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(10/01/14 10:44pm)
In June 2015, the first annual Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference will be held at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, Vermont. The weeklong summit, modeled after the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, is intended to offer training and community to translators of all abilities while improving accessibility to high quality literary translations.
Poet, literary translator, and Director for the Master of Arts in Literary Translation at the University of Rochester Jennifer Grotz is the director of the “BLT,” as she calls it. “It would be hard to overstate the importance of the literary translator in our culture,” Grotz said, touching upon the often-overlooked yet complex role of the translator.
Grotz said, “First, it has to do with importing into our culture and language something that isn’t already there, something that will breathe new life into our current conceptions and ideas. Secondly, it has to do with making a substantial work of literary art in the target language. This is where the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference comes in. Our goal is to help train translators as literary writers.”
Bill Johnston, Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University and faculty member at the inaugural Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, echoed Grotz’s statements regarding the importance of the under-appreciated translator.
“The translator is pretty much essential in ensuring a flow of literature around the world,” Johnston said. “In the case of a language like mine, like Polish, where there aren’t that many translators or alternative translations available, you’re frequently responsible for singlehandedly creating the tone of a particular work or even author in the English language.”
Grotz, with Director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Michael Collier, designed the program and described it as a “culmination of at least five years of thought and work.” During this time, their plans and ideas have evolved. Grotz originally intended for the conference’s workshops to be language-centered.
Grotz said, “I came to decide that the more innovative and, ideally, productive approach would be to keep the workshops genre-based…the BLT is not a workshop that helps with the acquiring of foreign languages but instead with acquiring the skills of successful literary translators.”
Another element that evolved over time, Grotz revealed, “was the idea of having one workshop specifically for those interested in learning more about and practicing translation even if they didn’t have a foreign language sufficiently acquired or if they didn’t have a project they were already working on.” Grotz expressed her excitement for this introductory workshop alongside the others.
Grotz was also involved in selecting the faculty members for next summer’s conference. They include Susan Bernofsky, Maureen Freeley, Jennifer Grotz, Bill Johnston, and Don Share. Grotz described all of them as tremendously accomplished.
My criteria for the faculty,” she revealed, “are that they be successful literary translators who are also accomplished and published creative writers. Additionally, all faculty members have substantial teaching experience and are known to be gifted and dynamic teachers.”
In terms of the future of the conference, Grotz and Johnston expressed their excitement and hope for success. “I hope that it will become a regular thing,” Johnston explained. “I think it’s an important indication and component of the fact that more and more people are becoming aware of translation, taking an interest in it, appreciating it. It’s important in the world of writing and the flow of literature across national borders.”
Grotz reiterated Johnston’s sentiments, stating, “My hope is that the establishment of this conference will provide new and helpful ways of training the current and upcoming generations of literary translators, and also that it will increase their exposure in the larger literary and publishing world.”
In a moment that conveyed his dedication for literary translation, Johnston explained that he was most looking forward to working with texts during the conference. He said, “There’s a tremendous excitement when you get to work with texts that have never previously seen the light of day in English.”
(10/01/14 10:39pm)
The Middlebury College Board of Trustees held their first meeting under the new governance structure on Sept. 18 – 21. The bi-annual meeting of the Trustees was held at the College and addressed resolutions regarding the new Identity System and Sustainability and Carbon Neutrality.
The most important outcome of the meeting was its determination of the functionality of the new structure. President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said of the meeting, “It was both a test of the new structure and really a learning experience for us to find out what needed to be tweaked and adjusted. I think the biggest challenge was for Trustees who were totally used to the old system.”
Under the new structure, what used to be a series of individual committees has been broken down into a group of three Boards of Overseers and a group of six standing committees. The three boards of overseers represent the undergraduate College, the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and those “Schools” associated with the College including the Middlebury Language Schools, the Bread Loaf School of English, the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
Unique to the structure is the representation by the Board of Overseers at the meetings of the committees and vice versa, creating a crossover that allows for completely informed discussions.
The new structure also included student representation for the first time, which could help to alleviate recent complaints against a lack of transparency from the administration.
Liebowitz believes that the College can help other institutions realize the importance of an improved level of governance communication.
“Institutions of governance are recognizing that the world is changing,” said Liebowitz. “The external pressures that are on higher education in general means that Boards need to look at their governance structures, many of which have not changed in decades, including our own, which is why we made our changes,” he said. “Whether or not others follow our lead, we are in the forefront of institutions like us talking about governance,” he concluded.
Last Monday, Liebowitz attended a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Mellon Foundation on the issue of Boards of Governance.
“We’re sort of on the forefront now; we will tweak the system; we will change the system over the next few years once we learn what works and what works less well,” he said.
Liebowitz claimed that the College is only “one-third of the way through.”
He said there are still steps to be taken in respect to changes in faculty and student governance at the College.
“Eventually we think students will have to look at their governance structures,” he said. “Do they need different committees, does a community council really meet the needs of students, and should students be represented differently? What are the issues over which students ought to have oversight?”
The meeting began on Thursday, Sept. 18 with a Trustee orientation and a retreat about faculty governance. The Trustees invited the Faculty Governance-working group and the Faculty Council to the retreat and heard from faculty on what was most important to them about governance.
The three Overseer Boards spent Friday morning doing more orientation in order to be best educated about the different programs. Meetings of the Overseers and the Committees took up the rest of the weekend for the Trustees.
Although the biggest point on the agenda was the new identity system, there was not very much headway made in implementing it. The specific logos of the identity system are proving to be the biggest issue, according to Liebowitz. Although the Trustees did not vote on any logos, there was a consensus that the Identity System is important and the issue of the logos should be figured out soon.
“In terms of showing our so-called logos I believe we are in a good place. It’s going to be a compromise,” said Liebowitz.
The College is going to hold two open meetings on the College and the Monterey Institute of International Studies campuses. Liebowitz says that the College hopes to get feedback from both communities in an effort to confirm and implement the new Identity System by January.
(10/01/14 8:13pm)
After falling to Hamilton in a NESCAC matchup on Friday, Sept. 26, the Middlebury volleyball team bounced back to win a pair of matches in the Skidmore Classic on Saturday, defeating St. John Fisher and Skidmore each in straight sets.
The Panthers entered the match against Hamilton with newfound momentum after defeating Bates 3-0 in their NESCAC season opener. The Continentals, meanwhile, had jumped out to a fast 8-3 start to the season, including a win in their sole conference match.
The first set of the Hamilton match was tight from the opening serve, with both teams failing to hold on to leads. After falling behind early, Middlebury took the lead at 16-15 on a kill from Piper Underbrink ’15 before three consecutive Hamilton points gave the lead back to the Continentals. A kill from Olivia Kolodka ’15 brought the Panthers within a single point of winning the set at 24-23, but Hamilton snatched it away with three points of their own to take the set 26-24.
The second set was another tough loss for Middlebury. The Panthers stretched their early lead to 17-13 midway through the set on a kill from middle hitter Melanie English ’17 before the Continentals went on a run to take the lead for themselves. After drawing within one on a kill from Olivia Kolodka, the Panthers were unable to cap the comeback and fell 25-23.
The third set was all Middlebury. Hannah Blackburn ’17 recorded a pair of consecutive service aces to key a six-point streak for the Panthers. A kill by Olivia Kolodka, with an assist from Blackburn, finished off the set for Middlebury with a 25-12 win.
Looking to even the match at two sets apiece in the fourth set, however, Middlebury squandered a six-point lead by ceding 11 straight points to Hamilton. Despite offensive contributions from Olivia Kolodka, Emily Kolodka ’18 and outside hitter Charlotte Devine ’17, Middlebury went on to lose the match with a 25-19 loss in the set.
Olivia Kolodka led the Middlebury attack against Hamilton with 13 kills, while Emily Kolodka added 11 of her own. The Panthers fell in four sets despite earning just one fewer point than the Continentals, with the close losses in the first and second sets creating a hole out of which Middlebury could not dig themselves.
Saturday’s Skidmore Classic opener against St. John Fisher would be a different story, with Middlebury consistently outplaying their opponent to win in consecutive sets.
The Kolodka sisters again starred for the Panthers against St. John Fisher, with each contributing nine kills while Underbrink added seven of her own. Blackburn recorded 27 assists against just one error, while captain Lizzy Reed ’15 led the team with 17 digs. The Cardinals, meanwhile, were plagued by attack errors as they were unable to weather the heat from an aggressive Middlebury squad.
The weekend finale against host Skidmore was another win for Middlebury, with the Panthers sandwiching nearly flawless first and third sets around a gritty second-set win to beat the host Thoroughbreds 3-0.
In the first set, the Panthers registered 13 kills against just four errors on 40 total attempts for an impressive .225 kill percentage. Emily Kolodka took center stage for Middlebury in that set and would finish the match with 13 kills to lead all players.
The second set was not as dominant for Middlebury. The Panthers fell behind 23-21 on a Skidmore service ace, but were able to rally around Blackburn’s strong serving to take the set 25-23. Middlebury regained their form from the first set in the third, however, and outplayed the host team throughout en route to a 25-16 win.
First-year outside hitter Becca Raffel ’18 played a significant role in the Panthers’ win over Skidmore with nine kills. Underbrink and Emily Kolodka combined for 22 more to pace Middlebury against the Thoroughbreds, while Blackburn’s table-setting game again stood out.
With a 2-1 record on the weekend, the Panthers improve their season record to 4-5 overall and 1-1 in conference play. Their ability to play tough with Hamilton – who currently occupies the second spot in the NESCAC standings – bodes well for the Panthers’ season prospects as they look to improve their record going forward and solidify a spot in the NESCAC postseason.
Middlebury resumes its conference slate this weekend, Oct. 3 and 4, with a pair of road matchups against conference frontrunners Amherst and Williams.
(09/25/14 3:38am)
Middlebury College hosted the MiddAction Fair in the Wilson Social Space on Sept. 16. Community volunteer organizations from Middlebury and surrounding towns came to connect with students interested in offering their time to valuable causes. The organizations that came to the fair had a wide variety of goals that ranged from caring for the elderly to providing education for members of the local community.
Everybody Wins, a Vermont state children’s mentoring organization, has a branch in Middlebury’s Mary Hogan Elementary. Student and adult mentors are matched one-on-one for an hour of reading, mentorship and bonding each week.
“The children love feeling like an adult is really paying attention to them, and they really love having college students” said one adult mentor. “I almost feel bad because I see how excited they get with the college students, and my kid is stuck with me!”
The children sign up for the program, so they are always enthusiastic to meet with their mentors. There is a waiting list for mentors, so volunteers are always welcome.
Foxcroft Farm, based in Leicester, Vermont, is a harvest program that offers educational services for youth. The participants range from preschool students to seniors in high school. Different programs are targeted at specific age groups. The mission of the organization is to “develop, support and sustain effective and affordable educational opportunities for youth that will help them to be independent, productive, responsible, caring and contributing members of their community.” Middlebury students can primarily help by being good role models while participating in programs with children. However, the organization could also use help with fundraising, grant writing and events.
HOPE (Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects) is dedicated to providing services to those who live in poverty. In addition to operating a food bank in Addison County, the organization runs a thrift store, owns low income housing sites, offers financial counseling and deals with homeless case management. HOPE is a privately funded organization and therefore has the freedom to choose the kind of help they want to provide. Oftentimes, the organization works with people to accommodate needs that are not covered by government programming. Based in Middlebury, HOPE looks for dedicated Middlebury students to help out with all of its projects.
The Addison County Parent/Child Center aims to get “young families off to the right start.” As the name implies, the Center offers programs for both parents and children. Through its childcare program, the Center hopes to build each child’s self esteem, resiliency skills, self-control and initiative. With only two teachers available to run its nine programs, volunteers create more opportunities for children to have one-on-one attention. The Center also provides classes for parents, and could use Middlebury College students to help teach an English or Math class.
“Most of our families come from poverty,” said one representative, “so they don’t know what it’s like to walk into a place where thirty people are kind to them. We’re built like a house, and that’s for a reason; we look like a home.”
Middlebury’s Bridge School, an independent not-for-profit elementary school located on Exchange Street, is looking for Middlebury students who love kids and wish to work with them on a variety of activities.
“We do a wide range of things and we have a lot of flexibility,” said Cynthia Clarke, one of the school’s full-time staff members. Volunteers can help with academics or just be there to play.
“We look for someone who likes to have fun and be with kids. What they want to do, they can talk to me about and we can make it happen,” said Joe Schine, also a teacher at the school.
The Willowell Foundation, based on 230 acres of land in Monkton, is a non-profit that focuses on connecting people to the environment and the arts. It provides numerous land-based education programs, including Farm to School, a national effort to expose students to the sources of their food. Students help out in community gardens that grow food served in their cafeterias. The Foundation also operates the sail freight project, a freight barge that takes Vermont products to New York City via the Hudson River in order to promote carbon neutral transportation. A number of Middlebury students have helped out with the sail freight project in the past, and students are welcome to aid with the Foundation’s numerous educational programs as well.
Located in Vergennes, the John W. Graham Emergency Shelter provides housing, food, and support to families with children, the sick, the elderly, the mentally ill and those struggling with or recovering from drug addictions. The Shelter helps families and individuals eventually get back on their own feet. Clinicians also regularly come to the Shelter and provide services. Volunteers help the shelter by providing house maintenance, cooking services and childcare.
The Rotary International Club fundraises and donates money and time to various local, state and international projects. One of their global objectives is the promotion of clean water resources. The organization is involved in clean water initiatives all over the world. Through their “Hands to Honduras” program, the Club created water filtration systems, wells, a three-classroom school and a microloan program for people with disabilities in 2012. In 2013, the Rotary Club returned to Honduras and cleared land to make a playground for the school they created. The Rotary Club has worked with Middlebury students before in activities such as Green-Up day and community suppers. The organization meets at Rosie’s on Route 7 at 7 a.m. every Wednesday morning and would love Middlebury College volunteers.
The Charter House meets the needs of members of the community at an economic disadvantage. The House organizes community suppers every Friday night and lunches Monday through Thursday, which feed 200 people. The House farm garden is located in New Haven, Vermont, five miles from campus. The garden produced 5,000 pounds of food this summer. The Charter House uses the food they grow for their community meals and also donates it to the food pantry. The House has transitional housing with apartments and a winter shelter. Students comprise one-third of the volunteer base for the housing program and can help by preparing and serving meals as well as playing with kids at the shelter. The shelter is staffed 24/7. The Charter House offers internships for J-Term and the summer.
Experience Middlebury, a community organization, is responsible for the Chili Fest, the “Very Merry Middlebury” celebrations around Christmas, trick-or-treating on Main Street and Mid-Summer Fest. They offer Middlebury students one-day volunteer opportunities and committee involvement to help plan local events. Middlebury students can gain hands-on knowledge about economic and community development in Middlebury. Experience Middlebury advocates for local businesses and gives them a voice. The organization recently created a website, experiencemiddlebury.com.
Living Well Bristol is a residential care facility in Bristol offering holistic eldercare. They strive to care for the bodies, minds, and souls of senior citizens, whom they offer all organic food and various fun activities including tai chi and musical events. Living Well Bristol aims to bring the local community back to taking care of and cherishing elders. There are no fees for senior citizens to come to the center, and many of those who come have disabilities or are low-income. The organization believes that every Vermont elder deserves excellent healthcare and housing. Middlebury students can get involved with Living Well Bristol by volunteering their time to do activities with senior citizens, as well as simply keeping them company.
(09/24/14 8:43pm)
Most fans of literature associate Leo Tolstoy with his almost universally identifiable War and Peace and regard him as one of the greatest authors of the modern era. One of Tolstoy’s later works, however, The Kreutzer Sonata, had been cast far out of the spotlight for what was, at the time, perceived to be a radical, almost crazed presentation of sexual abstinence and jealous fury-a presentation that illuminated the rather silent marital distress between Tolstoy and his wife.
Recently, Michael Katz, the C.V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and Eastern European Studies added his own name to the list of those interested in this curious, mysterious aspect of Tolstoy’s life. In an unprecedented exploration of the other half of the story behind Tolstoy’s 1889 Kreutzer Sonata, Katz has translated into English the previously neglected counter-stories written in direct response to Tolstoy’s novella.
Presented from the point of view of a middle-aged man who, in a rage of jealousy and disgust of his teenage wife, murders her, The Kreutzer Sonata is taken to present Tolstoy’s own views about sexual abstinence and marriage.
Katz’s journey began at a conference he went to at Tolstoy’s estate just outside of Moscow. There he heard about two unpublished stories written by Tolstoy’s wife, Sophie, and was instantly intrigued.
“She thought that her own marriage was being described by The Kreutzer Sonata, or rather that everyone who read it would think so,” Katz said.
Her fears were not unfounded: she was half of Tolstoy’s age when she married him, and other parallels between Tolstoy’s characters and his own friends and family existed. So she wrote her own variation of her husband’s novella, following its structure with a wife who, half the age of her husband, is murdered by him.
In the manuscript of Sophia’s first story, Whose Fault?, located in the archives in Moscow, Sophia wrote in the margins quotations from her husband’s story that she was simultaneously disagreeing with in the text itself. In response to his mother, Tolstoy’s son then wrote his own version of the original story, in effect polemicizing both his mother and father.
Katz first translated Sophia’s two stories and then Tolstoy’s son’s story.
“I didn’t know I was going to translate the original Kreutzer Sonata when I started, but it was terrific to struggle with a text by Leo Tolstoy, a text that was famous, controversial, and provocative. That was the last one that I did-I saved up,” Katz said.
He also stressed the interconnectedness of the Tolstoy family’s stories.
“My argument is that all of these stories are in dialogue; the wife and the son are replying to the things that the father says,” he said.
The preliminary title for Katz’s translation, therefore, is “The Tolstoy Family Story Contest”.
“The publisher didn’t think that was very funny,” Katz said.
Other Russian scholars have translated Tolstoy’s original story before, but Katz was the first to undertake the wife’s and son’s stories.
“It was very exciting. It was the first project I did after retirement, and this was a wonderful way to start that,” Katz said. “It gave me the opportunity to go to Russia twice. And the support-for a research assistant, for going to conferences, for buying books that I needed in order to conduct the research-the College gave me a great deal of support.”
Katz was also nominated by the College to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and received a Mellon Emeritus Fellowship to support his work, allowing him to travel to Russia and research in archives and museums. Part of the fellowship is also financing Katz’s attendance at a conference in Russia in which he will present his findings throughout the process to his colleagues there. The response from Katz’s colleagues so far, he says, has been excellent.
When asked what he thought was the most significant aspect of The Kreutzer Sonata is, he stressed the dissent of Tolstoy’s wife.
“I think it establishes Sophia Tolstoy as a figure in her own right. She writes well-she’s not a great writer like Tolstoy himself or like Dostoevsky-but she’s clear, she has her own ideas, she defends the right of a woman to seek happiness within a marriage and not just be an instrument of man’s sexual desire. She’s taking on a big fish; you don’t disagree with Tolstoy-easily, at least. He was by then probably the world’s best-known writer. He was an incredible figure. And she takes him on.”
(09/18/14 1:08am)
The fall semester is a time of transition for Middlebury’s Dance Program, as three new faculty members begin to make their mark in the wake of the retirement of longtime Professor of Dance Penny Campbell and the imminent retirement of Professor of Dance Andrea Olsen, who is on sabbatical leave this year. Assisstant Professor of Dance Christal Brown envisions a revamping of the dance curriculum, which will aid students in becoming embodied scholars with critical lenses for the creative outlet of the medium.
Brown expressed the hope that the program’s image to the greater campus is one of clarity and accessibility.
“We want to make it clear that dance is just as rigorous an academic discipline as others,” she said. “It can be easy to dismiss a field of study one knows little about, especially those in the arts, as not as academically serious as, say, physics or economics, but each area of study holds it own challenges and rewards, and no one discipline is greater than another.”
As the dance program evolves, the three new faculty members will bring their varying perspectives and visions to Middlebury this year.
Tzveta Kassabova is joining the long-term faculty as an Assistant Professor of Dance. Originally from Bulgaria, she came to the United States in 1999 with the intention of studying meteorology at the University of Maryland.
“I knew my secret mission was to dance, and so I ran away to New York,” she said.
With her Masters in meteorology in hand, in New York City she danced with the David Dorfman Dance Company and in other choreographers’ works. After a few years, Kassabova returned to the University of Maryland to pursue her MFA in dance, expand her views on art and build a body of original dance works. She then began showing her own choreography in the Washington, D.C. area and teaching at the University of Maryland and George Washington University. Before coming to the College, Kassabova taught for two years as a full time guest artist at the University of Florida, where she was involved in shaping the dance program and curriculum, as she hopes to do at the College as part of the core dance faculty.
During the summer Kassabova attended a workshop led by Olsen, where she experienced firsthand the teaching of a professor who has been a guiding force in the dance program for so long.
“It was wonderful to get a sense of continuation ... of exchange,” Kassabova said.
This semester Kassabova is teaching Introduction to Dance and Advanced Beginning Dance, in which she strives to create a welcoming experience to students just beginning or continuing their journey with dance, and to encourage them to explore and expand their capabilities.
Trebien Pollard is the new Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance and the Artistic Director of Dance Company of Middlebury (DCM) this year. A gymnast in early life, Pollard was introduced to dance in high school, and after studying mathematics education at Florida A&M University, he moved to New York City to train at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. He then joined the Martha Graham Ensemble and continued dance professionally for 12 years in various other companies, including Pascal Rioult Dance Theater, Erick Hawkins Dance Co., and the MET (Metropolitan Opera Ballet). In 2004 he received his MFA in Dance from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and began teaching and choreographing for the University of Southern Mississippi, Adelphi University, Queens College and Goucher College before arriving at the College.
Pollard’s work as a choreographer often explores themes of identity and our perception of it. By integrating costumes, poetry and music with performance, his work challenges audiences to explore different ways of seeing. In directing DCM this year, he expressed his hope that students will be open to collaborative inquiry and discovery.
“When you come in with too many of your own ideas based on where you’ve come from, it doesn’t leave room for exploring, for experimenting,” he said.
Pollard is teaching Dance History in the fall, as well as an open ballet class.
In the Artist-in-Residence position this year is Scotty Hardwig. After growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of Southern Virginia, he double majored in English and Dance at the University of Virginia. Hardwig chose to be a professional dancer precisely because it was one of the hardest things he could have done, and because of the honesty of dance as a form of self-expression.
“Whenever I’m performing in my work or whenever I make a piece, I’m creating something that’s the most me that I could express, in the most full and intense way possible,” he said.
Hardwig’s work in choreography is deeply engaged with digital media, and he explores how technology can help us make connections rather than alienating us from ourselves and our environment. By creating dance works for film in natural locations, Hardwig is able to bring his audience, via the language of the body and the medium of the camera, to places and experiences not possible in the traditional setting of a dance theater. In his spring Movement and Media course, Hardwig hopes to share the myriad possibilities for integrating the potential for digital technology into the art form of dance while maintaining a strong focus on technique, particularly in contact improvisation.
This fall Hardwig is teaching Anatomy and Kinesiology and will be choreographing works for the Fall Dance Concert, the Faculty Concert and the DCM.
The fall, the Dance Program is overflowing with the fresh experience of these new faculty, who are all three excited to share their perspectives on the study of dance and to shape the development of dance at the College.
(09/18/14 1:04am)
At the end of last semester, the artists behind The Storytold Project were gathering momentum to debut a revitalized and reorganized organization at the start of the fall term. As promised, the program is now taking flight with a new, user-friendly website, faculty advisor and ambitions to expand the project as a vehicle of campus-wide artistic collaboration.
The mission of Storytold is basic and fundamentally loyal to the Project’s initial foundation – students submit one or two sentences outlining a story they want to read, and in return receive personalized stories, delivered in weekly installments, created by Storytold’s narrative team.
Ben Mansky ’15 had been ruminating over a way to expand his love for narrative storytelling for years.
“I’ve always been interested in storytelling in a whole variety of ways,” he said. “I grew up around not just books, but plays and video games, as well. I figured there’s no better opportunity to try and start something like this than now, so when the idea struck me for a way to have a story that is truly your own, that you not only want to read but that you have a personal attachment to, I knew that that was an opportunity that didn’t yet exist. So I thought, ‘Why not?’”
Over the summer, Mansky performed logistical troubleshooting to improve the accessibility and efficiency of Storytold. After creating a more concise and engaging website, genre specifications were added to the story request form, allowing students to choose up to two narrative categories, ranging from historical to thriller to comedy to fantasy. This additional request narrows the focus for both the student desiring a story and the artists at Storytold while still allowing imaginations to run wild.
When requesting a story at www.story-told.com, students can choose to receive their narrative in installments ranging from one to ten weeks as opposed to the 20 week option available last year, with each installment anywhere from two to ten pages. Stories can be privately delivered to a student’s mailbox or publicly posted on the project’s website for other students to read.
“The shortened length of each request is more manageable for our writers to take on during the year, as is asking for more specific plot bits instead of just something wide open,” Mansky said. “Maybe eventually we’ll be able to open that up more, but as we keep recruiting, we’ll keep it specific.”
In addition to fundamental formatting changes, Mansky also accomplished his goal of finding a faculty advisor for Storytold. Visiting Assistant Professor of English & American Literatures Kathryn Kramer will lend official credibility and advice to the group while allowing student ideas and creativity to remain at the core of the project.
“Mostly I think we’re trying to take this into our own hands as a student run project, for the students, by the students, but it’s going to be really nice to have [Kramer] as a resource to tap into as a presence in the creative writing department,” Mansky said.
Though the idea of Storytold is steeped in simplicity, the breadth of work and student collaborations that can result from the project are intricate and endless. The acquisition of artists across mediums will eventually allow the publication of stories with visual, interactive and even theatrical components.
“Because it’s really applicable to all different art forms and media, hopefully we can collaborate with radio theater, some of the literary journals and some of the other arts around campus,” Mansky said. “To be able to develop relationships with other student groups that are around would definitely be the primary goal once we’ve been established as something that exists on campus.”
Recruiting and managing student schedules have been the biggest difficulties in establishing Storytold as a prominent student organization. Though two students interested in contributing to the project graduated in May, two writers currently remain on the team for this year.
Interested writers, illustrators and graphic artists are encouraged to attend Storytold’s first meeting of the semester tonight, Thursday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m. in the LaForce lounge. To be a part of the Storytold team students can also apply at www.story-told.com or by emailing apply@story-told.com or bmansky@middlebury.edu.
“There’s always the question of why is this something that we would want or need, and that’s something that I’m sure plenty of people might think in relation to a project like this, but I don’t think that will be a roadblock or a problem,” Mansky said. “It always has been and will be a labor of love for us.”
Eventually, Mansky would like to see Storytold expand beyond the College as a service available to anyone with access to the Internet.
Three stories are currently available to read on www.story-told.com, and students are welcome to start making requests now.
At its very core, Storytold is a new forum for students to exercise their skills in narrative storytelling. What sets the project apart is the opportunity for interaction, allowing students to request, write and read stories that were crafted from idea to finished product by students. Storytold is trying to redefine the creative part of creative writing, banishing the isolation of writer and page to allow an innovative, personalized brand of narration that has never existed on this campus before.
(09/10/14 8:30pm)
On Sept. 4, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz announced a proposal for a new Middlebury identity system. The proposal was detailed in an email Liebowitz sent to all students, staff and faculty.
If approved, the identity system will formally incorporate the Middlebury name into the official title of each school outside of the core undergraduate program. For example, the Bread Loaf School of English will subsequently be referred to as the “Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English.”
The term “Middlebury College” will then refer exclusively to the undergraduate school, whereas the general “Middlebury” will be used to collectively describe the College and its graduate schools and programs.
“Middlebury has evolved into an institution that transcends the traditional bounds of a residential liberal arts college,” Liebowitz said in the announcement. “While best known for our preeminent undergraduate college, Middlebury each year educates as many graduate and summer students as undergraduates.”
He added, “The new system would create a common linkage across all our schools while ensuring that each retains and strengthens its unique identity and mission.”
Work on the proposal began after the decennial Reaccreditation Review’s recommendation that the missions of Middlebury’s programs and their relationships to each other be clarified.
“Middlebury was somewhat of a surprise to the visiting team as they were not quite aware that we have been awarding 200+ M.A. degrees through the Language Schools and Bread Loaf School of English for decades, or that we had become such a complex organization over time,” said Liebowitz in an email interview with The Middlebury Campus.
Though Liebowitz initiated the proposal for the identity system, day-to-day project management has been the responsibility of Vice President for Communications Bill Burger.
“We think that the identity system will help raise Middlebury’s visibility because a lot of really interesting things are happening at [the other schools], but people don’t understand that it’s Middlebury that is running them,” Burger said.
Liebowitz and Burger have both incorporated the community in the process as much as possible. Thus far, they have received suggestions, comments and feedback from over 300 faculty, staff, students and alumni in the Middlebury and Monterey communities.
For Burger, efforts have been especially strong in Monterey. Founded in 1955 as the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies, the institute was later renamed the “Monterey Institute of International Studies” and signed an affiliation agreement with the College in 2005. In 2010, it formally became the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a Graduate School of Middlebury College.
If the proposal for the identity system is approved, the institute will be renamed the “Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.”
“There’s no question this is a more significant change for the Monterey Institute than is for the other schools,” said Burger. “We’ve tried to be very respectful of that by bringing as many people into the conversation as we can.”
“One reason we have taken so long, gone through so much process, and shown [the proposal] to so many people is that we wanted to make sure this would work. And that’s why we’re really being as inclusive as possible,” Burger said.
Town hall meetings will be taking place in Middlebury and Monterey. A presentation will be held for the Board of Trustees on Sept. 19, and a formal vote will take place on Sept. 20. If approved, rollout will take place over the next few months.
Burger said, “It’s been a fascinating and interesting project. So many people care about these things — which is great, because it shows how much they care about Middlebury. We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback, and we’ve made a lot of adjustments based on that feedback.”
In the conclusion to his email, Liebowitz said, “We have entered a period of great change in higher education. It is more important than ever for us to create clarity in describing and administering our rich and varied academic programs. The newly proposed identity system will help us achieve that clarity to the benefit of our individual programs and to the larger institution.”
(09/10/14 8:24pm)
Sunday was my 20th birthday. The occasion called for some self-reflection — Do I like who I am and how I’ve spent my time? What kind of impact am I leaving on this planet? — but it also marked the two-year point of my political involvement.
When I entered kindergarten in 2000, we had a mock election following the Bush and Gore campaigns. I have to imagine that every child turned to his or her parents for guidance, as I did.
“Mom,” I asked one day over breakfast, “What’s a Democrat? What’s a Republican?” She leaned back in her wooden chair and looked at me over her glasses.
“Democrats,” she said, “want to help the poor and those less fortunate,” (She paused to let that altruism set in).
“Republicans,” she continued, “are selfish and want to keep all their money for themselves.” With that, her chair snapped back into place and she continued to read the New York Times.
Not surprisingly, I voted for Al Gore in my class election, and I was just as disappointed at his actual loss as my parents were in November.
My affiliation with the Democratic Party did not stop there, though. In fact, my experiences growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area only amplified it. I went to a high school where someone once drove onto campus in a Hummer and the nearby students booed until the gas-guzzler left. I took an English class called “Why War?” and participated in the Peace and Justice Coalition. My brother is gay and at various times members of my family have benefited from “government handouts.” So, do I come from a liberal background? 100 percent.
But I reached a point during my senior year of high school when I wanted to validate these claims. I knew that in my area, a county where 74 percent of the population voted for Barack Obama, it was easy to become “a close-minded open-minded person” as a wise friend once put it.
Thus, I started reading up. I watched Barack Obama and Mitt Romney debate, I scoured the web for political op-eds, and I pestered the few Republicans I knew until they engaged with me in ideological discussions. I soon realized that my mom’s Republican profile was not one-size-fits-all, and an improved understanding of the former enemy helped form my own views.
All of this political soul-searching coincided with my turning 18. I registered to vote ASAP and, (maybe this was overcompensating) tried to spread my election joy and register other young people, too. I registered over 50 new voters, and I encouraged each of them to research the issues at stake in the 2012 election regardless of what their families and/or peers believed.
Such autonomy in political thought is the exact point of this piece and column to follow. Phil Hoxie ’17.5 and I will alternate writing op-eds in which we explore our respective partisan beliefs. Phil, an establishment Republican, will counter my pieces from a moderate liberal’s perspective.
So, now I’ve announced where on the political spectrum all that soul-searching left me and it begs the same questions — am I pleased with what I’ve accomplished? With my impact on the planet?
I cannot yet say definitively, but I know that my two years of political involvement have brought me closer to answers. Between engaging as a voter in the 2012 election and volunteering for the Obama campaign, (oops, I left that detail out when I was trying to maintain objectivity) I have come to hold the opinion that being a Democrat betters my actions and impact as a U.S. citizen.
While my mother may have been blunt and judgmental in her original description of Democrats and Republicans, I do not think that she was without reason. I voted for Barack Obama in my first real presidential election and judging by the current state of America’s partisan system, I will continue to stay blue. I welcome Phil to challenge this plan of action, however, and anyone else through responses to this column. If you find yourself in a similar state of 20-something self-reflection, this might be a good place to start.
Artwork by JENA RITCHEY
(09/10/14 8:11pm)
As my German school friends and I hurtled up the steps of McCardell Bicentennial Hall, pressing all the elevator buttons to get there fast, I felt like I was clambering through a window back into childhood, when I lined up for hours on end to gaze at spectacles in circuses.
Sliding up the staircase of the Observa- tory curled in the shape of DNA — or just curly fries — I was sucked through a time tunnel. I remember whispering to my friend (in German), ‘This feels just like the chamber where HAL lives, in 2001: A Space Odyssey!’
As you peer through the aperture, you don’t know whether you are looking through a telescope or a microscope. Saturn was so small — as if it were a cartoon on a fuzzy CRT television with a pet-moon on its hip. I felt like I was watching a scene from Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon, except, this time it is Saturn — a slight thumbprint in the sky, just barely there. At the same time, you realize you are staring into the deep abyss of space. It is strange to be in contact with something so absurdly distant. I couldn’t help but sympathize with Saturn — so isolated and far away! It must tally the rotations of its moons (how many lightyears more?!) and hurry to align itself to other planets for their timely rendezvous.
It must both love and hate the sun for holding the solar system together and yet binding it to this irrevocable and eternal rotation. At least it has its moons, its rings and the sun’s illumination, unceasing through the seasons to accompany its endless toil.
After going up to the viewing tower, we went down to the open-air podium where smaller telescopes were set. As one of my Chinese friends amd I waited in the queues, we spoke in a mixture of Cantonese, English and German. I was driven into confusion — the perfect subject-verb order was broken into the structureless combination of Chinese words, in which meaning are strained into small frames of pictures, which are then verbalized into curt, stark syllables. Sometimes I feel like Cantonese is the exact opposite of German. While Cantonese is spoken with nine tones, expressing its meaning sensually as if in music, German words arrive logically at their meaning with word particles. For example, with ‘fern’, meaning distance, and ‘weh’ meaning pain, the word ‘fernweh’ is formed meaning wanderlust (which is also an example of this logic).
We also saw the surface of the moon up close. It is a pregnant curve — a chalk-pale cheek pockmarked with craters. Mars was a jittering tungsten filament. You aren’t sure if the image was an afterimage printed in the back of your eyeballs after you stare at a lightbulb for too long.
My best friend Annie from Hong Kong goes to a school in a city. She envies me for having the advantage of height, as our school is perched on a hill. Moments when you can stare into the far distance are indeed luxurious, but we have too much of that in Middlebury. I find it impossible to ponder these bodies in the sky. Sometimes the walk from Proctor to the Library is too long and stark, and I yearn to resign my thoughts to the noise and chaos of ill- managed city planning.
(09/10/14 2:42pm)
Volleyball
Going into the 2014 season, the Middlebury volleyball team will have to reload after losing a pair of all-conference outside hitters as they look to improve upon their 18-7 mark from a year ago.
After winning the conference championship two years ago in 2012, Middlebury tumbled to sixth in the regular-season NESCAC standings in 2013, and fell to Amherst in the conference quarterfinals – a disappointing finish for a squad that was flush with senior talent.
With the departure of Megan Jarchow ’14 and Amy Hart ’14 – who combined for nearly 70 percent of the Panthers’ kills a year ago – Middlebury will look to Olivia Kolodka ’15, Melanie English ’17 and Lizzy Reed ’15 to bolster the attack in 2014. Hannah Blackburn ’17 and Kathryn Haderlein ’16 return as the Panthers’ top setters from last season, and their play will be crucial if Middlebury is to recover from the loss of Jarchow and Hart.
After a relatively easy early-season schedule, the Panthers travel to challenge a pair of perennial conference frontrunners in Williams and Amherst on the weekend of Oct. 3-4. With women’s volleyball looking to bolster their resume for postseason play, the regular-season finale at home against Tufts on Nov. 1 will also be an important opportunity.
Men's Soccer
Filling a defensive unit formerly anchored by graduated seniors ranks among the top priorities for the men’s soccer team in the 2014 season. Second team all-NESCAC honoree Graham Knisley ’14 was among the seven departing seniors, as was starting goalkeeper Ethan Collins ’14. Co-captain Willie Gevertz ’14.5 returns to the team after receiving a medical waiver for a fifth year of eligibility and will rejoin standout Deklan Robinson ’16 on the back line.
Fortunately for Middlebury, they return almost all of their offensive weapons. Every multiple goal-scorer returns for the 2014 season, including NESCAC Rookie of the Year and first team all-NESCAC selection Adam Glaser ’17. Dan Skayne ’15 and Greg Conrad ’17, who netted five goals apiece last season, also return for the Panthers.
Leading the team in the midfield will be co-Captains Harper Williams ’15 and Noah Goss-Woliner ’15, both of whom have started in that position for multiple years.
The men’s team looks to improve on last year’s 9-5-1 (5-4-1) season that ended in the NESCAC quarterfinals with a 3-2 defeat at the hands of Williams. Middlebury’s last conference championship came in 2010.
“We were young last year and almost broke through, and this year we’re looking to be really good,” Robinson said. “Winning the NESCAC is our goal, along with making the NCAA tournament.”
The men dive right into a tough NESCAC schedule that includes a key trip to Williams on Oct. 1. Their non-conference games are dispersed throughout the season and will include several mid-week games to complement the weekend conference competition.
Cross Country
After a successful 2013 season in which the men finished a program-best seventh in the NCAA and the women scored a podium spot in third, the Middlebury cross country teams look to continue as NESCAC and national powerhouses in 2014.
The women’s team boasts five of the six top returning runners in the NESCAC. Leading the charge will be track All-Americans Erzsie Nagy ’17 and Alison Maxwell ’15. The team is bolstered this year by the addition of Adrian Walsh ’16, a transfer from Hamilton who boasts an impressive resume of NCAA qualifications in cross country and track from the previous year.
“We just need to stay healthy and continue doing what we have been doing,” Head Coach Nicole Wilkerson said.
On the men’s side, the team hopes to continue its surge towards top national finishes. The team will be led by Wilder Schaaf ’14.5 and Kevin Wood ’15, both of whom translated last year’s cross country success into impressive times on the track in the spring. Sebastian Matt ’16 also looks to be a player in both NESCAC and regional races for the Panthers.
The Panthers play host to the NESCAC Championship this year on Nov. 1. The women look to defend their title on their home course while the men hope to regain the top spot in the conference from 2013 champion Williams.
Prior to NESCACs, key races on the schedule include the Purple Valley Classic hosted by Williams – also home of this years NCAA Regional meet – on Sept. 27 as well as the Open New England Championships at Franklin Park in Boston on Oct. 11, where the Panthers will be pitted against top Division-I talent.
Tennis
Though their primary competitive seasons are in the spring, the Middlebury men’s and women’s tennis teams will take the court this fall to build upon their strong seasons from last year.
The Panther men had an historic season a year ago, falling just short of both conference and national championships – both of which went to NESCAC rival Amherst. En route to the NCAA semifinals, Middlebury had four players selected as All-Americans, with Palmer Campbell ’16 being the sole member of that quartet to return in 2014. Campbell will be joined by second-team All-NESCAC selection Ari Smolyar ’16, Courtney Mountifield ’15 and Jackson Frons ’16 as the top players for the 2014 conference Coach of the Year, Bob Hansen.
On the women’s side, Middlebury returns a young, talented team that will be led by sophomore sensation Alexandra Fields ’17, last year’s national Rookie of the Year. With the added experience of NCAA quarterfinalist Ria Gerger ’16 and Kaysee Orozco ’17, the Panthers will have a great chance to surpass last year’s NESCAC semifinal appearance and contend for both a conference and national championship.
The competitive highlight of the fall for both the men and women is the ITA championship, which takes place in late September. Though secondary to the spring’s NCAA championship, the ITA will give the Panthers an opportunity to test themselves against top small-college competition and compete for accolades. The men will host an ITA regional on Sept. 26-28 while the women’s tournament will be held in Cambridge, Mass. on that same weekend.
Football
The Middlebury football team had a historic season a year ago, splitting the NESCAC crown – their first since 2007 – with Wesleyan and Amherst as they finished the year 7-1. If the Panthers are going to play at that same level this fall, the first order of business for NESCAC Coach of the Year Bob Ritter will be to replace record-setting quarterback McCallum Foote ’14, a two-time NESCAC Offensive Player of the Year who racked up over 8,000 passing yards and 77 touchdowns during his time in blue.
The task of replacing Foote under center will likely fall to Matt Milano ’16, who will be buoyed by the return of the NESCAC’s most prolific receiving duo in Matt Minno ’16 and Brendan Rankowitz ’15, who combined for 1,200 yards receiving in 2013. The offensive line will be anchored by guard Blake Shapskinsky ’15, while Joey Zelkowitz ’17 figures to see an increased role in the offense as a running back who can catch the ball out of the backfield.
Middlebury returns the cornerstone of their defense in middle linebacker Tim Patricia ’16, who recorded a team-best 78 tackles last season. Safety Matt Benedict ’15 and corner Nate Leedy ’17 return for a Panther secondary that held opponents to a stingy 5.5 yards per pass attempt a season ago. Michael Dola ’15 returns as the conference’s premier specialist.
The Panthers will face a stiff test in their season opener with a home matchup against Wesleyan on Sept. 20. Middlebury’s home date with Amherst on Oct. 4 and visit to Trinity on Oct. 25 should go a long way towards determining which team will be conference champion in 2014.
Women's Soccer
After a stellar season last year in which the Middlebury women’s soccer team won the NESCAC championship and made a historic run to the NCAA final four in San Antonio, the Panthers look to return with a young, yet deep squad and to replicate last season’s success.
The Panthers will look to their seniors and underclassmen players step up in the places of some key players, including two All-American selections, who have graduated. Goalkeeper Elizabeth Foody ’14, center back Lindsay Kingston ’14 and 2013 NESCAC Player of the Year Julia Favorito ’14 are some of the strong players will not be returning.
Captains Katlyn Casey ’15, Sophie Kligler ’15, Hannah Robinson ’16 and Moria Sloan ’15, along with fellow seniors Carter Talgo ’15, Molly Parizeau ’15, Claire Nishioka ’15 and Ali Omsberg ’15, will lead the squad. They will be supported by a number of skilled underclassmen including forwards Krystina Reynolds ’17 and Adrianna Gildner ’17, Amanda Haik ’17 at center back, Katherine Hobbs ’17 at the center holding midfield position and Kate Reinmuth ’17 in goal.
The Panthers’ schedule will be difficult this year in the ever-competitive NESCAC with perennial powerhouses Williams and Amherst looking to take the conference crown away from Middlebury.
It will be difficult for Middlebury to improve upon last year’s historic 17-2-3 season, but the Panthers appear to have the personnel to do so in 2014.
Field Hockey
Coming off a season in which they mounted a late comeback to defeat Bowdoin for the program’s second consecutive NESCAC title, the Middlebury field hockey team will rely heavily on their offensive experience as they launch their defense of the conference crown in 2014.
Midfielder Cat Fowler ’15 returns as the reigning NESCAC Player of the Year for the Panthers and will look to replicate her team-best 52 points in 2013. Offensive stalwarts Bridget Instrum ’16 and Pam Schulman ’17 combined for another 52 points a year ago and will be key contributors up front this season. Alyssa Dimaio ’15 is a four-year starter and a multi-dimensioned threat in the midfield for Middlebury.
On the defensive end, the Panthers will have to reload after losing a pair of all-conference players to graduation. Jillian Green ’16 and Shannon Hutteman ’16 – along with a cohort of underclassmen – will anchor the defense, while Emily Knapp ’15 returns as the starter in goal for Middlebury.
A late-season question mark for this team will be their ability to overcome a string of disappointing finishes in the NCAA tournament. Despite being ranked in the top two spots in the nation entering the postseason during each of the last two seasons, the Panthers have not advanced past the quarterfinals since their championship-game appearance in 2011, the current seniors’ first year in the program.
Entering the year with a number-five national ranking, the Panthers should face stiff competition this season from Bowdoin, Tufts and Amherst – all of whom appear in the national top 10.
Golf
The men’s and women’s golf teams arrived at Middlebury a few days early to start their campaigns for a successful fall in 2014.
After a tremendous 2013-2014 season, the men’s team hopes to continue their dominance of the four-team NESCAC and to continue to have a presence at the spring’s NCAA championships. Even though the team will play without its two captains from last year, three of the five players who competed at nationals are returning.
John Louie ’15 – the spring 2014 NESCAC Player of the Year – is part of that group and will add tremendous value to the success of the team. Another formidable force is Eric Laorr ’15, who recorded the Panthers’ best score at NCAAs and who nearly qualified for the national individual tournament.
The women’s team had a down season last year, so their intent is to regain their best form. Many of the same competitors will be returning for the Panthers, with the exception of Monica Chow ’16, who will be abroad during the fall.
Returning seniors and captains Jordan Glatt ’15 and Michelle Peng ’15 look to shoot consistently low scores for Middlebury. The Panthers suffered in 2013-2014 from a lack of consistency and will look to Theodora Yoch ’17 and first-years Kathy Fortin ’18 and Hope Matthews ’18 to provide much-needed depth that could bolster their overall team finishes this fall.
The Panthers open their fall in a tournament at NYU on Sept. 13, which will be a good test for the team to see where they need to improve.
(05/08/14 12:16am)
Two students, Rana Abdelhamid ’15 and Spencer Salibur ’15, were selected as winners of prestigious Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowships which will provide them with financial support for two years of undergraduate and graduate study in preparation for work as a Foreign Service Officer.
The Pickering Fellowship, named in honor of Thomas R. Pickering, former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, El Salvador, Israel, India and the Russian Federation, provides “academic and professional preparation for outstanding candidates to enter the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service, representing America’s interests abroad.” Winners receive up to $40,000 annually for two years meant to defray costs of attending undergraduate and graduate school. Recipients also commit to a minimum of five years of service as a Foreign Service Officer in the United States Department of State.
Through the Fellowship and her eventual service as a Foreign Service Officer, Abdelhamid hopes to continue the work as a human rights advocate that she started in her teenage years. When Abdelhamid was 17, she founded the Women’s Initiative for Self Empowerment (WISE), which teaches young women self-defense, leadership and entrepreneurship skills. She worked on human rights causes through Amnesty International at home in Flushing, New York before coming to the College and founding the College’s own chapter of Amnesty International.
Abdelhamid plans to apply to programs at the Harvard Kennedy School and Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and is also interested in going to law school. “Either way,” she wrote in an email, “I want to continue my women’s rights advocacy work.”
On April 29, it was also announced that Abdelhamid was selected for a 2014 Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which provides $30,000 for specialized study.
Salibur, who is an International and Global Studies major with dual focuses on Latin America and Economics, wrote in an email that she has been fascinated with foreign countries from a young age and attributed that interest to her parents, who are from Haiti and Guadeloupe and raised her in a trilingual household speaking French, Haitian Creole and English.
“I applied for the fellowship because of my interest in working abroad to learn from and strengthen relations with other communities abroad and because of the strong relation between working in the foreign service,” Salibur wrote. “I am really excited for many parts of this opportunity: to go to graduate school and further my education and understanding of international affairs and economics; … for my postings abroad [and] the opportunity to be a foreign service officer and the amazing opportunity to work, connect and learn about other communities abroad.”
Both winners are also Posse Foundation scholars. The Posse Foundation awards scholarships to partner institutions such as Middlebury to high-achieving students “who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes.” The College has hosted Posse classes (groups of students from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles) each year since 1999.
Additional reporting by RENEE CHANG
(05/07/14 8:15pm)
Cindy Lee wakes up at 3:15 a.m. five days a week and drives 45 minutes to work at the laundry room in Freeman International Center (FIC). She starts off her day with emails and bookwork. Around 9:30 a.m. the truck arrives full with bags of dirty laundry from the three dining halls and any other catered events on campus. The bags can weigh 75 pounds, so it takes two people to lift each one off the truck. The staff then refills the truck with the previous day’s laundry and throws the first loads of towels in the washers as quickly as possible. It then takes the staff 45 minutes to an hour to sort through the rest of the laundry, checking all the uniform pockets to make sure nothing unusual gets tossed in the wash.
A typical day includes six to eight washer-loads, each of which is divided into two to three dryer loads and then put through the press and folded. Lee skips lunch so she can get off work at 1:30, in time to pick up her two sons from elementary school.
“It can be a very monotonous job,” Lee said. “Especially when you’re standing at a press for five to six hours, just putting flat sheets in — white flat sheets — or table linen, or napkins that just take forever.”
But then every day brings also its surprises; depending what the truck brings in the morning, the staff might be overloaded with dirty laundry, or face an easier day ahead with time for straightening up the storage or someone from a department outside of Dining Services could call in last minute with an order for linens. It is nearly impossible for Lee to plan a day ahead of time.
“I don’t think there’s ever a day that’s the same,” she said. The constant changes can be stressful, but Lee appreciates these constant shifts. “When the unexpected happens, it kind of breaks up the routine,” she said; she enjoys being taken out of the monotonous rhythm and forced to problem-solve.
Up until 2003, Middlebury College Dining Services rented all their uniforms, aprons, towels and linens through Foley Services Inc., who picked up dirty laundry at the end of the day and brought back a clean batch in the morning. In 2003, the College decided to begin buying their own uniforms and linens, and Lee, who was then 35, applied and was hired to help out serving in Ross Dining Hall and washing the laundry onsite.
The laundry service was a very new program, Lee said, and the College did not totally understand what it would involve when they started. Though they hired Lee to work both in the dining hall and in the laundry room, she rarely work in the dining hall. She had her work cut out for her washing all the aprons, uniforms and linens for Ross using one washer and dryer and a “little tiny press” in a storage closet inside the student laundry room in LaForce.
Within a year, Lee worked with Dining Services to turn over all three dining halls to the College’s newly bought uniforms and linens, moving one building at a time. She worked at first completely by herself, with some help from the dining hall staff during the busiest stretches of graduation, reunion, and commencement. Lee hired a part-time helper for a few years who eventually became full time, and added another part-timer as the program continued to expand.
Five years ago, the job became a lot bigger as Lee was given the added responsibility of washing all the bed linens, towels, and bath mats for the summer language schools and Bread Loaf School of English. With that responsibility came a move to FIC, where she would have the use of a large (approximately ten-foot long) press that pre-folds larger linens part-way, as well as three washers and four dryers, including “Betsy 1” and “Betsy 2,” the original washer and dryer from the storage-closet days in Ross. Lee now supervises a staff of four, and a much larger staff in the summers, including high school and college students, to deal with the heavy load from Commencement and Reunion through the language schools and Bread Loaf programs. Having built up the program from scratch, Lee said she is “very happy with where it’s come.”
Lee had never worked with laundry, except at home, before applying to work at the College. When she moved to FIC and took on laundry for language schools, “it was all new to us,” she said. The staff would ask her how to do something, “and I’d be like, ‘I don’t know!’ I didn’t know how to fold a fitted sheet for the life of me!” she said.
I have also felt clueless throughout my life as to how to fold fitted sheets and usually end up rolling them into a ball, which was also Lee’s technique at home until someone from facilities taught her how to do it. The technique, which she shared with me is in fact amazingly simple, and comes out perfectly flat and square.
Lee said the learning process has been continuous throughout her eleven years supervising laundry services. She makes suggestions to her supervisors that make the job safer and more manageable, such as switching to a smaller bag for dirty laundry so that it could even be possible for her staff to lift the full bags off the cart. Still, the job is constantly changing. Each year she is asked to take on a little more work.
But then again, as Lee said, “life changes on a daily basis, so you just have to go with it. I never get too comfortable because I never know what’s going to be brought!”
When Lee moved to FIC, she hired three fifteen-year-old high school students — including Elise Biette, who is currently a freshman at the College — all of whom stayed with her for four years. Lee said she works to keep the job fun so that her high school and college student workers come back year after year. She keeps a white board that anyone can draw on in the press area (when I came to visit it was covered with Disney figures representing each of the staff’s personalities) and always keeps music playing. In the summertime, the music gets “quite loud,” Lee said, and she has little competitions between the staff to see, for example, who can fold a certain number of napkins the fastest.
In the summer, it can get very hot in the work area, and the workload can be intense, especially at the beginning, when the staff has to turn over all the linens from graduation for reunion two weeks later, which also happens to fall at the same time as the Young Writer’s Conference at Bread Loaf.
“It gets pretty hectic,” Lee said, “turning over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of linens within a week and a half. At the end of language schools is another rush, as her staff washes 2,100 blankets, sheets, mattress pads, towels and bath mats.
It takes about a month to wash all the language school linens. The bags of dirty laundry fill almost the entire dance floor of the Bunker in a seven to eight foot high mountain, as well as a walk-in cooler which the staff piles full all the way up to the fire extinguisher sprinklers on the ceiling — “as high as is legal.”
“It does get crazy in here,” Lee said. She’s had staff cry feeling so overwhelmed by this month of work. She tells her staff to “take it one day at a time; we’re only here, we’re only human, and we’ll do the best we can … there’s nothing else we can do.”
“If we’ve been really stressed,” Lee said, “and I’m looking at people, and it’s like slow-mo, and it’s hot in here too on top of that, I’ll be like ‘field trip!’ And I’ll take everybody outside for five to ten minutes just to get away from this.”
Lee calls a field trip a couple times throughout the summer, and every time, she does, the staff cheers.
When Lee’s three high school workers left her to go on to college last year, she cried to see them go, after she’d been sort of their “mother hen” for the past four years. But she is happy for her students that are now “spreading their wings”; they all stay in contact with her, and they are doing “really well” in college.
Nowadays, Lee finds, high school and college students don’t always possess the same drive as past generations.
“I was brought up differently,” she says, but today parents tend to be more indulgent — “and I treat my kids the same way, you know, I give them everything, so I’m feeding into what I don’t like!” But Lee finds that she has been “really lucky” with her young staff. They have been “really hard workers, really well-rounded students,” both at work and outside, and “good people” all around. Lee has had her share of challenges with some staff-members, “but of the eleven years,” she would say, “it’s been more positive than not.”
When I asked if she foresees working in laundry services for a long time into the future, she said she has “mixed feelings.” She is 46 years old, and this job — lifting the bags of dirty linens off the cart, sorting through eight loads of laundry, switching the loads as quickly as possible in the summer to keep the washers constantly running, standing at the press for five hours at a time — takes a physical toll.
“I would love to stay here and retire from the College,” Lee said, “because I like this job.”
Though the pay is similar to what could be found elsewhere, the benefits for College staff are unmatched in the region. When Lee’s nine- and twelve-year-old sons are old enough for college, they could attend Middlebury at a discounted rate, or receive credit to attend another school. The question, however, Lee said, is whether she will be physically capable of working with laundry services until her retirement.
“What will my body be like in ten to fifteen years?” she asked. “I’m hoping to [retire from the College], yes, but only the future knows that right now.”
Laundry Services is always open — seven days a week, all year long. And, hopefully, for many years into the future, Lee will be there, playing her music at top volume.
(05/07/14 3:54pm)
In recent weeks some faculty colleagues have questioned the College’s investment and participation in Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL). MIL is a for-profit, joint venture created in 2010 by Middlebury and K12 Inc., a Virginia-based company that creates online educational and curricular content for students in grades K-12. Today, approximately 170,000 students learn languages through MIL courses in elementary and secondary schools across the country. For many of these students, these courses provide the only opportunity they have to study a language other than English.
This venture, something new for our institution, raised concerns from the beginning. Colleagues noted that one of the founders of K12 Inc., William Bennett, was a political conservative whom they viewed as hostile to public education. Bennett, however, was long gone from the company by the time we began MIL. Critics also claimed that K12 was aiming to undermine the country’s public education system because of its association with charter schools. In fact, MIL’s courses, which are taught in 1,200 school districts, are making it possible for public schools to continue offering language courses rather than eliminate them as has happened all too often during the past decade. In addition, many new teaching positions have been created as a result of the adoption of MIL courses.
This past year, MIL alone has hired more than 110 language teachers, certified in multiple states, to teach MIL courses. For example, the state of Delaware asked MIL to hire and train four language teachers (two Spanish, one Chinese, and one French), each of whom teaches in multiple schools across the state. For the coming year, Delaware will expand its MIL offerings, which will require the hiring of two additional Spanish teachers. The city of Baltimore, which has contracted this year to use MIL courses, will offer Spanish in ten elementary schools this Fall, and then in all of its elementary schools the next year. The city is hiring new teachers to teach across the 10 schools. And here in Vermont, Weybridge hired a Spanish teacher a couple of years ago to teach the MIL Spanish elementary course, and that teacher now offers Spanish in neighboring elementary schools where MIL is used as an after school program.
The latest round of criticism arose earlier this year after a high school Latin teacher contacted the chair of our Classics Department, Professor Marc Witkin, and noted that a course sold by MIL (but developed by a predecessor company) contained a number of errors, and could be misunderstood to say that the course was developed by Middlebury faculty. Understandably, Professor Witkin found this disturbing. He brought this to my attention and to the attention of others and I thank him for that. The management team at MIL acted quickly: it notified those taking the Latin course of the errors in the course, corrected them, and clarified in its marketing materials that the Latin courses were not developed in partnership with Middlebury or by Middlebury Classics faculty.
I believe MIL acted appropriately and we have put new controls in place to help prevent similar issues in the future. Though Middlebury is a “minority” partner in this collaboration (it owns 40 percent of the company), all new course development has been done by a Middlebury development team, with full authority over the content. This control is a non-negotiable requirement for Middlebury to continue in the venture, as the institution is keenly aware of the need to protect its reputation.
The incident with the Latin course opened the door for those who opposed the MIL venture to propose we sever ties with K12 Inc. and end the venture. Unfortunately, they have chosen to do so by putting forth a narrative that neither provides a full context nor aligns with the facts. A proposed, non-binding faculty motion calling on Middlebury to sever the relationship with K12 Inc. suggests that MIL censored curriculum content to satisfy the Texas Board of Education or other unnamed entities. This is a misleading claim. MIL ultimately decided not use some raw footage it shot for the French and Spanish courses that showed people smoking and drinking alcohol. Such scenes were in the authentic videos shot on site as the courses were in the development process, but were never included in the courses themselves. It was understood that elementary and secondary schools (and parents) would not want to encourage those activities by having them in pre-college textbooks or courses. This strikes me as a sensible decision that hardly rises to the level of censorship.
More to the point, perhaps, is the criticism raised about the exclusionary nature of MIL’s course content; colleagues have objected to how same-sex couples and non-traditional families were excluded from MIL courses. This is largely true, and the MIL development team, led by Middlebury Professor of Linguistics and MIL Chief Learning Officer Aline Germain-Rutherford, has already begun to work on guidelines for a greater inclusion of lesser represented groups in future MIL courses. The team will follow guidelines established by state boards of education, including California, many of which now encourage and even require greater representation of diverse populations in K-12 textbooks and course materials.
Ironically, MIL courses today include greater diversity and are more inclusive of a range of family structures and multicultural perspectives than the course materials used in most, if not all, of the College’s introductory language courses.
Perhaps lost in the criticism, and what should certainly be of interest to all of us, is the positive reviews of MIL course from students, teachers, administrators, and independent researchers at Johns Hopkins University. In a comprehensive study released last year, researchers judged MIL courses to be among the best available of their kind.
It is worth restating the reasons why Middlebury entered into this venture:
• First, we seek to retain our leadership in language teaching, which began 100 years ago with the founding of the Middlebury summer intensive Language Schools and their distinctive approach to language learning. To achieve this goal, we need to experiment with new pedagogies, including online learning. We purposely pursued experimenting outside the “college educational space” so as not to interfere with the traditional pedagogies at the College or confuse MIL’s mission with the College’s. MIL has contributed much to our understanding of what works and does not work with online courses in foreign language teaching and learning, and continues to represent a valuable and cost-effective research and development (“R&D”) vehicle.
•Second, we believed it was important that, as leaders in language instruction, we expand access to language education for pre-college students. The United States continues to lag behind much of the world in language education, and recent cuts to public school budgets have affected the teaching of languages disproportionately: foreign language courses are among the first to be eliminated when budgets need to be trimmed. MIL has the potential to increase access to language education for many students across the country, and has already done that. While little of what we learn might find its way back to our residential liberal arts curriculum, there is no doubt that online learning will soon complement our Language Schools intensive summer curriculum, our Bread Loaf School of English curriculum, and a number of degree programs at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
•Third, we recognized that this venture was an opportunity for Middlebury to develop new revenue sources that would help us sustain our commitment to need-blind admissions, increasing our student body’s socioeconomic diversity through greater financial aid, small class sizes, and competitive salaries to attract and retain an excellent faculty and staff. We can no longer count on annual tuition increases to generate the resources needed to achieve all these goals, and so if MIL ultimately provides revenue to the institution, it will help us preserve what we value most in our residential liberal arts program.
We chose to partner with K12 Inc. due to its experience in creating online pre-college courses successfully in disciplines outside the foreign languages. We knew we could not launch courses independently, as we needed the technological experience and scale to allow for course development and meaningful student and course assessment. Our $4 million investment in MIL, for which we received a 40-percent share of the company, was an investment from our endowment and has no effect on our annual operating budget.
Middlebury’s long record of innovation and experimentation has frequently been questioned by those comfortable with the status quo. This was true in 1915 when the first summer Language School was founded here at Middlebury by a German professor from Vassar College. The Middlebury faculty opposed the idea, arguing that such a program had no place on the Middlebury campus. It was not part of the Middlebury mission, many argued. Thankfully, President John Thomas went ahead with the creation of the Language Schools despite the opposition. Thomas recognized the risks, but also saw the possible long-term rewards from what was then a novel and new way to teach languages and culture.
One hundred years later, there is no doubt that everyone who has studied at Middlebury, whether in the summer at the intensive Language Schools, or here as an undergraduate student, has benefitted from the leadership in language education the Schools have brought to the College. Likewise, pursuing online education with a partner in the pre-college educational space, though beyond the traditional mission of our undergraduate college, has allowed us to experiment, learn, and, hopefully, remain in the forefront of language education for the foreseeable future. Such leadership for a liberal arts institution is rare, and we should neither take it for granted nor rest on our past accomplishments.
RONALD D. LIEBOWITZ is the President of Middlebury College
(04/30/14 11:43pm)
In an email sent to students, faculty and staff at the College and the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) on April 16, Chair of the Presidential Search Committee Al Dragone ’78 announced the roster of the Presidential Search Committee. The announcement is the first step in finding a successor for President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, who will step down at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year.
The Search Committee will include representatives from groups of stakeholders spanning the Middlebury community, including members of the Board of Trustees, the Middlebury Alumni Association, College faculty, College staff, College students and a single representative from both the faculty and staff of MIIS. In his email, Dragone noted that the Search Committee and the Board of Trustees will also rely on assistance from the international executive search firm Spencer Stuart.
Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of American Studies Tim Spears, as well as other members of the Search Committee, declined to provide extensive details about the search process, due in part to the fact that the committee has yet to hold an official meeting.
Spears noted that it is common practice for any college to hire a search firm to assist in the process of finding a new leader. According to Spears, a search firm like Spencer Stuart can use its access to potential candidates to broaden the pool of candidates for the position.
The process will begin with several outreach sessions taking place at MIIS and at the College in early May. In an email notifying the College and MIIS communities of the sessions, Dragone wrote that Spencer Stuart representatives will use these sessions to identify qualities desired in the new president, as well as challenges and opportunities that the new president will encounter. Spencer Stuart will conduct similar sessions this summer at the College’s Breadloaf School of English, as well as at the Summer Language Schools.
Spears said that the sessions will contribute to Spencer Stuart’s generation of a prospectus describing the College and the characteristics sought in a new president to be distributed to candidates interested in the position. He likened the prospectus to the literature on colleges analyzed by high school students during the college admissions process. Spencer Stuart will likely deliver the prospectus by early summer.
Prospective candidates for the presidency may be nominated by members of the Middlebury community or by people who know the College or approached by Spencer Stuart starting over the summer, Spears said.
“If you’re a candidate, you’ve had several conversations with the people from Spencer Stuart — probably done your own due diligence on Middlebury — and then you’ll likely write a statement of interest to submit along with a curriculum vitae, and Spencer Stuart will collect that information and narrow the list,” he said.
The narrowed list of candidates will receive consideration by the Search Committee. The Search Committee will interview candidates and ultimately recommend a candidate to the Board of Trustees, which will make the final decision. The Search Committee has not yet decided how much interaction candidates will have with the broader Middlebury community or student body — this will likely be a topic of discussion at Search Committee meetings in May and June.
Spears said that candidates for leadership position of academic institutions like Middlebury are typically deans, provosts or chief academic officers at an institution like Middlebury or a larger university, but he noted that candidates can also come from outside academia, citing Raynard Kington, President of Grinnell College and former Deputy Director at the National Institutes of Health.
“For us, getting input from the community is really key,” Spears said. “You want the community to feel invested, to feel like they had an opportunity to be part of the search process.”
The two student representatives on the Search Committee, Bao Lin Xu ’16 and Nick Mallchok ’14.5 will provide student perspectives on the Search Committee.
Xu ’16 said that during her participation as a member of the committee she “will be looking for a community builder who has a similar vision for the future of Middlebury as I,” citing issues of race, identity and marginalization as her primary concerns.
“We need to be prepared as an institution, as a community of fine educators to be inclusive and to welcome all color, backgrounds and identities to feel like a part of this community,” Xu wrote in an email.
(04/23/14 3:17pm)
Now in its fourth year, The Middlebury Bach Festival is aiming to offer its most diverse and ambitious program to date when the inaugural festival’s guest scholar Christoph Wolff returns for a three-day extravaganza of events April 25-27.
Students, affiliate artists, faculty and professional musicians from the community and the greater New England area will join Wolff to celebrate the music and influence of 18th century German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach.
Wolff, former Adams University Research Professor at Harvard University and recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the College in 2012, is one of the most prominent Bach scholars in the nation, and his second visit to the Festival is representative of his involvement in the early planning stages of the popular annual event.
The Festival’s organizers, Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities Jeffrey Buettner and soprano, voice teacher and Director of Music at the Congregational Church of Middlebury Jessica Allen, were inspired to create the Bach Festival after participating in an American Choral Director’s Association Bach conducting symposium.
“Jessica, my wife, and I left that event and it was simple, really,” Buettner said. “She said ‘We should have a Bach Festival in Middlebury,’ and then we were going to Leipzig anyway to see their Bach festival, and we thought we’d try and make an appointment with Christoph Wolff at the Leipzig Bach Festival, which he directed, and he said that he was interested. Suddenly, we had a guest, we had an idea for some music, and things took off from there.”
Allen and Buettner have been looking for an opportunity to invite Wolff back to the Festival since his participation in 2011, and the scholar’s recent retirement from Harvard and the Leipzig Bach Festival allowed for a rare scheduling availability.
Before Wolff gives a lecture as a part of Saturday’s events, cellist Sophie Shao and violinist Soovin Kim will open the Festival on Friday, April 25 with a program of the unaccompanied works of J.S. Bach for cello and violin. Both musicians have connections with the area, as Shao is frequently featured in the College’s Performing Arts Series and Kim directs the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, but both have also been acclaimed on the world stage. The concert is at 8 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts, and tickets are $25 for regular admission, $20 for faculty, staff and other affiliates with an ID and $6 for students.
Three free interest sessions continue the Festival on Saturday in the Concert Hall.
“Our interest sessions are more diverse than we’ve perhaps had in the past,” Buettner said. “We have two different instrument families covered in those sessions, and then in the afternoon we hear a talk that contextualizes the Bach piece itself, so it’s a very broad appeal. This time, only one of the sessions really frames the concert, and the other two draw interesting sounds and technique from the instruments in the orchestra. In that way, the Festival has expanded a bit.”
The first 10 a.m. session, ‘Unaccompanied Bach: Bach’s Solo Works for Cello and Violin’ is offered by the previous evening’s performers, Shao and Kim, and oboist Cheryl Bishkoff will follow at 11 a.m. with ‘Demonstration of Oboe, Oboe d’amore, English Horn, and Oboe da Caccia in the Music of J.S. Bach.’
At 1:30 p.m., Wolff will be talking about the Saturday evening Festival concert piece, Bach’s Ascension Oratorio, and its context in ‘From Christmas to Ascension Day: J.S. Bach’s Unique Oratorio Cycle.’
“We performed the Easter Oratorio two years ago and the Christmas Oratorio will probably be two years from now, so it’s a terrific topic,” Buettner said of the lecture. “It’s timely and useful in terms of our Bach Festival on a larger scale, just as Bach was thinking about music in a larger context. We often admire that Bach wrote a piece with a complicated and sophisticated architecture, but that expands further into groups of pieces over months or even in an entire year he thought about a comprehensive musical concept, so it’s philosophy and theology and intellect as well as musicianship.”
Two free events follow in the afternoon in anticipation of the evening Festival Concert, including a carillon recital by Middlebury College carillonneur George Matthew, Jr. at 3 p.m. at Mead Chapel. Classical guitarist and College Affiliate Artist Eric Despard will provide patrons of 51 Main with music by Bach and other composers from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
The culmination of Saturday’s events comes in the form of the grand Festival Concert at 8 p.m. in Mead Chapel, opening with Antonio Vivaldi’s four violin concertos The Four Seasons featuring violin soloist Katherine Winterstein.
The Vivaldi violin concertos were chosen for their audience appeal and because they are most often heard as sound bites, not performed live. The cyclical plan of the seasons and the sense of renewal also corresponded thematically to the renewal found in the Ascension Oratorio.
Each concerto is written to capture the sounds and ideas of the season it represents, and Vermont Public Radio commentator Linda Radtke will narrate with poetry, potentially written by Vivaldi himself, which draws the audience’s attention to these ideas.
Bach studied and transcribed Vivaldi, so including the pieces provides greater insight into the context of music at the time.
The Four Seasons will be performed in a somewhat unorthodox manner, with one player taking on each orchestral part rather than a soloist and a large orchestra.
“It’s an intimate setting and you can really hear the inside of the score,” Buettner said. “Also, that performance features a student. It’s a professional ensemble with the exception of violist Matt Weinert-Stein ’14, and it’s a great opportunity for him to play all by himself with a professional ensemble.”
Buettner will conduct the College Choir and festival orchestra as they perform Bach’s Ascension Oratorio. Four professional vocal soloists, soprano and College Affiliate Artist Carol Christensen, alto Linda Radtke, tenor Adam Hall and bass Stephen Falbel will join the ensembles for the major work.
“I’m excited for the audience to hear our really remarkable guests and to hear the Vivaldi and the Bach Oratorio side-by-side and feel the exciting impact of those pieces,” Buettner said. “For the students, I’m excited for them to perform their piece and then hear the Vivaldi beside their performance and sense that excitement and energy that the music carries. I think that when we hear something that is related to what we do, we can be more excited about what we’re doing.”
Tickets to the Saturday evening event are free for students, $10 for faculty, staff and affiliates with ID and $12 for the public.
Throughout the four years of the Festival, over 90 singers and 30 instrumentalists have participated, creating a unique blend of repeat performers and new musicians every year.
“We try to find something new and interesting that comes out of this idea of Bach, which has a tendency to become ‘Early Classical Music’ in quotations, like a genre,” Buettner said. “The piece itself is not necessarily different from previous pieces, but the point is we will find other things about the Festival that bring out something new and fresh. This year, that’s the idea of renewal and connecting what the texts are talking about.”
At the Sunday, April 27 concert at 3 p.m. in Mead Chapel, the College Choir will sing some of the selections they will performing for their May 27 to June 9 tour to Berlin, Prague, Leipzig and Vienna.
Since the students are participating in a concert tour to Europe, they will be singing primarily new North and South American music compositions, with the addition of folk music from a living Ukrainian composer. The concert will start with the Collegium, a smaller ensemble composed of four Choir students and Buettner, singing three early Baroque selections thematically connected to the ideas of rebirth and renewal emphasized in the previous evening’s concert. The rest of the program includes the selection of material for a European audience that represents the College with international and contemporary American aspects.
Buettner, who conducts the College Choir, has been helping to plan the tour for at least three years, and he has visited the tour sites twice in preparation for the trip. Since the last major Choir tour to San Francisco in 2011, an endowment for touring was established to help lower student contributions toward the cost of the 2014 voyage.
Some of the highlights of the trip will be singing in Berlin with the Berlin Cathedral Choir, performing with a guest choir in one of Bach’s churches, Saint Nicholas, in Leipzig and visiting Saint Peter’s Church in Vienna.
“We are all excited to take this music that we have been preparing and go sing it, and that’s it,” Buettner said. “No homework, no schoolwork, no impending deadlines. Without the pressures of everything else in life, we get to experience another culture and sing, and that’s a liberating and edifying feeling.”
Also on Sunday, six area congregations, including the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society, Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Congregational Church of Middlebury UCC, Memorial Baptist Church, St. Stephen’s on the Green and the United Methodist Church of Middlebury, will feature the music of Bach in their Sunday services.
Buettner attributes the growing success of the Festival to its ability to capture the interest of audience members on different levels.
“There is certainly a performance excitement around having a weekend of concerts, and there is also an appeal to the event to people who care and think about music and culture,” Buettner explained. “Then, simply, in attending the performances there is a beauty to the music. That’s a description of Bach’s compositions – they appeal to our intellect and they appeal to our emotions, and that’s something that we keep in mind for every festival that we plan.”
More information can be found at go/bachfest.
(04/17/14 12:03am)
The Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) has been presented with a series of recommendations compiled by an ad hoc committee to reform the First Year Seminar (FYS) program. The committee’s report is the first in-depth report on the FYS program since the 1997-1998 academic year.
It is unlikely that a vote will occur during the current academic year, however. In order for a vote to occur, the ad hoc committee, led by Associate Professor of History Amy Morsman, had to compile a report and present it to the EAC for review before it could be discussed during a faculty meeting. The report was presented to the EAC just two weeks ago and only one faculty meeting remains.
As it exists now, there are 42 first-year seminar courses offered in the fall and eight in the spring. A system of rotations based on the number of faculty within each department was developed to select the 50 professors leading seminars each year.
“We ask more from the English department and the History department, than we do from Classics, because there are more faculty in there to rotate around,” said Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean for Instruction Kathy Skubikowski, who has overseen FYS advising since 1995.
On average, faculty return to the role of FYS advisor once every three and a half years. However, some rotate through more frequently simply because they enjoy advising students during their formative first months at the College.
Morsman did not reveal information held within the ad hoc committee’s recommendations, writing in an email that “they [the EAC] will take the time they need over the next several weeks to go through it ... before making any firm decisions about next steps.”
She did note, however, that she and other committee members sought feedback from students about their FYS experiences.
“But at least from my perspective, the initial impetus to rethink the FYS program came from faculty who have taught in the program and wanted to make some changes and from administrators who were happy to have faculty consider possible tweaks to the system,” she wrote in an email.
Skubikowski and Dean of Curriculum and Director of the Sciences Bob Cluss hinted at potential changes based on the recent evolution of FYS advising, however.
When the FYS program was last reviewed in Spring 1998, it led to the integration between FYS courses and the Commons system. The Commons system was developed during the presidency of John M. McCardell and expanded as new dormitories were constructed to allow for commons-specific housing. Cluss noted that the timing of the review and the expansion of the commons system allowed for the coupling of first-year housing assignments with FYS courses.
“One of the changes we’re thinking of is having a larger Commons role in the advising of first-year seminars,” Skubikowski said, noting Commons-organized dinners linked with particular academic departments to guide first-semester sophomores in declaring a major.
Vice President for Academic Affairs Tim Spears elaborated on the evolving role of advisors.
“What we’re trying to do on the administrative side is to take advantage of the resources we have to establish a framework for advising that extends from first year through to sophomore year,” he said. “We understand that from a student perspective academic advising can, and sometimes should, lead to more general discussions about what students might want to do with what they’re majoring in.”
Cluss made note of the potential for a group of super-advisors who would serve as expert advisors with regard to major advising and AP or IB credit distribution.
Adapting the FYS program to remain current with regard to student needs and College policy is also a concern.
“One thing that’s changed in 26 years is the students who are coming in. There’s just a whole different preparation,” Skubikowski said. “The idea of the first year seminar is that it helps ... students make the transition between being excellent high school students to being excellent college students … but we need to identify in some ways what those transitions are.”
Spears echoed Skubikowski with regard to the changing needs of students.
“Is it appropriate that the FYS program should only focus on writing skills? Some have suggested we consider other skills, like public speaking or information literacy.”
(04/16/14 5:06pm)
Bill McKibben
Schumann Distinguished Scholar
It's never been a huge problem for me. I grew up writing for newspapers, and that tends to cure you of perfectionism: you know that half the job is to get it done on time. I think sometimes you have to say: I'm going to write as well as I can right now, and when I wake up I'm going to go over it again to make sure it's good. Making sure the first time through can be a little daunting.
Marion Wells
Associate Professor of English and American Literatures
When I hit a roadblock in writing I have a few techniques:
1. Make a cup of tea. This can take a while, done properly and gives the mind a chance to mull things over.
2. Just start writing – even if the structure and organization of the piece as a whole are still elusive, writing a "core" piece of it can be very helpful
3. Leave the writing alone and think about teaching instead! Using a different part of the brain can help unlock the issues causing the block.
Christopher Klyza
Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Environmental Studies
My writing in the years since I've been at Middlebury (I arrived in 1990) has primarily been aimed at an academic audience. I've written and edited several books as well as articles, book reviews and book chapters. In general, I don't get writer's block. But I do sometimes have a hard time getting started on a new project. When that is the case I make myself start writing — it could be something from the middle of the paper (such as a case study) or a description of the theoretical framework I will use rather than the introduction. I also don't worry so much about the quality of the writing, knowing that I will go back and revise it. At the end of the day, having 4-5 pages of text often primes the writing pump for future productivity. I also tend to think about the overall project better when I have done some writing.
Kathryn Kramer
Visiting Assistant Professor of English and American Literatures
Have a baby. There’s nothing like knowing you have only two hours of child care to focus the attention. (A descriptive, not a prescriptive, remedy.)
There are many devices and prompts, like imagining that the world is coming to an end in twenty minutes and what you write will be the sole remaining record, or writing without ever using the letter e, for example. But as it’s generally construed, writer’s block (which Gilbert Sorrentino calls inspiration’s “idiot brother”) has probably most to do with not wanting to write what you think you want to write, like a term paper or a letter of recommendation. There’s some dishonesty, either of intent or execution. So it’s interesting to figure out what that’s about.
Michael Sheridan
Associate Professor of Anthropology at Middlebury College
I think that the key to overcoming writer's block is to start writing and let yourself write junk. Now that you've gotten started, you can keep going and later go back and either fix or delete the junk. The other trick I often use is that I make myself explain whatever it is that I'm supposed to be writing about in ordinary non-specialist language, as if I was giving an overview of what I'm trying to write about to a patient, sympathetic and wholly ignorant friend. That sketch becomes the first paragraph (which may be junk, and that's OK). The second strategy for curing writer's block is to make your writing something that you need to do for other people, not just for yourself or the text itself. For example, I often propose a paper for an academic conference on a topic that I haven't written about yet, and then the conference becomes both a deadline and group of people depending on me to deliver. Finally, chocolate never fails to motivate me. One page done means I can have one piece, no exceptions.
Julia Alvarez
Writer-in-Residence
When the writer William Stafford was asked the same question, he replied that he never suffered from writer's block, all he had to do was lower his standards. I don't think he really meant that he would settle for schlock, just that part of the block is that the writer is getting in the way of the writing by worrying too much about performance, and measuring up. At that point, just forget about achievement and write to limber up, write as finger exercises, write in a journal, write a letter. (Whoever does that anymore? I do!) The point is to keep up the agility, the flexibility, the practice of the craft. Writing, all creativity, I think, should have an element of play, self-forgetfulness, fun.
On the other hand, times when I'm forcing it, I realize that the balance is off. I need to get out, get involved in the things I care deeply about, issues in my community and beyond. We are writers in a context, storytellers in a tribe. To quote another great, Charlie Parker, the jazz musician, said, "If you don't live it, it ain't going to come out of your horn."
So there are a few prescriptions for writer's block, courtesy of Dr. Alvarez, via Drs Stafford and Parker: Keep Doing the Writing but forget about the performance/measurement, and when all else fails: go out there and get involved in life itself – fall in love, plant a garden, save a forest, work in a soup kitchen, teach kids to make balloon animals and then take them over to the local assisted living facility.
Christopher Shaw
Visiting Lecturer, English and American Literatures; Associate Director, Program in Environmental Journalism
“Work every day without fear or expectation.” (Somebody said that.) Always show up at the desk or notebook, or, god help us, computer screen. In fact, if you are stuck I suggest returning to the basic and essential physical act of making words on paper with a pen – or maybe a piece of burned charcoal from a fire. Don't judge, at least for a while. Keep going. Put it aside. Then go back and see what you have, if a structure or a point seem to be emerging that you can begin building on. Some days it works and some days it doesn't. Don't judge. Go back and work again.
It's different for school work and creative work, of course. Deadlines are useful even without an assignment. Desperation often breaks the log jam.
Stop fighting, stop judging, stop comparing yourself to the great. The writing NEVER turns out the way it gleams and beckons in your mind. In the draft stage you need to accept being terrible. As an editor, I have worked with some of the best full-time deadline writers and I can tell you their first stabs are gobbledygook. But you need to start. Don't wait.
Timothy Billings
Professor of English and American Literatures
I asked that question of William Stafford once when he came to give a reading at Pomona College many years ago when I was an undergraduate there, and his immediate answer was: ‘Lower your standards and keep writing.’ What I love about that advice is that it recognizes that “writer’s block” is nothing but your internal editor harrying you, saying that what you are about to write is not good enough – and that what you most need to do is to trust yourself. The downside is that Stafford’s many wonderful books contain not a few mediocre poems written no doubt when he would otherwise have had writer’s block. And yet without those poems – which many people have enjoyed, I’m sure, even if they didn’t do much for me – he might never have written the truly extraordinary poems that knock my socks off. Stafford certainly wrote more books than I ever will. For a certain kind of person, I think that’s still probably the best advice there is, but I’m just not that kind of person. What works best for me is to stand up and start talking. Whenever I find myself paralyzed because my sentences are becoming tangled and intractable, I stand up and start talking to myself. I pace back and forth and gesture with my hands (probably looking a bit loony, to be honest) exactly as though I were explaining the issues to an interested group of fellow scholars or students. Somehow the language comes to me that way because if I imagine an audience sitting in front of me I can’t just stand there – I’ve got to say something – and the exercise gives me focus. I then lean over my desk and type in what I have just said, sentence by sentence, and keep pacing. (It helps to be a good talker, but one becomes that by writing.) So my alternative advice is: when the words on the page feel intractable, return to your voice; when the ideas in your head feel tangled, remember your audience.
Vendela Vida
Keynote Speaker (April) and Class of '93
If a scene’s not working or giving you trouble, it can help to think about how you’d approach it if you were telling the story in a different medium. That is, if you can’t figure out how a scene works in prose from, how would you write the scene if it was a film, or a play? I find this technique can help me a lot when I’m stuck.
Another remedy: try writing first thing when you get up in the morning. Before e-mail, before anything. If you write right away, before your doubts or second thoughts awaken, you can keep them at bay.
(04/11/14 6:59pm)
On the surface, A Clockwork Orange is a standard dystopian text, in the same line as classics such as Huxley’s Brave New World. It is complete with suitably wicked teenage males, beautiful young women and gratuitous violence. It is not so simple though; it is an intricate work. It is freedom and choice, not violence, teenage rebellion, good and evil, social pathology, nor high adventure that is at the heart of this work.
Written by Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange was first published in 1962 and then adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. The film was a success and despite being quite controversial, it has become iconic. Burgess felt that the film glorified sex and violence in a manner that detracted attention from the core theme of his novella - choice. So repulsed was Burgess that, in response to it, he published a revised version in 1987 which focused the lens more on his core theme of choice. It is this central message that Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Andrew W. Smith ’97.5 has aimed to capture in directing the College’s production, which is an adaptation of the novella by Anthony Burgess scheduled to be performed on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights this week.
“It is everything that you want theatre to be,” Smith said. “It’s stylistic, full of action and great choreographed sequences, full of a lot of good questions and full of a lot of heart and passion. There is a lot of music, light and a sense of pageantry. There is a whole lot to it.”
Smith believes that part of the reason he selected A Clockwork Orange as the text for the production is that it is an expressionist piece and he is interested in that style and the creativity that it inherently brings to the process and, ultimately, the product.
“Expressionism is a certain kind of style that, in essence, tells the story through the eyes of the main character,” he said. “Many of the stylistic choices have to do with how the other characters interact with him, or what they are blocking. Their behavior or actions are filtered through the lens of what it feels like to the main character [Alex]. That was certainly a point of interest in choosing the novella for the script,” said Smith.
The production’s aim is not just to convey the central message, but to lead to discussion and ask questions.
“I really believe and appreciate theatre that asks questions more than provide answers and that is what I am hoping will happen with this show,” Smith said.
While choice is the main message, Smith is aware of the intrinsic violence in the story but urges the audience to be alert to the distinction between the film and the novella.
“It is crucial to separate the movie and the novella,” he said. “Our production focuses more on the novella. Still, it is a show that is full of fight choreography; there are probably 15 different fights that involve huge numbers of the cast. We affectionately refer to it as a fight show with a little bit of text, but that is not to underplay the value of the text itself which has a very high level of poetry to it.”
Language is certainly a prominent feature of the text because it uses Nasdat, which is an invented language created by Antony Burgess.
“It [Nasdat] is essentially a mixture of Russian and English which at the time up to this are the two most politically powerful languages,” Smith said. “The result is a very poetical language.”
The political significance of merging these two languages, given the context of the political tension that existed when the novella was written, is unmistakable to anyone familiar with the history of the Cold War. The use of Nasdat is even more important within the story because it is an impenetrable language spoken by the youth. It is incomprehensible to judges, government and all forms of authority in whatever guise that they are presented.
Smith is working with a total of 28 talented actors, stage manager Katie Preston ’17, assistant stage managers Adam Rivera ’17 and Aashna Aggarwal ’16, and between 15 and 20 students in technical supporting roles.
A lot of hard work has gone into making the production possible.
“We rehearse every day for the maximum number of hours possible, which is an average of 24 hours a week,” Smith said.
As the performance date looms ever nearer, they have been rehearsing for an average of 30 hours a week.
“The time commitment is truly impressive,” he said.
Steven Medina ’17, one of the actors, conveyed excitement for the upcoming performances. He expressed that his sense of drive is predicated on working with a group of people that care for and supportive of each other, as well as his ardent love for theater.
“Honestly, we are all thrilled to be together,” Medina said.” At times, rehearsals get really stressful, especially when I have to study and do homework for other classes. I keep moving forward because this camaraderie means a lot to me and I have a huge passion for theatre. Andrew is great and when he directs us, I know he really cares about, not only the show, but our wellbeing and how we are developing as actors. I love these guys and soon our hard work will pay off, which is probably what most of us are waiting to test.”
The show will be nothing short of a dazzling phenomenon.
“The show combines the element of heart with spectacle, brilliant language and a great text – and that is something quite rare. It should be entertaining and hopefully thought-provoking,” Smith said.
Performances will be held in Wright Memorial Theatre at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, Apr. 10 and 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Apr. 11 and Saturday, Apr. 12. Tickets are $6 for students and are available at the Box Office. There will also be a discussion of the production after the Friday performance with the director, cast and managers.
(04/10/14 2:30am)
Vermont’s education may be in for an historical overhaul if legislation passed in Vermont’s house of representatives last month passes at the end of this legislative cycle.
The proposed bill, H.883, would radically consolidate public education in Vermont by reducing the number of school districts in the state from 273 to 50 in the next five years.
Historically, the Vermont public education system has struggled to reconcile impulses for local governance with the financial benefits of consolidation.
In 1777, Vermont’s state constitution was the first in English-speaking North America to mandate universal public funding for education. This initial mandate led to the creation of a number of tiny, independent village elementary schools.
The importance of agriculture in the early development of Vermont’s residential landscape created a highly diffuse population across the state — and a highly diffuse network of public schools across the state to provide education to all corners of the state.
In the nineteenth century, migration to Vermont swelled due to increased prosperity and the success of Vermont’s agricultural industry.
The simultaneous increase in agricultural productivity and overall population led to an increased school-going population that remained spread out through the state due to the continued importance of the agricultural sector.
The diffuse network of tiny schools and school districts in Vermont persists in modern Vermont. The average number of students per Vermont school district is just 313 students, which is less than one tenth of the national average, according to a 2009 report.
Opinion on school board consolidation is mixed in Vermont, and each side of the argument has vocal advocates and opponents.
Proponents of school board consolidation argue that pooled financial resources will enable small schools and school districts to diversify the educational offerings available to students.
“Are you going to cut your music program or are you going to cut your art program?” asks Dan French, superintendant of the Bennington-Rutland Supervisory Union. “That’s where [Vermont] is heading if we don’t do governance change.”
Proponents think that consolidation will afford students in rural districts the opportunity of sharing teachers and other educational resources that individual districts would not be able to afford them individually.
Critics of consolidation are equally vocal. Most detractors of school board consolidation cite the loss of venerated schools and of local influence on education as detrimental byproducts of consolidation.
Vermont schools may be generally small, but they are reliant on the input of local people for educational policy. Critics of consolidating policy measures argue that eliminating school districts would undermine local control by putting undue power in the hands of representatives from larger towns — at the expense of students in small towns who would have benefitted from specialized education.
“Access to decision makers and local community involvement is what makes Vermont successfully tick and our schools succeed,” said Debra Stoleroff, director of the Renaissance Program at Twinfield Union High School in Plainfield, Vt.
In addition to the argument that small schools are more attuned to the needs of students, opponents of consolidation have also voiced concerns over the lost social benefits of small-town schools. Stoleroff says that small, local schools serve an important social function by fostering higher graduation rates, discouraging risky behavior and mitigating the divisiveness of poverty.
The H.833 Bill does not mark the first time that Vermonters will consider consolidation at a large scale, however.
In 1892, Vermont’s state legislature required that Vermont schools — which all functioned as independent school boards unto themselves and thereby constituted more than 2,500 school boards across the state — to consolidate into localized school districts.
These original districts were created in accordance with historical settlement patterns in order to maintain cohesive local value systems.
In most cases, settlement patterns lined up neatly with town boundaries, and therefore the 1892 legislation had the effect of incorporating numerous schools within towns into a single school district — thereby reducing the costs of operating up to 8 school districts in a single town.
In 1896, the state passed legislation that enabled individual districts to form “supervisory unions” in which individual districts still continued to control hiring, budgetary decisions and policy decisions while jointly electing a largely nominal “superintendent” meant to liaise between school boards and federal tax purveyors.
Beyond the town-scale consolidation, however, Vermont schools have resisted any attempts to further merge administrative bodies.
Since the 1896 decision, though, the many large-scale attempts to continue the process of consolidation by merging school districts have floundered. The school district landscape has remained largely unchanged, therefore, since the 1892 consolidation.
In 2010, the state legislature passed Act 153, the Voluntary School District Merger Act, which offered town school boards a number of incentives to consolidate. An interim report published by U.V.M.’s Jeffords research center in 2013, however, confirmed what many education commentators had already realized — that the act was ineffective at encouraging consolidation.
A number of school boards have already issued formal statements in response to the passage of the H.883 bill in the house. On March 26, the Rutland Northeast and Rutland Addison supervisory unions passed resolutions formally rejecting the consolidation bill.
In a statement issued by the Rutland Northeast and Rutland Addison supervisory unions, the board stated their belief that “eliminating local school board governance is not conducive to promoting our democratic ideals and fostering social capital.”
The Vermont Superintendents Association endorses the bill, but the Vermont School Boards Association has declined to adopt a formal stance due to the diversity of opinion among members of the association.
The conversation about consolidation is far from over. Steve Dale, head of the Vermont School Boards Association, reminds his colleagues and fellow citizens that “[the consolidation conversation] requires us to strike a balance between the students and the taxpayers [and] balance that with our deep love of our very, very local democratic processes.”
The bill still has to go through the state’s Ways and Means and Appropriations committees before it undergoes final deliberation in the house — and then the state Senate must still deliberate on the bill. The huge surge in debate, however, seems to foreshadow continued consideration of educational consolidation and perhaps a dramatic shift in Vermont’s school-board landscape in the near future.
