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(03/23/16 3:17pm)
GrillMe, an online Grille delivery service, launched on Feb. 29 and is founded, owned, and operated by Andrew Jung ’16. In its first month of operation, GrilleMe has boosted total Grille sales and has satisfied student demand for a Grille delivery service.
“I just noticed a gap in the food services on campus and knew I could create a relatively easy way to fix it,” Jung said.
GrilleMe’s online interface allows customers to add Grille items to their basket, pay for their items using a secure third party credit card service, and then wait as their food is delivered to their desired location on campus. For Jung, reliability and convenience are the two main priorities of GrilleMe. “Grille delivery is not a new concept, but GrilleMe is better because it is consistently available every night and people are never wondering whether or not they will get their food,” he said.
“I supported it 100 percent from the start,” Executive Director of Food Service Operations Dan Detora said. “From a customer standpoint, it is a thousand times better because students know it’s something they can count on.” Detora believes having a Grille delivery service is important because it is something that students have expressed a desire to have on campus.
For Jung, it is the ease of business that makes GrilleMe so popular. “All they have to do is click a button and order their food,” he explains. According to Jung, GrilleMe has a consistent, repeat customer base, but also has new customers every night and at least 10 people make a GrilleMe account per day.
Paul Lagasse ’16 listed “convenience” as the main reason that he used GrilleMe.
“I live fairly far from the Grille, so when it’s cold outside there’s a pretty slim chance I would walk there to get food. GrilleMe eliminates this probem — I can still get delicious grille food but I don’t even have to step outside,” Lily Sawyer ’16 said.
It is not just students that are benefiting from this service, however; total Grille sales have increased as well. According to sales data provided by the Grille, total weekly Grille sales had been trending downward prior to the launch of GrilleMe delivery. Since the launch, Grille total weekly sales have been trending positive between five and 10 percent. On an average night, GrilleMe makes up about 20 percent of total Grille sales.
GrilleMe is an autonomous, student-run business, but Jung has worked closely with the Grille’s nighttime supervisor, Justin Edson, to ensure that GrilleMe and the Grille effectively collaborate in order to maximize the potential of GrilleMe’s delivery service.
“I took a lot of my personal time to ensure that Andrew would get all the tools he needed and all the resources that were available,” Edson said. While Edson acknowledges the significance of GrilleMe’s impact on Grille sales, he says he also supports Jung’s efforts because he believes in the importance of student-run businesses as an opportunity for students to learn how operating a business really works. Edson is especially willing to help students like Jung who he describes as having “a good head on his shoulders, ambition, and a good set of tools available to him.”
Jung cites the importance of Edson’s support as he figures out how to optimize GrilleMe’s performance. “Justin has been instrumental in pushing the idea of GrilleMe with management at the Grille, sitting down with me to brainstorm next steps, and also to maneuver around some of the obstacles that have come up,” he said.
One such obstacle is the mechanism with which GrilleMe pays for the food it delivers. Currently, Jung is required to be present at the Grille seven nights a week because he has to use his own charge card to make purchases rather than something like an index code.
“The question was would we create an index for an external company to charge at the College, and the answer is no. We do not do that for any external company,” Director of Businesses Tom Corbin said. For Corbin, part of the College’s role in supporting student-run businesses is to “impart a real world experience” to the students operating their businesses. As of now, Corbin says the College has no intention of providing a charge account for GrilleMe despite the impact it has had on increasing Grille sales.
Regardless of the time commitment and the operational headaches, Jung is glad he started GrilleMe. “I have put more time into this than some of my classes because it is so rewarding to see something that you started grow and for people to talk about it, learn about it and use it,” he said.
(02/17/16 4:16pm)
Last month, the College awarded tenure and the title of associate professor to three faculty members – Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Chong-suk Han, Associate Professor of Spanish Enrique Garcia and Associate Professor of German Natalie Eppelsheimer.
Han and Garcia both expressed delight in receiving tenure, but emphasized that their tenured status would not affect their commitment to their students, to their research or to their roles in the College community.
For Han, receiving tenure “gives you the freedom to take the time you need to really think about what’s ‘next’ and how you want to grow as a scholar and a teacher.” However, Han does not foresee his tenured status having a large impact on his course content or on his academic research. As Han explained it, this is because Middlebury encourages professors, even those without the “protection of tenure,” to research and to teach about topics that interest them – no matter how controversial those topics may be.
Echoing Han’s sentiments, Garcia stated, “I don’t want to become a ‘batata’ after tenure, and become lacking in service, teaching and research.” He explained that “batata” is a Caribbean-Spanish term for a person who is “as inert as a yam waiting on the floor to be picked up.” For Garcia, receiving tenure is validation for what he described as his unique teaching style. For instance, Garcia recently worked with his J-term class to create a Spanish-language film on zombie apocalypse, which Garcia acted in.
“The fact that I have tenure puts me as a different model of professor that students see, [and] I think that I could also be a model for other professors,” Garcia said.
Eppelsheimer was unavailable for comment. But, in an email to the Campus, Chair of the German Department Roman Graf, praised Eppelsheimer’s ability to create “a comfortable, student-centered classroom in which she functions as a conduit of information and impulses to activate her students.” According to Graf, her promotion had the unanimous support of her colleagues in the German department.
Outside the classroom, Han, Garcia, and Eppelsheimer have all made significant contributions to academic research.
According to the College’s press release, Han’s research has contributed to a better “understanding of the intersection between race and sexuality for Asian Americans.” Just last year, the NYU Press published his latest book entitled Geisha of a Different Kind: Negotiating Gay Asian Male Identities.
“Garcia is one of the foremost scholars of Latin/o American visual culture and media studies in the United States,” the press release states. In addition to his first book, Cuban Cinema After the Cold War, Garcia is in the process of writing another entitled Los Bros Hernandez.
Of Eppelsheimer’s research, the press release states, “Her contributions to the theoretical understanding of the relationship between language acquisition and intercultural competency speak to one of the foundations of a Middlebury education.” Additionally, she is currently working on a book about German-Jewish exiles in Kenya.
Finding the balance between the demands of their scholarly research and their commitment to teaching students has not been as challenging as one might expect for Han and Garcia. In fact, both believe that their research has benefited from their engagement with students and vice versa.
“The time I spend teaching really strengthens my research and the time I spend doing research really strengthens my teaching,” Han said. Han believes that his students’ engagement with his latest research material in the classroom helps him think differently about his work.
Garcia also tries to create classes that are engaging for students, but at the same time benefit his research. He feels that keeping up with research is necessary for being a good teacher.
“You could be great inside the classroom, people love you, and classes are fun,” he said. “But, if you become outdated, then your classes begin to fail. It is like you’re stuck teaching what you learned in grad school.”
While both received the same honor, Han and Garcia celebrated receiving tenure in very different ways. Han wrote that he celebrated with a dinner and small get together, but his “real” celebration plans have yet to be determined. Garcia, on the other hand, threw a 24-hour party at his house that began at 10 a.m. on a Saturday and ended at 10 a.m. the next day, and said that he stayed up for the entire event.
(04/09/14 11:21pm)
On March 21, the College mailed letters of acceptance to 1,422 prospective students representing all 50 states and 82 different countries in the hope that 575 of these students will enroll next fall. The College shrunk its target class size due to yield for the class of 2017 that was greater than anticipated and therefore offered admission to 14 percent of its regular decision applicants and just 17.3 percent of overall applicants – lower than last year’s 19 percent overall acceptance rate.
“It is the most selective class ever,” said Dean of Admissions Greg Buckles. “They have been subject to the highest degree of scrutiny that any class ever has.” Despite a 10 percent drop in received applications (a total of 8,196), Buckles says that in terms of academic rating – the seven point scale used by the admissions office to evaluate academic capability – the admitted class is the highest he has seen at Middlebury College.
The number of admitted early decision students is consistent with last year’s total, and early decision students comprise 53 percent of the class, contributing to a low regular-decision acceptance rate. Buckles describes this early decision method as “a little controversial” but says that Admissions did not want to pass over excellent early decision applicants just to keep the percentage of the class that applied early decision below 50.
The admitted class for 2018 hails from across the country, with the most admitted students coming from California. Other pipeline states include New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Illinois. The class also includes students from 82 different countries. Buckles attributed this diversity to Admissions’ goal of, “creating a community that reflects the best of the rest of the world.”
Within the accepted class, 33.7 percent of the students identify as students of color and 14.5 percent identify as the first in their family to attend college. The first generation category is very important for Buckles and his team as they strive to create a diverse student body.
“First generation access cuts across a lot of boundaries,” he said. “It will be inclusive of socioeconomic, racial, cultural and religious diversity.”
The College plans to award $9.6 million in need-based financial aid. Although the class size is smaller, the Admissions Office tried to maintain its numbers for students of color and first generation students. According to Buckles, this means that while the budget for financial aid might not be higher than last year’s, the percentage of students on financial aid could be.
“We have many more kids with aid packages out there than we have the budget for,” Buckles said. “But, we look year to year and have a pretty good idea of where we will end up.”
Recruited student-athletes make up 11.5 percent of the admitted class. Due to the smaller pool of admitted students, Buckles said, this year Admissions was more “focused” with coaches about the number of recruits they could bring in.
The Admissions Office has also started utilizing a new feature that makes it easier for faculty in the arts departments to evaluate work submitted by prospective students to afford students with exceptional artistic ability to be recognized and lend greater heft to their application.
Buckles said the Admissions Office is as transparent about the admissions process as possible. The Admissions Office staff rates applicants on academics, personal qualities and extra-curricular activities, and then assigns the applicant an overall rating. This system allows the staff to attain a holistic view of the student.
Other factors are useful in determining whether Middlebury is a good fit for an applicant – “self-awareness” and “resiliency” are two qualities that Buckles and his team have found are important to increasing the likelihood of a student having a positive Middlebury experience. Buckles explained that these qualities allow students to take advantage of what is offered at Middlebury and, additionally, to give back.
“That creates a better roommate, a better classmate, and a better community,” he said.
With every graduating class, the Admissions Office compares the academic rating they gave students with students’ actual performance while at Middlebury. Buckles said that he has found that the best indicator of success at Middlebury is consistently the academic rating.
Students have until May 1 to accept their spot in the Class of 2018. Once the Admissions Office is able to process acceptances, the composition of the enrolled class will be available.
(03/13/14 1:42am)
The Middlebury College Board of Trustees met over Winter Carnival weekend to discuss a range of issues including a 2.94 percent increase in tuition, a new Korean language school and various construction projects underway between the main College campus and Monterey Institute campus.
According to Vice President of Communications Bill Burger, the February Board of Trustees meeting is traditionally the time when the Board determines the next year’s tuition. For the 2014-15 school year, the Board approved a combined tuition and room and board total of $58,753 – up 2.94 percent from this current academic year.
In an effort to control rising costs, this is the fifth consecutive year that Middlebury has utilized its “CPI plus 1” rule. This rule, announced by President Liebowitz in in 2010, caps the tuition increase from year to year at one percentage point above inflation – as determined by the Consumer Price Index. This is the first year this rule was not applied to room and board increases, which rose 4.5 percent from last year to $13,116. Vice President Burger put this effort into context.
“Since 2010, when we started the CPI plus 1, we have measured where we stand among 21 peer schools. When we started, we were one of the most expensive of the 21. We are now 18th.”
When asked about efforts to reduce cost, Burger responded that, “The board is always sensitive, as is the administration, to the cost of what we do.” However he noted that, “It’s not as though you could reduce the cost of tuition by $10,000.”
Other major decisions handed down by the board include the approval of an eleventh Language School – the School of Korean. Vice President of Language Schools Michael Geisler said that the Language School hopes to find a director and build a program in time to launch in the summer of 2015. “Although, until a few years ago, relatively few non-heritage speakers studied Korean, the number of new learners has grown rapidly in the past decade,” Geisler said.
Korean is spoken by more than 67 million speakers around the world making it the sixteenth most spoken language. To be prepared for the shifting landscapes of global business, security and diplomatic requirements, Geisler cited the need for a strategic language reserve – that is a group of people able to speak the world’s most important languages. “Middlebury Language Schools can play a significant part in delivery of our strategic language reserve,” he said.
On the construction front, the Board discussed plans to create a pedestrian mall at the Monterey Institute campus in Monterey, CA. The Monterey project is still awaiting approval by the City of Monterey, but if approved would create more of a campus-feel to what is now an urban setting.
Construction is set to begin this fall on renovations and winterization of Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School campus in Ripton, VT. The renovations are primarily focused on compliance with safety and accessibility codes while the winterization makes the space available for use during the colder months. There is a soft deadline for this project of May 2015 in order to be prepared for the 31st Young Writer’s Conference at Bread Loaf. All told, this project will cost $7.5 million.
Beyond the issues discussed, Burger talked about the layout of the meetings and how the agenda is set. He characterizes them as very well planned and well structured. Typically board members break into committees and then, during full Board meetings, address key topics discussed in their respective committees. Some issues, like the Korean language school, required a vote by the full Board. Other topics, such as the state of the online learning landscape, were simply reported on.
Much of the work is done before the Trustees arrive. “The Board always receives information in advance of its meetings so that Trustees have the information they need to make decisions,” Burger said. “And on key issues there is always some discussion as well.” At this most recent meeting, Burger says there were no contentious issues, which is not unusual for these meetings
“I have never been to a board meeting where there’s been a true surprise,” he said.
The next Board of Trustee meeting will take place in May. While the agenda is not set, this meeting will be momentous in that it will be the last under the current governing structure.
(02/20/14 4:17am)
Middlebury College’s Office of Sustainability Integration declared the College to be on track towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2016 in its most recent report citing the biomass plant, efforts by a variety of groups on campus, and the new biomethane initiative as critical to the progress.
In his Winter Term update, Director of Sustainability Jack Byrne wrote, “Our FY13 carbon emissions were 50 percent below our 2007 baseline year emissions due to the high performance of our biomass system AND the cumulative effects of the numerous energy efficiency projects the College has completed over the past several years.”
The poster child of the College’s push for carbon neutrality has been the biomass plant, which has cut the College’s use of #6 fuel oil from 2.1 million gallons to 634,000 gallons since 2009.
Despite its success, the biomass plant cannot always handle the College’s large energy demand. “The next big step will be the switch to using biomethane to displace the fuel oil we still burn when biomass is not enough to meet heating and cooling demands,” according to Byrne’s report.
The process of switching over to biomethane to supplement the biomass plant will not be quick and is reliant on the successful construction of the recently approved Vermont Gas Systems pipeline project. The pipeline will allow for cost-effective access to biogas when the biomass plant requires it to maintain operation. The Office of Sustainability Integration estimates the biomethane project will be online by early 2015 at the latest.
The success of the biomethane project is essential to the attainment of carbon neutrality as Byrne anticipates that it will reduce the College’s carbon emissions by 40 percent from the baseline emissions. This amounts to about a 90 percent reduction overall from the baseline year.
“Once this is achieved, [the] remainder of our carbon emissions will be from College related travel, electricity purchased, vehicle fleet and waste sent to the landfill,” Byrne wrote.
College-related travel will account for roughly half of the remaining 10 percent of carbon emissions. According to the 2008 Climate Action Implementation Plan, the current definition of travel includes exclusively College-funded travel, and excludes travel that is funded by student groups or is funded through grants.
However, Byrne reports, “We are in the process of revising the method for calculating emissions from travel as it represents more than half of the total that would remain to assure that we are using as accurate an estimate as feasible.” Other efforts to reduce emissions due to travel include converting some of the College’s vehicles to run on carbon-neutral fuel.
That leaves about five percent of emissions that need to be cut and much of that can be done with the involvement of College students.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to reduce their day to day energy use,” said Campus Sustainability Coordinators (CSC) President Ali Rotatori ’14. “Most of the students on this campus are very eager and willing to live greener, but the issue is they aren’t sure how.”
The CSCs are one of a handful of student groups on campus committed to educating the student body on responsible energy use.
Rotatori acknowledges that not everyone can commit the time to environmentally-focused groups.
“If people can’t be directly involved and commit time to helping Middlebury become a more environmentally friendly place, they can at least help out by changing their own habits,” she said.
Rotatori and her fellow Campus Sustainability Coordinators have many suggestions in their “Greening Your Dorm Room” pamphlet including turning off power strips, taking shorter showers, and walking instead of driving around campus.
With the deadline just two years away, the College is planning to reach its goal thanks to the efforts of many students, facilities and maintenance staff, faculty and administrators.
However, if Middlebury finds itself falling short of its carbon neutrality goal, there is a back-up plan in the form of “carbon credits” that can be purchased to offset our emissions. Colby College employed this tactic when it claimed its own carbon neutrality, sparking debate about the validity of using carbon credits to assert carbon neutrality.
For now though, the College is focusing on furthering what progress has been made in the effort to achieve its goal.
(10/31/13 12:15am)
The Middlebury College Board of Trustees convened over fall break for their first meeting of the academic year. The biannual meeting traditionally consists of setting an agenda for the year and hearing presentations from various committees and student representatives.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz called this year’s meetings “different” because the College is in the midst of a nine month process of governance review.
“[We are] restructuring the board to make it more reflective of the institution that we’ve become,” Liebowitz said.
The board has six weeks to reflect on and refine recommendations made by the special committee — dubbed the governance review group — before a potential vote on their proposals at the December meeting.
The weekend began on Thursday, Oct. 17, with an all-afternoon retreat at Taproot – the 337-acre gift to the College by alumnus and trustee emeritus Will Jackson ’51 and his wife Carolyn Jackson ’61 and concluded with an early dinner before a full day of committee meetings on Friday, Oct. 18.
Friday meetings began with the Educational Affairs Committee that discussed admissions and the evolution of liberal arts. The trustees then agreed to the establishment of a MA program in Hebrew, which will be taught at the College’s summer language schools.
That afternoon, the Student Affairs Committee assembled to hear presentations from SGA President Rachel Liddell and Community Council Co- Chair Luke Carroll Brown.
“I was focused on giving the trustees an honest, pointed, and relevant update on the SGA,” said Liddell. “I also wanted to give them a real-student perspective, as opposed to the student perspective through the lens of the administration.”
In her discussion with the Trustees, Liddell updated them on her work thus far which has focused on enacting a policy that allows students to receive credit for summer internships, among other things. This has been a focus of Liddell’s since her campaign for SGA President. She then informed the Trustees on actions taken to increase sustainable food in the dining halls and the challenges of defining and sourcing this it.
Brown subsequently spoke to the importance of the Community Council in creating non-academic policy change. The Community Council is comprised of faculty, staff, administrators and students and is dedicated to addressing concerns of the whole community.
“We discussed a few of the larger issues facing the Community Council: hard alcohol policy, the potential use of surveillance cameras, and how to promote increased student/staff interaction,” Brown said.
Both Liddell and Brown found the experience to be a positive one. Liddell wrote of the Trustees, “They asked excellent questions, and clearly cared about my answers. I felt like a valuable member of the conversation.”
Brown echoed Liddell’s sentiments, “Students, administrators, and the Trustees each brought different backgrounds and skill sets to the table. Having all of us together led to interesting, dynamic conversation.”
Prior to the Trustee’s arrival, there was growing sentiment to increase opportunities for student-Trustee interaction – even prompting The Campus to call on the Trustees expand direct engagement with students.
“I think one of the things that came out in the governance working group’s work is that more Trustee involvement with students, faculty and staff can only be a positive thing,” Liebowitz said. He went on to explain that this includes Trustees and students having discussions on the direction of Middlebury as an institution and promoting the role of Trustees as a network for student resources.
(10/10/13 12:40am)
The College biomass gasification plant, a key component of the College’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2016, hit an important milestone today, beginning its 16th week of uninterrupted operation — the longest period of time for which the plant has been running.
This record-setting accomplishment holds significance both for the plant’s operation team and the larger environmental sustainability movement on campus. With the College’s self-imposed deadline for carbon neutrality looming, the plant’s consistent operation is essential, as the College relies on it to cut 40 percent of the College’s greenhouse gas emissions. While the plant must be periodically shut down for cleaning and maintenance, today’s accomplishment proves the College’s ability to dictate and minimize these shutdowns.
The members of the biomass plant operations team, led by Manager of the Central Heating Plant Kelly Boe, recognize their important role in striving for carbon neutrality.
“It is painful for us to use oil,” Boe said. “No one wants to be the guy that breaks the streak.”
The efforts of Boe and his team have resulted in the biomass plant nearly quadrupling its maximum continuous operation time from roughly four weeks without a shutdown in 2009, to 16 weeks in 2013.
“The really significant part of that is that it means we burn that much more biomass and that much less fuel oil,” Director of Sustainability Integration Jack Byrne said.
Since 2009, the College has decreased its use of #6 fuel oil from 2.1 million gallons annually to 634,000 gallons last year. In September of this year, the College only utilized 3,000 gallons of fuel oil. This decrease in oil consumption corresponds with a 66 percent drop in carbon emissions from heating and cooling since 2007.
“[The biomass plant] seems like the biggest and most successful part of our push towards neutrality” said Olivia French ’14, an Environmental Studies major active in many sustainability efforts at the College. “Without it, I think we would be really stuck.”
In the early days of the plant’s operation, however, it seemed that only the “biggest” part of French’s statement was true, for, back in 2009, the College’s biomass gasification plant was one of the largest units of its kind.
“There’s no book that says ‘here is how you run it’,” Boe said. “We didn’t understand the fuel, we didn’t understand the importance of how we heated the system up, how we moved the air around.”
The system was introduced by running for just three to five consecutive weeks before being shut down. After experimenting with a variety of methods of burning woodchips and making improvements to the plant, the team was able to run the plant for eight consecutive weeks.
“The improvement efforts have really been a function of the guys in the plant, it’s a great team,” Boe said, noting the biomass team’s ability to reach new benchmark goals. “They kind of systematically figured it out.”
The increased mastery of the system has minimized shutdowns, in which the plant is forced to burn fuel oil to run the College, instead of biomass.
The plant’s goal is to use less than 600,000 gallons of fuel oil this year, as well as limiting shutdowns to once in the spring and once in the fall.
Boe cited administrative support as playing a critical role in reaching biomass milestones.
“They have been wildly supportive,” Boe said. “Whenever an improvement needed to be made, they never balked.”
Byrne, too, praised Boe and his team.
“[They’ve] not only been able to make the biomass system run longer between maintenance cycles, they’ve optimized their operation of it to routinely run at 100 percent of its capacity to meet campus steam demand,” he said.
Byrne sees the plant as a model for turning a local, renewable fuel source into energy. He cited the four to five thousand people that have toured the College’s biomass plant as evidence of the type of clean energy role model the College has become.
While a handful of local and peer institutions, including Colby College and Green Mountain College use biomass for heating, the College differs in that its efforts to produce clean energy occur on campus, as opposed to purchasing from off-campus sources of green power.
The biomass plant has also proved to members of the College and local community, as well as peer institutions, that it provides economic benefits in addition to green benefits. The College saves roughly $840,000 a year in fuel costs due to biomass gasification. Such savings, however, are countered by the annual cost of obtaining the wood chips that the plant burns, which totals approximately $800,000 annually.
Moving forward, Boe cited this coming winter as another test for the biomass gasification team. He hopes to repeat another 16-week operational streak, if not surpass it, while meeting the College’s increased demand for heating.