924 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(10/07/10 4:10am)
Author, professor, renowned speaker and Middlebury graduate Stephen Kiernan '82 kicked off the series by reminding attendees of what it means to be part of a nation.
Citing some alarming economic statistics (the average age of U.S. citizens below the poverty line, for example, is nine), Kiernan emphasized collective responsibility and the need for real patriotism in spite of a largely individualistic society. “We are less connected just when we need to be more so,” he said.
While the numbers were striking, Kiernan’s presentation was grounded in real stories of personal initiative. One featured Jack McConnell, a retired physician in Hilton Head, South Carolina, who started a free clinic staffed by fellow medical retirees, which eventually led to a nationwide phenomenon.
“The biggest payoff was not in dollars,” Kiernan said of the program that treated 16,000 patients and saved the Hilton Head health system $500,000 every year. “It was in the people’s experience.”
To help others find ways to get involved, Kiernan started the B1 Campaign. Visitors to the website, B1campaign.com, need only enter a location and field of interest in order to be matched with 15 nearby volunteer opportunities.
Kiernan urged those in attendance to look to people like McConnell for inspiration. “We need every one of you,” he said. “If you admire authentic patriots, then be one.”
(09/30/10 4:08am)
Saturday morning’s panel featured three women who have taken hands-on approaches to health care in their respective fields. Those in attendance learned about their respective endeavors through individual presentations and a Q & A. Though their approaches differ in nature, they share common senses of compassion, initiative and ability to recognize situations of dire need.
Chenoa Hamilton, a certified midwife herself, spoke about the role of midwifery in global health. Hamilton recently returned from Jacmel, Haiti, where she worked for Mother Health International. This small organization was formed just weeks after January’s devastating earthquake, functioning solely on volunteer work and donations. The staff includes midwives, OB/GYNs, nurses and visiting alternative health care practitioners such as acupuncturists and chiropractors, all of whom use as little technology as possible. The array of services provided is vast, ranging from the prenatal to the postpartum.
While word of mouth has helped the client base expand to about 800 women (about three new mothers each week), the clinic faces a great deal of challenges in maximizing its impact. For one thing, many women have trouble getting there.
“We’re lucky if we see them two to three times during their pregnancy,” Hamilton said. Cultural beliefs can also clash; for instance, many women believe breast milk to be poisonous for the first three days of the child’s life, and fears of sorcery discourage nighttime travel, even if labor is imminent. Additionally, scarce access to water and electricity prove problematic in maintaining cleanliness and preventing the spread of disease.
While care and treatment are primary concerns, education is also a key component of MHI’s initiative. Along with mandatory HIV testing for all mothers, volunteers provide patients with information on nutrition, hygiene and infant care. They also try to involve fathers as much as possible in order to encourage involvement throughout the child’s life.
Hamilton emphasized the value of comfort, support and trust in a trained and knowledgeable staff for expectant mothers. “When they feel love,” she said, “they usually give birth quite well.”
She hopes that her patients’ interest in midwifery will help to perpetuate the clinic’s success and further empower women in Haitian communities. A wider distribution of midwives throughout the country could have a massive impact on mothers’ quality of life and the infant mortality rate.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 700,000 midwives are needed worldwide to ensure universal coverage. That puts us at a 50 percent shortfall,” Hamilton said. “It really comes down to education throughout the world.”
After such an emphasis on education, it seemed fitting that Lisa Adams, assistant professor of medicine at Dartmouth, would follow. Adams, who is also the coordinator of the department’s section of infectious disease and international health and director of the college’s global health center, is part of a 10-year research collaboration between Dartmouth and Muhimbili University in Tanzania. The goal: “the expeditious development of an improved vaccine to prevent HIV-associated tuberculosis.”
Adams illustrated the need for such research with the help of some truly frightening statistics.
“There are 33 million people living with HIV,” she began. “A number that may resonate more easily is that every day, more than 7,000 people are infected. If you were to line the world’s population up single file, every third person would be infected with the Tuberculosis bacteria.”
As part of the search for effective treatment, the Dartmouth-Muhimbili collaboration was initiated in 2000. It is known as the DarDar program — one “Dar” for Dartmouth and another for “Dar Es Salaam.” It also sounds very similar to dada, the Swahili word for “sister.”
One of the project’s major trials focused on HIV-related TB. Over the course of a year, researchers tested a new vaccine boost (or a placebo) five times on HIV-positive individuals who had been primed with the bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) TB vaccine. The study, conducted using a random sample and double blind format, was actually ended early due to strikingly positive results. The vaccine was shown to reduce disseminated TB by 47 percent and definite TB by 39 percent.
Because the team was doing research on latent forms of TB, they were able to help those who would have otherwise faced great health challenges, as resources for those with active diseases are already scarce. Therefore, in addition to making major strides in the research sector, they had discovered an opportunity to provide hands-on treatment.
“What you realize is that it’s hard to provide very narrowly defined care,” Adams said. “We sort of evolved without any intention into primary care providers.”
The overall mission of the resulting clinic consists of caring for patients, training, counseling and research. At any give time, there are seven faculty members, four undergraduate students, three medical students and five fellows and residents on site.
“It’s really provided the launching pad for our global health initiative — a springboard for a much greater involvement,” Adams said.
Caitlin Cohen was an undergraduate student volunteering at a maternity ward in Mali when she found the void she needed to fill.
“My job was to catch things,” she half-joked. “Babies, surgical equipment … I’d sterilize things–ish,” she added, referring to the difficulty in maintaining cleanliness with a dearth of available resources. After experiencing the current health care system firsthand and maintaining contact with one of her coworkers throughout the following school year, Cohen was convinced to return to Mali.
“There was a disconnect between the care that we could provide and the cure that we needed,” she said.
With the help of a $1,500 loan from her father, she founded the Mali Health Organizing Project with the intention of providing primary care for all possible ailments.
“When you run disease-specific campaigns, so much of the time in places that are incredibly poor, they are ineffective because people can be killed by so many different things,” she said. “You need a comprehensive, holistic approach.”
Today, the clinic serves about 5,000 people annually, and it is the closest source of primary care for approximately 250,000. In addition, the Project comprises a variety of additional programs, including a plastic recycling effort employing about 30 locals and a text messaging system to monitor the health of young children from afar.
Cohen believes that these children should be a top priority, the basis of the “free care for under fives” policy.
“One in five kids die before the age of five,” Cohen said. “That means nothing until you actually see it, and then it becomes devastating. It has an emotional burden that is really difficult to comprehend.”
After building this organization from the ground up, Cohen is all too familiar with the struggles of fundraising. “What everything boils down to is money and where it’s going to come from,” she said. Her advice is to ask for more than you need and don’t be afraid to admit mistakes.
“People are often unwilling to admit when they have failed,” Cohen said. “If we don’t publicize our failures, we will repeat the errors that people have made time and time again.”
(09/30/10 4:01am)
Sisters Audra Ouellette and Kris Bowdish have been busy designing, creating and maintaining Addison County’s only corn maze, located at 181 Thompson Hill Road in Weybridge, Vt. Now, as the early signs of foliage brighten up the landscape, the two enjoy watching people of all ages find their way out of their nine-acre labyrinth.
Ouellette and Bowdish are part of a fourth generation dairy farming family and their current plot of land has been with their family since the 1930s. The sisters love working and connecting with the land, but the two did not want to continue dairy farming. So, they began growing vegetables, like squash, pumpkin and sweet corn, and crafting an annual corn maze on their land at Weybridge Farms.
It is the farm’s third year in operation, and the sisters are learning the ins and outs of the business. The corn maze has been a success in past years and attracted many visitors.
“The best method of advertising has been through word of mouth,” said Bowdish.
Ouellette is the self-proclaimed artist of the family and she is responsible for designing the layout of the maze. She begins toying with ideas in February and draws inspiration from various sources.
“Originally, the design for this year’s maze was going to be based on fractal geometry, but we changed the theme to crop circles instead,” said Ouellette.
Once the sisters agree on a preliminary sketch, they transfer the design onto a sheet of graph paper, which is scaled to account for the location of every row of corn in the plot. Next, they cut the corn stalks by hand, starting early in the season when the plants are about six inches high. It is impossible to know what the design looks like from above until they receive the official aerial photograph. They do not release this photograph until the end of the growing season to prevent visitors from planning a route through the maze.
During daylight hours the maze takes about one hour to complete. However, when night falls the maze is a different and difficult challenge, with some families taking up to two and half hours to find their way out. From 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., guests are invited to the maze and they must bring their own flashlights, so they can navigate the maze in the dark.
“At night we get some college students and even returning families who solved the maze earlier that day,” said Bowdish.
For those who want to experience the ultimate fright, there will be a special “Haunted Maze” on the two weekends before Halloween (Oct. 15-16 and 22-23). While attempting to solve the enigma at night, guests will have to dodge scarecrows and real-life “ghouls.”
New additions to Weybridge Farms’ autumn festivities include weekly Sunday hayrides around the property and a pumpkin launch organized by the local Boy Scouts chapter. A trebuchet will launch pumpkins into the sky using a 500-pound counterweight on Oct. 10 and on Halloween weekend.
The maze is open to the public on Fridays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. and on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Last admission is one hour before closing.
(09/30/10 3:52am)
Weight loss courses help overweight students
The percentage of overweight college students has increased to 11.3 percent in 2009 from eight percent in 2000. As concern for the growing number of overweight students rises, some colleges are responding by allowing their students to raise their GPA by losing weight.
University of Texas, University of Maryland, and University of Vermont are just a few of the schools that now offer weight-management courses to help their students reach and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Due to the embarrassment of going to a weight-loss class, it was only after these classes were offered online that schools saw the course enrollment increase.
The course requires that students wear a monitor that counts steps and calories expended and keep a food log to track their calorie intake. However, one of the most important components of the course, according to Christopher T. Ray, a professor at University of Texas, is the support-group style student discussion that allows students to share their struggles and urge each other to reach their goals.
— The Chronicle of Higher Education
Concussions threaten college football players
A disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy was discovered in the brain of deceased University of Pennsylvania football player Owewn Thomas last week.
This disease, up until now, has been associated only with professional football players who were known to have had repeated concussions. Thomas is believed to be the youngest athlete found with signs of the disease. However, he never reported a concussion throughout the 12 years he had played football. It is predicted that the disease came from unnoticed concussions or many subconcussive hits.
Brearley went to Capitol Hill this week to talk to Congress about the many issues surrounding concussions in football culture.
Brearley’s greatest concern is that high school athletes have their parents to watch after them, and professional players have a hired medical staff constantly on call. College athletes have neither, and are thus dependent on their friends to notice behavioral changes after a concussion.
— The Chronicle of Higher Education
Vanderbilt student has unconventional 21st
Leslie Labruto, a senior at Vanderbilt University, has accomplished something that most college students would find impossible: she gave up drinking on her 21st birthday.
Labruto requested for all of her friends to skip the traditional rite of passage of buying her a drink, and instead donate money to get the Bayaka people of the Central African Republic clean drinking water. Through the nonprofit organization Charity: Water, over 100 people have donated about $4,500 in Labruto’s name (http://www.mycharitywater.org/leslies21). Her ultimate goal is $5,000, and the fundraising continues through the end of the month.
Labruto’s concern for clean water began when she was a sophomore, when she created a filtration system for a large body of standing water in a village near Buenos Aires. In January she travelled to Peru and helped install an electric water pump in a village without clean drinking water.
And, for all of the skeptics, Labruto did admit to having a drink on her birthday: a Sprite.
— The Chronicle of Higher Education
(09/23/10 4:10am)
As the air continues to get cooler and we transition into fall, the beauty of Middlebury’s campus comes alive with a watercolor of reds, oranges and yellows. While this seasonal change is something we look forward to every year, it may not be something we can truly value without knowing the story behind some of the most interesting and impressive trees on campus.
Over the summer, Middlebury’s Horticulturalist Tim Parsons developed an interactive map as a means of “keeping track of and organizing” the once poorly-managed and diverse tree variety. The introduction of this digital and static map detailing the 2,279 trees on campus gives students the opportunity to discover and admire these great trees at Middlebury.
It was his goal to “know exactly what is in the ground and what new to plant,” said Parsons, who estimated he plants three new trees for every one taken down.
Parsons worked with a Geography Info Systems (GIS) team to categorize the approximately 2,500 trees on campus. This was a follow-up project to his Winter Term Urban Forest class in which his students took the tree population and ran it through modeling software to look at carbon sequestration, pollution abatement and other environmental factors.
Ben Meader ’10.5 worked with Parsons to select the 99 tress that would be, as Meader said, “most significant for people to see.” Meader spent the summer gathering information about each tree and creating the static map as part of his job as a digital media tutor at the library.
“The project was so interesting,” Meader said. “There was so much about the trees I wouldn’t have known without working with Tim.”
Mapping the trees on campus proved exciting and challenging for Parsons, who came to Middlebury in 2000 and found that the College lacked a proper arbor identification system. With GIS software, he is now able to keep track of the growth and development of all trees in a systematic and accurate manner.
“I want as diverse of a modern forest I can get,” said Parsons, “and the GIS program allows me to do just that.”
Parsons can now walk the campus with his GPS reader and recall information about any tree that he encounters.
The plant diversity is an aspect of Middlebury Meader feels he can now fully appreciate.
“I pride myself in learning,” said Meader. “We have so many kinds of trees that most students don’t even really see or take interest in.”
The recent horticulture study can serve as a resource for students in all disciplines. As Parsons noted, it has the potential for geography classes to do population work with something, “right at your own door.”
Additionally, it serves as a means through which students can learn more about the variety of plant life on campus.
Check out some of the many beautiful trees on campus: Osage Orange, Weeping European Birch, Elm, Katsura, Crimson King Maple Tree, Star Magnolia, Norway Spruce.
To learn more about Parson’s Horticulture Study, read his blog at http://blogs.middlebury.edu/middland/ or find his project at go/middlab
(09/23/10 3:55am)
Nearly 2,500 Middlebury students enjoy meals at Ross and Proctor dining halls each day, but for students with food allergies, every meal is another possible chance for disaster.
Director of Dining Services Matthew Biette is in charge of protecting students from various allergies. A 13-year veteran of Dining Service, Biette has been director for the past seven.
Biette works closely with the Dining Services Committee, a 15-member body responsible for bringing culinary concerns of the student body to the attention of Biette and the other chefs.
“We help students get the resources they need in order to get the accommodations they need to [accommodate] food allergies,” said Paige Keren ’12, a three-year member of the committee.
According to the Keren, the five major food allergies on campus are: dairy, gluten, peanuts, almonds and soy.
Keren estimates that approximately 10 to 15 percent of Middlebury students suffer from some sort of food allergy.
She says most allergic reactions come from cross-contamination, which occurs when a food allergen comes into contact with a non-allergen food through utensils or other means. The lack of understanding about cross-contamination concerns the Dining Committee.
“If you walked up to someone on campus, they wouldn’t understand the idea of cross-contamination,” said Keren. “A lot of students suffer because of cross-contamination.”
The nearly 200 employees of Dining Services post numerous signs advising students of possibly dangerous ingredients, but rely mostly on students to communicate their allergies.
“There is a lot of reliance on the students knowing what they can and can’t do,” explained Biette. “If you look at all the food we put our there, we try to identify, whether it’s a religious belief or a personal preference.”
While dairy and gluten allergies are easily contained, Biette says other allergens are harder to control. “Nut and shellfish allergies are the more dangerous,” he said.
Even airborne particles pose a significant threat. When grinding peanuts for their homemade peanut butter early every morning, Dining Services uses a ventilation hood so that the air is fresh by the time students file in for breakfast.
“We have to be that aware,” explained Biette.
Sarah Simonds ’11 has severe allergies to peanuts, soybeans, and other legumes. “I didn’t eat much freshman year, I was really really careful,” she said. “I still can’t touch that whole reach of the dining hall because of the open peanut butter.”
Despite her vigilance and Dining Service’s warning notices, she has approximately one allergic reaction every semester, ranging from light rashes to dangerous ingestion. Simmons credits the reactions to cross-contamination.
“People don’t realize that cross-contamination is an issue for people with severe allergies,” said Simonds. “People who eat with me and live with me tell me that they never thought about how if they put the knife in the jam after the peanut butter they are cross contaminating.”
The biggest casualty for Simonds was the panini maker. After using it her entire first-year, her friend mused how great her peanut butter and jelly sandwich tasted after being heated in the Panini maker.
“I can never use that machine again unless they make one that is specifically peanut-free,” she said.
Biette and Simonds agree that incoming first-year students with food allergies are most at risk. Biette says that first-year students with food allergies are accustomed to structured dietary guidelines and have trouble transitioning to buffet-style college dining.
“You as the student need to give up your mom at home and understand that we are the moms and dads here that are going to take care of you,” said Biette.
Simonds advises fellow students to be careful, but not limiting.
“You don’t have to make concessions,” she emphasized. “Life sucks if you can’t eat cookies so you just need to know how to control it.”
(09/22/10 4:06am)
On Sunday, Sept. 19, over 500 bikers left the Shoreham Green for one of the most farm-friendly events in New England. The Tour de Farms is a biking event with routes through the Champlain Valley where bikers stop at farms to eat and learn important information about farming.
This is the third year of the Tour de Farms ride, and its popularity has been steadily growing. Organized by three organizations — Rural Vermont, the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition and the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACoRN) — these non-profits strive to spread awareness, understanding and fun.
ACoRN Director Jonathan Corcoran believes the Tour de Farms is the best event because it is “an out breath for people.”
“Everybody is running around so fast today both physically, emotionally and mentally,” he said.
The Tour is all about taking your time, relaxing with friends and enjoying the beauty of Vermont. It is, according to Corcoran, a “community celebration of the harvest.”
Nancy Schulz of the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition believes that the Tour de Farms sends a strong message not just to the participants, but also to the entire community. Aside from raising awareness about locally grown food, the event also helps bikers and motorists become conscious of one another on the road. Schulz is optimistic about the event’s effects, and she hopes the festivities inspire more people to bike, to be road conscious and to help everyone cooperate and make Addison County a more bike-friendly area.
Schulz also explained that although the route can only pass by a certain number of farms, these farms are not the only participants. Tour de Farms has inspired farmers from all around the county to come together and organize ways for farms outside of Vermont to participate in the event, as well. Some farmers hosted other farmers on their land, and there was also a farmer’s market at the end of the race with stands from over 20 different farms.
Shelby Girard of Rural Vermont keeps in contact with farmers and bikers throughout the year. The cyclists tell her how wonderful it is to get to see where their local food comes from and to talk to the farmers that produce these goods. Many bikers buy food after sampling a few options. There were also several requests from the participants to order Thanksgiving turkeys from these farmers to be delivered to their houses in November. These requests and other comments led Girard to believe that the Tour de Farms really does make an impact and that the event inspires people to buy locally throughout the year.
“The food really speaks for itself,” she said.
Girard has also received calls from people across Vermont and New England, who are curious about how to start a Tour de Farms in their area. She is excited for the event to spread to other counties across the state within the next few years.
Although the event took place in Shoreham, Vt., there were many Middlebury students in attendance. Sarah Bachman ’13.5 rode the 30-mile route. She likened the event to a “farmer’s market on wheels” and said it combined the perfect amount of biking with the perfect opportunity to learn about local food. Bachman enjoyed seeing where her food came from and she had valuable conversations with the farmers themselves. In fact, her favorite part of the event was hearing what the farmers had to say. She appreciated the fact that they took time out of their busy days to organize the event to help raise awareness and to aid the local community. Bachman believes the Tour de Farms made local food seem real, and it gave people who have little knowledge about farming a nice taste of what it entails. Her message to the students at the College, to people of Addison County and to everyone else is to “eat local.”
“Go to farmers markets and talk to the people,” she said. “Know that there is a food culture in Vermont and do your best to become a part of it.”
(09/22/10 3:54am)
Since its inception in 2007, the Middlebury willow project has been running according to plan. The first harvest and testing of willow trees as a sustainable fuel source for the biomass gasification plant will happen this coming December.
The biomass gasification plant, which uses wood chips as fuel, currently runs on waste product from local sawmills. Assistant Treasurer and Director of Business Services Tom Corbin is a leader of the project and has been working with several others to find alternate sources of fuel for the plant.
“In the winter there is more competition [for fuel] from the local K-12 schools,” said Corbin. In order to find an alternative source of fuel, Corbin has been working closely with the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) which is using the College as a testing site.
“We looked at two or three varieties of short-rotation crop trees,” said Corbin. They decided on willow trees and, in 2007, a nine-acre plot of trees was planted to test their potential as a fuel source.
Dr. Tim Volk, professor and research associate with SUNY-ESF, is the leader of the scientific studies of the willows. He and his team were involved in the planting in 2007 and have been closely monitoring the project since then.
“We are interested in seeing which varieties will do best in the soil conditions in Vermont,” said Volk.
“[The College’s] concern is what will happen in the winter,” said Corbin. “It’s been a good partnership for us. They know what they’re doing to help the plants … it’s like free consulting.”
According to Corbin, one of the advantages to growing willows in that the process is quite simple. The trees are trimmed one year after the original planting to aid in multiplication. After that, they grow for three years and are ready to be harvested. The trees are cut down and shredded with a slightly adapted corn-harvesting machine and are ready for use in one simple step.
“There’s no processing necessary,” said Corbin. If all goes will with this nine-acre test, Middlebury plans to expand the project to a 1,500 acre plot that will provide 500 acres of trees each year, enough to supply about half of the fuel needed for the winter.
Besides saving money for the College, the willow project has many other benefits.
“It will be good economically for the county,” said Corbin. “We employed many local farmers to help with the planting and we hope to employ more for the harvesting in December.”
In addition, the use of locally grown willows for fuel is a much more sustainable and environmentally sound practice.
“It’s a simple, organic process,” said Corbin. “We started with organic cow manure, applied biodegradable herbicide during the first year, and we have not used any chemicals since then . . . We are not taking wood from the forests, we know where it’s coming from — it’s only trucked a few miles.”
The primary goal of this test was to see how the willows would do in this “different ecosystem and different weather patterns,” said Corbin. Both Corbin and Volk said that the trees are doing “as well or better” than has been seen in previous tests in central New York and elsewhere.
Some lessons have been learned that could be applied in the future. Among the many varieties of willows, “some have grown extremely well and some have done poorly,” said Volk. “Because of the high clay content of the soil, the trees were slow getting started,” said Volk.
“We should have spent more time getting the ground ready to plant,” said Corbin. “Weeds were also a problem at the beginning. More preparation would allow us to reduce the amount of chemicals we use.”
Predictions for the upcoming testing are positive, but there are some uncertainties. According to Corbin, this is the first time willow will be used in such a plant.
“There may be a less consistent chip size,” said Corbin. “The wood is not as dense so we may find that instead of needing 10,000 tons, we need 13,000 and we need to plant more.”
“The willow wood chips are not much different from the ones they use now,” said Volk. “This harvest should provide enough to do a test for a couple of days and play with the dynamics.”
The biomass gasification plant will require three to four days worth of fuel to do a decisive test, according to Corbin. In order to keep the plant running at full temperature, a mixture of willow and the existing fuel will be run through the plant before the transition to pure willow is made. After the pure willow has been tested, a mixture will be used again to transition back to the original type of fuel.
“There are some pockets that did not grow as well,” said Volk, who is not sure there will be enough yield to do the full test. “However, we have backup supplies of willow — truckloads that we can bring in to make sure the test can be done.”
“The proof is in the test,” said Volk.
(09/16/10 4:30am)
Call it a most beautiful marriage of music and film.
Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips — two musicians currently performing with a band under the moniker Dean & Britta — were commissioned several years ago by the Andy Warhol Museum and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to compose music accompanying a handful of Warhol’s several hundred “screen tests” — short, silent film portraits of individuals both famous and completely anonymous. The result is titled 13 Most Beautiful: 13 songs written for 13 of, ostensibly, the most beautiful or most powerful screen tests. Wareham, Phillips and two other band members performed these songs in the McCullough Social Space on Saturday night with the respective film portraits projected on a large screen behind them.
Warham and Phillips certainly come from respectable musical backgrounds; Wareham was a founding member of the pioneering indie “dream-pop” band Galaxie 500, active from 1987 through 1991, and both were members of a subsequent band, Luna, which released a string of critically respected albums in the 90s and into the new millennium. Perhaps the contemporary fanbase for these bands has lapsed (despite their influence on bands as wide-ranging as Yo La Tengo, Beach House, Sigur Rós and My Bloody Valentine) — certainly some factor prevented the show in McCullough from drawing much of a crowd. Chalk it up to this being the first weekend back, for MCAB not having much time to promote the event, or to the fact that it was hard to succinctly advertise due to its complex, multimedia nature; regardless, the Social Space was mysteriously empty for this haunting and captivating performance.
The sound mix was loud but crystal clear, the musicians had a subtle, expert touch and Warhol’s film portraits are entrancing. When they were shot (and there’s approximately 500 of them), the subjects were posed, lit and then shot with a 16mm camera on 100-foot reels of silent, black and white film. A few of the portraits were slowed down just slightly in order to match the four-minute length of the others, and this gave some of them an especially ghostly aura. The screen tests may not be the best known facet of Warhol’s oeuvre, but they have been exhibited previously (in shifting compilations with names like 13 Most Beautiful Boys and 13 Most Beautiful Women), and perhaps most notably in “Exploding Plastic Inevitable,” the traveling multimedia “happening” in which Warhol’s video art was accompanied by earsplitting performances from The Velvet Underground and Nico.
Some featured “look how young!” moments of stars like Dennis Hopper, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed and Nico, whose natural charisma made it pleasurable to look at and become acquainted with their face for four minutes. Yet some of the most moving portraits portrayed characters from the 1960s underground whose memory has not survived in quite the same way. Ann Buchanan, a minor Beat figure who once lived with Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassidy, stares at the audience nearly unblinkingly until a single tear rolls down her face near the end of the clip. And the icy-cool shot of lighting designer Billy Name, replete with sterile light reflected off his Aviator sunglasses, was perfectly matched by Dean & Britta’s “Silver Factory Theme,” an instrumental reminiscent of Brightblack Morning Light’s languid electric psychedelia.
Sometimes the performers let the aura of the tragic, self-destructive stories of the subjects, related by Wareham in between songs, hover over and haunt the portraits and songs themselves, greatly augmenting the mood of the performance. They might have overplayed the look how beautiful and tragic they were” card a little bit, but one couldn’t help but dwell on the mysterious disappearance of Ingrid Superstar or the poetic suicide of Freddy Harko while watching them immortalized on screen and accompanied by the perfect mood music.
Dean & Britta are certainly masters of emotion — their songs are low on concept but have an abundance of mood. And they’re no strangers to the art of soundtracking — they have score credits for several films under their belts, most notably Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale. Wareham’s crooning tenor and Phillips’ breathy flutter were both used to great effect in the 13 simple songs. They managed to pick exactly the right style to work within to best complement each screen test, whether it conjured pulsing Velvet Underground rock, the architectural ebbs and flows of post-rock, shoegaze’s washes of sound or simply old-fashioned, subdued pop, in which one can hear the relation to Yo La Tengo circa-And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.
Thirteen songs also turned out to be the perfect length for their set, and after the last portrait faded out, the band bowed to a light smattering of applause (I’m telling you, this crowd was small — and horrible at knowing when to clap) and quietly left the stage, leaving us with the ghostly impressions of these vanished individuals and a sort of false memory of the last great revolutionary underground which almost no one in attendance was alive to witness.
(09/09/10 4:15am)
The Wright Theater will soon be looking a little more colorful than usual. This fall, the theater’s eastern wall will be decorated with a 1,300 square foot mural depicting a new and dynamic image by Vermont artist Sabra Field ’57.
The image, entitled “Cosmic Geometry”, is a grid-like piece of art comprised of cellular, plant, animal and architectural patterns grouped in themed quartets. The message behind the artwork is that the human and natural worlds are connected by the same forms and patterns, though it can also be interpreted as a call to action; for humans to re-examine our connection with nature, and to help preserve it for future generations.
Wright Theater’s makeover is part of the Middlebury Mural Project, which is the brainchild of Kate Lupo ’10. She started the project in September 2009 after gaining approval from Field, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, Middlebury College Committee for Art in Public Places (CAPP) and the Town of Middlebury. Lupo, who was an art history major, a Middlebury mamajama and the head of the SGA Environmental Affairs, also helped raise a 100-foot mural in her hometown. She sees murals as educational tools that can teach viewers valuable, unspoken lessons and was also inspired by public murals created during the Great Depression, which, Lupo said, “provided hope and inspiration during a dark time in America’s history.”
Lupo said she specifically chose the eastern wall of the Wright Theater because of its potential as a canvas. “I walked by the Wright Theater so many times and it was just a big beautiful blank wall that could become a gorgeous work of art. I said to myself, ‘I think I can do this.’”
At its completion, the project’s total cost will be $25,000. CAPP, a committee of Middlebury staff who are responsible for the creation and maintenance of all public art on campus, has committed to pay for half of the costs. Lupo also won a $500 grant from dosomething.org, an organization that gives financial aid to young people with large nonprofit projects. The rest of the costs will come from fundraising done by Lupo and Peggy Smith ’57, a friend of Field’s.
Lupo said that, initially, she was considering using another image by Field that would feature windmills and her iconic Vermont imagery, but “Cosmic Geometry” seemed more exciting and had a different design than most of Field’s other artwork. “It’s also [Field’s] favorite and she’s really happy we chose it,” Lupo said. She also said that since Field is an alumna of the College and a local Vermont favorite, the mural would help unite the college and the town. As a mural aficionado, Lupo enjoys working primarily on murals with environmental themes, so “Cosmic Geometry” was an ideal image to display on the theater’s blank wall.
“Cosmic Geometry” will be painted by Colossal Media, a professional mural company based in New York City, and will be completed by mid-October. The mural is slated to last for up to five years in the current agreement with the Middlebury CAPP Committee for Art. After completion, it will be one of the largest murals in the state, and there will be an opening celebration later on in the fall that will include both the town and college communities.
After the finalization of her project, Lupo will be working as the Coordinator of the Westport Youth Film Festival in Westport, Ct. She would like to thank all those who collaborated with her on the project, including Liebowitz, Richard Saunders (the chair of CAPP), as well as her mentor, Special Assistant to the President Dave Donahue.
(09/09/10 4:09am)
On Friday afternoon, Sept. 3, the atmosphere at Kenyon Arena was tense as the Class of 2014 anxiously gathered for fall registration. In the days preceding, first-years poured over the course catalogue to create countless possible schedule options and met with their advisors to outline potential courses. In addition, students could take advantage of opportunities to receive further instruction on class registration by attending the Center for Teaching and Learning Resources (CTLR) pre-advisory classes and the Academic Forum.
Earlier in the week each student was randomly assigned a lottery number that determined in what order the students would enter the arena to register. Students with lower numbers breathed a sigh of relief.
“Because I had an early registration number I didn’t have to worry about a backup plan,” said Simeran Sabharwal ’14, who was number 58 in a pool of 579.
Others with higher numbers weren’t as lucky, as they were shut out from their preferred classes. Jake Nonweiler ’14, number 425, was unable to secure one of 18 slots in Beginning French Part One.
“I know you can’t always get what you want, but it was frustrating not to begin a language I’ve always wanted to learn,” Nonweiller said.
While most first-years were nervous about working out a schedule, Guadalupe Barajas ’14 and Quanteshia Tennyson ’14 were surprised to see availability in their top choices, despite having registration numbers in the 500s.
“I was really stressed and scared I wouldn’t get what classes I wanted. I was constantly refreshing BannerWeb to be sure I had a shot at getting into Portuguese,” said Tennyson, who held the second to last registration number, but still secured a desired place in Beginning Portuguese.
With registration complete, first-years can now jump into their very first semester at Middlebury College.
(09/09/10 4:06am)
Between July 6 and August 1, Middlebury theater students took center stage in a venue far removed from the hills of rural Vermont, setting up house off-Broadway at New York City’s Potomac Theatre Project (PTP).
Jim Patosa of Boston University, and the College’s own Cheryl Faraone and Richard Romagnoli founded PTP in 1987. The company has returned to professional theatre every summer, first to a D.C. suburb and since 2007 to New York City’s Atlantic Stage. Students selected by audition work in conjunction with actors accredited by the widely recognized Actors Equity Association. Since the program’s inception, over 150 Middlebury students have gone through PTP.
Now in its 24th season, PTP staged Snoo Wilson’s “Lovesong of the Electric Bear” as well as a compilation of two works by playwright Howard Barker, “Plevna: Meditations on Hatred” and “Gary the Thief” and a last piece, David Rabe’s “Question of Mercy”.
While the latter two plays are unfamiliar to the College, “Lovesong of the Electric Bear” was first staged as a winter term production examining the life of Alan Turing, best known for cracking the Enigma code in 1942 and by many accounts winning World War II for the Allies. Less known is his homosexuality, which led to his persecution by the British government, and eventual suicide.
Many of the cast went on to participate in PTP. Among these is Lilli Stein ’11. Originally cast as Turing’s teddy bear-turned-muse — simply called the Bear — she traded in her part to Equity actor Tara Giordano, taking on a plethora of smaller roles.
“Watching a professional actor do my part — someone who was similar to me (both short, impish) and at the same time very different (a lot more benevolent and sincere) was very interesting,” Stein said. “[Giordano] brought out the devil/angel sides to the Bear. I’d love to play the role again having seen her.”
Stein is not alone in highlighting the exceptional experience of working side by side with professionals. Co-founder and current Producing Director Professor of Theatre and Women’s and Gender Studies Faraone, considers this aspect a particular strength.
“It’s not a conventional student/teacher relationship,” she said. “If anything it is like the apprenticeships of old times, learning a trade.”
Perhaps even more importantly, the experience imbues aspiring actors with the confidence to pursue a somewhat illusive profession. Alex Crammer ’99 has appeared both on screen and stage, in such household names as 30 Rock and CSI – and as a student, with PTP. He credits the program with his early acting success.
“I finished Middlebury, did a season of PTP, right after that was hired to do a season with the National Players,” he said. “I was basically employed for 12 months as an actor because of PTP. That is unparalleled.”
Crammer returned to PTP this season and his experience is not atypical. Of the eight Equity actors participating this year, six are Middlebury alumni. They provide insight into the craft, and invaluable connections to the greater theatre world.
“Both Alex Draper and Alex Crammer brought agents in,” Faraone said. “People can spend years in New York and not get any access to an agent that way. Our students are working with people who have the ability to give them this gift at no cost, rather than spending $500 to be one in fifty at a casting director’s class. For every season I can point to two or three people who got their next — first — job directly from the PTP experience.”
It’s very much a family affair, and both Crammer and Faraone went on to describe a strange phenomenon eating its way through the Big Apple — the Middlebury Mafia, a close-knit alumni network surprising the theatre world with its verve and talent.
Not only a springboard to a career in theatre, PTP is also a valuable confidence booster. “The way the actors behave backstage — they’re human like us, we miss entrances, they miss entrances, they worry about an audience not laughing enough or forget makeup or part of a costume,” Stein said. “On the outside it’s such a dream world, but you get there and there are so many actors doing it and being successful. The opportunity actually feels closer.”
For a month, participants lived the life — and more often than not found that they liked it. Better yet, they could do it.
“When I went I was worried I wouldn’t like NY, that it would be too big or too hard, and I’d decide this wasn’t the life for me,” student actor Willy McKay ’11 said. “It is an incredibly competitive business, no one would say its not, but you meet people who do it for a living and you see that they’re not any different from us and they’re happy. I’m not- going to be starving in the street. You can have fun with a play even if it’s in a professional setting and the New York Times is there. It absolutely reaffirmed that this is the most fun anyone could ever have.”
(09/09/10 3:49am)
Mental illness increases on college campuses
According to a recent study presented at the 118th convention of the American Psychological Association, mental illness has seen a marked increase among college students over the last decade.
“University and college counseling services around the country are reporting that the needs of students seeking services are escalating toward more severe psychological problems,” said John Guthman, PhD, the study’s author.
The study is based on the records of 3,256 college students who made use of college counseling services at a mid-sized university between September 1997 and August 2009.
“The percentage of students with moderate to severe depression has gone up from 34 to 41 percent” over that time period, said Guthman. Furthermore, as the study noted, the number of students taking psychiatric medicines increased by more than 10 percent during the same period.
The report speculated that perhaps the increase in anxiety and more severe cases of depression among college students is due to the students entering college with pre-existing mental disorders.
— Science Codex
Williams ranks number one on Forbes college list
Williams College was ranked at the top of a Forbes magazine’s annual list of “America’s Best Colleges.” The list ranked the top 610 schools out of the more than 6000 accredited post-secondary institutions in the country.
Forbes ranked the schools based on “the quality of education they provide, the experiences of the students and how much they achieve.”
The rest of the top 10 included Princeton, Amherst, the United States Military Academy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Swarthmore, Harvard, Claremont McKenna, and Harvard.
Middlebury ranked number 26 on Forbes’s list.
According to Forbes, the index used to create the ranking is largely compiled using research from the Center for College Affordability & Productivity, in Washington, D. C.
— The Huffington Post
U. of Iowa scrambles to accommodate freshmen
The University of Iowa dramatically over-admitted this year, accepting thousands more students than normal for the Class of 2015. Though many have chosen to matriculate elsewhere, according to most estimates, Iowa will need to somehow accommodate at least 400 more freshmen than normal this year, for a total of more than 4,500.
Iowa has apparently been unusually successful in recruiting students; the Class of 2015 will include many students from out of state and even some from as far away as India and China.
“It’s good-bad,” said Tom Rocklin, interim vice president for student services. “You want them here. But we have to house these students. We have to ensure they have the classes they need.”
As a result, the university has been scrambling to secure local apartment buildings and to convert common dormitory spaces into private residential rooms.
The boom in students seems to be the result of an aggressive marketing strategy on the part of Iowa’s office of admissions.
— The New York Times
(05/06/10 9:30pm)
It was James S. Davis ’66 and his wife, Anne, who in 2007 kicked off Middlebury’s $500 million capital campaign with an anonymous donation of $50 million. It was the Davis family that — for the past five years running — anonymously matched every alumni pledge to the College, dollar for dollar. And it was the Davis family that supported the Main Library’s construction when the dot-com bust put the project in jeopardy.
Now, the library that Jim Davis helped build will bear his family’s name.
At an unveiling ceremony today, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz introduced Davis as the anonymous donor behind some of the most sweeping changes to have affected the College in recent history. Speaking at the newly named Davis Family Library, Liebowitz recognized Jim and Anne Davis, as well as their son, Chris Davis ’08, and their daughter Kassia for their longtime dedication to service and generosity to the College.
"In their own lives,” said Liebowitz, “they have consistently demonstrated the creativity, innovation, pursuit of knowledge and commitment to excellence that are at the core of a liberal arts education.”
Davis is the chairman of New Balance, the Boston-based athletic shoe company with annual revenues in excess of $1.5 billion. At the time Davis bought the company in 1972 for a $10,000 down payment, New Balance was making 30 pairs of shoes a day with six employees. Today, it operates in 13 countries around the globe and is among the five largest companies in the athletic footwear industry. But what sets New Balance apart from its competitors are the values that support the company, administration officials said in interviews Tuesday.
“He built this company in a unique way,” said Mike Schoenfeld, vice president for College Advancement. “It was all about family.”
After nearly 40 years, New Balance is still privately held.
Davis’ loyalty to family and community has consistently included Middlebury. Since graduating, Davis has donated over $70 million to the College. He has also spent 15 years as a member of the Board of Trustees, and considerable time as a behind-the-scenes advisor to Liebowitz and to President Emeritus of the College John M. McCardell, Jr.
With his $50 million starting pledge to the Middlebury Initiative, Davis helped establish a financial aid fund that slashed the loan burden for all students receiving assistance from the College.
“The first thing we did with that money,” said Schoenfeld, “was cut everybody’s loans from $4,000 a year down to either one-, two- or three thousand dollars, depending on your income.”
Through a tip from a college classmate, Davis introduced Middlebury to the Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS) — paving the way for an acquisition that is to become increasingly important as Old Chapel leans more heavily in the future on its satellite operations for income. The College is expected to take full ownership of MIIS this summer, when the California-based institution formally becomes “a graduate school of Middlebury College.”
The Monterey Institute offers a wide range of language and translation training programs, as well as Master’s degrees in international environmental policy and nonproliferation and terrorism studies. Davis became a member of the Board of Trustees at MIIS after the Middlebury-Monterey partnership was signed in 2005. Liebowitz and Schoenfeld credit Davis with making the agreement possible at all.
“His philanthropy has touched every single piece of Middlebury College for the last 30 years,” said Schoenfeld. “It’s unbelievable.”
Davis proved equally instrumental in the construction of the Main Library, which opened to students in July 2004 after nearly a decade of planning and building. The idea for a new library came about amid discussions over the future of nearby Starr Library — a hundred-year-old structure that, according to C.A. Johnson Professor of Art Glenn Andres, students avoided at all costs.
“Starr Library had 18 levels, and an inscrutable floor plan, and could never be made handicapped-accessible,” said Andres. “You couldn’t run technology there. You couldn’t run proper climate control through there. It was hopeless.”
A stone’s throw away, a science building stood in the Davis Library’s current position. But instead of drawing the eye to the sweeping lawns that sit beside South Main Street today, Liebowitz said, the edifice did little more than cut the College off from the town.
Calling the science building “obtrusive,” “a disaster” and likening it to the Berlin Wall, Liebowitz said the trustees ultimately voted to demolish the offending sight and construct a library in its place. Though some trustees questioned the need for a library in the digital age, Davis argued consistently and forcefully for the project as “the right thing to do” — even when the burst of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century threatened to kill it off.
When the building finally opened its doors, Liebowitz stopped by one day on his way home from work.
“I talked to some of the language school students — I was only able to talk to the Russian students because of the language pledge — and they loved the space,” said Liebowitz. “They’d been there for 10 days, and they were there every night. It was more crowded in that library that summer than I’d ever seen.”
Nearly six years later, the Davis Library still fills up every night. Mike Roy, dean of Library and Information Services at the College, anticipates that the institutional mission of the library will only become more important as scholarship migrates to the Web.
“Much of a liberal arts education has to do with learning how to use information, evaluate information, present it in various formats and use it ethically,” said Roy. “And so we’re always thinking about what role the library can play in developing those sorts of capabilities.
“As more and more stuff becomes available digitally,” Roy added, “and people begin to prefer the digital, how do we have to change our habits in order to meet the needs of our community?”
Roy’s strategic foresight follows in the Davis family tradition. In his remarks, Liebowitz praised Davis for encouraging Middlebury to become a leader among its peers.
“He has always pushed the College to think big and to be alert to new opportunities,” said Liebowitz. “His goal has been to make Middlebury stronger by, in his words, ‘balancing the College’s traditional but unique heritage with a continuing enhancement of the Middlebury experience, as we prepare our students for leadership in a rapidly changing, more complex world.’"
For a photo gallery of the event, click here.
(05/06/10 4:00am)
Proving he’s the whiner his biweekly pinochle club always thought him to be, Mexican President Felipe Calderon is getting all sorts of whiny over the new Arizona immigration law, which is also known by the robo-sounding name SB1070. Experts are shocked that Mexico’s fearless leader is still talking to the press despite the ongoing controversy over his name sounding like “cauldron,” a claim that has caused some Mexicans and Sarah Palin to speculate about his ties to witchcraft as well as the Harry Potter book series. Last week, Calderon, while skillfully dodging questions about his special relationship with J.K. Rowling, declared that the Arizona immigration law “opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement.” When reached for comment, the door promptly responded that it has “been open for quite some time thank you very much!”
The blogoverse, a magical place on the internet where people post keyboard puke, has been all atwitter about this new law. Most opinion pieces I found on this subject began with the thesis that, “Unfair! Racist! Hatred! Boycotting!” or, contrapuntally, “Jobs! America! Glenn Beck! Freedom and liberty for all whites!” The most reasonable opinion piece I found on this subject, written by a respected African-American scholar at Stanford, basically said, “Wait a second! Isn’t it already illegal to be an illegal immigrant?”
Yes, Scholar at Stanford, it is illegal to be what is known in kinder terms as “undocumented.” I’m not sure how “undocumented immigrants” and “illegal immigrants” are at all different terms. Maybe it’s sort of like how the Indians (the ones who run Casinos and paint with all the colors of the wind) want to be called Native Americans and Indians (people from India) want to be called Slumdog Millionaires.
Opponents of this law like Mr. Calderon, who have long whined about racial profiling, are now imagining that this law is inventing racial profiling or at least making it is easier. This, I think, is so they can whine more. Police officers in Arizona have been racial profiling Hispanic people with impunity since way before this law was just a twinkle in Arizona’s eye. I have no idea if that’s true actually, but it seems about right. Sometimes, as I sit musing about the police racially profiling with impunity, I imagine the police chew on that grass thing and speak in an indecipherable Southern accent; other times not. Where were we?
Ah, my solution to this problem: PBRs.
Check it: Polite Border Receptionists, or PBRs, will hold hands to form a human wall on the border and also politely hand out pamphlets on how to utilize the proper legal pathways to entering the U.S.A. Even in the likely event of future immigration reform (which annoying people will call “Obamagration reform,”) these proper legal pathways will continue to be a huge pain in the ass for the potential immigrant. But fear not, because we’ll cushion this depressing news by offering huge prizes and raffle opportunities at the border! Immigrant hopefuls will be given the opportunity to buy a very special raffle tickets for the monetary equivalent of five dollars (pesos accepted), and for every thousand tickets purchased, one lucky Mexican citizen, and up to four of his/her closest kith, will be granted hassle-free access to all of the things that make America great — Six Flags, chain restaurants, the blood and tears of our forefathers, etc. They won’t even need to immigrate, which again, is helpful given that the official immigration process involves memorizing anywhere from 500-1000 percent more United States history than any native-born U.S. Citizens knows.
You don’t give a flying squirrel about Mexicans, you say? It’s all good. Consider: the border is approx. 1,969 miles long. The average unemployed U.S. Citizen could politely defend two feet of border no problem. Math Time!!! That’s [(2,640 PBRs per mile) X (1,969 miles of Mexico-United States border)] = 5,296,610 new jobs via the human wall! With any luck Obama will make this a law with his weird left-handed claw signature as early as next month!
Did I mention the exciting border games the PBRs are authorized to engage in? In addition to raffles, there shall be a fun little game called “The Cross-countries Cross-cultures Cross-promotional Challenge.” In this game each PBR will offer his/her potential immigrant client a refreshing Pabst Blue Ribbon (you had to know that was coming) as a testament to what our marvelous country can offer those who choose to go through the official immigration process. If you beat the PBR in a PBR chugging contest, you, like the raffle winner, may bypass the official immigration process and, even better than the raffle winner, receive $200 for passing GO thanks to another special promotional tie-in with our good friends at ParkerBros, maker of Monopoly. And that’s just the beginning!
Though it will be fairly clear from the handholding that we Americans have turned the page on our ambivalent border enforcement and are now steadfastly enforcing the law in a friendly, courteous manner, fairly clear is not clear enough! The PBRs will also sing. One happy song at the top of their lungs, at the top of each hour. The thematically relevant song selections will include Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” The New Seekers’ “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” and Lipps Inc.’s “Funky Town,” which foreign countries still mistakenly believe to be the official USA theme song.
This can’t work, you say? Oh forget it! I’m sick of you Negative Nancies. Look, whatever. Is a wall of hand-holding singers working for minimum wage too much to ask from the country that brought us Lady Gaga, The Snuggie and intense scrutiny of Tiger Woods’ penis vacations? I think not. Mark my words, one day we live in a world with polite human walls. Until then, good morning and good luck.
(05/06/10 4:00am)
Before opening day this season, before the first pitch and the first rained-out series and the first grudge match against Williams, I asked sophomore pitcher Dirk van Duym ’12 about the team’s expectations of themselves for the coming season. Van Duym responded by saying that the team would be very disappointed with anything less than a .500 record for the year.
A .500 record would have been a vast improvement over the last two season’s outcomes, which have been mediocre, to say the least. Flash forward two months, where, 27 games later, Middlebury baseball sits at 10-17, their worst finish since winning the NESCAC crown in 2006.
“We feel pretty disappointed in our overall performance this season, especially considering the remarkable talent we had,” said pitcher Peter Kinchley ’12.
“I think the main thing that prevented us from being successful was our lack of consistency in all three areas of the game.”
The team this year was exceptionally young, and youthful inexperience often translated into inconsistent performances on the diamond. Last weekend, the Panthers seemed to find some sort of redemption in the season, beating Hamilton two games out of three for their only NESCAC series win of the season.
They carried that success into last Friday, when they beat Amherst 5-0 in one of their most complete games of the season and brought their NESCAC record to .500, with a chance to finish well above that with four conference games remaining.
However, after dropping two games the next day to the the Lord Jeffs at home, they managed only four hits in two games at Tufts on Sunday, wasting two excellent pitching performances by Tyler Buckingham ’13 and Will Baine ’12. This uncharacteristic lack of offensive production (the Panthers hit .305 as a team on the season) was almost as surprising as the equally uncharacteristic solid pitching, as the team will finish the season with an ERA of 7.65 despite late recent success on the rubber.
The dichotomy exhibited in the final series against Tufts was a microcosm of the series as a whole; the team was at times brilliant, beating nationally-ranked Southern Main 10-6, and at times less so, allowing Bowdoin more runs than they had scored in four years in a 21-6 loss.
“While at times we were able to be successful in all phases of the game, other times we would have solid or even stellar performances in one area but come up short in others,” said Kinchley of the Panther’s season.
The good news for Middlebury baseball is that they will return 23 players next year, many of whom were some of the top contributors to this season’s team.
Tri-captain Donnie McKillop ’11 led the squad with a .423 batting average, and first-year Joe Conway ’13 provided the brunt of the team’s power, hitting five home runs and leading the team in RBIs with 29.
Both McKillop and Conway will join a young pitching nucleus that, despite struggles this year, should be much improved next year with a season of experience under their belts.
Van Duym led the team in ERA this season, allowing only 1.17 runs per contest in limited action, and Baine overcame a rough start to post numbers more on par with his tremendous level of talent towards the end of the year. Nick Angstman ’11 figures to anchor the rotation next year, finishing this season with an ERA of 8.39 that is not indicative of the consistency he gave to the staff throughout most of the season.
One player that the Panthers will miss will be graduating tri-captain center fielder Erich Enns ’10.
Enns, who broke the all time Middlebury stolen base record this past week, will also finish his career as the leader in walks and tied for the school lead in triples and home runs. Joining him on graduation day will be tri-captain infielder Danny Seymour ’10, first baseman/catcher Peter Baumann ’10 and pitcher Matt Lowes ’10, the last remaining members of the NESCAC championship team from four years ago, Middlebury’s last taste of baseball success.
“It was tough to walk off the field for the last time on Sunday, but I think the wonderful thing about college sports is that you are able to track the legacy you leave behind,” said Baumann, who will surely be checking the box scores next season, along with the other seniors who will be moving on.
It will be up to McKillop, Conway, Angstman and the rest of the team next year to get Middlebury baseball back to the proverbial promised land of postseason baseball.
“I think this team has the potential to be very good next year,” said Baumann.
“They are going to be in a very successful position to be moving forward.”
Next year’s team will have the talent, but they will have to prove to themselves that they have the mettle.
(04/29/10 4:00am)
On April 23, the Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference room hosted presentations by the fall 2009 Sustainable Study Abroad Grant recipients.
As the Dean of International Programs Jeff Cason explained, the Sustainable Study Abroad Grants began in the spring of 2008 as part of a cooperative effort between the Office of International Programs and the Office of Environmental Affairs. These grants of up to $500 awarded by International Programs and Off-Campus Study give students the opportunity to pursue research projects related to the environment and sustainability while they’re studying abroad. Ten grants were given out this year, showing that this is becoming an increasingly popular program.
Students interested in applying for the grant are encouraged to contact the Office of International Programs and Off Campus Study for more information. Former recipients had a few words of advice about the application process:
“My advice for students applying to these grants would be to not shy away from applying, even if the project is still developing,” said Jonas Schoenefeld ‘11. “There was no way I could have foreseen or planned everything I did in the fall of 2009, but the grant was flexible enough to accommodate my needs.”
Shannon Engleman ’11 offered that “it is important to apply for the grant if you think that you will want to contribute to your community while abroad in a sustainable way.”
Kaitlynn Saldanha: “Sustainable Development in Patagonia, Argentina”
Middlebury School in Argentina
Saldanha ’11 focused her project on a key sustainability dilemma faced by developing nations in today’s increasingly globalized world: should development come at the cost of environmental concerns, or should the environment take priority over development? As a developing nation with an emerging economy, Argentina faces this challenge constantly. Argentina’s environmental problems stem from the mismanagement of resources, mainly land, in Patagonia. Despite conservation efforts, Patagonia is unprotected virgin land prone to resource and land spoilers.
“During my time in Patagonia, I spent days at a time traveling on buses, and I was able to physically grasp the geographical scale of the development projects and extent to which these projects have altered the landscape,” said Saldanha. She spoke about how her travels in Patagonia and her interactions with the people there had lit a new perspective. “Arriving there, I had the vast perspective that most of the new development projects were unsustainable. After walking the roads and talking to people at the estates, I realized that some projects are bringing prospects and purpose to this desolate land.”
However, Saldanha continued to question whether or not the indigenous Mapuche people needed this economic incentive.
“Do these people need these jobs and these changes in their lifestyle imposed by the development projects? This remains to be determined, but the research that my Sustainable Study Abroad Grant funded prompted me to reflect on the purpose that these projects are bringing to the land.”
Shannon Engelman: “Land of Hidden Treasure: A Vegetation Study of Jazani’s Coral Rag Forest”
SIT Tanzania
Engelman originally planned to apply her grant towards research in a malaria clinic in Stone Town, but after spending time in Zanzibar, she realized that her grant would be better spent in helping Jozani Forest. Zanzibar is a small island off the coast of Tanzania, and the Jozani Forest is a national park and a “global biodiversity hotspot.” The biodiversity has been threatened by development in the area, and only 10 percent of the original forest remains. Zanzibar is increasingly becoming a tourist island, causing controversy as to the sustainability of these practices. The goals of Engelman’s project involved a vegetation study, tourist surveys and tourist products, like a brochure and a trail map. The brochures offered a history of the Jozani forest as well as information about conservation initiatives and environmental education. Engelman helped establish a nature trail with a path of least cutting and had trail signs made to encourage tour guides to stick to these pre-existing trails and to educate tourists about the vegetation of the forest.
“The Sustainable Study Abroad Grant enabled those of us with interests in conservation to help the local community, wherever we were,” said Engleman. “It is important for other students to see that it is possible to push for sustainability, even in completely foreign cultures.”
Engelman also felt that studying abroad broaden her perspective on environmental issues. “At Middlebury, environmental issues are often the subject of conferences, workshops, lectures, etc., and I would say that Middlebury strives to be as eco-friendly as possible. But while abroad, it was easy to see that environmental issues do not always receive as much attention as they should. Hopefully students will continue to take advantage of the grant and bring a bit of sustainable interest wherever they travel.”
Jonas Schoenefeld: “Iniciativa ‘Cooperacion Inter-Universitaria de la Region Metropolitana de Santiago Campus Sustentables en el context de la Historia Ambiental de Chile” (Sustainable University Initiative Chile)
Middlebury School in Chile
While studying abroad at the Middle School in Latin America, Chile, Schoenefeld used his Sustainable Study Abroad Grant to work on the Sustainability University Initiative. This initiative brings together university representatives, government officials and outside entities such as Middlebury College and other groups in order to write an inter-university agreement to further the efforts to make the campus more sustainable. Five big universities in the Santiago region are participating in this initiative, including The University of Chile, one of the most prestigious universities in Chile and Latin America.
Schoenefeld traveled around Chile to attend about 70 meetings and to give presentations on sustainability practices at Middlebury College. He spoke about the power plant, the finances and economics of being sustainable and projects in which students, faculty and staff were all involved.
“I tried to give a picture of how projects can work here and really show that these projects are integrated, that it’s not just the administration that is working towards sustainability, but other entities too,” said Schoenefeld. “I wanted to present these projects as being accessible to encourage student participation in the initiatives at Chilean universities.” Schoenefeld also worked with 350.org, an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate change crisis.
Schoenefeld was grateful for the support of the International Programs and Off Campus Study Office and as well for as the opportunity to present during this International Studies Colloquium. “I think it is important to share these projects with Middlebury students to show the incredible possibilities and resources we have to do these projects.”
(04/29/10 4:00am)
In what has been a season of extreme highs and lows for Middlebury baseball, the outlook has turned up for the moment. The team took two of three from the Hamilton Continentals last weekend, notching its first NESCAC series win this year.
The Panthers won the first and third games of the three-game set, while Hamilton picked up its first NESCAC conference win in the second contest.
“We knew coming into the season that we were capable of playing like this, but this weekend was our first sustained effort,” said first-year Joe Conway ’13. “Even when we got behind we battled back, and that is a huge sign of improvement.”
Matt Lowes ’10 turned in one of the finest pitching performances the team has seen in the first game as he continues to provide some consistency for a pitching staff that has struggled all season, with the team ERA hovering around eight runs allowed per game. Lowes went six innings, allowing just four hits and one run, and struck out three Hamilton batters in picking up the 13-1 win.
He was helped by a lineup that lit up the scoreboard as it has been doing all season. Donnie McKillop ’11 and Joey Liberator ’11 had three RBIs apiece, and Erich Enns added two more. The combo of McKillop and Enns has proven lethal all season for opposing pitchers, hitting .442 and .380, respectively, and making major contributions to an offense that is hitting .314 as a team on the year.
The offense was potent again in the second game, putting up seven runs, five of which were driven in by Peter Baumann ’10, who hit a grand slam in the seventh.
However, the pitching was not nearly as reliable this go-around, as starter Nick Angstman ’11 was touched up for 11 earned runs in five innings of work, seven of which came in the Hamilton half of the third inning, putting the Panthers in a hole that they could not climb out of in the later innings.
The third game of the series was another slugfest. Middlebury led 7-1 after three innings and never looked back on their way to a 20-8 win. Murphy McCurdy ’12 had the best game of his Middlebury career, going four-for-four and scoring four runs and Zach Roeder ’12 homered twice and drove in six runs.
Conway continued to make his case for team Rookie of the Year, as he went four-for-four with three RBIs, bringing his total to 23 on the season, leading all other Middlebury batsmen. John Wiet ’13 picked up his first career win as a Panther after going six innings and striking out two.
Only games against NESCAC west opponents count in the conference standings so the Panthers were able to improve their conference record to 4-5 and have a chance to finish above .500 in conference play if they can win at least two this weekend against Amherst, their last home series of the season.
“We may be out of playoff contention now, but we are going to go out and compete. We want to go out strong, and give the seniors a memorable final weekend of college baseball,” said Conway.
(04/29/10 4:00am)
As far as academic resources go, the Middlebury College Museum of Fine Art is regrettably unnoticed and underused by the majority of students on campus.
However, in recent years there has been a much-needed push to get students out of their desks and into the galleries, where they can find an outlet to apply classroom lessons. Taking this a step further is the Museum Assistants Program (MAP), which selects and trains students to participate in the Museum’s education programs for families and visiting school groups.
Combining museum work with training in teaching education, the MAP offers a unique opportunity for students interested in either field.
Students in the program treat it as a mix between a job, internship and class, where they are expected to attend weekly meetings, read and discuss assigned material and give tours to between 1,200 and 1,500 visitors per year.
Sand Olivo, Curator of Education at the Mahaney Center for the Arts, runs weekly meetings and teaches students about the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) and Visual Understanding in Education (VUE) programs. These teaching methods, developed by psychologists Abigail Housen and Philip Yenawine, identify different stages of aesthetic development in children and propose a curriculum to teach visual literacy.
“In our VTS tours we ask three questions: what is going on in this picture, what do you see that makes you say that and what more can you find?” said Amanda Perry ’11, a MAP participant since 2008.
“We serve as facilitators and we do not give them any factual information about the piece of art they are looking at.”
During the MAP’s 90-minute tour, student visitors learn to “read” the images by following the prompts and guidance of tour guides while still making their own observations and supporting them with what they see in front of them.
“Facilitators do not pass judgment on what the students say, for example we don’t say “good observation” or “that’s right” because by doing so we might shut down other interpretations from other students,” says Perry.
“Instead we paraphrase each response while pointing at the corresponding area in the image and inserting new words to help build vocabulary.”
Weekly classes focus on many aspects of VTS and address details such as image selection, the stages of aesthetic development and even points such as museum labels. Heavy emphasis is placed on the visitor, how to introduce children to art and how to teach specifically for art, incorporating objects into lessons.
Students interested in participating in the program should be aware that a completion of at least one History of Art and Architecture introductory course is necessary for admission into the program, although students from all majors are encouraged to apply.
A strong expressed interest in teaching in a museum setting and a serious commitment to connecting to children and to working closely with museum staff should be emphasized. In addition to a written application, formal interviews will also be conducted by Olivo to help her choose which students will fill the 3-4 available slots.
Once admitted to the program, students have the option of enrolling in an independent research project with Olivo through the Education Studies department. This option allows MAP students to truly integrate their work at the museum with their studies in a way that complements and expands their interests. A Winter Term class is also offered for museum assistants during which they train for spring tours.
“The more school tours I participate in and the more I learn about VTS, the more interested I become in Museum Education,” said Perry.
“The connection with the viewer is so crucial for museums, because without that audience a museum is really just a big building full of old objects. Unless you can connect to the viewer and really get them to look at a piece of art and try to understand it on their own terms, it is a waste.”
The direct benefits of the MAP are abundant, and yet the program’s lessons scope is so much further than the arts and education, helping students with public speaking skills, engagement with the community and planning future career goals.
The application deadline to participate in next year’s program is Monday, May 17.
(04/22/10 4:00am)
Tomorrow evening, hundreds of people will descend on Middlebury for the town’s annual Relay for Life event. It’s a success by any measure, especially when you consider that our relay has raised more than $1 million for the American Cancer Society since a Middlebury student started it seven years ago.
But what’s more impressive is that many of the most successful fundraising teams are made up entirely of students. The highest grossing team to date has 15 seniors who’ve raised more than $9,000. Some are cancer survivors themselves, like Mark Whelan ’10.5. But most do it just for the satisfaction of helping a good cause, which makes that $1 million even more impressive. Apparently busy college students are as dedicated to defeating a silent, deadly and mysterious enemy as they are to defeating organic chemistry and macro theory.
But college students can and should do more in the crusade against cancer, especially considering this alarming fact: 70,000 Americans between the ages of 15 and 40 are diagnosed with cancer every year, and there has been no measurable increase in their survival rate in 35 years, according to The 15-40 Connection (www.15-40.org). While everyone knows that cancer is not just a disease for the elderly, those numbers should be a wake-up call for our generation.
One possible reason that survival rates have not increased is that students who have been healthy for all of their 18 or 21 years start to think they are invincible. While many of us know someone who has been affected by cancer or even fallen victim to it, we have probably all had the thought, “Oh, it won’t happen to me.”
Don’t think that. Remember that the most obvious sign of cancer is often just an ache or other subtle change in your health. Don’t pretend you’re invisible, and take your medical care and cancer screenings seriously. Tell your doctor if you are worried about a noticeable change in your health. Encourage your friends to do the same. Though being aware of your own health seems like a piece of cake, at some point you might find cancer and eradicate it in its early stages, saving your own life and improving the stagnant cancer survival rate among young adults.
Just ask Whelan, whose personal page on Relay for Life’s website explains why he is participating. “I have had my own personal fight with cancer, but I am glad to say that in about a month I will officially be free of cancer for one year,” he writes. “While I have been incredibly lucky and my story is a happy one, there are many who aren’t so lucky. This is my attempt to give back what little I can to a cause that I care about.”
If you are among the more than 500 people who have already spent so much effort raising money for the Middlebury Relay, you deserve congratulations and the gratitude of every cancer survivor. But as Relay participants know, cancer never sleeps, and anyone can get it. Whelan’s successful battle with cancer as a young adult will no doubt inspire people to donate money. It should also inspire us, his peers, to pay attention to our own health.
So remind yourself and others to take aches, pains and other minor but unusual health problems seriously. It could save your life, and that’s worth more than all the fundraising in the world.
