pouring over spreadsheets, sending reams of emails and contemplating overarching goals to provide over 600 first-years with trips. The trips had themes such as Exploring Education in Rural Communities, Housing Access in Vermont, The Music Scene in Vermont, Storytelling and Folklore, Capoiera, Backpacking, Trail Maintenance and Sailing. They were divided into three categories: Community Engagement, Vermont Exploration and Wilderness Exploration.
Though in its inaugural year, the MiddView program branches off 25-plus years of the College’s tradition of orientation trips. Middlebury Outdoor Orientation (MOO), the College’s first and longest-lasting orientation trip program, originated with predominantly outdoor excursions, later expanding to include volunteer components and later still, an option called “This is Vermont,” a trip in which first-years stayed at Breadloaf and toured the state on buses, visiting sites from the capitol to Ben and Jerry’s.
This first-come, first-served system, while a positive experience for participants, remained divisive among the first-year class, as several students were denied spots on trips.
“This [lottery system] meant that for some students, their first experience with Middlebury beyond their initial acceptance was one of disappointment,” said Katie Smith Abbott, dean of students and assistant professor of art and architecture.
In 2007, Smith Abbott joined the student life team, oversaw Orientation and became determined to open orientation trips to every first-year student, no questions asked.
“If (as we knew to be the case), our trips offered students a transformative experience and if we were offering these experiences athrough small-group, student-led trips focused on challenge and growth, why in the world could we not make these available to any student who wanted to participate?” said Smith Abbott.
One year and a lot of dedication later, MiddView, version 1.0, was born, with Derek Doucet, associate dean of students and, Doug Adams, associate director of internships and career services, JJ Boggs, associate dean of students for student activities and orientation, Tiffany Sargent, director of civic engagement, and, of course, Smith Abbott, leading the charge. Three hundred and eight first-year students embarked on voluntary trips of their choice, with fully-trained leaders and coordinators supporting the system from the inside.
“We were ecstatic,” said Smith Abbott.
But a month later, the financial crisis hit.
“That was that,” she said. “The college pressed a big pause button (that felt like a big cancel button to students) on MiddView.”
But the cancel button proved reversible. Through several petitions, resolution, and Mountain Club-SGA collaboration, the temporary outdoor introduction program Outdoor Orientation for New Kids (OINK) was introduced, with the SGA agreeing to budget $141,000 for four years of trips for 165 students, selected by application. Participants still paid an approximately $200 fee, with financial aid available.
As OINK’s planned expiration date neared, “we got to a place where lots of us, including Dean of the College, Shirley Collado were going for broke: we’re doing trips for every student, or we’re not doing them,” said Smith Abbott.
And, with hours of meetings and negotiations having pulled all the details together, MiddView officially launched last spring, with the help of student representatives and administrators alike. The plan in place lands half the budget in the hands of the SGA and half in those of the College, intending over three years to allocate all costs to the College.
“Thrilling and terrifying,” said Smith Abbott. “You did have a moment at some point to reflect on the enormity of all of this, right?” she asked. “626 first-years? 148 leaders? All launched at once?”
As the MiddView program is in its first official year, the model is still in its formative stages. “I’m sure we’ll learn a great deal from the assessment process and make plenty of refinements for next year, but on balance I’m really pleased with the way training went,” Doucet said. The organizers remain confident that the pilot MiddView, version 2.0, trips were a success.
According to Doucet, the philosophy behind MiddView is based on three central goals: “fostering the creation of a supportive small peer group through shared experience, facilitating opportunities for intentional reflection on this time of transition…and introducing the first years to various aspects of the campus community.”
The overwhelming reaction to the trips seemed to reflect these ideas.
But for all the positives of these mandatory excursions, conflict arose for several fall athletes, whose trips conflicted with their season-opening games. Field Hockey, Men and Women’s Soccer and Men and Women’s Golf played their first matches this past weekend without the help of their first-year teammates, and the first-years were prevented from experiencing the first game of the season. Frustration teemed among upperclassmen athletes, who felt their chances were unfairly altered due to the trip requirement, and many first-year players grumbled that they’d rather be on the field than in a tent. Many understood, however, the pros of the MiddView scheduling construction.
Erin Quinn, director of athletics, recognized the importance of MiddView in making ties between athletes and non-athletes among the first year class, a bond that is often difficult to form.
“The inclusion of first-year athletes supports the integration of athletics as an important component of student life, and the full integration of athletes into the student experience,” said Quinn.
While there are some challenges with scheduling, the mandatory aspect of the program worked to provide a stronger foundation among the first-year class.
“The diversity that having the trips mandatory brought to my group was really great,” said Collins, “because sometimes trips like that can be pretty self-selecting, and instead we had a great group of people with different senses of humor from all over the country, all these different kinds of kids who came together.”
Athletics aside, controversy also became evident over the idea of first-year missing their first weekend of college.
Abhari believes this is one of the greatest advantages of MiddView’s setup. Without another option of a way to spend their weekend, first-years “avoid the fear of missing out,” said Abhari, citing parties and meeting upperclassmen as two of these potentially tempting options.
Collins echoed this idea, saying, “I think it was super liberating for the first-years to be in a setting that they could totally immerse themselves in, without having any expectations or outlets for regret.”
Abhari also stressed the importance of first-years spending their first weekend of college substance-free, an unwavering policy of the program.
“We want to set up the norms that there are other fun things to do on the weekends,” said Abhari. “You can choose to drink or you can choose to do other really fun things, and we’re showing you the other options.”
“A large part of it is we want first-years to ultimately be happier on campus,” he continued. “That’s what a good orientation does – helps them find a place, their identity, and meet people with common interests on campus. We’re presenting them with other productive options, things they can engage in and get involved with. We want to help first-years adjust to college life and these trips help them in that regard in a number of ways.”
Though its mandatory participation and scheduling conflicts sparked some dispute, MiddView went off essentially without a hitch, according to Abhari.
(05/08/13 8:56pm)
Mark Feinberg, co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools and superintendent of KIPP Houston, opened his address to Mead Chapel last Tuesday, May 7, with a description of a traditional Masai warrior greeting.
“How are the children?” says the first Masai warrior, according to Feinberg.
“The children are well,” responds the other.
Feinburg embraces the meaning behind this interaction in his extensive work in education reform -— he focuses on the children.
KIPP is the largest network of charter schools in the U.S. The schools, located mostly in under-resourced areas, are funded publically, privately run, free and open to anyone.
Since 1994, when the first KIPP school was founded in Houston, Texas, Feinberg and his co-founder Dave Levin have pursued their goal of closing the achievement gap in elementary, middle and high school education. Today, 125 KIPP schools are in session across the U.S., about half of which are middle schools.
“There are two basic ingredients in the KIPP formula: great teaching and more of it,” Feinberg said on Tuesday.
Though Feinberg and Levin fundamentally believe that education reform comes from having a strong presence in the classroom, their model is also based on five other major principles: more time (in the school day and throughout the year), choice and commitment (giving families an opportunity to determine their own education), power to lead, high expectations and focus on results.
Feinberg closed with a call for a complete “mindshift” in American society; to combat the issues of education and reform the system for the better, we first must understand the system as it is and tackle it with a brighter future in mind.
(04/10/13 8:29pm)
Middlebury offers the chance to play the following nine club sports: cycling, fencing, equestrian, sailing, Quidditch, rugby, figure skating, chess and badminton. Our editors caught up with a few of the participants. For a full view of the design and layout, check out the PDF version here.
Recruitment
Women’s rugby faces a few challenges in attempting to recruit new members to the team. While the sport requires 15 players on the field, often the team struggles to fill the roster for a variety of reasons. This year, however, recruitment is high, as the team has 22 women on the official roster.
One of the biggest challenges that Marea Columbo ’13 cites for the team is that rugby does not cross over from any other sports for women. Columbo is the only member of the team who had played before the transition to college athletics.
Another club on campus is the Sailing Team. Although they accept anyone who wants to learn how to sail, part of their recruitment difficulties are that not very many people on campus may realize that Middlebury does, in fact, have a sailing team, said Nick Dragone ’14, vice commodore. They do, however, recruit a decent number of students each year and currently have 30 members on their roster this year.
“The majority of our members became interested in sailing at the activities fair at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters,” said Dragone. “We have sailors from all experience levels, from walk-ons who have never sailed before to those who have competed on a national and international level before [coming to] Middlebury.”
As for the Equestrian Team, most of their riders come to them. “We get a lot of emails from students who are already at Middlebury and are interested in taking riding lessons or seeing what we do as a show team,” said team captain Oonagh Ziegler ‘13. “And then we get a lot of emails from high school kids, who are looking at NESCAC schools or schools on the east coast, who competed at the high school level.”
Like the sailing team, the equestrians attribute the small size of their team to the little visibility they receive on campus. But excitement tends to be high when students do find out that the college has horses near campus.
Finance
Women’s rugby faces a few challenges in attempting to recruit new members to the team. While the sport requires 15 players on the field, often the team struggles to fill the roster for a variety of reasons. This year, however, recruitment is high, as the team has 22 women on the official roster.
One of the biggest challenges that Marea Columbo ’13 cites for the team is that rugby does not cross over from any other sports for women. Columbo is the only member of the team who had played before the transition to college athletics.
Another club on campus is the Sailing Team. Although they accept anyone who wants to learn how to sail, part of their recruitment difficulties are that not very many people on campus may realize that Middlebury does, in fact, have a sailing team, said Nick Dragone ’14, vice commodore. They do, however, recruit a decent number of students each year and currently have 30 members on their roster this year.
“The majority of our members became interested in sailing at the activities fair at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters,” said Dragone. “We have sailors from all experience levels, from walk-ons who have never sailed before to those who have competed on a national and international level before [coming to] Middlebury.”
As for the Equestrian Team, most of their riders come to them. “We get a lot of emails from students who are already at Middlebury and are interested in taking riding lessons or seeing what we do as a show team,” said team captain Oonagh Ziegler ‘13. “And then we get a lot of emails from high school kids, who are looking at NESCAC schools or schools on the east coast, who competed at the high school level.”
Like the sailing team, the equestrians attribute the small size of their team to the little visibility they receive on campus. But excitement tends to be high when students do find out that the college has horses near campus.
Competition
Women’s rugby faces a few challenges in attempting to recruit new members to the team. While the sport requires 15 players on the field, often the team struggles to fill the roster for a variety of reasons. This year, however, recruitment is high, as the team has 22 women on the official roster.
One of the biggest challenges that Marea Columbo ’13 cites for the team is that rugby does not cross over from any other sports for women. Columbo is the only member of the team who had played before the transition to college athletics.
Another club on campus is the Sailing Team. Although they accept anyone who wants to learn how to sail, part of their recruitment difficulties are that not very many people on campus may realize that Middlebury does, in fact, have a sailing team, said Nick Dragone ’14, vice commodore. They do, however, recruit a decent number of students each year and currently have 30 members on their roster this year.
“The majority of our members became interested in sailing at the activities fair at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters,” said Dragone. “We have sailors from all experience levels, from walk-ons who have never sailed before to those who have competed on a national and international level before [coming to] Middlebury.”
As for the Equestrian Team, most of their riders come to them. “We get a lot of emails from students who are already at Middlebury and are interested in taking riding lessons or seeing what we do as a show team,” said team captain Oonagh Ziegler ‘13. “And then we get a lot of emails from high school kids, who are looking at NESCAC schools or schools on the east coast, who competed at the high school level.”
Like the sailing team, the equestrians attribute the small size of their team to the little visibility they receive on campus. But excitement tends to be high when students do find out that the college has horses near campus.
Perception
“I think that we’re in a unique position because we are a women’s team playing a full contact sport, so you can imagine the stereotypes that come with that,” said Columbo. She says that often people understand women’s rugby to be a “butch” sport. “The fact that someone would stigmatize it as a very butch and large girl sport is humorous to me,” Columbo added.
“I think people respect us as a real sport because they’re purely intimidated by what it is that we do,” said Columbo. “They obviously know it’s a club sport and people don’t pay a lot of attention to it. I think we are respected because we are playing a full contact sport with no padding whatsoever.”
Although the sailing team may not have a very high profile on campus, they do try to make it an accessible sport for the whole campus.
“Along with our racing team, we offer a PE class, a free weekly recreational sailing day for the wider campus community,” said Dragone.
The Equestrian Team is made up of only 15 students, so recognition on campus is small. “A lot of people don’t even know we exist,” said Ziegler. Furthermore, the organization is not officially recognized as a club sport, but rather a student organization. “I would love to reopen that conversation and see if there’s something we can do about that,” said Ziegler.
Injury
While injury may seem impossible to avoid when playing rugby, Columbo said that when played correctly, the game is actually quite safe. She added that many understand rugby injuries in a different light than non-contact sports because of the nature of the sport.
“The reason [perception of injury is high] is because a lot of people think we bring it upon ourselves,” said Columbo. “If a soccer player gets injured, people would say that’s really bad luck, [but not with rugby]. It’s really hard to be treated that way because if you’re playing rugby safely it should be injury free.”
Despite the perception of injury being skewed, any contact sport comes with its risks. Concussions tend to be the biggest issue because of the length of time it takes to recover. The women’s rugby team does have access to the training facilities and is taken seriously by the staff.
“Only recently have we been viewed as contributing athletes in that facility,” said Columbo. “I’m really close with a lot of the trainers there and really like them, but my freshman year I was petrified.”
Commitment
Rugby practices are similar to that of a varsity team. Practices are held three to four times a week for two hours a day. While the team has the potential to reach varsity level, Columbo said that the varying levels of commitment on an individual level pose a challenge to the organization of the team.
“I think some of us could, if rugby became varsity, fulfill all of the requirements that would make a varsity team,” said Columbo. “But a lot of people know they’re a club sport and they know that things are not mandatory like they are on varsity, so there’s more resistance individually.”
The equestrian team has two levels of commitment. The show team, which is competition-based, participates in six to eight shows in the fall. “We ask that you commit to lessons for an entire semester, and that’s once a week for an hour,” said Ziegler. “But it’s about two and a half hours total, when you factor in getting to the barn, getting ready, etc.” If riders are not interested in competing, they can take lessons without participating in shows.
(03/20/13 10:58pm)
At the activities fair a couple weeks ago, I was wandering the aisles of clubs and organizations when I spotted a friendly face behind the College Democrats table. In his typical outgoing fashion, this friend shouted to me that I should come join the College Democrats. I politely declined, and when asked why not, responded that I was already a College Republican. I then approached the adjoining table, that of Feminist Action at Middlebury (FAM), and asked the club’s representative about the organization. The representative answered my question briefly, but followed up her reply by saying, “I’m not sure this is the club for you.” In all honesty, I don’t remember what I said, if anything, but the representative then told me the next meeting’s topic was abortion, and therefore she didn’t know if I should be there. I wrote my name down on the email list and left.
This anecdote is not meant to launch a personal attack on the club member with whom I interacted, or to slander the organization as a whole (one of the co-leaders later profusely apologized to me for the incident). I also don’t mean to highlight this interaction to make a point about the contradiction between ideas that are “liberal” and supposedly open-minded, that manifest themselves in exclusive ways — that is a dead horse. Instead, I want to use this story to address the nature of dialogue and diversity of thought in Middlebury culture.
It is a sacred aspect of the Middlebury education that we are able and encouraged to form our own opinions and stances and to share them with our peers. Far more valuable than our mere ability to frame our ideas, however, is our capacity to express them respectfully and responsibly. To articulate ideas decently, dissent respectfully and argue maturely is one of the most important lessons we should learn from our experience in this prestigious liberal arts institution. We are encouraged to question our teachers and peers in class, to delve into topics about which we hold firm opinions and to speak up for issues that matter to us. But a great lesson has been by-passed if we Middlebury students, who fancy ourselves some of the most worldly, mature and intellectually elite college students in the country, have chosen instead to express our ideas with arrogance, self-righteousness and disrespect.
The privilege to think and speak freely is one that can be taken too far. Staunch and self-righteous in our own opinions, we act as though the articulation of our own opinions, however marginalizing and insulting they may be, comes before the attention to the beliefs and comfort of others.
There is a difference between agreeing with someone’s thoughts and disagreeing, yet respecting, their opinion. Though we will inevitably disagree, the only way we can consider ourselves intellectual and upstanding students and eventual members of the “real world” is if we can acknowledge and value the ideas of those around us.
As much as we tell others and ourselves that we appreciate and embrace diversity – though of course this is a topic to be debated as well – we neglect to recognize one of the most important aspects of diversity: diversity of thought. It is others’ thoughts, opinions and perspectives that have the strongest ability to broaden our own education and widen our outlook on the world in general and these that we must hear without assuming, labeling or belittling.
(03/06/13 5:00am)
Walk into the basement of Forest Hall these days and you will find a transformed space. Thanks to the efforts of a few inspired students, this once stark, industrial area is now the site of an open-ended art project that aims to turn the basement into a viable social venue through weekly Sunday night painting sessions.
The project started out of a desire to reclaim what was once an inviting alternative space, home to dance parties and other late-night gatherings. In years past, it was chiefly the presence of student artwork that set “LoFo” apart from other social areas on campus. But in the summer of 2011, the hall was renovated, and the process destroyed the art that had become a hallmark of the space. When it became clear after the renovation that students would no longer be allowed to decorate the basement, a spate of graffiti protesting the loss of Lower Forest Hall aroused controversy among students and the administration. The conflict was never satisfactorily resolved — since the unauthorized tagging was painted over in early 2012, the walls have remained bare.
Earlier this year, Christopher Batson ’13 and Katy Smith Abbott, dean of students, began to shape the current effort to make use of the area once again. In an email, Batson described his vision of “‘black box’ spaces — common spaces that would be transformed into dance hall-like spaces, where all the walls would be painted black, there’d be strobe lights, black lights and a sweet sound system,” places students could host dorm parties and DJ events.
This notion is part of a broader attempt to expand Middlebury’s weekend scene, and give those who want a different place to gather more chances to create their own events. Though Lower Forest’s walls will not be black, the art that adorns them (currently ranging from a painting of a beach scene to abstract shapes and human figures) serves to create the same kind of “alternative space” that can be used as students see fit. Batson added that the project is not related to last year’s controversy, but is rather a fresh attempt to reclaim the area.
Painting is done from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays, and all are welcome to participate. Individuals may express themselves as they wish; the only rules are “no profanity, English words, or inappropriate references.” Students hope to have the space ready for use before the end of the semester, and Dean Abbott has been striving to obtain A/V equipment for Lower Forest and several other places around campus. A year and a half in the making, Lower Forest is close to being fully restored as a special place dedicated to students looking for something different on a Friday or Saturday night.
(02/20/13 6:18pm)
The College received a total of 699 Early Decision I applications this past fall, representing an eight percent increase from last year. Forty-two percent of applicants, or 295 students, were admitted. Of those admitted, 274 will arrive on campus in September as members of the class of 2017, and 21 will be representing the class of 2017.5.
“Middlebury has traditionally had a pretty significant Early Decision pool compared to our peers,” said Dean of Admissions Gregory Buckles. According to Buckles, the number of early decision applicants changes from year to year, but generally hovers between six and seven hundred.
For the second year in a row, the College Admissions Office has reversed the ratio of deferred to denied among Early Decision applicants. Previously, approximately twice as many applicants were deferred than were denied. This year, 156 students were deferred and 281 applicants were denied.
“We want to be able to say to students who are deferred ED that they have a realistic shot,” Buckles said. “We’re trying to focus more on students we really do think would be able to have a chance in the spring.”
The change was made to allow students who likely will not be offered admission the chance to make other plans. “It’s educationally the better thing to do,” said Buckles.
In reviewing and deciding upon Early Decision applications, the College Admissions Office aimed to fill between 45 and 48 percent of the incoming first-year class.
While the College remains strictly need-blind for domestic applicants, the Admissions Office employs a need-aware policy for international and transfer students. Thirty percent of students admitted Early Decision were offered financial aid. The Admissions Office aims to admit 43 percent of the entire class with financial aid.
Forty-three percent of admitted students were recruited for varsity athletics, a number that is on par with past Early Decision admissions statistics.
Recruited athletes are evaluated based on two rating scales, both ranging from one t0 seven — one is based on talent and the other is based on character.
“[The New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC)] has very strict guidelines to ensure that athletes are representative of the entire student body,” Buckles said. “There’s no student athlete who’s going to be admitted who would be below the standards of any other student here.”
All applicants receive a grade on a scale of one to seven, comparable to the scale used for athletes.
“Forty-eight percent of the students admitted ED this year were rated a six or higher academically,” said Buckles.
A rating of a six indicates a student with a minimum SAT score of 2190 or ACT score of 32, virtually all A’s across his or her transcript, and is someone who has taken the most rigorous courses offered by his or her school. According to Buckles, this academic rating is the highest it has ever been. Forty percent of last year’s ED class received an academic rating of six or higher.
Eleven percent of students accepted Early Decision are first-generation college students, and 10 percent are legacies.
Forty-five percent of admitted Early Decision applicants hail from New England, 23 percent are from the Mid-Atlantic, five percent are from the Midwest, seven percent are from Southern states, 17 percent are from the Southwest, and five percent are from outside of the United States.
(01/24/13 12:44am)
From Jan. 24 - 26, the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship (MCSE) will host its second annual Symposium on Social Entrepreneurship and Social Justice. The event will feature student presentations on social issues in Addison County, Vt., workshops led by six champions of social entrepreneurship — two of whom are alumni — and keynote speeches from Billy Parish and Majora Carter.
Both Parish and Carter are recent recipients of the MCSE Vision Award, a recognition given by the Center to standout social entrepreneurs.
Parish helped found Energy Action Coalition, the largest student group focusing on climate change in the world, after dropping out of Yale University in 2003. He is currently the president of Mosaic, Inc., a solar power investment company.
Carter’s project, “Greening the Ghetto,” is based in the South Bronx, and works to spur social change, promote health and tackle environmental degradation through the creation of parks and green space.
“[Parish and Carter] are exemplary in that they combine how they live their daily lives with their moral principles,” said Lauren Kelly ’13, an intern at the MCSE.
On Jan. 26 at 10 a.m., Parish and Carter will sit on a panel with Schumann Distinguished Scholar Bill McKibben, leading environmentalist and founder of 350.org, a global grassroots movement to stop climate change.
McKibben started 350.org along with seven students in 2005, and since then has grown to become one of the largest grassroots climate organizations in the world. With roots in 191 countries (every country except North Korea), 350.org has organized approximately 20,000 demonstrations in attempt to spur environmental action.
McKibben believes the growing tradition of environmental activism at the College will continue to grow with the symposium’s help. The focus of the forum, however, is not exclusively environmental.
We all have these hopes and dreams for the world,” said McKibben. “I think we need some real practical advice about how to make these things real.” McKibben believes Parish and Carter are perfect advocates of this idea.
“They’re both profound examples of what idealism mixed with a certain kind of shrewdness can accomplish,” he said.
With this overarching message, organizers hope that the symposium will catalyze reflection and change in a variety of fields.
“I hope that everyone who attends, from high school students to grandparents, will use the symposium as an opportunity to reflect on their own agency, to connect with others, to analyze the world around them and to prepare to engage the world in new ways,” said Jonathan Isham, professor of economics and director of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship.
According to Isham, the symposium is in the spirit of much of the work being done by students, staff and faculty at the MCSE.
“We invite cutting-edge practitioners to campus, offer students the opportunity to lead projects over the summer and convene classes and informal gatherings designed to help students to reflect, connect, analyze and engage,” he said of activities at the MCSE.
McKibben echoed this sentiment in voicing his goals for the symposium.
“I hope [students] get fired up to realize that the array of choices of what people can do with their lives is way greater than sometimes we think,” he said.
Encompassing creativity and passion in the fight for social justice is part of the MSCE’s central ambition. Organizers hope that the symposium will serve a similar purpose, providing a creative spark for all participants.
“The ultimate objective lies in the hope that students will see that they don’t have to pick between doing well and doing good,” said Kelly.
(11/28/12 11:30pm)
J Street U Midd held a student-led discussion on the recent Gaza-Israel violence on Monday, Nov. 19. J Street U Midd is the Middlebury chapter of J Street U, a student organization for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans.
Sam Kaufman ’13, president of J Street U Midd, moderated the discussion for approximately 20 students and one professor.
Part of Kaufman’s reasoning for holding the discussion was concern that many students have been informed about the recent violence through Facebook posts. Several students present also expressed concern regarding students’ reliance on biased news sources.
“This is a really loaded topic for so many people,” said Harry Zieve-Cohen ’15, who participated in the discussion. “You have to know what’s going on and what’s happened in the past to comment on it intelligently.”
Zieve-Cohen also believed the conversation needed to be opened up based on what he perceives to be a prevalent anti-Israel sentiment on campus.
“I think there are students on this campus, specifically Jewish students, but not exclusively, that feel uncomfortable with the rhetoric that they hear,” he said. “I think that’s why the tension and anger are coming out in this conversation.”
Kaufman opened the discussion with all participants introducing themselves and describing in one word how the recent Gaza conflict made them feel. “Scared,” “sad,” “helpless,” “disturbed” and “not surprised” were common sentiments voiced in the room, setting the tone for a serious and emotional conversation.
The single professor in attendance, Instructor in Arabic Ahmad Almallah, then opened up about his views on the controversy. Almallah identifies as Palestinian and currently has family members living in the contested region. He expressed severe frustration with the American perspective on the conflict, and said that the media neglects to acknowledge Palestinian lives, and added that the general language surrounding the violence greatly disturbs him.
Almallah left the discussion soon after his statement.
Amid some tension in the room, Kaufman attempted to put boundaries on conversational etiquette to encourage respect.
“The point of this conversation is to open up conversation,” Kaufman told the group. Together, the participants agreed to focus on respect, assume good intentions in others’ comments and use “I statements” — avoiding generalizations such as “we,” “they” or “you.”
The group then viewed a timeline of the recent violence published in an article from The Atlantic. Breaking off into groups of two or three, participants discussed the inception of the violence. Many students believed the timeline was essentially pointless; regardless of who started the attacks, several students agreed that the continuing violence must be stopped.
However, certain students did express strong feelings that one side or the other was more to blame for the current state of the dispute.
Turning the discussion toward U.S. involvement in the conflict, the group read from the U.S. Department of State statement on Gaza Rocket Attacks, which includes the statement, “We support Israel’s right to defend itself, and we encourage Israel to continue to take every effort to avoid citizen casualties.”
One student believed that the U.S.’s focus on Israel might be inflaming the issue; the U.S. is not playing the role of peacemaker if American policy unilaterally supports one side, he argued.
A number of students agreed that the U.S. has noted Hamas as the aggressor, but the implications is that Palestinians as a whole must bear the brunt of the punishment.
Arguments arose over the nature of Hamas’ charter, which was read aloud during the conversation. Some students believed it contained terrorist and anti-Semitic ideologies. Others contested this reading, saying the language frames the issue so negatively that to hold a real discussion one must look past wording and consider the facts.
Kaufman voiced opposition to a ground operation and a desire to raise awareness for diplomatic pressure.
Prompted by this discussion, one student raised the issue of the power dynamic in the room during the conversation, imploring peers to consider the history of the situation, namely the 45-year-long occupation of Gaza. When another participant asked for his permission to pose a question, this student communicated fear that the question would influence his answer. Tensions rose and Kaufman asked the group to remember the initial ground rules.
Emotions and tensions rose once more as the matter of justification for the recent killings surfaced. Some students denied that there is any justification for killing civilians, while others believed killings were justified out of desperation and defense.
At several points throughout this discussion, Kaufman reined in emotional commotion by recognizing the rising frustrations in the room and reminding participants to remember others’ good intentions.
Discussion then turned to the place of history in the issue, when some students advocated for the focus to concentrate only on the present, while other students argued that history and the present situation could not be separated.
“People come into these things with all different sorts of facts,” said Zieve-Cohen. “Everyone here who said anything is speaking based on their own reading of history.”
When the term “concentration camp” was used by one student to describe the occupation of Gaza, several participants spoke out fervently, asking him to rephrase with less offensive wording.
The discussion ended with the question of whether the issue is at gridlock or whether something can be done. Kaufman used the opportunity to describe J Street U’s online petition for President Obama to call for a cease-fire.
Though Kaufman formally concluded the event, almost every student stayed to continue conversation with others.
“I’m hoping that more conversation like this can challenge this two-sided issue,” said Kaufman. “I think it’s non-productive to make it an issue of sides.”
(11/14/12 10:17pm)
Eleven contestants, four judges and approximately 80 audience members gathered in Crossroads Café on the night of Nov. 8 for auditions to be the student speaker at the College’s TEDx event in March.
TEDx is an offshoot of TED, a worldwide initiative in which speakers have 18 minutes to share “Ideas Worth Spreading.” To perpetuate this goal, TED began hosting local, independently organized events, called TEDx, that can now be found at international conferences, school district meetings, colleges and universities.
TEDx aims to “give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue.”
In 2010, alumna Cloe Shasha ’12, who now works for TED, started the TEDxMiddlebury program, which hosts a TEDx event featuring one student every spring. Since its first year, the number of tickets available for the program has tripled.
Moria Sloan ’15, a leader of the program, explained the criteria for the selected winner of the competition.
“The philosophy behind TED talks is quite simply to share ideas,” said Sloan. “Thus the judges were looking for speakers that had an idea and could share it well on stage.”
First runner-up Daniel Egol ’13 was grateful that TEDx had provided an opportunity for students to talk about their interests.
“We don’t really [otherwise] have the space to connect over things that are important to us,” said Egol.
Given no prompt but the theme “The Road Not Taken,” students were allowed four minutes to share their own ideas.
Talks covered topics far and wide, such as “Why Engineering and the Liberal Arts Need Each Other More Than Ever,” “Looking Within: A Journey of Healing and Liberation,” “What Caricature Art Tells Us About Human Interaction” and “Brain Game: Africa’s Potential Energy.”
Ryan Kim ’14 was named the winner and will speak at the TEDx event on March 9. In his talk titled “Train American” he asked, “What does it mean to be an American?” Outlining the seven weeks he spent travelling cross-country on the Amtrak network, Kim introduced vivid characters, whose stories he employed to confront the idea of the American frontier.
Egol spent his four minutes reflecting on the state of terrorism in Cuba, where he has extended family and studied abroad last semester. Living in Cuba, which is identified by the U.S. as a terrorist nation, Egol realized “how unjust this policy is.”
He relayed stories of his family members waiting in long lines for bread and health care as well as memories of “an enormous amount of trust in others” rarely seen in the U.S. Egol concluded with a call to “re-evaluate our foreign policy.”
After his speech, Egol remarked that his goal was, “to connect a political issue to a personal experience and hopefully raise awareness about that issue,” an aim several other speakers seemed to share.
Joseph Putko ’13 was named second runner-up for his talk “Cosmic Planetary Potential: How Astronomy Can Make the World a Better Place.” His argument to incorporate astronomy into every year of education focused on “the cosmic perspective.”
“The world will never agree on a religion,” Putko said. “But a taste of the cosmic perspective […] can make the world a better place.”
Pam Michaelcheck P’15, one of the four judges and a parent, said, “I can say that I was impressed by all of the speakers and that the deliberation process was hard.”
Mutual appreciation was palpable among the speakers.
Cate Costley ’15, whose talk was titled, “Food is Love” thought the auditions were a beneficial experience.
“It’s just so great that everyone is standing up here and talking about something that they’re passionate about,” said Costley.
Sloan expressed the drive to push boundaries as one of the goals of TEDxMiddlebury.
“We are constantly striving to overachieve, focusing on deadlines and guidelines,” she wrote in an email. “And yet the most important things are often those that are not bounded by any sort of lines.”
Hudson Cavanaugh ’14, another leader of the program, feels just as strongly about the importance of TEDx Middlebury, saying it “is [central] to Middlebury’s mission of providing a liberal arts education.”
Kim will give an 18-minute TED talk at the March 9 event. Eleven other speakers will also be featured at the event.
(11/07/12 10:15pm)
On Nov. 29 Professor of Economics and Director of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship Jon Isham will teach an hour-and-a-half long online course for alumni called “What is Social Entrepreneurship?”
Isham was approached by the Alumni Office in September to lead a course on social entrepreneurship. He quickly modified the subject matter to address social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts, specifically, as the topic has been a focus of his recent research.
“It’s a topic that people are talking about and thinking about and are curious about,” Isham said of the course’s material. “Alums […] will be curious based on their own experience […] how social entrepreneurship fits in at Middlebury.”
“That means asking 'What are the goals of the liberal arts?’ and ‘How can social entrepreneurship enhance and complement those goals?’” wrote Isham in an email.
According to Isham, social entrepreneurship is the use of business practices to enact social change, an approach different than traditional charitable or philanthropic tactics.
“It takes the civic engagement model and brings in approaches that have been developed, say, in the business sector,” said Isham.
Ian McCray, director of the alumni and parent program, said that this topic is on the minds of many students and recent alumni.
“The idea of social entrepreneurship is one that we get a lot of questions about from alums who come back,” said McCray, who works to organize programs for alumni across the country.
Thanks to help from several professors, the College is able to keep alumni actively involved and intellectually connected to happenings on campus. This engagement has recently become even more readily available to alumni around the world through the employment of online courses.
“We’ve dabbled [with online courses],” said McCray. “It’s something that we’re exploring more and more, as a lot of our peers are.”
Amherst College offers an online book club for alumni and Williams College has established an Alumni Online Community group.
“The ability to do this and to do it in interesting ways online is really the new [issue] here,” said McCray. “And it’s a way for us to expand our outreach to alums.”
The Alumni Office has offered online courses in the past, but they are not a commonplace occurrence.
Last year, John Elder, professor emeritus of English and American studies offered an online course on the poems of Robert Frost for 15 alums. Through Adobe Connect software, the class offered video and audio connections and allowed students to type in comments or personal notes to Elder.
“It didn’t work so well,” said McCray. “[The course] was relying on a lot of back and forth because it was a discussion class, and there was some delay in the software.”
The participants ended up continuing the discussion over a conference call with Elder, which proved a better method.
Isham’s course has a higher capacity, fully registered at 90 people, and will therefore use the Adobe Connect software. Isham will be broadcasted through video to all of the participants, who can type in questions during the lecture. Though he does run the risk of being delayed, this way Isham can communicate more directly to a larger audience.
“People will be able to see me talk, and at the same time, we’ll be able to show PowerPoint’s or links online,” said Isham. “It’s a very flexible approach.”
Alison Byerly, former provost and executive vice president who is currently on academic leave at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, feels that online courses open the doors to continue education with members of the college community.
“An online course for alumni would in most cases not be replacing an in-person seminar,” she wrote in an email. “It would be making participation possible for people who would otherwise not be able to take part.”
She added that communication through technology can extend the possibilities of engaging alums from locations around the world, no matter how far they might be from Vermont.
The Alumni Office does not have concrete plans to increase the number of online courses offered, but hopes to keep experimenting with new ways to reach alumni through technology.
McCray said he could see the College holding online courses two or three times a year, but added, “I don’t see this as something that we plan on scaling up to the volume that some of our peers do.”
“We’re treading cautiously,” he said of future pursuits into online courses. “I think it’s something that for us is going to contribute around the margins, but we’re not going to become the University of Phoenix. But we’re trying to take advantage of the technology that is available to be able to reach more people.”
The College does not allow professors to take time away to pursue other for-profit teaching, but alumni courses do not fall under this category.
One other educational venue in which participants are charged is when members of the faculty give lectures in locations they travel to personally. Every year, about 20 to 25 professors will participate in such lectures. The College charges a registration fee for most of these to cover costs such as venue, refreshments, travel, and a small honorarium for the professor.
Elder’s course cost $25 per person; Isham’s will charge $15.
“It’s our policy to compensate our professors for their time,” said McCray.
According to McCray, the “crown jewel” of the Alumni Office’s work is the Alumni College, a program open to all alumni that is held annually at the end of August.
The typical turnout is about 100 alums, who spend four days at the Bread Loaf Campus taking a course from one of the College’s professors. The program costs about $400 or $500, which, according to McCray, “barely breaks even.”
“They’re not money-makers,” said McCray of alumni courses in general. “It’s really just another way to help alumni engage with the College and engage with the professors.”
(10/10/12 9:08pm)
“It started with one student having a crazy idea, one professor trusting it could happen and the administration putting a ton of trust in an idea that two years later got us fourth place in this competition,” said Cordelia Newbury ’13, one of the project managers of the Middlebury Solar Decathlon team.
The College will return to the Solar Decathlon competition for the second time in October 2013, and the team is currently in the early stages of construction on the College’s entry house, InSite. The Solar Decathlon competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), challenges participating colleges and universities to design, construct and present an environmentally sustainable house.
While the guidelines for the house are issued by the DOE, the team is also working to construct a livable and sustainable structure that will permanently reside in Middlebury.
Work on InSite began in November 2011 when the team submitted their proposal to the DOE. Originally, the team intended to structure the house around the concept of “Infill,” a technical construction approach that emphasizes revitalizing utilized space in an existing community. Students later changed the project’s name to InSite to encompass a broader range of concepts in the thematic scheme of the house.
The name, InSite, incorporates three concepts of the house: the “site” of the house, their goal to “incite” change and their dedication to thinking and planning “insightfully.”
“The house is a representation of the ideas we are looking to promote,” said Construction Coordinator Jack Kerby-Miller ’14.
These ideas are laid out further in the team’s “Five Points,” a list of principles they aim to apply to the house at every step of the planning and construction process. The first three principles are simple: respecting nature in all contexts, addressing the street (making the façade of the house welcoming) and condensing energy networks.
The team also intends to structure the house in a way that provides public spaces, such as the living room and kitchen, with more square footage than private spaces, such as the bedrooms and bathrooms.
Team members stress other components of the project besides the environmental innovations of the house. With the mantra “passive homes, active communities,” the team hopes to educate, inspire and incorporate members of the local and global community into the project.
“When we talk about sustainability, we’re talking about the environment, and of course that’s really important. However, what we fail to address often is the social environment and the importance of the links between people and our interdependencies,” said Design Coordinator Ellie Krause ’14.
Work on the house has been constant since last spring. Sixteen student interns accomplished the majority of the design work over the summer as they developed plans for the house. The team has also spent considerable time establishing community links through phone-a-thons, website construction and outreach initiatives.
The team faces the task of raising the $1.4 million needed to fund the project.
“It’s a giant number, but as you break it down into chunks, it very quickly becomes very real,” said Krause.
The team requires $50,000 to cover transportation to California, $400,000 to pay for student labor, $200,000 for the re-establishment of the house back in Middlebury, $250,000 for construction materials and the remainder will cover consulting costs and outreach materials. Currently, the team has only raised $44,000.
In an effort to cover these costs, the College’s Solar Decathlon Finance sub-team is applying for grants, contacting private and corporate donors and planning fundraising events. They also hope to secure in-kind donations from companies whose products could then be showcased at the competition in California.
“We spent a lot of time building up fundraising strategy and connections. We have a really close relationship with College Advancement. They’ve been a really great mentor for us,” Newbury said.
The construction of the house will incorporate eco-friendly materials, including wood gathered from Middlebury’s campus, cellulose insulation and formaldehyde-free and low-volatility organic compound materials.
The house will rely on solar power, and the team has taken a non-traditional approach by deciding to place the panels in a path-like formation leading up to the house, rather than on the roof.
“The path will directly increase the connection between people [and the community], and also will become an educational resource,” said Krause. He suggested that the solar panel path could be replicated in other parts of the community, such as along sidewalks and in backyards.
Without panels, the roof is left free to be planted with sedum, a low-growing plant requiring little water that will insulate the home.
In the months leading up to the competition, the team is required to submit periodic deliverables to the DOE to monitor construction progress. Student leaders hope that construction on the house will begin in January, if not earlier.
During the competition, the house will be judged on several different accounts from maintaining a consistent air temperature to energy budget to effective communications.
Though excited about the project, student leaders noted the disadvantage the College faces being the only small liberal arts college in the group of twenty competing institutions.
“We aren’t an engineering school, and we have students who know nothing about plumbing or electrical or heating ventilation and air conditioning, and they have to learn how it works and then design it,” said Krause.
Yet, throughout the project, student leaders have attempted to leverage the global thinking skills afforded to attendees of a liberal arts college.
“We’re addressing these problems without as much background knowledge, so we can come up with completely unrestricted solutions,” said Krause. “We have the opportunity to challenge convention and come up with what hopefully are better solutions and ways to a better future.”
(10/03/12 8:37pm)
It was an uphill battle to spread cheer during last Saturday’s gray and gloom, but the Youthful Alliance of Merrymaking (YAM) was up to the challenge. From 11 a.m. until 6 p.m., a group of 45 YAM members slaved away over cardboard and masking tape. They fought mud and wind all in pursuit of making history; they were determined to create the world’s largest box fort.
The idea was conceived a few years ago when YAM was first organized. The group’s president, Luke Greenway ’14.5, noticed the overflow of cardboard on campus, particularly during move-in week, and figured it should be put to use. Meanwhile, his hometown friend, Lauren D’Asaro, had a similar stroke of genius and set out to make the world’s largest box fort with her residential house at Harvard University.
Last September, D’Asaro’s team succeeded in breaking the world record with 586 boxes (double what they needed), and since then the competition has not stopped. On Feb. 6, Brigham Young University one-upped Harvard’s team with a fort of 734 boxes. Earlier this month, Harvard retaliated with a 1,064-box fort. YAM decided it was time for Middlebury students had to try their hand in box-fort making as well.
In early September, YAM members reached out to the Material Recovery Facility (Recycling Center) and the Office of Sustainability Integration to begin the collection and storage of boxes.
Jack Byrne, director of sustainability integration, was a major supporter of the club’s initiative and a great admirer of the students’ ability to learn about Middlebury’s recycling system, assemble a team and plan a structural design – all to further encourage the recycling initiatives already in place at the College.
“[The box fort project] is a pretty deep dive into the recycle/reuse dynamic here and I am sure it is a great learning experience,” wrote Byrne in an e-mail.
From the beginning, the entire process was a bit of a guessing game; storage areas around campus held several hundred boxes, but the club leaders had little confidence.
“I don’t think that we’re going to be able to break the record,” Greenway said prior to building day. “We haven’t had the man power; not enough people have been volunteering.”
“Even if we don’t break the record it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Greenway added.
The morning started with the dispatching of the fort-builders to the several storage sights and deployed on missions to the dining halls’ cardboard-only dumpsters. En-route to and from Battell Beach—the construction site—YAM members with armfuls of boxes were bombarded with questions from other students wondering what they were doing with hundreds of boxes on a cold, wet Saturday morning.
Yet, the club members did not let naysayers interfere with their main goal: fun. Some members even ventured into town of to collect boxes.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do it without last minute box collecting from Angel Santee [’13] and Thomas Kivney [’13],” said Greenway of these especially dedicated fort-builders.
Around 2 pm, once all the boxes had been collected and reconstructed, the designing began — walls for protection, drawbridges, lookout towers, igloos and mazes were among the ideas thrown around, though several were declared unfeasible. After much deliberation, the crew decided on a rectangular shape with an inner wall and an archway.
The strong winds proved YAM’s most formidable opponent. “I think the weather affected the turnout and the structural integrity of the fort,” said Abbie Wells ’16, who spent 4 and 1/2 hours on the Beach. She added that Adirondack chairs were helpful tools in supporting the structure.
By 4:45 p.m. the fort stood 47’ 6” wide by 48’ 4” long in the middle of Battell Beach. With boxes ranging from a 70” LED television box to a travel-sized Colgate toothpaste box, the fort was a site to be seen with all the different colors and sizes it employed. More importantly, the fort was a world record with 1,130 boxes.
After a long day of scavenging and building, the participants enjoyed a mere 15 minutes in their creation, before charging across the Beach to knock it over.
The record-breakers were all smiles as they reflattened the boxes and reduced their fort to a pile of cardboard once again.
“I think YAM should try to break a world record every year,” said a jubilant Sydney Haltom ’14.
Middlebury has now officially beat Harvard’s box fort record, yet the project was more than just a collegiate rivalry.
Byrne raised the idea that people affected by poverty, natural disasters or conflict often rely on cardboard for shelter.
“Perhaps this project will help remind us that our choices as consumers have consequences that go well beyond our normal perspectives and help us see how we could use [or] not use resources more wisely and humanely,” he wrote in an email.