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(03/05/09 12:00am)
Author: Jaime Fuller From Feb. 28-March 2, nearly 12,000 college students converged on the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., for Power Shift 2009. The national youth climate change summit offered a chance for student leaders to exchange ideas on how to prevent global warming on both a national and local scale, and offered a plethora of panels, workshops and speakers with experts sharing their knowledge on the issues. The event culminated on Monday with a lobby day at the Capitol, the largest in our nation's history relating to climate and energy policy.Middlebury demonstrated its fidelity to the environmental cause with a delegation of 194 students, bested by a narrow margin by the University of Vermont's group of 198 students. Middlebury was not only well represented by its youth - several faculty members made an appearance at the weekend's events including Scholar-in-Residence Bill McKibben and Luce Professor of International Environmental Economics Jon Isham.Isham expressed his enthusiasm for the energy and scope of the conference while moderating a panel titled, "Cap Carbon & Trade? Invest? Auction? Dividend?: A Conversation that Explores all the Options!""This is a moment to celebrate," he said. "A pinch-me moment for many of us."McKibben felt he had to counter some of the overpowering optimism at Power Shift with a dose of urgency and a quick reality check "I feel like I am being Captain Downer, but it's been my job for a long time," said McKibben, during a panel titled, "The Road to Copenhagen: The Future of International Climate Change Legislation." "The window is starting to close, not just on our species, but on a lot of other species too."However, McKibben's realism does not stop him from being an outspoken environmental activist. He is one of the creators of the www.350.org movement and he helped organize the mass civil disobedience march at the Capitol Power Plant on March 2, where activists occupied all gates to the government-owned coal-fired power plant.The panels and workshops catered to people interested in the many facets of the climate change movement, and even offered options that focused on broader social justice issues. Session tracks included campus organizing, skills training, new media, international, green jobs and the economy dismantling oppression, faith and spirituality, as well as many others. Prominent speakers such as Van Jones, Adam Gardner and Majora Carter were featured in the nighttime program, and were often met with standing ovations and thunderous applause. President Barack Obama's role in the quest for climate change policy was an unmistakable theme of the conference, and many of the speakers and panels focused, or at least mentioned, the new administration."We are in the Obama era," said Carter in her keynote address on Friday night. "I have to tell you its not only Obama the president, but Obama the acronym. Obama is an acronym for 'Officially Behaving as Magnificent Americans.'"The high level of organizing and thought put into the Power Shift national summit can be seen on a local level in the amount of planning required to transport and house 194 Middlebury students 500 miles from campus. Two buses, powered by biodiesel, transported most of the students to and from the conference, and housing was mostly decentralized, with native students offering their homes to friends and others crashing with friends of the family or anybody willing to offer a floor to a Middlebury student. The aura of youth and change pervaded Power Shift this year, and was especially apparent in the event's reliance on new media and technology to communicate with participants and to share what was occurring at the conference with the rest of the world. In order to know where panels and workshops were being held and to receive updates on changes to the schedule, participants sent text messages frequently throughout the weekend. Speakers, like Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and former mayor of Salt Lake City Rocky Anderson, even called for students to text during their speeches, and the organizers of Power Shift told participants to tag their photos and videos on YouTube and Flickr so they could use participant-generated content for a slide show. Middlebury students also were involved in documenting the conference; Mori Rothman '11 filmed much of the weekend, and plans on posting his video on YouTube sometime next week.All of the activity on Saturday and Sunday was in preparation for Lobby Day on Monday, where around 5,000 activists overtook the Capitol and pushed their representatives to move quickly to pass climate change legislation. However, the blizzard that struck D.C. on Monday, while not daunting for the energized youth, did prevent several well-known speakers in national government, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Markey, from attending. According to Sarah Simonds '11, this did not stop the visit to the Capitol from being an inspiring event."We managed to visit representatives from all 50 states, and there were 12 to 50 people at each meeting," she said. "You couldn't walk down the hallways without seeing groups of young people in green hard hats."An oft-repeated theme at the conference was that the majority of the action taken to prevent global warming would take place not at the conference center or lobby day, but at a local level when participants returned back to their respective campuses. The Middlebury attendees who are also active members of the Sunday Night Group (SNG), the largest environmental group on campus, were positive that they would be able to transform the energy and ideas at the conference into tangible change back on campus. It's awesome to see so many inspired young leaders in the same place for the same reason," said Nathan Blumenshine '09.5. "Knowing we have 10 percent of the student body that is willing to travel, listen and change their habits for the weekend gives me hope that we can reach the whole campus instead of just SNG."Many of the Power Shift participants who have never been involved with SNG have already expressed interest to use what they learned in D.C. to help accomplish things in Vermont. "I always have been interested in the environment
(03/05/09 12:00am)
Author: Cloe Shasha Since the announcement of the budget cuts at the end of Winter Term, speculation about the implementation of a meal plan has become a talking point on campus. But according to Director of Dining Services Matthew Biette, the discussion among faculty and staff is at an early, non-definitive stage. No specifics have been established about the type of meal plan Middlebury might develop."We are discussing possibilities as we should in this economic climate," Biette said. "We need to look at every way we do business and contain costs while providing quality meals within a budget. The meal plan discussion falls within these parameters."But Biette emphasized that changes in the College's dining system will probably not be implemented in the next year - if at all - because this type of change would require a long planning process. Students who heard rumors about a meal plan felt that it would have a major impact on the College."Having no meal plan makes us eat more healthfully," said Brad Becker-Parton '11. "It's nice to be able to come in at 5 p.m., get a bowl of soup, and then come in later to eat more, rather than stuffing our plates in one go. We might lose that healthy attitude with a meal plan."Ken Grinde '11 worked at the admissions office in the fall and noticed that prospective students are drawn to Middlebury's current dining system."In the admissions office kids were really turned on by the idea that our dining halls are open," said Grinde. "They thought it was so cool."Hillary Gerardi '09 thinks that the social qualities of the dining halls would change with a meal plan."The dining halls are major social spaces on campus right now," she said. "Right now, people can eat, go to class, come back, and find their friends still there. A meal plan would make dining hall culture less relaxed."Some students believe that a meal plan could help the College save money and food."I think a meal plan would be great," said Angela Evancie '09. "It would encourage people to waste less food. In fact, if there was a penalty for wasting food with our current dining system, we would already save a lot."Andrew Powers '11 suggested another way to save money other than with a meal plan."If we want to reduce our waste and save more money, we should have some visual evidence of the amount of food that we waste," he said. "If the College showed the students the amount of food that is regularly squandered, I think it might have an effect on peoples' tendency to waste. But a meal plan would change the atmosphere of our dining halls - they would be more like restaurants and less personal."
(03/05/09 12:00am)
Author: Johanna Interian If you are too busy or stressed to read this article, then you are part of a campus-wide trend.While it is nearly impossible to definitively quantify and compare stress levels over the years (attempts have been made at this - read on), there is a general concurrence among students and especially faculty that the workload at Middlebury - and with it, the level of stress among the members of the College community - has been on the rise.On Wednesday, Feb. 25 an open forum was held to discuss these issues and establish possible solutions. The forum, titled "Work Hard, Play Hard - Stress Hard?", was advertised throughout the campus and open to all, but eventually attracted only nine students, several of whom were there on behalf of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Campus Stress. Over 20 staff members were in attendance, including professors from various departments, dining services staff and psychologists from the Center for Counseling and Human Resources. Having the forum during midterms week must have been a deterrent to students whose priorities were to complete papers and study for exams, but others who did not attend simply feel that there is no prospect of change when it comes to stress at Middlebury. Most students get to Middlebury after years of toiling in advanced classes and intense academic environments and have essentially grown accustomed to the rigorous academic climate that characterizes Middlebury. "If you're coming to see me, you're probably stressed," joked Dean of the College Gus Jordan as he introduced himself. His position requires him to confront the predicaments stress creates on a daily basis and he is convinced that there is a problem at Middlebury. "How do we know we're afflicted? By the lack of counterevidence to suggest stress is not a problem," said Jordan.As part of his work study, Michael Nevadomski '09 has been compiling research to find out whether there has in fact been an increase in the workload at Middlebury in comparison to previous years at the college and also to other NESCAC schools. "I was asked to pull syllabi from the present day and (more or less) similar classes from 1998 across levels and departments and compare the numbers: increase in pages assigned, essays assigned, different weights, etc," said Nevadomski. "About halfway through the math and biology departments, I realized how ineffectual this was - as you know, there's no real way to tell how stressful a class is going to be based on the hard figures."His research has led to some conclusive results, however. Through interviews with professors and students, Nevadomski found that there has been an increase in the amount of "police work" - such as pop quizzes and reaction papers. He has discovered that many professors do not even read or evaluate these assignments, and simply give them to students to make sure they are keeping up with the coursework. Academics are not the only source of stress, though. Some students in the forum brought up how social stress is just as much a part of being a college student and that it is sometimes harder to deal with than academic stress, which is more predictable and in our control.Mark Stefani, a neuroscience professor from the psychology department, is interested in the biological and social aspect of stress and is particularly concerned with what he terms the "myth of multi-tasking.""Trying to do more in tiny little fragments is a modern-day myth," he said. He urged students and faculty alike to focus on one activity or assignment and put aside other distractions, such as e-mail and answering phone calls, in order to be more efficient and less prone to last-minute deadlines that will inevitably increase stress. Sometimes doing more is not always the problem, however. Yonna McShane, director of Learning Resources, pointed out that being idle is not necessarily more appealing than feeling overextended. "Boredom is an incredibly stressful state," she said, and encouraged students to find a balance in their commitments on campus.Elise Cohen '11 sees benefits in her extracurricular involvements. "Being on the crew team has helped me with time management and is also calming," said Cohen.Apart from extracurricular activities serving as therapeutic, other remedies were also discussed. MiDDialogue is proposing a silent lunch area once per week, where interested students can go to eat a quiet meal at a designated area in the dining hall.C.A. Johnson Fellow in Political Philosophy Kateri Carmola insisted that pass/fail courses should be permitted and also indicated that sometimes students overestimate the importance of grades and professors' expectations. She also suggested that certain college policies, such as the 24/7 library hours during finals week, inadvertently promote stress. "What message is this sending; that students should be up at 3 in the morning studying all week?" said Carmola.There will be a "Managing Academic Stress" workshop on Thursday, April 2 in Library Room 145, where various stress management techniques and relaxation exercises will be taught.
(03/05/09 12:00am)
Author: Katie Siegner The effects of the recent financial cuts announced by the administration have been felt by ever-expanding sectors of the College, and athletics has not been exempt. In light of the rapid changes, it is difficult for students to foresee how the budget cuts will affect them, and information sharing has been limited. President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz explained this in a recent e-mail, writing, "We must act quickly to address the budget deficits that are projected to develop during the next two years as a result of the deteriorating financial markets and the College's reduced wealth." The athletic facilities will soon see a number of changes. "Fitness Center hours have been reduced from being open 16 hours a day to 13 hours a day," Chief Financial Officer Patrick Norton wrote in an e-mail, and "several staff positions have been frozen." Furthermore, plans to replace old equipment over the next couple of years "have been put on hold," which means that athletes visiting the fitness center on crowded weekday afternoons will have to resign themselves to the difficulty of finding a functioning treadmill that isn't already in use. "I've taken to running around the hockey rink when there are no available treadmills," said Francie Alexandre '12. In keeping with the recent climate of fiscal restraint, Norton also wrote, "a five percent cut was made in discretionary spending in the operating budget." To ensure transparency and participation in the budget decisions, Director of Athletics Erin Quinn formed the Athletic Budget Oversight Committee (ABOC) which consists of staff, coaches and students. "Our purpose is to advise the Athletic Director on possible cost-saving measures in our department and to determine 'best practices' for the department with cost savings in mind," said Committee Chair and Women's Lacrosse coach Missy Foote. The committee has sparked many discussions regarding the financial problems the athletics department is facing and the possible responses. As a result, Quinn said, "members of the department have been willing to be flexible and adjust to the changing times." Since its formation, the ABOC has been examining the department's expenditures, large and small. As student member Lindsay McBride '09 said, they have been looking for "ways to save money without greatly affecting the students' experience. Every $100 here and $200 there adds up to a significant amount." The ABOC has also been conscientious in ensuring that the cuts do not disproportionately affect certain athletes. "We have tried to concentrate equally on budgets for varsity teams, club and intramural teams and general athletic services," said McBride. Foote said that sports teams will also be affected by the tightening of the College's budget. Sports teams at the College have been "level funded" for the past several years, meaning that their budgets remain constant even if prices rise. Because of this, Norton said, they "did not cut team budgets across the board." However, the luncheon portion of teams' senior banquets will be eliminated and their uniform budget will be reduced, according to Foote.This is occurring within NESCAC-wide changes designed by the conference's athletic directors. For example, changes in travel policies "may include limitations on travel squads, may replace some overnight trips with same day trips and may contain other measures," said Foote. Student athletes can expect noticeable impacts when the new NESCAC policies are finalized. The administration has made efforts to make the process open to student and faculty input, as can be seen from the establishment of the ABOC. The committee is dedicated to implementing "low-impact cuts" according to McBride, and thus reducing expenses without significantly altering students' athletic experiences.
(02/26/09 12:00am)
Author: Lea Calderon-Guthe "What powers a learning community? Apparently, wood chips," said Bill McKibben, scholar-in-residence in environmental studies, at the official launch of the Biomass Plant at the College on Feb. 19. Trustees, faculty, staff and students toured the new facility as part of the launch event, and President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz sought to describe the plant's significance best in his celebratory opening speech."This is no ordinary energy plant," Liebowitz said. "Biomass gasification demonstrates a new technology that cuts the College's consumption of heating oil in half, saving about a million gallons a year while reducing our carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 percent, or 12,500 metric tons per year."The biomass facility turns wood chips into carbon monoxide and hydrogen in the gasification chamber and then ignites those gases in a boiler. Steam from the boiler is used for heating and cooling in most of the buildings on campus, and on its way out of the plant the steam cogenerates about 20 percent of Middlebury's electricity. The biomass plant is designed to handle the College's base heating load 365 days a year and the wood chips will replace half of the number 6 oil the College uses. The plant also represents the largest step Middlebury has made toward its goal of carbon neutrality by 2016, a goal proposed largely because of student initiative."This whole process has been student-driven with tremendous student involvement the whole way," said Executive Vice President and Treasurer of the College Bob Huth. "I think that's one of the reasons that Middlebury has advanced as far as it has - we probably would not have a biomass facility had it not been for our students."The College first assessed its carbon footprint in 2003 when a Winter Term course taught by Professor of Chemistry Lori Del Negro and Luce Professor of International Environmental Economics Jon Isham produced a report proposing potential objectives and strategies for reducing campus climate impact. A Carbon Reduction Work Group reviewed the proposals and determined that gasifying biomass was an economically feasible way to reduce the College's footprint. Then, the Biomass Energy Research Corporation surveyed the area for biomass and verified that it was also environmentally feasible and locally sustainable. Building a biomass plant became part of not only reducing the College's carbon output but becoming completely carbon neutral by 2016 following the Board of Trustees' approval of student organization MiddShift's proposal in May 2007. The Board's pproval came after a campaign by Sunday Night Group (SNG), Middlebury's largest student environmental organization, achieved significant student response in the form of a petition and a task force chaired by Huth and made up of students and administrative staff outlined a path to carbon neutrality including the Biomass Plant as a key component. Like Huth, Chester Harvey '09, an active member of SNG and Huth's Carbon Neutrality Task Force, credits student support for a large part of the Carbon Neutrality Intitiave's success. "I think most students are at least interested in why the biomass plant was built," said Harvey. "While the administration may be handling the details and the action of the program, it's still the students who are kind of sitting behind the scenes and prodding them to keep going."Billie Borden '09, another member of the Carbon Neutrality Task Force, emphasized not only student leadership in the success of the Biomass Project, but also the unique collaboration between students, faculty and staff."For me, the most memorable part of the whole thing was actually being able to have an important role on these committees and as a student being taken seriously and being able to contribute to important discussions on the College's carbon footprint," Borden said. "I was increasingly impressed with how well the College and staff work with students and really value that relationship."Measuring the success of the Biomass Plant from a purely economic standpoint, the College has invested in a $12 million facility that will ultimately pay for itself in approximately 10 years depending on the cost of oil, and then continue to save money. Diversifying the fuel supply with wood chips also decreases the College's dependence on oil while stimulating the local economy."The focus hasn't been on if it would be nice to do this - it's been on solving real-world problems that have an economic rationale to them," Huth said. "To me, this is a case-in-point where we've diversified our fuel supply, we've done something that has a payback for us and the local economy, and we have the great benefits of reducing the carbon produced. It's a win-win-win situation, and to me that's what you call a real-world solution to a problem we're all trying to correct."The Biomass Plant's success is widely acclaimed, but to a leader in the field of institutional sustainability like Middlebury College, there is more to be done. Even though the wood chips for the Biomass Plant are currently collected within 75 miles of the campus, the College seeks to shrink its definition of 'local' even more. Environmental studies students are currently investigating the environmental impact of 1200 acres of willow trees based on a 10-acre test plot west of campus. If the willow trees prove to be environmentally friendly, the College has plans to grow its own fuel and supply 25 percent of its heating needs. The willow project would further benefit the greater Middlebury community as well. "We have a lot of fields in the area that nobody does anything with, so if we were to have landowners be able to grow a cash-crop - willows - that works, it would really help the economy within Addison County," Huth said.The College has reduced its need for oil by one million gallons, about half, but there remains the second million-gallon question: how will Middlebury reduce the rest of its carbon emissions? After the rest of the oil, Isham and the Carbon Neutrality Initiative point to transportation as the next major source of carbon emissions for the College, and even as the Biomass Plant continues to receive nationwide attention, students, faculty and staff are already tackling the other 60 percent of the College's carbon emissions. "I am utterly stunned, in awe and so proud," Isham said. "Everything about [the Biomass Plant] speaks to the best of what we can do, including the sense that we have to do more. One of the things I really admire about environmental studies as an academic department is that while we are quite proud of what we do, we are always trying to do better, and I think that is something that gets at the core of what makes our college and the entire Middlebury community such a strong place. We're proud of what we do, but we don't rest on our laurels too much. Genuine celebration is well-merited, but we also have a sense of, 'Okay, what next?' It's that sense of moving forward that is such a special part of this community."The students involved with the Biomass Project are looking forward already, as well. Borden, who is graduating, hopes other students will continue to step up. "I definitely would like to see students maintain an interest in helping to plan [carbon neutrality]," Borden said. "I think there are a lot of really exciting things going on at a national level and even at a state level in terms of increasing the sustainability of our operations. I think if you want to be invested in where you are, then this carbon neutrality commitment is a really great way to take an active role in shaping the environment at Middlebury. I want to see that excitement about the project sustain itself."Harvey is also graduating, but before he leaves he has set some new goals for SNG and continued expectations for the student body as a whole."I think that the College has done a really good job identifyi
ng places where the institution can make really big changes to take a large bite out of our carbon footprint," Harvey said. "What we haven't done such a good job with, and what I think SNG could help with a lot potentially, is figuring out ways to mobilize students to do something about [carbon neutrality] themselves. There are all of these things that form a much smaller piece of the pie but can really be used as an educational tool in everyday energy conservation."The College is itself an educational tool in that it sets an example for other institutions. It has become one of the leading models in collegiate carbon neutrality, but according to Huth, its success will not be easy to emulate. "Other institutions have asked questions like, 'How do you do this? How do you get an institutional goal of carbon neutrality by 2016, how do you affect carbon reductions, how do you get the community engaged?'" Huth said. "They'd like to replicate that, and it's very hard to replicate because it's in the Middlebury College DNA and to a great extent it's driven by our students. We have this environmental program and over the course of the years it has become embedded in the culture. It's something that students get excited about because they will have to deal with the environment longer than we will."
(02/19/09 12:00am)
Author: Hillary Hall Last April in a tight election, College students elected Bobby Joe Smith '09 as the Student Government Association's (SGA) president for the 2008-2009 school year. Voters responded to the three platforms he called his most important: communication between the SGA and the community, the development of an Africana Studies department and the introduction of a multi-purpose access card. Yet the past semester - Smith's first as leader - has been a challenging one for the College, with budget shortcomings putting strains on the administration and announcements of upcoming changes to life at Middlebury angering some in the community. Smith, though, said that the SGA has much to be proud of despite the economic hurdles it faces. "The budget and economic crisis certainly made us approach things much differently than we had initially intended," Smith said, "and made us shift our focus as to what is most important and what can be reasonably implemented this year, but I also like to think of this moment as an opportunity rather than a hindrance." Smith believes that it will be the SGA's duty to prove that its initiatives are a "worthwhile investment," despite the College's financial trials.This positive determination is what several SGA members called Smith's most valuable quality as a leader."His unfailing desire to work for the betterment of the student body here at Middlebury has been a mainstay since day one," said David Peduto '11, one of the sophomore senators.Becky Harper '11, Chair of Diversity and Cabinet Member of SGA, echoed Peduto, saying, "He is truly dedicated to what he is doing."Several SGA members noted the subsidy of Addison County Transit Resources (ACTR) fares as a great accomplishment from the past semester, yet most of the goals that Smith cited last spring remain uncompleted thus far. The multi-purpose access cards, which would transform current student IDs into a laundry, debit, access and copy card, are, as Harper says, "still in the works," because of the large amounts of research and work that they require.And many College students still do not understand what SGA does, nor do they have much of an idea of what the SGA has accomplished yet this year."I can honestly tell you that I don't really have one," remarked Jack Kramer '10 when asked his opinion on the SGA.The several students with whom Kramer was sitting all agreed."[There are] a lot of people on campus who are unclear as to what the SGA's initiatives are," said Phebe Meyers '11.While the monthly student rallies that Smith has introduced do invite community members to take initiative and listen to what is going on, many students still remain in the dark as they lack the time to attend these rallies.Smith admitted that he has not done everything that he set out to at the start of the year, but maintains that his focus has been more on the internal workings of the SGA."Given the complaints and general negative or indifferent attitude most students on campus have towards the SGA, I figured it was time to really re-examine the student government to see if it was living up to its name, and if not, why," Smith said.Thus Smith spent the majority of last semester researching the role of not only the SGA as a whole, but the roles of each individual position within the group. He, with the help of Director of the Center for Campus Activities and Leadership (CCAL) and SGA advisor Doug Adams, wrote an SGA guidebook. This manual will, Smith hopes, reduce the "learning curve" that new members of the SGA often encounter upon entering office. He and Adams also decided to start a program this coming spring to train the incoming administration so that it can be more prepared to take on the 2009-2010 academic year.Smith also created three new SGA committees: External Affairs, Publicity and Special Projects. Smith called all of these internal changes his greatest accomplishment of the past semester."If you want to make a change in the broader community, you must first start with yourself," he said.Other SGA members recognize that, to some, it seems that Smith has not carried out the goals he set at the start of his term. But Harper assures students that positive steps will come from the behind-the-scenes reorganization."Improving communication on all fronts has been a slow process but progress is being made," she said.If his work to change the culture of the SGA is as effective as he believes, he will be able to execute the goals that resonated with students last spring. In the difficult economic climate and with the allowances that College students will have to make in the coming semester, the next four months will be a true test of both Smith's new SGA structure and his capability as the strong leader that students need in times of change. Smith hopes that he and the rest of the SGA are up to the task."We still have the entire second half of the school year to get the things I had initially intended accomplished," he declared. "I think the SGA as a whole will have to bring it up another notch in order to make the most out of this year, but I am confident we can do this."
(02/19/09 12:00am)
Author: Grady Ross In an economic climate that many are comparing to the Great Depression, the state of Vermont is revamping its food stamp program - a program that found its start in that first major period of financial distress. Renamed 3SquaresVT, the new program is designed to reach out to more Vermonters than ever in an effort state administrators hope will extend help to a quickly broadening population in need.Most importantly, the threshold at which citizens become eligible for food stamps has been more inculusive. Before Jan. 1, hopeful applicants were required to have an income at or below 130 percent of the poverty level. Since Governor Jim Douglas enacted the new program, the income eligibility level is now at 185 percent below the poverty line, opening the opportunity to a more extensive pool of Vermonters. In a phone interview, Joanne Heidkamp, program director for the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger, said that Vermonters, particularly in today's economy, have an increased sense of urgency when providing for their families."Participants are going dollar for dollar, going for the most food the money can buy," Heidkamp said.In addition, the program increases the variety of deductions that people can claim when applying for assistance. Previously, regardless of how much a person paid for childcare, elderly assistance or similar services, one could only claim $200 as costs."Your gross income level determines whether or not you can apply, but your net income after deductions determines the amount of benefits you get," Heidkamp said.Changes of this degree require financial backing, money that is not necessarily easy to come by under current economic circumstances. The program found its champion in Congress, which approved an increase in funds to food stamp programs across the nation as part of the economic stimulus package. Heidkamp said their willingness to back food stamps makes sense."Money cannot go into a savings account;" said Heidkamp. "It must be put directly into the local economy," she said. Moody's Economy, a leading independent provider of economic analysis, has called the food stamp program the most effective method of economic stimulus.But Heidkamp said the plan encourages economic growth in more indirect ways as well. "Changes in the economy are making it difficult for people to nourish their families," she said. "People are often sacrificing their own nourishment to feed their children. We need a workforce that's ready to work. We need to make sure the next generation is nourished while they're gaining the skills to enter the workforce."Heidkamp said lawmakers also took social issues into account when they undertook the project. Some elderly people, for example, have been forced to choose between heat and food this winter, thereby jeopardizing their own health. These concerns convinced administrators to act now. Since the induction of the 3SquaresVT program, hits on the program's official website, vtfoodhelp.org, have doubled to exceeding 10,000 per month. Applications to the program, said Heidkamp, have also risen substantially since the new program went into effect.This is due in part to an enthusiastic publicity campaign launched by the state of Vermont. There are five Community Action Agencies and five Agencies on Aging around the state working with their members to pass along necessary information about the new program. Physicians' offices, churches, elementary schools and multiple public institutions have also joined the effort to spread the information. Heidkamp noted that it is important that not just one group of Vermonters be targeted, but that the information be available to everyone."Households that previously did not need help are finding need of the program," she said.Vermont is the 13th state to make income and asset changes to food stamp programs.
(02/12/09 12:00am)
Author: Kelly Janis After months of deliberations by the Budget Oversight Committee, College President Ronald D. Liebowitz publicly announced the first set of a series of cost-cutting measures aimed at reducing expenditures by $20 million over the next several years to counter a mounting budget deficit. The College's endowment - upon which it relies to support 24 to 25 percent of its budget - has fallen to $684 million from a high of $936 million in June 2007, due largely to a decline in donor gifts amid the global financial crisis."Our wealth is at 2004 levels, but we're operating in a 2009 cost structure," said Chief Financial Officer Patrick Norton during an open meeting at which he, Liebowitz and Acting Provost Spears elaborated on the cuts and fielded suggestions, questions, praise and criticism from a packed audience in the McCullough Social Space.Emphasizing the manner in which the losses will compound, Liebowitz urged swift action. "The sooner we remove the budget deficit, the better," he said. When it was approved in 2006, the Strategic Plan projected a series of 4.9 percent annual increases in the comprehensive fee, which would bring the figure to approximately $51,621 for the coming year. In light of the current fiscal climate, however, Liebowitz said that when the Board of Trustees deliberates on the increase next week, it may be reluctant to adhere to that model for fear that it would impose too heavy a burden on many families already expected to require additional financial aid. Regardless, the financial aid budget will be cut by approximately $150,000, mostly by increasing the summer and academic-year work expectations for incoming domestic students, whose full demonstrated need will still be met."I don't think you can put a price tag on being need-blind," Liebowitz said, estimating that fewer than 30 colleges and universities in the nation truly abide by such a policy. "To go off need-blind would be to pay a huge price in the eyes of future applicants, especially if we seek socioeconomic and regional diversity."Dean of Admissions Bob Clagett agreed. "It's a luxury that we don't have to go to Student Financial Services and ask them - in the way that happens at thousands and thousands of other colleges - how much admitting a particular student is going to cost us," he said. "We can admit the most qualified applicants in the pool."Less aid will be available to international students, however, and their financial need will be taken into consideration during admissions. Liebowitz estimated that this will result in seven to eight percent of the class of 2013 being comprised of international students, rather than the typical average of 10 to 11 percent. He expects that, despite this, the College will still reach its goal of a student body compromised of 10 percent international students. The College will also eliminate the MiddView program for the class of 2013, dispensing with overnight camping trips in favor of a less expensive model that "takes advantage of resources closer to campus."While Liebowitz said MiddView is a "big loss" in terms of the "small group bonding experiences" it offers, "incoming students haven't experienced it, so they aren't going to miss it." Also under scrutiny are auxiliary operations such as 51 Main, the Snow Bowl, Ralph Myhre golf course, Juice Bar and Grille."They don't make money for the College," Liebowitz said. "They don't even break even."In an effort to mitigate this, the College has closed Rehearsals Café, and plans to reduce the discounts offered to employees and other "friends of the College" at the Snow Bowl and golf course. Moreover, beginning this week, the Grille and Juice Bar will delay opening until 11:30 a.m. on weekdays and 5 p.m. on the weekend. While the College is striving to preserve its academic quality, the Educational Affairs Committee is currently evaluating how to scale back the cost of Winter Term. Although this is mostly likely to occur at first by minimizing the number of visiting professors, Liebowitz expressed wider misgivings about the model at large. "Many students claim they applied to Middlebury because of it," Liebowitz said. "Cynics say it's a great time to ski."He said the faculty debates the merits of Winter Term every few years, typically culminating in a very close vote."Most of the people who support it are those who have never taught it," Liebowitz said. "At least from an energy and cost perspective, it would be easier to go to two semesters of 14 weeks."While there are currently no official discussions to this effect underway, Liebowitz said the possibility is not off the table."We might get there," he said. "If the economy keeps going down, I wouldn't be surprised if this comes up."Visiting Winter Term professors are not the only employees whose jobs are on the line. If the College is unable to cut staff 10 percent by attrition, it may implement an involuntary reduction of the work force, particularly in dining services.Spears said the College was making every effort to avoid layoffs, and was willing to explore "creative" strategies such as "lending staff members to various entities in town" while the College continued to pay their salaries. Among the questions which generated the most discussion at the meeting was whether members of the College community would be informed when areas with which they are affiliated had been evaluated and "passed," or whether "this feeling of being on the chopping block" would "persist indefinitely.""We're looking at everything," Norton said. "We still are. We've made a lot of progress, but we still have a long way to go."Norton said he and his colleagues were striving to operate as transparently as possible.Doug Perkins, Administrative Operations Manager at the College's Museum of Art, took issue with this assertion. He said employees at Rehearsals Café were blindsided by the news that the operation would close during a dining services meeting held the day before the decision took effect. "The people who were affected were never really considered, never really questioned as to how it might impact them," Perkins said. "The transparency just wasn't there." He asked whether staff members should constantly wonder whether their jobs will exist the next day. Liebowitz became visibly agitated in response."First of all, Doug, transparency doesn't mean putting everything up to a vote," he said. "That is not transparency. Transparency means being open about the process. As I said before, the goal here is to make changes as fast as possible to preserve jobs. All right? The bottom line is, the quicker we move to make our recommendations a reality and save budget dollars, the less we have to do down the road." Liebowitz said Rehearsals Cafe is "not a new issue." "Rehearsals has been losing money for years," he said. "We've been talking about closing Rehearsals for years. To act surprised that this might be on the block when we're looking to cut $20 million is something disingenuous, at least in my view." Liebowitz reiterated his stance that transparency cannot be equated with voting. "That way, we'll never reach $20 million," he said. "Never. So I appreciate the issue of the staff not knowing where they were going. Perhaps they should have been talked to before the meeting with dining. But transparency doesn't mean answering to the folks in the CFA about how this is going to affect their programs and whether or not we should do it."Liebowitz said the best way for students to be helpful is to "lower their expectations.""Their expectation is to have everything they've ever had and more," he said. "That's ambitious, but not realistic."Liebowitz
said he recently received an e-mail from a parent who resented the idea that her child would not have the same "Middlebury experience" as students who attended the College five years ago. He reminded her that the College and the economy at large are much different than they were even a short time ago - and that the changes are far from over. The budget will see an estimated $2.5 million in additional cuts before the end of the fiscal year. "Where's the bottom?" Norton asked. "January was a brutal month in the markets, and February isn't starting out much better.""Even if the economy turns around," Liebowitz said, "it will take time to rebuild what we've lost."
(01/22/09 12:00am)
Author: Katie Siegner With the renovations of the McCullough Student Center nearing completion, students are already seeing changes and improvements to the building. "While McCullough was closed, there was a noticeable lack of an all-campus social space," said Katie Horner '11. The project is on schedule to be completed by early spring. It features a new lower entrance as well as renovations to the Box Office, Midd Xpress and the Mail Center that aim to "make the building more accessible and really brighten up the lower level," according to Director of the Center for Campus Activities and Leadership (CCAL) Doug Adams. The color, flooring and new furnishings create an integrated and comfortable atmosphere that is designed to bring students in, because, as Adams repeatedly emphasized, "this is their student center." The second level has also been transformed by the addition of the new McCullough Center Gallery, which will display student artwork, and the redesigned McCullough Social Space. Adams has lofty goals for the revamped space, which he hopes will serve as a focal point of the campus. "It can be a lot of things," Adams said of the Social Space, noting that the seating capacity of the venue has increased from 300 to 400 people. The construction team also removed the balcony, replaced the floor, changed the stage, added sound, lighting and seating systems, added a dressing room for performers and enhanced climate control in the facility.Throughout the new building, Adams hopes to prominently display examples of Middlebury students' creativity. This endeavor hinges on the Gallery, which will feature the work of one Middlebury student-artist every few months. Sam Dakota Miller's '08.5 graphic art is scheduled to be the first exhibit. The walls of the first floor also present new opportunities for the visionary CCAL director. One wall will showcase student photographs and another will be the inspiration for a student-wide mural contest. Adams noted that there is a lot of empty space that needs to be filled and that he plans to do this in a way bring more students' interests into the building."It's only appropriate to have [student art] at the Student Center," he said.A combination of Middlebury staff and students initiated and supervised the project, the goal of which - according to Adams - was "to provide a more usable and attractive space for Middlebury College students." In order to accomplish this, a Program Plan Committee was created, with members drawing from a cross-section of student performing groups. Adams involved the committee in meetings with the architects in an effort to make the Social Space specifically tailored to student desires, essentially giving the committee the freedom to express "what they would want if they could have anything."Renovations meant some adjustments for McCullough inhabitants. Box Office Coordinator Debby Anderson pointed out that when the Box Office moved upstairs temporarily, it was "not in the path of people." However, now that it has returned to the first floor, the Box Office's prominent location has made it an "information center."The Mail Center was also transferred into a trailer for the duration of the project. Mail Center Supervisor David LaRose expressed frustration about the cramped space and the lack of a desk. "I like things in order," LaRose said. He said that life in the trailer was essentially business as usual, however, albeit a bit harder to find packages. The Service Building Warehouse was used as a secondary storage facility for packages, as the space in the trailer was 300 square feet smaller than the mailroom in McCullough. The Mail Center's move back to McCullough was completed in one day. The new Mail Center is brighter and offers considerably more space to LaRose and his staff. The new Midd Xpress will open after Feb Break in its new location - due to its increased visibility, sales are expected to go up 25-30 percent according to Steve Reigle, the general manager of Retail Dining Operations. Once the project is completed, Middlebury will have a Student Center that is more cohesive, attractive and versatile than its old one. The Social Space is already set to host concerts, dances, performances and many other events that will attract Middlebury students, including the Orange Crush concert during February's upcoming Winter Carnival. These improvements will all help to reestablish McCullough as the literal and figurative center of campus.
(01/15/09 12:00am)
Author: Margaret Moslander Volunteering at the Middlebury teen center. Teaching a workshop on the history of baseball. Visiting and volunteering in third world countries. While this may sound like a list of popular Winter Term activities, it actually illustrates some of what Middlebury's senior community has been up to. On Jan. 9, the Middlebury College Office for Staff Development, with Middlebury Elderly Services, hosted a lunchtime discussion on preparing for retirement. Sheila Andrus, a staff member in the Office for Staff Development, and Pat Carpenter, a social worker from Middlebury Elderly Services, invited five members of the Middlebury community who are at various stages in their retirement to share their experiences and wisdom with those who are preparing to retire. While one may expect that a discussion on retirement may revolve around finances, especially in today's economic climate, Pat Carpenter made it clear that this discussion would focus on the "social and psychological" aspects of retirement.Carpenter got the discussion started with questions for each member of the panel, beginning with their motivations for retirement. Marge, the most recently retired member of the panel, said that she retired because "the school board offered a bailout." The honesty of her response would set the tone for the rest of the discussion, with the panel being frank about the difficulties and rewards of retired life. There was a strong emphasis placed on how the patterns of life change with retirement. Because there is no strict schedule to follow after stopping work, participants suggested that it is important to get involved in other activities. Rudy, a former professor of sociology at the College, said that after retiring at 62 he "did nothing for two years." Other participants on the panel agreed with Rudy that it takes time to "recover" from the working world, but after that recovery takes place, it is important to rejoin the world in some other capacity. The other capacities in which members of the panel rejoined the world are many and varied. One of the most interesting stories was told by Jan, a long retired woman who had worked for Geiger of Austria. Upon retiring, she joined the Peace Corps and taught "small business development" in South Africa for two years. She was in South Africa when Nelson Mandela was elected president, and she talked about the excitement that swept the country at that time. After leaving South Africa she worked at an orphanage in Uganda. Her story was inspiring; she created a new, exciting life for herself after having worked the same job for most her life. Rudy, for his part, rejoined the community after retirement using the teaching skills he honed at Middlebury College. He now teaches classes at the Elderly Services College. His specialty is the history of baseball, and he is an avid baseball memorabilia collector. Mal and Pat, the only couple on the panel, are active participants in many Elderly Services activities and also volunteer at the Middlebury Teen Center. The members of the lunchtime discussion were inspired by the stories of these retirees - in fact, it is accurate to say that many of their views on what retirement can and should be were changed by the members of the panel. Pat Carpenter, in her closing remarks, reminded the participants that "some people retire to live, and others retire to die." The members of the panel certainly retired to live, and continue to inspire others in the Middlebury community in many different ways.
(01/15/09 12:00am)
Author: Jacob Udell Haven't you heard? You don't need to be a vegan, drive a Prius, or know how to compost to be an environmentalist! Of course, conservation in our daily lifestyle is incredibly valuable. But rather than immediate global warming solutions, things commonly associated with environmentalism currently serve as symbols - symbols which help us drive the global change we need.At this point, the only way we can possibly mitigate climate change to a safe level is through first national and then international legislation, and it needs to happen fast. Leading climate change scientist Rajendra Pachauri told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that, "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." Read that year again: 2012 - the last year most of us here will graduate.Influential legislation starts with grassroots political activism, and there is no better chance to do that as a college student than at PowerShift 2009. From Feb. 27 to March 2, thousands of young adults will converge on Washington, D.C. for PowerShift 2009, the second national youth summit committed to solving the climate crisis. Once there, we will be doing everything from lobbying our legislators to participating in workshops and career fairs.PowerShift '09 is the most important thing you can do this New Year. And it's not like you have to come to Sunday Night Group every week in order to feel like you can be passionate. If you care about international social justice issues, that is more than enough. Global warming has the potential to be the biggest humanitarian crisis in history. It will most devastatingly affect the rural poor, who have the least financial and technical capacity to adapt to its dangers and are most affected by fluctuations in worldwide food supply.All of us can understand the enormous number of injustices that the human race has committed in our history, and global warming is potentially the worst one yet. With great potential for destruction, however, comes great potential for good. Climate change is our first truly global issue, and its urgency will hopefully force us to transcend our national and cultural differences in order to overcome it. How do we make sure that we don't read this, lament for a few moments, and then go back to our breakfast? It's easy: commit to going to PowerShift. Let's make sure Middlebury sends well over 100 students, from all over the country and the world. We'll be down in D.C. at the beginning of Barack Obama's presidency, physically taking part in actualizing the change that he has promised. We need members of the College Democrats and College Republicans, the African American Alliance and the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the International Student Organization and the Mountain Club, because this is a crisis that connects us all. Don't miss taking part in shaping our generation's, and the world's, defining issue.
(11/20/08 12:00am)
Author: Grace Duggan Most people probably would not take their last semester off from Middlebury to spend several months working in West Virginia to promote the nationwide prioritizing of alternatives to clean coal technology, but Sierra Murdoch - now a member of the Class of 2009.5 - is doing just that. Following an internship she will complete on campus with seven other Middlebury students this Winter Term, Murdoch, who has been hired in part by Project 350, expects to remain in West Virginia through July facilitating continued discussion of the issues surrounding the ominous consequences of the continued use of coal as an energy source. The impetus for this internship - as well as the continuation of Murdoch's efforts through the spring - grew out of a fruitful conference held this past April and attended by Luce Professor of International Environmental Economics Jon Isham at the Garrison Institute. These three inspiring days looked to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and prompted Isham to consider how Gandhi - whose grandson attended the conference - may have approached the current climate crisis. Following his return to campus, Isham continued the dialogue started at the Garrison Institute with other Middlebury faculty, including Associate Professor of Religion Rebecca Gould, Professor of English and American Literatures John Elder and Scholar-in-Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben, along with a number of Middlebury students who showed interest in participating in what is already an important national and global issue.Though still in the preliminary planning stages, the internship marks a collaborative effort between Murdoch, Eleanor Horowitz '11, Michaela O'Connor '11, Lois Parshley '11, Katelyn Romanov '11, Peter Spyrou '10.5, Matt Vaughan '09 and Ben Wessel '11, each of whom brings to the table varying levels of familiarity with this particular component of the overall climate movement. The students will tackle the complex web of issues surrounding coal, one that includes learning about mountain top removal, alternative energy sources and the possibility of facilitating the development of a green economy in coal country.Given the magnitude of success Middlebury students have had participating in past initiatives, both locally and nationally, standards for Murdoch and the other interns are high. Isham hopes that efforts from environmentalists, including Middlebury students, will also feed into legislative measures, both in the United States and abroad. Once in West Virginia, Murdoch will build off of her internship by working with organizations like the Alliance For Appalachia and iLoveMountains. Following successful models from history as well as recent initiatives like Step It Up and an internship 10 Middlebury students had with 1Sky last Winter Term, at least one meeting has been set before January to plan for the upcoming internship and Murdoch's continued involvement through the spring.The issue of coal is already on the national radar, having received attention from a number of activists, including Al Gore and both 2008 presidential candidates. As recently as Nov. 9, Gore published an op-ed in the New York Times emphasizing how unrealistic "clean coal" technology is as a viable component for solving the current climate crisis."It's a wonderful idea," said Isham, "but as Al Gore pointed out, it's not yet anywhere close to being valid. 'Clean coal' is just hype right now."The term "clean coal" obscures the magnitude of the issue, as the technology does not currently exist. Both Isham and Murdoch cited a profound lack of research into the idea and asserted that it cannot be viewed as a sensible option given the current speed of climate change."Clean coal is not a possibility within the timeline we have to act on global warming," said Murdoch. "We have to do something else. We need to look to wind, solar and innovative technologies we've already developed, and integrate these into an economic system that creates new jobs and lifts a lot of communities out of poverty."Noah Brautigam '12, who recently wrote a piece on carbon capture and storage for Isham's first-year seminar - titled "Can We Really Do This? Finding Global Warming Solutions" - had similarly mixed feelings about clean coal."The way I see it is that clean coal is a political construction. Politicians need to appeal to Appalachia, and to do that they can't say, 'Moratorium on coal' to get elected. I don't think [clean coal] is the most viable option right now. It's not a permanent solution … it's a band-aid until there are better solutions found."Isham emphasized the urgency and importance of engaging the problems of coal in the United States as well as on the global level. With over half of the electricity produced in the United States coming from coal and a rising number of coal plants opening in China - the origin of approximately 25 percent of all current greenhouse gases - coal's status as a cost-effective, readily available energy source will be hard to change."Coal is an exceptionally difficult challenge," he said. "The alternatives are to ban using coal for reasons associated with the injustices of it, figure out some technological fix or move as quickly as you can away from coal. But of course you have to have the clean energy alternatives … By some estimates up to half a million people in China die every year because of the burning of coal. In the United States it's certainly in the tens of thousands."With language colored by earnest references to other movements, such as abolitionism and Gandhi's movement against British colonial rule, Isham acknowledged the formidable task that lies ahead, one that involves framing coal use as a moral issue."If it's not seen as a moral issue, it's just going to be one more in a list of things that we should be doing, and the key is to make it a moral issue that one can't ignore," said Isham. "A great analogy is the abolitionist movement … The reason they succeeded is because they made [slavery] a moral issue. It's hard for us to imagine that slavery wasn't a moral issue, but it wasn't until they came along … We want to use the climate change story to say, just as abolitionists did over 200 years ago, that this core engine of our economy can't be defended because of the injustices associated with it."
(11/20/08 12:00am)
Author: Jaime Fuller Though much has been done in the 18 months since the College announced its commitment to carbon neutrality in May 2007, new innovations will hold the key to upholding that promise by 2016 given current economic conditions, according to faculty and students already searching for creative ways for the College to meet its environmental goals. The development that has had the biggest impact on reducing the College's carbon footprint was the decision to build a biomass plant to replace the old #6 oil-fueled heating plant. Once the biomass plant goes into operation beginning in Jan. 2009, it can potentially cut the College's greenhouse emissions by 12,500 metric tons per year. Benjamin F. Wissler Professor of Physics Rich Wolfson, who specializs in global warming research, believes this development is the biggest step that Middlebury will take in going carbon neutral. "The heating plant is the single largest producer of carbon emissions by a factor of 10," Wolfson said. "The biomass plant, once in operation, will cut the College's carbon emissions in half."The next largest carbon emitters are the buildings on the periphery of campus, which are not heated by the main heating plant. Because these buildings will not be aided by the new biomass plant, the administration is thinking of other ways to make the outskirts of campus conform to the College's environmental ambitions. The solar panels to be installed at 107 Shannon Street are a prime example, but Wolfson believes that solar and wind power, though admirable, are not going to considerably affect the College's carbon footprint."People think that by putting up lots of solar panels and windmills for electricity we'd solve a lot of problems," he said, "but Vermont gets most of its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric energy, which has virtually no carbon emissions. If we were in Ohio, it would make a big difference because we would be getting most of our electricity from coal."The source of carbon emissions that will prove most troublesome for the College to neutralize is faculty travel, which because of Middlebury's remote location will be impossible to completely eradicate. Wolfson said travel will most likely be cut, but in order to become carbon neutral the College will need to buy carbon offsets to atone for trips to locations far from the Green Mountains. Wolfson said the next step the College planned to take in its quest towards carbon neutrality by 2016 was to duplicate the biomass plant, but these plans were made before the financial crisis made the administration more budget-conscious. "It's going to cost," Wolfson said. "It's not as economically feasible as it was two months ago. We're going to have to be innovative if we want to do this by 2016."Although Wolfson believes Middlebury is a pioneer among the nation's liberal arts colleges in its commitment to carbon neutrality, he wishes that there were another way to get there besides the woodchip-fueled biomass plant."Frankly, I'm a little disappointed that we need to burn something else to become carbon neutral," he said. The nine-acre willow farm planted on College lands seeks to make the biomass plant more palatable and more sustainable. When 1200 acres of willows are fully grown, they should be able to provide a quarter of the College's heating fuel supply, which in effect replaces 500,000 gallons of the carbon-rich #6 oil.The Sunday Night Group (SNG) has also been busy trying to deal with carbon reductions, albeit on a much larger scale. Chester Harvey '09, who was a main actor in the push to get Middlebury carbon neutral, is pleased with what the College has achieved so far, but unsure of how SNG should progress."We've been struggling since the carbon neutrality proposal was passed with what we should do next," he said. "We almost accomplished our goals too well, we didn't leave anything for the students to do afterwards." He then said that since carbon neutrality was mostly in the administration's hands as far as Middlebury College goes, SNG was now focusing on the climate crisis on a larger scale. "We've been trying to branch out beyond campus, to bring carbon reductions to the community and the state, and further out nationally," said Harvey.As part of this branching out beyond the bubble, Lois Parshley '11 has been leading an effort to draft policy proposals that she hopes to present to Vermont legislators, using her research on Oregon's business energy tax credit program as the starting point. "Like Oregon," Parshley wrote in an e-mail, "the state of Vermont could stimulate capital investment, conservation savings and renewable energy sources through the introduction of energy conservation and renewable energy income tax credit programs." Parshely's goal is to finish drafting her proposal with the help of the Middlebury chapter of the Roosevelt Institution, and raise awareness among local representatives, senators and business leaders, which she hopes will lead to passage of her idea in the 2009 state legislative session. However, recent events in national politics have spurred her to make much more ambitious goals regarding her policy proposal. "Since Obama's win last week, I have also been discussing with Professor [of International Environmental Economics] Jon Isham and [Scholar-in-Residence] Bill McKibben the possibility of taking my proposal national," she wrote in an e-mail. "I am beginning to network on the national level towards that goal."Other nationally oriented SNG-supported initiatives include Middshift, 1Sky, 350.org and PowerVote, which all seek to make climate change a more central part of the national agenda. At the SNG meeting Nov. 9, Bill McKibben had no fears that the College would not be able to achieve its environmental goals."Middlebury has been the most activist college campus on climate change for about a decade," he said. "[This college] has a legacy and historical commitment to the environment and is in the lead for college campuses in the march towards carbon neutrality."
(11/20/08 12:00am)
Author: Richard Wolfson "Buy an SUV instead of a car," says Bill McKibben, and you'll waste so much energy that "it's like you've decided to leave your refrigerator door open for the next seven years." Shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, you say, and we can replace it with wind turbines. Both of these statements sound reasonable, and both would garner nods of agreement from Middlebury environmentalists. Both statements are also quantitative, explicitly in the first case and implicitly in the second. Could you justify either statement?Being an authoritative environmentalist means being able to grapple with quantitative issues. "How rapidly are we humans raising atmospheric CO2 concentration?" "What's exponential growth and how does it affect our projections of future environmental conditions?" "What percent of species are threatened with extinction?" "What's the imbalance in global energy flows and how does that drive anthropogenic climate change?" "How much power is available from wind, and how's that compare with our total energy consumption rate?" "What change in stratospheric temperature should we expect from an enhanced greenhouse effect, and how's that provide evidence for anthropogenic global warming?" "At what rate is sea level rising, and how's that compare with historical rates?" "What's 'tipping point' behavior, and how does its mathematical description differ from 'normal' behavior?" The list of quantitative environmental questions is endless.The College community is rightfully proud of its commitment to the environment. We're green in so many ways, and we're activists who inspire others beyond the small world of the Champlain Valley. We're even aiming to become carbon neutral by 2016 (By how much must we reduce our carbon emissions? What's Middlebury's greatest source of carbon? How do our other sources compare?). Yet I'm not sure we're always willing to be as quantitative as we might be. Last year's Environmental Studies colloquium series featured a session on the many voices that need to be heard in the environmental movement. Missing was the quantitative voice. We need that voice, not only to sound - and to be - authoritative, but also to help guide our own environmental decisions. Wind and solar photovoltaics are great for the environment, but understanding Middlebury's electrical energy mix quantitatively shows that they can't help much with carbon neutrality. Buying local chicken reduces our carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, but, as a recent ES colloquium showed, we can't do that without exhausting the local poultry population (How many free-range chickens are there in Addison County?). And switching to hybrid cars will help the environment in many ways, including making a significant dent in our carbon emissions. But only a quantitative assessment can show that hybrids alone won't get us to "80 percent by 2050" or to 350.org's goal of an eponymous atmospheric CO2 concentration. Understanding all this requires quantitative thinking and the quantitative voice. It's a voice we environmentalists should use proudly, forcefully and often.(Richard Wolfson is professor of Environmental Studies and the Benjamin F. Wissler Professor of Physics.)
(11/20/08 12:00am)
Author: Kevin Redmon The mailman delivering to my Washington apartment is not known for his attention to detail. I end up with a lot of other people's magazines this way. Normally I crumple up the pages to stuff into the crumbling masonry of my poorly constructed and very drafty basement room. Yesterday's wayward arrival gave me pause, though. Plenty magazine is a self-consciously stylish harbinger of the eco-revolution to come. Replete with features like Miss Eco Etiquette, Green Gear, Eco-Eats and The Dirt - "celebrity gossip from an eco perspective" - the publication feels like a middle school girl who wants very badly to fit in. With features on the movement's darling children Gore and DiCaprio, reviews of recycled Patagonia jackets, recipes for "green cocktails," and discussions of whether wrapping Christmas presents is morally (that is, environmentally) reprehensible, it is a magazine that misses the disease while diagnosing the symptoms. The editors revel in the providential good fortune that refurbishing one's countertops with certified bamboo or shopping for responsibly-panned Sierra Leonean diamonds are now selfless acts demonstrating environmental concern. What luck, that we can save the planet by ensuring that our next pair of Ferragamos is sewn of sustainably culled, free-range leather. Fact: the "green-collar" jobs that environmentalists love to promote won't be filled by workers who spend a lot of time choosing between organic vodkas.Plenty is a small part of a larger, problematic trend: the eco-movement is preoccupied with appearances rather than dialogue. Underlying this, there is a tremendous amount of energy being devoted to creating a "green identity." Environmentalism and all its discontents - climate change, deforestation, ad nauseum - are at peril of being reduced to a slogan and a brand image. It's simplistic and it's dangerous. Why? Because it replaces nuance with ideology, complexity with dichotomy - us vs. them, greens vs. everyone else. With regard to affecting real change, though: you can't get there from here. It's time to abandon our misguided faith in continued consumption, as if consuming differently can preclude consuming less. The indomitable Ed Abbey cautioned against precisely what Plenty champions: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." It is a Faustian bargain that consumer culture is striking with eco-entrepreneurs. Caveat emptor.
(11/20/08 12:00am)
Author: Jack Byrne The current economic turmoil in the world comes with many lessons, some of which we know but seem to have forgotten. A core principle of economics involves the relationship between capital and interest: invest your capital wisely and spend the interest it earns. By some strange mathematics we had capital that was leveraged way beyond any realistic return on its investment and a lot of people are holding worthless IOUs because they believed in the impossible. Sometimes such illusion is useful, such as when pursuing grand aspirations of human achievement. But when it includes a disregard for some fundamental principles of how the world works, it can lead to disaster.There's a parallel turmoil in the world of natural capital. I refer to the value of all the services nature provides us: flood surge protection by coastal mangrove swamps and estuaries, soil aeration and fertilizer production by earthworms, fish and shellfish food produced by the oceans, and so on. The best estimate of the value of the fertile soils, fresh water, breathable air, stable climate and the other life-support services provided by Mother Nature is $33 trillion in 1997 dollars. That's about twice the global gross national product. Just like we treated our financial capital as though it could generate interest that was impossible, we are treating our natural capital as though it can provide impossible rates of interest. The best measure of this imbalance is expressed by the ecological footprint which includes all the agricultural land, forests and fishing grounds required to supply the food, materials, and space we humans need to live. It also includes the ecosystem services mentioned above. By the best estimate available, at our current rate of consumption we have gobbled away about 25 percent of the earth's natural capital. At this rate we will need two earths by 2050. I don't know how to create a second earth and I'd bet the smartest people on earth don't know either. We are smart enough however to learn and to act for our own self-interests. We are also capable of unselfish cooperation, which is what it will take to avoid kicking half the population off the planet if current trends continue. The countries with the biggest ecological footprints will have to reduce their consumption of natural resources while those with the smallest, with very few exceptions, will need to grow theirs in order for their people to have a dignified and adequate quality of life.What will help us get there? For starters, it would make sense to put a price on the value of the ecosystem services that we do not include in the cost of the products and services we purchase. We did this years ago when we put a price on acid rain causing pollutants and it did wonders. There is legislation in the works now to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions and we need to tell our political leaders that we want that done ASAP. We also need to support the creation of a global carbon trading system in which all countries participate including our own.Closer to home, we each need to take a look at our own ecological footprints and ask "What choices could I make that would make a significant difference in my use of natural capital?" Little things add up quickly when a lot of people do them. For example, if every household in the US had energy saving compact fluorescent light bulbs we would reduce consumption of electricity by 35 percent, which would also significantly reduce the amount of climate warming carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere. The next time you need to replace a vehicle, get one that has higher mileage efficiency. In the meantime, look for ways to reduce the miles you travel alone in your vehicle. And so on. The point here is to make this kind of thinking and acting a habit. Each of us can pursue sustainability in our own unique ways while we work together for the bigger changes needed on the national and international front to assure that all of us here now and those to come will have a decent life on a healthy planet.To calculate your own ecological footprint go to www.myfootprint.org.(Jack Byrne is the College's Director of Sustainability Integration.)
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Author: Stephanie Joyce, Ian Trombulak, Adam Schaffer, and Tess Russell COLLEGE KEEPS UP WITH CURRENT PRINTING TRENDSEven printing has a taken on a distinctly green hue in recent years as Middlebury has kept pace with the national trend, switching to 100 percent post-consumer waste paper in most publications, reducing printed publications and encouraging recycling. Even so, the limited oversight of publications on campus leaves the choice to 'go green' or not print at all largely up to the individual. Steve Goodman, manager of Reprographics, the on-campus printer, estimates that roughly 25,000 pages get printed for College purposes every day. Programs, sports schedules, event fliers, alumni newsletters, yearbooks and directories are just some of the daily printing projects at Middlebury.Reprographics designer Lyn DeGraff noted the importance of using environmentally friendly papers, inks and printing practices, but was quick to point out that cost plays a major role in decisions about printing. "Often it's more expensive to be environmentally friendly, so it requires cutting back on quantity to compensate," she said.Sometimes though, all that is required is innovation. In an effort to be both sustainable and cost-effective, The Center for Campus Activities and Leadership (CCAL) has ceased their bi-annual mailing of student fundraising projects, opting instead to send a postcard inviting parents to a Web site. Other publications, such as New Faces and the Winter Term Workshop catalog have simply been reduced in number and target only specific groups.The alternative, of course, is not to print at all. Director of Communications Maggie Paine stressed the importance of thinking before printing. "How do you get the right message to the right people at the right time?" she asked. "That's how we can be good stewards of the College's mission and money." COUNT PAPER PROVES COST-EFFECTIVE AND ECO-FRIENDLYThe College's most noticeable effort to increase environmental friendliness may be the biomass gasification boiler next to the McCullough Student Center, but smaller initiatives such as Count Paper are aiding the cause as well. The initiative, which began last year in the form of e-mail notifications to all students reporting their individual paper consumption from networked printers, aims to cut paper waste in half.The basic idea of the Count Paper initiative is to remind students that every sheet counts. It will not restrict your paper use - rather, it will tell you the exact number of sheets you have used. Carol Peddie of Library and Information Services undertook the challenge following a charge by the environmental council on campus to address the paper waste on campus. Though the initiative began with the environment in mind, the increasingly bleak state of the economy now gives the initiative the dual purpose of being a vital cost cutter as well. If the College can reduce the amount of paper it wastes by half through initiatives like Count Paper, as well as an increased level of encouragement to print on both sides of a sheet, it will reduce the budgetary stress and allow the College to focus its resources elsewhere. Unlike the biomass gasification boiler, the Count Paper initiative does not come at any cost; instead, it serves to reduce cost in addition to promoting eco-friendly behavior, getting us that much closer to the goal of carbon neutrality by 2016. GREEN ORIENTATION DRAWS MIXED REVIEWS FROM STUDENTSRanked as the number one "school that gets it" by the Sierra Club for its environmental initiatives, the College has extended its stewardship to educate students and staff on maximizing campus sustainability. The effects of such programs, however, remain in question. All residential life staff were required to undergo a 45 minute session to help them to "better understand the issues and priorities and practices of sustainability at Middlebury and to be better able to communicate with students about the topic," explained Sustainability Integration Director Jack Byrne in an e-mail.Reflecting on the experience, however, many were left without useful knowledge."All I remember is that we should unplug our computers when we're not using them and use energy saving lighting, and then I fell asleep," said Will James '10, a First-Year Counselor (FYC) in Ross.Also remembering many students nodding off during the program, fellow FYC Emmy Burleigh '10 felt that the experience failed to connect environmental sustainability practices to her job as an FYC."It didn't relate at all back to what our job was, and the point of our training … was to be prepared for our job for this year," she said. "It was not relevant at all."During a recent review of programs undertaken by residential life staff, Burleigh recalled this environmental program as one that many FYCs believed to have failed to educate them for their work ahead.Byrne, for his part, now gives a new employee orientation to help people joining the College community integrate sustainability into their work with the College.The College also attempted to include first-year students in the process. Each incoming student was sent a welcome letter encouraging the use of public transportation, recycling and energy conservation.Nina Wright '12 said that although she does not remember this mailing or receiving specific guidance from her FYCs about how to be more environmentally friendly, "there still is an overall atmosphere of environmentalism on campus."FOOTPRINT CALCULATOR SITE DEMYSTIFIES CARBON STATSAs Middlebury students, we are certainly conscious of our carbon footprints and cognizant of small steps we can take to reduce the impact that we have on climate change. Still, it can be hard to grasp the weight of our personal carbon contributions when faced with intangible metric measurements. With that in mind, the Global Footprint Network (GFN), a nonprofit organization which cooperates with various campaigns and initiatives to work towards a sustainable future, has created an interactive "footprint calculator," located at www.footprintcalculator.org.Unlike other carbon quizzes, the GFN's calculator is easy to use and couches emissions in easily relatable terms, showing as a final result how many "earths" it takes to support each of our lifestyles. To start, participants are enabled to choose from a range of wacky hairstyles and outfit choices to create their own avatars, whom they will follow through a series of questions.The first query deals with dietary habits - specifically, we are asked how often we consume animal-based products, how much of our food is processed and where the majority of our food comes from - and respondents can elect to provide a few "basic" answers or, alternatively, multiple "detailed" answers. Subsequent questions deal with our recycling habits, our usage of electricity, the size and structure of our homes and our travel patterns via public transportation, car, motorbike and airplane. The graphics, which show our waste literally mounting up on our computer screen in the form of plastic bottles, power lines and gas-guzzling automobiles, are both amusing and intentionally disturbing.And now, the moment of truth: how many planet Earths would we need to provide enough resources for everyone to "live like me"? I will not disclose the exact amount, but I can tell you that it is not too far off that incurred by Jack Byrne, the College's director of sustainability integration, and that the "average" American uses five times (i.e., five planets worth) his or her share of Earth's resources. Perhaps the most useful aspect of the GFN calculator is that it allows users to backtrack to direct questions and see where their environmental impact is the most significant - I was doing pretty well until the air travel section. (Looks like it might be time
to find some new vacation spots.)In addition to its personal footprint calculator, GFN's Web site allows users to compute the output produced by their businesses, cities and nations. They also provide a useful, and surprisingly comprehensible, explanation of how the equation for the "planet" figures was designed.
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Author: Andrea Glaessner "Conservation Congress" conjures up an image of a room full of Vermonters drawing up legislation and making decisions on local environmental issues. Against the backdrop of society's current fixation with climate change and national politics, "conservation" could only mean environmental conservation, and "congress" obviously alludes to decision making and action. Yet at the end of the day, the Addison County Conservation Congress did not produce laws, nor did the group spend hours debating the merits of wood pellets over clean coal energy. Instead, participants of the Congress walked out of Mount Abraham Union High School in Bristol singing the lyrics of a song called "Hope" in a three-part harmony. "It was ephemeral, it's about learning. [It was] never intended to be an institution or to have a life beyond the day," explained David Brynn, one of the main organizers of the event. "The idea is that people can just relax, it's not about policy setting, not about voting. [It's] a chance for people to sit around and just get to it."Co-sponsored by the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACoRN) and Vermont Family Forests (VFF), this year's event opened up to encompass a range of topics. Focusing on three issues - peak oil, the financial crisis and climate change - the 150 attendees divided into 12 rooms to discuss these issues through the lens of various aspects of the community from food and farming to heat and power to faith and spirituality. Each room's discussion was led by an expert or leader in the respective area.Rather than placing environmental conservation at the center of the discussion, it was taken as a given. "We basically made the point that we were assuming that we were going to take excellent care of the land, that we view land as the foundation of the community and that all our plans would keep in mind that we needed to sustain the health of the land," explained Brynn.Brynn has been organizing these Conservation Congress forums for community dialogue since the 1990s. The first Congress was held in 1993, and Brynn continued organizing the forums annually for the next five years before taking 10 years off. "The idea, initially, was that we needed a place where the community could come together and discuss controversial conservation issues in an environment that's respectful, but get right to some of the major conservation issues facing us," said Brynn.Last year's Conservation Congress marked the first one in a decade, and focused on community energy. As successful as it was, Brynn decided to keep the tradition going, hence the decision to organize this year's Conservation Congress, imbuing it with a new theme entitled "Visioning Our Community in 2020 and Mapping the Next Steps to Get There."Initially, the Congress forums tended to focus exclusively on "conventionally defined conservation sustainable forestry and energy," said College Professor John Elder, who led the "visioning exercise" in this year's event. But according to Elder, the context of this year's event was more inclusive than that of years past."[The environmental movement] has evolved quite a bit in the last quarter century, and while wilderness conservation and biodiversity are all still highly important, we have a tendency now to integrate them with the needs for social sustainability and the human community; we see them all as inextricable," said Elder, "I think this is good because it makes environmental movement feel pertinent to a broader range of society, some of whom were inclined to think it elitist before."The idea for this year's theme came about over a typical afternoon coffee break at the Bristol Bakery and Café. "It actually started right here, almost a year ago now," said Jonathan Corcoran, who helped Brynn organize the event. Corcoran's connection to the event comes through ACoRN, which promotes awareness about local sustainability, primarily through food and energy. "We're just a loose network of people who are really interested in rebuilding the local economy around our basic needs," said Corcoran, explaining ACoRN.Corocoran described the context for this year's Congress as "The Great Turning." Arguing that we are "on the cusp of this change that some say is as big as the shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance," Corcoran believes humans, and Addison County more specifically, are gradually shifting dependence back toward local and regional economies.With the context in place of future change and transition to local - as opposed to global - economic interdependence, Brynn and Corcoran began delving into the details."From there, David and I started talking about bringing the community together to vision our future in 2020. We started with 12 rooms, [going] from our most basic material needs, to our social needs, to our spiritual needs. We really tried to basically represent the entire community. The idea is that people would go into these rooms and spend several hours visioning 2020, and then come out of that with a common vision," said Corcoran.The vision for the congress conjured up in the Bristol bakery was realized one year later. Over 150 participants engaged in deep discussion over the future of Addison County and how to design its destiny. Yet several features of the daylong discussion were innovative additions to the old Congress model. The introductory "ohm" chanting, the "localvore" lunch made from Vermont's best local goods, the envisioning exercise led by John Elder, and the "cranky show" (a type of moveable animation) at the end of the day were a few of the new, exciting additions. According to Elder, "In each group there was a highly skilled artist who tried to boil down some of our objectives and put it into a kind of moveable animation. Then they made a kind of movie in which the images of our conversation formed a continuous sequence." "If you can envision the future you want then it's easier to make it a reality and bear in mind how you want to achieve that ideal," said Elder.As for the physical results of the Congress, each group produced a "vision statement" inclusive of major ideas discussed, along with three decisions of how to implement that vision within each individual's respective household, town and within the county."To sum it up, it was really about celebrating community and celebrating what we have and just recognizing what a beautiful, rich place we live in, and at the same time, making it clear that we really have come to a crossroads, and that its up to us to create our future," said Corcoran.
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Author: Kate Lupo Environmental art has become ever more popular in a world that wishes to acknowledge and solve the problems of climate change. What is "environmental art" anyway and what sets it apart from other contemporary art? According to GreenMuseum.org, an online collaboration of environmental artists, environmental art helps improve humanity's relationship with the natural world and is oftentimes "ephemeral (made to disappear or transform), designed for a particular place (and can't be moved) or involves collaborations between artists and others, such as scientists, educators or community groups." Middlebury's Committee for Art in Public Places (CAPP) brought two environmental artists to our campus last year: Deborah Fisher and Patrick Dougherty. Deborah Fisher created the cement and tire sculpture Solid State Change outside of Hillcrest and Patrick Dougherty set up shop in front of the CFA and made So Inclined, a grouping of his signature monumental "hive" sculptures made with local saplings.While these sculptures were at least partially created to serve as reminders of Middlebury's commitment to the environment, they are not without controversy. Deborah Fisher's sculpture in particular sparked a storm of heated conversation and debate on the Middlebury campus, with many students wondering why Middlebury had paid money for such an "ugly" sculpture that looked like "trash." Patrick Dougherty's sculptures also had people asking why this "environmentally friendly" artist needed to kill hundreds of young tree saplings in order to create his art. These conversations had people thinking about what "environmental art" really means. Should environmental art be beautiful? Should it be environmentally efficient? How do we measure the success of an environmental artwork at all?Deborah Fisher's Solid State Change certainly succeeded in creating debate and conversation on campus, but it did not succeed in translating its environmental message to the Middlebury community. I believe that Solid State Change would have been more likable and communicative if it had been installed indoors, which would have put the focus on the sculpture's impressive size and allowed people to more closely observe and appreciate the intricate work that went into each tire fold. Solid State Change could have also included a more informative and easily read label (not one hidden in the grass) if it had been placed indoors. A label would have helped viewers to better understand the environmental message of the artwork and how the cement base of Solid State Change was created to represent the geography of Middlebury and create a "symbiosis" with the recycled tires on top. As it is now installed outdoors, the sculpture is either ignored or scoffed at. Thus, we can see how the placement and presentation of environmental art is important in the interpretation of its message. Patrick Dougherty's So Inclined sculptures are more aesthetically pleasing than Solid State Change and the process of weaving the sculptures created a closer relationship between the artist, volunteers and the natural environment, but wasn't the destruction of hundreds of saplings a contradiction of Dougherty's environmental message? These public sculptures at Middlebury have shown how environmental art is not always easy to define and understand, which means that the public must begin to look at this new type of art in a new way. Perhaps we should not simply judge the success of an environmental artwork by its aesthetic beauty, but by how well the artwork furthers an environmental message in its materials, location, installation, etc. It is important that people at Middlebury questioned both Patrick Dougherty and Deborah Fisher's works as contradictions of their environmental themes. As I mentioned before, people lamented Dougherty's use of harvested saplings in his 'environmental art,' while others were troubled by the fact that the transportation of Fisher's huge sculpture from New York to Vermont probably wasted gasoline and produced pollution. As environmental art begins to change the face of the Art World, we should all continue to voice our opinions to help rethink and redefine what "environmental art" should be in the 21st century.
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With all due respect to my fellow faculty members, I'd like to think that Nick Muller and I, with joint appointments in Economics and Environmental Studies, have the best teaching jobs on campus. Our students not only study the great challenges of this century; if we're doing our job, they also acquire the critical tools to begin to take them on. So many of the students who are burning the midnight oil in Warner and Hillcrest these days (and yes, soon they'll be burning biomass!) are learning to think like economists and ecologists.
I admit, though, it's not really the choice of discipline that determines whether students are acquiring tools to lead a life of meaning. Biology, Political Science, Dance: randomly choose any major in the Middlebury College catalogue and you'll find a unique, valid means to understand the world's complexities. And there's one other thing you can be sure of at Middlebury: behind every major are outstanding scholars.
But in these changing times, how can we faculty members do even better? It can be difficult for modern educators to connect the everyday experiences of the student - what is immediately observable and within the grasp of even the most sophisticated student's worldview - with the systemic challenges that the global community now faces: stabilizing the climate, alleviating poverty, and expanding human rights. I've recently adopted an approach called "open-source learning" to increase the odds of success. This approach includes five basic elements: a non-hierarchical classroom; group-based learning within the classroom; network-based learning across classroom walls; real-time creation of knowledge; and knowledge creation for the common good.
In the spirit of John Dewey's vision of the civic purpose of democracy, the open-source classroom is dedicated to the proposition that the classroom has a public purpose. In a non-hierarchical classroom, students are taught that knowledge which they create is potentially as legitimate and important as knowledge from elsewhere. Through group-based learning within the classroom, students learn the importance of persuasion, reflection, and collaboration. Network-based learning across classroom walls - for example, analyzing data for a social-service agency - dramatically expands the scope of enquiry. Perhaps most importantly, the joint call for real-time creation of knowledge and knowledge creation for the common good lets students know that what they learn now can matter for others, now.
I have found that that open-source approach is consistent with three aspects of a successful 21st-century classroom: developing students' awareness of their own agency (what William James calls "the ability of a person to structure and make sense of her life experience"); assigning challenging content (for example, analyzing the interrelated determinants of poverty); and using the power of networks in this digital age (our students, masters of the world of Facebook and Kiva.org, need little nudging here!) Ultimately, to challenge students with the open-source approach is to ask students about their own role in effecting social change. And critically, doing so can lead to the self-discovery that is the very core of the educational experience. As Ron Nahser, a scholar of pragmatism puts it: "Through inquiry, you find what you do believe, your values and vision."
Given the traditions behind the liberal arts model, it is not difficult to take on this call for open-source, pragmatic inquiry. In his recent Save the World on Your Own Time, Stanley Fish writes that the professor's job is to: (1) introduce students to equip bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry that had not previously been part of their experiences; and (2) equip those same students with the analytical skills - of argument, statistical modeling, laboratory procedure - that will enable them to move confidently within these traditions and to engage independent research after a course is over.
I believe that the first part of Fish's formula is paramount. Indeed, users of the open-source approach can flounder (at times I have) without it. To eschew analysis, to jump right into "problem-solving" dilutes what students learn and sells them short. Above all, higher education needs rigor.
But (rigorous) open-source learning calls for a modification of Fish's final phrase: it should read "and to lead collaborative research while a course is underway." The end result of matching Fish's call for comprehensive rigor with pragmatic, meaningful inquiry? The opportunity to achieve, in this challenging new century, John Dewey's ideal: education as "the fundamental method of social progress and reform."
My confidence about this approach is not solely based on my own experiences in the classroom. It also comes from the outcomes of many comparable experiences on campuses nationwide. For example, scholars at MIT and Berkeley have successfully guided students in the design of clean-energy solutions. Here at Middlebury, open-source learning can help Middlebury students to prepare for a life of meaning in a challenging new century.
JON ISHAM is the Luce Professor of Environmental Economics
