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(11/11/10 4:59am)
The Independent Scholar is a rare breed at Middlebury. Each is passionate about a specific field that does not fit within one of the established majors and therefore has opted to design his or her own. If this sounds like an easy way out of unappealing classes, do not be fooled — blazing one’s own academic trail is no small feat. Without the stability of an existing department, hopeful independent scholars are required to construct support systems of multiple academic advisors to help plan and execute complex programs of study. After an interview with the Dean of Curriculum, each proposal, which includes a list of courses, ideas for an independent senior project and “the aim of the program” (including potential post-graduation plans) must be presented to the Curriculum Committee for approval. According to the College Handbook, “A successful proposal must articulate a fully developed program of study, and will demonstrate compellingly that the student’s academic goals cannot be met through existing majors.” For the few determined students who successfully design majors of their own, the rewards are plentiful. Here, four students — two of whom have been approved as independent scholars and two still in the process — weigh in on what it is like to be four in 2,400.
April Dodd '13: Linguistics
When it comes to her self-designed major, April Dodd ’13 is determination, personified.
“Whatever it takes, I’m going to graduate with a Linguistics degree,” she said matter-of-factly in an interview.
Her journey began serendipitously, as she arrived at Middlebury intending to study Spanish and playwriting. In choosing to pick up French, she stumbled upon a fundamental self-discovery.
“I realized it wasn’t just the Spanish language that I loved,” she said. “It was learning languages.”
Meanwhile, despite her love of theater, she was not particularly drawn to the courses required for a theater major with a playwriting focus and so decided to explore other possibilities. In what she described as “kind of a fluke,” her roommate suggested that she explore interdepartmental courses, and it was there that she found Introduction to Romance Linguistics.
“It was one of those things where everyone else knew what I should be doing, but I didn’t,” she said.
She quickly found linguistics to be not only fascinating but also complementary with her passion for languages (which would soon include Russian as well). Once she expressed interest in the subject, she discovered more support than she had anticipated.
“A lot of language professors also have linguistics backgrounds,” she said. “Now they’re coming out of the woodwork.”
Still, as she works through the details of her proposal, “seeing the forest through the trees” is both an inspiration and a challenge.
“When I think about the fields, the careers, the doors that linguistics will open … I get so excited,” she said, “but right now it’s a matter of editing sentences to convince the committee to approve my proposal.”
Dodd believes that Middlebury’s emphasis on languages and studying abroad makes it the ideal setting for a linguistics department.
“The study of specific languages informs your knowledge of language as a concept, and the study of linguistics informs your speaking of languages,” she said. “While they’re not one and the same, they are so related.”
While a select few have pursued Linguistics majors at Middlebury, as with any Independent Scholar program, “it’s a little unnerving to not have a department,” Dodd said. “If we had a department, it would open it up to people.”
She was sure to avoid defining herself entirely by her current academic focus. “I’m a linguistics major, but I’m also a writer and a member of my family, and I want to keep being in plays,” she said.
“It’s hard to put all of that into a proposal.”
Her post-graduation plans — possibilities, rather — are appropriately diverse. Fields discussed included translation for nonprofit organizations, treatment of neurolinguistic disorders, comparative research in sociolinguistics and teaching English as a second language, for which she is already certified. Dodd’s current undertakings include a children’s book and a role in Marisol, which opens tonight.
“I want to be a linguistics major,” she said, “but — quoting poet Elizabeth Alexander — ‘many things are true at once.’”
Carlisle Overbey '11: War and Peace Studies
“When you look at all the conflict we have in the world, what are the causes and remedies?” It is a daunting question, to be sure, but it is also the reason Carlisle Overbey ’11 decided to design a War and Peace Studies major at Middlebury.
“My view is that if you understand conflict, you understand how to get peace,” she said.
Initially, Overbey anticipated a major in political science or international studies. Unfortunately, she said, “both disciplines really limited what I wanted to take.” She then began collaborating with professors to develop her own program of study.
The result was an exercise in versatility.
“When you take courses along a broad spectrum of disciplines, your writing style and learning style isn’t always going to match up with every course and professor, and it’s difficult at times to adjust,” she said.
Overbey feels strongly that such an interdisciplinary major could suit a vast array of students.
“There’s room for people who are interested in so many different things,” she said, comparing her “conflict-centered” approach to possible literary, economic and philosophical angles. During her time at Middlebury, she has noticed more and more student interest in the study of conflict and anticipates further enthusiasm for the major.
“To be the first one approved and to realize that there are all these seniors, juniors and [first-years] who are so interested — that gets me really excited,” she said.
After graduation, Overbey plans to go to law school, where she will study international and national security law. Her senior thesis focuses on the latter.
“My thesis is on pirates, the international legal framework surrounding pirates and how that ties into the conception of terrorists as illegal enemy combatants,” she said. She is particularly interested in how the U.S. has referenced pirates as part of the legal justification for the torturing of terrorists.
“My goal is to break that down,” she said. “It seems problematic to say that there are people who don’t have any rights.”
While she would love to see students follow in her footsteps, she reminds them that the Independent Scholar program is not to be approached casually.
“It’s not as easy as it seems on the surface,” she said. “I think that there’s a perception that Independent Scholars are taking the easy way out.”
On the contrary, “You have to take it really seriously…but if you’re passionate about something, that’s what you should be learning about.”
Bianca Giaever '12.5 : Narrative Studies
For Bianca Giaever ’12.5, stories are an indispensable part of life.
“I always knew I wanted to do journalism,” she said.
After gaining acceptance to a variety of colleges, some of which are especially known for strong journalism programs, she chose Middlebury for the liberal arts experience and soon found herself wandering down a unique academic path.
“I was constantly choosing classes that were very narrative-oriented,” she said; these courses, from Nature Writing to Cultural Geography, spanned several departments. Giaever pointed out the pervasiveness of narratives in the media as well as in the academic curriculum, citing podcasts and The Moth as examples.
“I think people really respond to stories,” she said.
She realized that what she truly wanted to study (and the way she wanted to study it) would require a great deal of extra initiative and began developing a proposal for a major in Narrative Studies.
“I couldn’t get it from any other department,” she said. “That’s why I could do it — because it was so interdisciplinary.”
Giaever warns anyone considering becoming an Independent Scholar that it requires an intense level of commitment.
“You’re going to have to jump through a lot of hoops, really want it and work hard,” she said. “Often the hardest part can be finding an advisor who can be there for you.”
However, positive relationships with her professors greatly aided the process.
“My professors knew me and knew that I was passionate about it,” she said.
Even after finding a support system and developing an academic plan, Giaever still experiences occasional bouts of uncertainty.
“It’s kind of scary having your own major, in a way,” she said. “I don’t know if I trust myself to take classes I’ll be happy I took later.”
With four full semesters left at Middlebury, Giaever’s career plans are understandably up in the air.
“[The major]’s been really useful,” she said. “Hopefully I can get paid for it later.”
Fortunately, the combination of a versatile focus and an open-minded attitude gives her a wide array of options.
“I’d do anything in journalism, radio, marketing,” she said. “Stories can be used for fundraising, raising awareness about causes … they can just be used for so much.”
She currently works for the Communications Office, which, as she said, “uses true stories for fundraising.” Despite the obstacles, Giaever is proud of her unique place in the academic community.
“It’s been kind of fun,” she said. “I like to refer to myself as the Narrative Studies department.”
Elias Alexander '12: Bardic Arts
If you had asked the high school version of Elias Alexander ’12 where he would be today, “majoring in Bardic Arts at Middlebury” would have been an unlikely answer. In fact, the Oregon native enrolled at Northwestern for his freshman year. Despite being “super dedicated” to theater, he soon realized that he wanted to broaden his academic pursuits. After a year of traveling in the United Kingdom, he came to Middlebury and began to consider a major in Environmental Science. Finally, however, “I managed to admit that I wanted to be a creative artist.” From his lifelong background in Scottish folk culture to his more recent travels, the major was a natural choice.
Alexander defines Bardic Arts as “the performance of myth and folk culture.” To elaborate, “it’s based on the ancient Irish triad of things that make a bard: playing the harp, knowledge of ancient lore and poetic power.”
Through the Independent Scholar program, he is constructing his own set of related courses in music, literature, anthropology, poetry and theater. Though he was initially discouraged from applying to be an Independent Scholar, his stubborn resolve eventually gained him the faculty support he needed.
“Once I indicated that I would do it no matter what, then they got behind it,” he said.
In order to take the opportunity seriously, he said, being passionate about a specific topic is crucial.
“You shouldn’t do it just because there’s no major that attracts you,” he said. “You should do it because you have a concept that you really want to explore.”
His homeschooling prepared him well for the initiative required for this undertaking.
“I was used to controlling my own education,” he said.
He is confident that the Independent Scholar opportunity will help him to maximize his “short, precious few years” at Middlebury.
“There are so many opportunities here. It’s amazing,” he said. “I want to use this time to take classes that will prepare me for what I want to do afterwards.”
Middlebury has already helped him to implement his passion in a real-world setting. Last spring, as one of four winners of the College’s Stonehenge Idea Competition, he was granted $3,000 to produce a performance of traditional folk tales and songs in his hometown. “Long Way Home: Traditional Stories and Songs of Our Ancestors and the Rogue Valley” allowed him to demonstrate the power of music in raising environmental awareness. The program finished with “Land on Shore,” a traditional American song with verses composed by Alexander.
And we’re coming home now…
We’re going to teach our children…
We’re gonna love this valley…
(11/11/10 4:59am)
“He’s really curious,” said Ada Santiago ’13. “He likes to be in the know. When new people come, he likes to meet them. He’s playful and funny and smart. He knows when he’s in trouble and he’s good at getting out of trouble. He knows how to get where he wants to go. He likes to eat tree bark.”
Wondering who this is? You’ve probably seen him on campus before, and although he’s often wearing a leash, Santiago isn’t describing her dog. Santiago is talking about her two-and-a-half-year-old rabbit named Fugu.
Ada and Fugu go a long way back. She first got him when a high school friend of hers whose two rabbits had babies needed to give them away. Ada’s family had a history of having pets, and they especially liked rabbits. The fact that Fugu needed a home badly convinced Santiago’s family they needed to take the rabbit in.
“If I hadn’t picked him up when I did he would have been sent to the pound the next day,” Santiago said. “He was the black sheep that I loved very, very much. I just liked him because he was different. His siblings were all white or white with brown spots. He was the only black one.”
When it was time to come to Middlebury, Ada knew she would have to bring Fugu with her. Her family supported her, and Ada made sure Fugu would be allowed by checking the College’s pet regulations and e-mailing Ross Commons Dean Janine Clookey. Most importantly, Santiago had to make sure her new roommate, Maggie Khuu ’13, would be okay with an extra roommate freshman year. Khuu’s responded affirmatively, so Fugu was set to come to college.
Now, Santiago and Fugu have become a common sight on campus. Santiago takes Fugu on walks three to four times per week, weather permitting. On sunny days they can be seen walking along College Road or outside Gifford’s north entrance.
“That’s what I call his forest,” Santiago said. “He loves walking around there.”
Last year, Fugu even got a chance to see the Quidditch World Cup Finals on Battell Beach. Fugu has also embraced the “Midd Kid” culture.
“He has more Middlebury apparel than I do,” Santiago said.
Among Fugu’s Middlebury wardrobe are two Middlebury T-shirts, a Middkid T-shirt, and a Breadloaf School of English T-shirt. Additionally, Fugu sports an angel-wing Valentine’s Day sweater, a Halloween costume, and some new winter gear: a raincoat. For last year’s Halloween, Fugu wore an angel costume Santiago made herself. This year, he joined the Halloween celebrations in town dressed as a pumpkin.
Having Fugu on campus has made Santiago’s life at Middlebury slightly different from the average student’s. Santiago finds that although Fugu is a big responsibility, he is also a stress reliever and a constant companion.
“He’s my kid,” Santiago said. “He gives me something to look forward to. I mean, who doesn’t want to come home to a rabbit?”
Santiago has plans in place for Fugu in case of emergencies, having communicated with her three suitemates to come up with a fire escape plan.
“If it’s at night, because I would have to go down the stairs and turn away from the door to get him, the friend would get him and transfer him to me when we’re outside and safe,” Santiago said. “Otherwise I grab him and run. But I won’t leave without him.”
Santiago has also collaborated with friends in order to ensure that Fugu always has someone to look after him; given the complications of transporting him back to Brooklyn for breaks, he often needs babysitters over shorter breaks.
Santiago and Fugu became a recognizable campus duo soon after Santiago’s arrival freshman year, and she has found that there are always people ready to stop and talk when they see her and Fugu on walks.
“I don’t mind when people ask questions but it’s weird when you’re walking down the street and people start recognizing you as ‘the girl with the rabbit,’” Santiago said. “That’s not the name I expected to make for myself at Middlebury.”
Ada feels very strongly about the fact that some students identify her as “the rabbit girl.” While she is open to people asking about Fugu, she wants people to recognize that there is more to her persona than the cute rabbit by her side.
Ada and Fugu have a lot to look forward to in the future. Fugu’s specific breed of rabbit, called the Netherland Dwarf, usually lives up to 10 or 12 years. Ada is planning on studying abroad in Brazil next year and will be taking Fugu with her.
“Well, Fugu’s pretty much going with me wherever I go,” she said. “When I go to graduate school he’s coming with me. My hope would be that he would be around to see the birth of my first kid. But that may be pushing it. It’s possible, but not definite.”
Whatever the case, Santiago and Fugu have made a home for themselves at Middlebury and are here to stay.
(11/11/10 4:34am)
As Ellis Professor of English and Liberal Arts John Bertolini mentions in his program notes, “unusual people” of idiosyncratic ambition inhabit Major Barbara. George Bernard Shaw writes the vast disparity between characters with a seamless naturalism that lays the groundwork for both fluid humor and startling contrast. Moreover, it allows successful transition between both to create a middle ground where truly evocative theater can occur.
It is in these moments that Major Barbara really triumphs, human features emerging from beneath heavy undertones of the parable.
The audience finds initial inklings of this in the first scene: Lucy Van Atta ’12 plays the part of Lady Britomart, an ostensibly too-upright aristocrat bent on securing (and meddling with) the affairs of her children. Stephen, played by Nathaniel Rothrock ’12, assumes an amusing counterpoint to her control, highlighting her castrating stringency. But Van Atta does not fall prey to the trap posed by her character — and indeed, the trap Shaw sets in writing each of his characters — and astutely leaves room for her development to come.
In the end, her care and insight into the role is rewarded upon the entrance of her estranged husband, Andrew Undershaft —played by Matt Nakitare ’10.5 —who throws the wrench into Lady Brit’s careful clockwork. Though not the primary focus of the performance, the pair manages to develop a chemistry that breaks down the cautious poise of her exterior: we see Biddy, the loving mother and former lover, a character reflecting much more than first suspected. It is to Van Atta’s credit that this transition develops organically — as an audience, we don’t need attention to be called to see the change. We feel it.
But of course the play’s highest stakes lie on the eponymous shoulders of her daughter, played by Lilli Stein ’11. Everything about her introduction to the plot seems secondary: she enters as a quarter of two couples, and the audience’s eye, drawn away by the striking figure cut by her sister Sarah, passes over her uniformed presence. Her few lines allow us only a sketch of her being: as a character, she seems reduced to the impassioned blindness of a fanatic, stagnant in stasis. We are left to wonder why Adolphus has any interest in her at all, and the only clue to the puzzle seems to be the special interest Andrew takes in her.
It is a confusing scene, replete with the dramatic irony of mistaking Stephen’s identity and the overhanging issue of his succession, which almost allows Barbara to be left in a performative wake of understatement. As an unbelievable result, the scene rides on the myriad tensions and jolts the plot into gear. The audience does not move into the next scene dissatisfied, but rather asking all the questions — consciously or not — that they should be asking. It allows Barbara to carry the play’s progression in her own development; which, as Major Barbara unfolds, proves exponential.
When we encounter her later at the shelter, in her element, the true depth of her character is revealed as Stein brilliantly defies the dichotomy between faithful and enlightened. There is a wisdom, a depth to her rhetoric in dialogue that conveys both compassion and belief. Bill Walker (Kevin Thorsen ’11) provides the perfect platform for her transformation, which happens quietly while the audience is diverted to the exchange between Mrs. Baines (Lindsey Messmore ‘11.5) and Undershaft. Upon his final appearance, she has broken her own mold of desperate devotion, and through the change she affects upon him, we see the newer, disillusioned Barbara becoming a foil to her former self.
This change comes to a head in the Undershaft factory, when the former Major comes to a point of self-revelation through the problem of her father, and of her fiancé, played by Willy McKay ’11. Adolphus’s sudden inheritance proves to be the ideal trigger for her catharsis. It is a role that McKay exacts with nuance and facile humor, and is undoubtedly among the jewels of the production. McKay’s subtlety succeeds in completely avoiding the trap of two-dimensionality; he is never just his fiancé’s devotee, nor only the dry professor of Greek. Instead, he balances humor, tenderness and understatement in the embodiment most fitting of Shaw’s writing.
Also worthy of note is a similarly acute awareness of performative naturalism present in Sarah Undershaft, as interpreted by Isabel Shill ’12. Though her role is minor, Shill manages to make a great presence on stage, consistent and without a trace of over-acting.
Professor of Theatre Richard Romagnoli’s production of Major Barbara does remarkable credit to Shaw’s work, and will doubtless be remembered on the Middlebury stage for years to come.
(11/11/10 2:15am)
Students taking natural science and introductory language courses routinely spend twice the amount of time in class than students in other classes, prompting a possible resolution by the Student Government Association (SGA) to add a half credit to classes with extensive lab time.
Junior Senator Connor Hershkowitz ’12, Director of the Academic Affairs Committee Georgia Wright-Simmons ’12 and Academic Affairs Committee member Taylor Shepard ’12 have spearheaded the potential resolution.
“The basic plan is to explore the possibility of adding a half credit for extremely intensive courses — for example, first year Chinese or the lab sciences,” said SGA President Riley O’Rourke ’12. “We will consult the students, faculty and the administration before voting on a resolution in the Senate.”
Molecular biology and biochemistry major Barbara Wilkinson ’12 believes the resolution has long been warranted for natural science majors who, she says, spend significantly more time per class than other majors.
“I have a lot of friends both in the natural sciences and out, and it’s pretty clear who is still working at 1 a.m. consistently four or five days a week,” she said. “A clear disparity certainly exists that is not reflected in the course credits.”
According to Professor of Geology Peter Ryan, 16 out of 18 classes offered in the Geology department have weekly three-hour lab classes in addition to three hours of lecture per week.
“I expect that a typical Middlebury class should take 10 hours a week, including in class time and out of class time,” he said. “If you take four classes, that’s 40 hours a week, which is the equivalent of a full-time job.”
But Megan McGeehan ’12, also a molecular biology and biochemistry major, says 10 hours a week is an unrealistic dream for most natural science majors.
“It’s great if they’re designing it to be 10 hours a week, but the reality is that it’s so much more,” she said.
Biochemistry major Timothy Fields ’12 says “a very conservative estimate” would be 15 hours a week spent for every natural science class he takes. If 10 hours a week equals one credit, Fields believes he and other natural science majors deserve one and a half credits.
If the resolution is passed by the SGA, it will go on to the Educational Affairs Committee (EAC), a group of five tenured faculty members elected by the faculty at large who have the power to implement changes in course credits.
Provost & Executive Vice President and Professor of English & American Literatures Alison Byerly chairs the EAC.
“It’s important to recognize that there are calculations beyond time spent in class that enter into the designation of what constitutes a course,” she said. “The faculty sense is that we allocate effort from class to class in a way that is consistent.”
But according to Ryan, there is an inconsistency between the credit students receive for classes and the credit teachers receive for classes. Professors receive Instructional Units (IU) for teaching classes similar to how students receive credits for taking classes. Ryan points out that professors get one IU for teaching a lecture and half an IU for teaching a lab.
“If I teach a lab and a lecture, I would get 1.5 IU,” he said. “So I can see why students might wonder, ‘Why don’t we get the same amount of credit?’”
Reginald L. Cook Professor of American Literature Brett Millier believes the key to determining whether or not course credits need to be reassessed lies in the “total hours spent per class,” which encompasses time spent in and out of the classroom.
“It’s hard to put a number on how many hours it takes you to write a paper because it takes different people different amounts of time to write papers, but you have to find some average,” she said. “It’s a complicated puzzle.”
McGeehan has taken 10 classes outside the natural sciences and says from her experience, the workload in those classes hasn’t come close to workloads of her natural science classes.
“Every semester a science class takes up the most time,” she said.
The “one class equals one credit” system is deeply engrained in the culture of the College. Changing how much a course is worth would alter the equality of a liberal arts degree.
“Awarding credit to a course is basically certifying a level of effort that encompasses both time spent in class and level of material covered,” said Byerly. “It would be a fairly substantial change.”
If the EAC passed a resolution for an extra half credit, Millier does not believe humanities courses or humanities professors would be relatively devalued.
“I don’t think that people in this department [ENAM] would be offended by the idea that some classes in other departments would receive more actual credit,” she said.
Wilkinson says that adding an extra half credit for labs would be a serious boon for natural science majors. The added half credit for lab would give students greater flexibility to take their area of study outside the classroom.
“[Half credit for labs] would provide the opportunity for natural science majors to use Winter Term or another class block to do something off campus to bolster their résumé, which is increasingly necessary in these competitive fields,” she said.
But according to Byerly, adding a half credit to certain courses with extensive labs will start a problematic domino effect.
“If you start making those (credit) differentiations, then you can imagine a system where slight fractions are awarded to classes all across the College,” she said. “If you started making too fine a distinction among courses, it would be hard to know where to stop.”
Wilkinson rejects the idea of a domino affect. She says that Middlebury has the resources to evaluate course credits on a class-by-class and department-by-department basis.
“We are a very small college where the course catalog is relatively small,” she said. “I understand that there will be a lot of ripple effects but I don’t think that is a valid reason for not considering [the resolution].”
Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Rick Bunt says that between two-thirds and three-fourths of courses in his department entail an additional three hours of “forced contact hours” in lab time. While neither in favor nor against the resolution, Bunt acknowledges that natural science courses are inherently more time consuming.
“It’s a little unfair,” he said. “But some things are just unfair and you have to deal with it.”
Ryan and Bunt both say they try to compensate for the added class time by scaling back on the lab homework they assign.
“As a teacher, I am cognizant that students are spending an additional three hours in the lab, so the amount of work I require outside of class is a little bit less than what otherwise would be the case,” said Ryan.
But if the resolution is put into place, Ryan and Byerly say they would feel pressure to add additional work to fulfill the one and a half credits, offsetting the goal of the SGA’s resolution.
“If students were getting an additional half credit for lab classes then the workload would definitely have to go up,” said Ryan. “I don’t think that students in the natural sciences are currently doing 50 percent more work.”
“If what you are teaching is worth one and a half credits, you would expect that a student is taking fewer courses around it and you would expect them to do more work,” said Byerly.
Wilkinson says the central disagreement of how much time students spend on natural science courses is indicative of a larger disconnect concerning what teachers expect and the amount of time needed for students to achieve the expectations.
“If [half credit for labs] happens, it will take a lot of discussion between students and professors to come up with an honest measure of how much credit a class is worth,” she said.
Teachers and students both agree that the “one class equals one credit” system is at the very least worthy of a serious dialogue.
“This should be open to a College-wide debate,” said Professor of Mathematics David Dorman. “It’s certainly worth a discussion.”
(11/11/10 1:58am)
Everything I know and am is utterly false. This is what the British students at Oxford tell me. I cannot speak or spell or tell time. I cannot drive. I cannot even drink my tea the way I would like it, that is, without milk. This is incorrect, if you didn’t know. Civilization asks for milk in its tea. And I, being American, am not civilized.
There are some aspects to this barbarianism with which I can’t really argue. Multiple party political systems beat two-party governments any day. And I would kill for their national health care and their subsidized university system (though that’s under threat at the moment — Google “Browne Review”).
I would call life here eye-opening, but someone around me might object that there are better ways to phrase it, and I would feel sheepish. (There are many sheep here in England; therefore, I think they will be okay with this diction.)
When I decided to come to Oxford to study, people joked about the “difficulty” of the language I was going to face. And I took it all in good fun, realizing that, yes, going to an English-speaking country in Western Europe would engender less culture-shock then say, Dakar, Senegal. But this “special relationship” the U.K. and America supposedly hold only makesd the differences more acute and pointed. I have never been a very patriotic American, but with a defense ever at the ready (“Yes, Americans can read, thank you very much”), I have actually become more enlightened toward the beautiful complexity of my own homeland.
Last weekend, some British friends and I played a game, in which they tested me on English bits of slang. Some of it I plan to adopt and bring back to the U.S. Have you ever heard of a more delightful word than “more-ish”? It denotes a food so addictive you cannot resist eating more. We do not really have an American equivalent, and yet, this word seems so useful. Others, like “rubber” for “eraser,” I feel would effect some confusion in the United States. As the game progressed, they then began asking me to throw out American slang terms, but I found it difficult. Everywhere, even in a country as small as Britain, has its own regional dialects and accents, but in a nation the size of Europe, denoting what exactly was “national” slang was near to impossible. Minnesota might as well be France and Texas can be Spain, and I explained that trying to find a similar term between them would be like finding a slang word that crosses both Spanish and French.
But this is something I love about the United States. Our conception of distance will always be greater — to the Europeans, we must look like a country built from little countries. It takes me eight hours to get to Vermont from my home in Swarthmore, Penn., but my friend here from Liverpool receives looks of incredulousness when she talks about her three-hour trip to Oxford.
Despite all of these differences, I have found Oxford welcoming, seeking solace in those similarities that rise above all international barriers. No matter what country you’re in, I believe, the effects of intoxication will always stimulate belligerent debates about politics. The parties might be different, but the resounding disillusionment with the ineffective government overcomes the sometimes-unintelligibility of the accent. I get it, you’re pissed, in both the British and the American sense.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
For most four-year-olds, a major accomplishment might be a successful count to 10 or a particularly imaginative finger painting. For Sierra Young ’12, it was her first solo spin on a toddler-sized unicycle.
Since long before Young was born, unicycling has been a family affair. Her father, known to fiddle with bicycles as a child, founded a unicycle club at MIT and later in Cle Elum, Washington, where Young would grow up. On occasion, he would visit her elementary school to teach his skills to local students.
“A lot of my classmates knew how to ride, or at least who my family was,” she said.
With a community of enthusiastic cyclists back home, Middlebury students’ reactions to her cycling were initially surprising.
“Here it seems way more of an oddity than it did at home,” she said.
Though she herself has little recollection of the learning experience, Young’s family tells her that she could cycle on her own before her fourth birthday. Her first unicycle featured a 12.5-inch wheel and a block of two-by-four attached to each pedal to allow her feet to reach. Outfitted with knee and elbow pads and a helmet, she was well-equipped to learn from the rest of the family.
“My brother and sister were riding as far back as I can remember,” she said.
Though older riders often find the learning curve challenging, Young experienced a smooth transition.
“I don’t remember it being frustrating,” she said. “It was more like my dad just put me on it, and I was striving to be like my older siblings.”
Since coming to Middlebury, she has dabbled in activities from tutoring to the meditation club. Her summer job résumé includes leading hikes as an interpretive park ranger and teaching English at an elementary school in Paraguay. The joint Geography and Environmental Studies major and active member of the DREAM mentoring program can often be seen wheeling around campus on her mountain unicycle.
While it serves as an effective mode of transportation to her classes and activities, it also provides a great deal of recreational opportunities. Young and her family have traveled all over the country for trail rides and unicycling competitions, including UNICON, an annual national convention that was held in Washington in 2002. Events include the long jump and the slow board, where riders try to take as long as possible to cross a ten-meter plank while maintaining forward motion. Depending on the event, cyclists can enter competitions individually, in pairs or with full club teams.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
Americans tend to dislike regulations. We don’t like being told what to do, much less how or why to curb our appetites. Yet we are in the midst of a social transformation based on rethinking the value of local and organic foods that is both market-driven and ethically compelling. Consumers want to know where their food comes from and what’s in it. Shoppers want grass-fed, not feed-lot beef, eggs from free-range hens, seasonal vegetables, organic milk, micro-brews — and even Vermont wine. The demand for foods like these is driven not only by health concerns (burgeoning obesity, high rates of heart disease and cancer) but also by the fact that organic and local foods taste better. Investing in them supports our community in all kinds of ways.
But while we are busy being green, we too readily forget that this is a blue planet. One of the ingredients of our gustatory lives often left out of the conversation is seafood. The many kinds of fish available at local grocery stores and specialty shops hide a simple, horrifying fact: the oceans are being overfished dramatically, emptied of life at a rapid rate. Overfishing has destroyed once-abundant stocks of groundfish (cod, flounder), billfish (swordfish, marlin), several species of tuna, Patagonian Toothfish and too many others to mention here. Rapacious resource extraction by humans has caused entire marine ecosystems to collapse (in the Black Sea, on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and elsewhere).
Consider sashimi — a particular vice of mine. This popular (and largely urban) fare is made possible by industrial fishing (pelagic fleets, flash freezing) and distribution. It is also unsustainable. Many fisheries experts consider the eating of large marine predators, such as Bluefin Tuna, the equivalent of eating Bengal Tigers or Snow Leopards. Should we really be consuming the top-level predators that regulate marine ecosystems, especially now that we know that their populations are a tiny fraction of their historical abundance?
Aquaculture (farmed fish) seems an easy answer. But most farmed fish, such as Atlantic Salmon, require enormous amounts of feed from species lower on the food chain and all kinds of chemical and medical additives to be safe and appealing to eat. The meat of a farm-raised salmon isn’t naturally orange. It’s grey. To make it look orange (like it should), fish farms use oil-based dyes. The meat contains relatively high levels of pollutants. Do you really want to be eating fish laced with petrochemicals, PCBs and antibiotics? The canard of “organically farm-raised fish” is simply a marketing ploy: there is no FDA organic standard for fish. There is no such thing as organic or environmentally sensitive farmed salmon. Tilapia is a much more environmentally friendly option. So are mussels.
The tension between food choice and eating locally (not to mention ethically) is a tough one. Should we really limit ourselves to root vegetables in the winter because fresh greens aren’t locally in season? Maybe not. Should we pay attention to what kind of fish we eat and where we get it? Absolutely. If you want to be blue as well as green, keep up to date with the Seafood Eaters’ Guides from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute. And skip the Orange Roughy, please!
Daniel Brayton is an Assistant Professor of English and American Literatures.
(10/07/10 4:10am)
Frank Sesno '77, whose resume includes but is not limited to “Director of School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University,” “CNN White House correspondent” and “Middlebury graduate,” introduced a theme that would come to pervade many of the presentations to follow: the power of the story.
“I think the four most important words in the English language are ‘once upon a time,’” he said. With 30 years of experience in journalism behind him, Sesno has learned about the potential impact of the story on both a widespread and personal level.
However, the media’s potential often goes unfulfilled. Sesno pointed out that while YouTube sensations such as “Charlie Bit My Finger” often attract more attention than coverage of natural disasters does.
Sesno challenged audience members to do better. “I’ve had the unbelievable pleasure to see stories, to listen to stories, to write stories and here’s what I’ve realized: I’m in a story,” he said. He encouraged people to use their own stories — those lived and retold — to reshape the world. “Through that story, others will follow you and be inspired by you, and you truly can change things.”
(10/07/10 4:07am)
On October 3, Victor Zhikai Gao spoke about China’s transformation under President Deng Xiaoping, for whom he served as translator. Gao is the first influential politician from mainland China to speak at Middlebury, and he held the undivided attention of a packed Dana Auditorium for almost two hours.
Gao discussed China’s efficient, single-party government — the ease with which they can simply decide on a long-term plan for China’s development. His comparisons between the Chinese and the American styles of government were particularly resonant because of the elections going on now. Gao mentioned a Republican friend of his who said, “We are pleased that the unemployment rate is as high as it is because it will give us a better chance in November.” Gao said that the comment surprised him because that such a statement would sound absurd in a one-party country like China.
Few can boast a resume comparable to Gao’s. During the 1980s, Gao worked at the Chinese Foreign Service as Deng Xiaoping’s English translator focusing on China-U.S. relations, making him a bridge between two of the Cold War’s largest powers during the war’s conclusion. Gao also has experience in law and private equity. He was Senior Vice President of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which is one of the three major national oil companies in China. Positions with the United Nations Secretariat, Morgan Stanley and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission augment Gao’s strikingly multi-dimensional experience. Assistant Professor of Political Science Jessica Teets introduced Gao by listing these positions as just “the highlights” of his resume.
Gao described the developmental fervor of China, the single-minded, single-party drive towards sophistication.
“In China, parents gave children born in the 1950s names that translate to ‘Surpass Great Britain!’ and ‘Overtake the United States!’” he said.
These names were features of the nationalism inspired by Mao Zedong. Mao’s economic strategies were limited by the philosophy that everyone must prosper equally. But when President Deng rose to power, he declared that, as translated by Gao, “Development is the hard truth.” Gao pointed to Deng’s assertion that “some people can become rich ahead of others,” as a policy breakthrough. As related in Gao’s presentation, Deng’s vision was to reach “a little comfort,” by the early 21st century and “[to] become a middle-level developed country” by the middle 21st century.
China’s actual achievements go far beyond this vision. In 1978, China held $168 million in foreign reserve currency. Through the intensive development of manufacturing and China’s emergence as, in Gao’s words, “a Champion of free trade and market economy,” China now holds roughly $2.4 trillion in reserve.
Gao explained the explosive quality of China’s development in terms of work ethic.
“The Chinese want to work,” he said. “In China, we did not understand why the French went on strike demanding that the retirement age be lowered to 62. In China, retirement is like a death sentence. There is glory only in work.”
Gao also gave more specific reasons: China has 1.4 billion consumers working within one single and unified market, one legal system, one party, and one government. Education is highly emphasized, and the older generation is willing to sacrifice for the younger generation. China is making large investments in green technology because, to paraphrase Gao, there is not enough oil left in the earth for 1.4 billion Chinese to consume as Americans do now.
Gao mentioned the increasingly high stakes in Sino-American diplomacy and the certainty with which China’s economy will grow larger than the US’s. He concluded by saying, “In history, the world’s most powerful empire has never allowed its position to be taken by another, rising power without a war. It is our greatest task to defy history.”
(10/07/10 4:05am)
On Sept. 29, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Chellis House, sponsored a talk with former journalist Marie Ridder titled “The Making of a Renaissance Woman.” Ridder came to Chellis House as part of the “Lunchtime Lecture” series.
“The Chellis House lunchtime lecture series provides an intimate framework where audience members can interact with speakers on a very direct level,” said Karin Hanta, director of Chellis House. “Marie Ridder’s talk was designed to stimulate intergenerational dialogue and provide a window into how a professional journalist and political activist achieved success during a time in which the glass ceiling was pressing down very hard on women.”
A renaissance woman is a woman who has acquired profound knowledge or proficiency in more than one field, and Marie Ridder certainly fits this description. Ridder was formerly a Washington correspondent for the Ridder and Knight Ridder newspapers as well as a Washington editor for Vogue, Mademoiselle and Glamour magazines. She was also deputy to the national director of Project Head Start and now serves on the Executive Committee of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Ridder is retired from her journalism career, but remains involved in politics as a current member of the Word Wildlife Fund Council, the American Farmland Trust Council, and the Brookings Institute Council.
In her talk, Marie Ridder shared how she always knew she wanted to be a journalist. In 1938, at the age of 12, Ridder became a copygirl for the English newspaper her grandfather owned in Japan, and from that point forward, Ridder was on the path to becoming an accomplished journalist.
“It never occurred to me to do anything else,” Ridder said.
Even as a senior in high school, Ridder was offered the position of reporter for her local newspaper. As a student at Bryn Mawr College, Ridder was the editor of the campus newspaper and also wrote a column for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Ridder attributed many of her accomplishments to luck and circumstance.
“These opportunities wouldn’t have occurred if there wasn’t a war going on, causing a shortage of men,” Ridder said. “You have to understand how devoid of bodies these people were.”
Students were struck by Ridder’s attention to her particular circumstances.
“[This point of the talk] made me think about how much each of our lives are subject to the particular circumstances we find ourselves in at any given moment, and how much effect external events can have even on the lives of individual people,” said Sarah Cohen ’12.
Ridder’s friend Wendy Morgan, an activist who has worked with Planned Parenthood, would not let Ridder be too modest about her achievements.
“With or without a war, [Ridder] is audacious, and she is always looking for an opportunity to get out there and do something great,” said Morgan.
Ridder described the dynamics of the news industry and how although newsrooms are a place where women have successfully advanced, women still face many challenges.
“So much of my luck came with wartime, but there still existed a glass ceiling,” said Ridder. Ridder spoke of women she knew who deserved to be lead editorss, but who were kept as staff writers while the positions were instead given to men.
Ridder also spoke about her involvement with environmental issues and her current projects, such a protecting a parcel of wilderness by the Potomac River, testifying against the reopening of old power plants in the Ohio Valley that will affect the health of the nearby national park and the Smoky Mountains and working to preserve the last pristine beach in the Chesapeake Bay Area, which is an important piece of land for migratory birds.
Students responded positively to the stories Ridder told.
“I thought Marie Ridder’s talk was really interesting — it was great to hear from a woman who covered such important stories and went on to have such an impact through her work with Head Start,” said Sarah Harris ’11. “She was certainly a trailblazer and really set a precedent for women wanting to do serious journalism.”
The diversity of Ridder’s pursuits also proved impressive.
“I was most impressed by what an accomplished and varied career Marie Ridder pursued throughout her life,” said Cohen ’12. “It seemed that she was interested in so many activities and found a way to enact meaningful change in a variety of different areas she was passionate about.”
When asked to give advice to aspiring journalists, Ridder emphasized real world experience over continued schooling.
“I personally believe ‘doing’ is more important than going to more school,” said Ridder. “And don’t be afraid to enter at the bottom. We all did.”
She was also honest in saying that the newspaper business is in bad shape and that serious journalism may be in trouble. However, Ridder did acknowledge that she sees a future in small papers, which seem to be in economic ascendance.
Despite this discouraging point about the future of print communications, students left motivated by Ridder’s talk.
“She is clearly a women who has lived a life full of adventure, and it was inspiring to meet someone who has accomplished so much in her life and still isn’t slowing down,” said Cohen ’12. “She’s someone who was never afraid of a challenge or having to work hard to get what she wanted, an admirable trait that I believe applies to us, as the younger generation just beginning to venture out into the real world to pursue our own passions and dreams.”
(10/07/10 4:04am)
When D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing Jay Parini introduced writer Howard Frank Mosher to a crowd in Axinn’s Abernethy Room last Wednesday, he said that he had a title for Mosher ever since he started reading his books: the William Faulkner of the Northeast Kingdom. According to Professor Parini’s introduction, Mosher’s work is rooted in this postage stamp of land in Northeast Vermont and with his books he has universalized it for decades.
Mosher went on to explain how he came to call the Northeast Kingdom his home. In his early twenties, Mosher had a desire to look for “a blueprint” that would show him how to write fiction. He thought graduate school might be the answer, but with very little money he had to put it on hold. It was at that time that he and his wife decided to teach and found jobs teaching high school in the county of Orleans, Vt, one of the three that defines the Northeast kingdom. Mosher and his wife had their first contact with the people of the Northeast Kingdom when they asked two drunken men caught in a street fight for directions. The two men jumped in the car and showed them where they wanted to go, only to continue the fight when they were done.
To Mosher, the Kingdom held “a goldmine of stories. When I arrived, I wasn’t ready to write them. I wouldn’t be able to write them for 10 or 15 years. Some of the stories are sad. The kingdom is a very desolate place.”
Mosher had just completed a 100-city book tour for his most recent book, Walking to Gatlinburg, published in March. Currently, Mosher is working on a new book that has a connection to Middlebury. According to Mosher, it is inspired by the life and work of one of Middlebury’s most famous graduates, Alexander Twilight.
Much of Mosher’s visit was focused on Walking to Gatlinburg. “I’m interested in where writers come up with that glimmer of an idea,” he said. “Where did Jane Austen come up with that spark for Pride and Prejudice? In the case of Gatlinburg, it started as a true story.”
The original story belonged to a friend of Mosher’s in North Carolina, whose great-great-great grandfather was conscripted to the confederate army during the Civil War.
“His name was Jasper Memory. At the beginning of his campaign, he was almost immediately captured and taken to Elmira Prison, where nearly 3,000 confederate soldiers died from neglect.” The story was to be about how he survived and traveled back to his bride in North Carolina, trekking over the Great Smokey Mountains.
“But it seemed somebody else wrote this story.” Mosher said, referring to Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. “I didn’t want to go at Charles Frazier. But the story wouldn’t let go.”
The current story came to Mosher about a year later, when he was walking at his home and observing the mountains.
“I thought, what if? What if he [the main character] was looking for his brother who was MIA?”
Seven years and 50 drafts later, Walking For Gatlinburg was finished.
Mosher read two sections from his book to the crowd. Both involved encounters between the main character, Morgan, and famous figures in the war, most notably President Lincoln. From listening to the reading, Mosher’s skill was apparent, though not in an overwhelming or bombastic way. The content was very specific and laced with history, while the language was active and heavy, but not wordy. Mosher’s skill with dialogue was strong, as it covered a huge spectrum of emotions. One minute it was quirky and pleasant, the next morally heavy. His prose seemed alive and incredibly natural. Though future drafts of the work might remove extra prepositions or words, two things that will remain in Mosher’s writing are curiosity and interest. He was genuinely in love with the story he was writing, which caused the audience to follow in turn.
This is in keeping with what he said was his muse. Mosher heard his best writing tip in a bar in Nashville listening to a young girl sing country. At the back of the bar was an old man “with iron grey hair” who was supposedly a major country star at one point. When Mosher saw him, the man was drinking himself to death. After the young singer finished, the old man beckoned her back and Mosher, “being the nosey writer from Vermont,” leaned in to listen to their conversation. Apparently, this country singer, a man past his prime, told Mosher via the younger singer: “When you’re up on stage singing nice songs, never hold nothing back.”
Mosher certainly took this to heart. While his words were spare at his reading, his curiosity with the world he creates could not be contained.
(10/07/10 4:01am)
Sporting a head of frizzy brown hair and wearing a pink dress, tights and boots, Abigail Washburn certainly fit the appearance of a bubbly bluegrass songstress during her Sept. 29 concert at the Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Effervescent from the moment she walked onstage, Washburn shouted a loud “Hi!” to the audience before she gave a strum of her banjo and led her four-man band into the first number of the night, the title track of her upcoming album City of Refuge.
As an alumna of the Middlebury College Language School’s summer Chinese School in both 1998 and 2001, Washburn was quite familiar with the College. Notably, she admired the beauty of the Concert Hall. After performing her first song, she reminisced briefly on her dream of sharing her music onstage at Middlebury.
“I remember when I was a student in Language School. I came [into the Concert Hall] and went, ‘wow someday.’ Well, today is the day,” Washburn said.
The concert was a compilation of some of the most sophisticated and well-written bluegrass songs I had ever heard, ranging from whimsical ballads to soft, reflective lyrical poems to boppy instrumental pieces featuring violin and banjo solos. Washburn’s voice was gorgeous and crystal clear, and her four supporting musicians were equally as skilled. A musician herself, Washburn is a clawhammer banjo player, meaning that she strikes the strings of the instrument using the motion of her wrist rather than the more traditional flicking motion of the fingers. This technique lent itself to her unique sound. The concert consisted of songs from City of Refuge as well as some of her past compositions.
The highlight of the show, however, was a traditional Chinese song which Washburn learned during a trip to China in 1996. The pounding drums and blaring trumpet solos served as the perfect background to Washburn’s soaring voice as she demonstrated her near-fluent prowess. Interestingly, there was a certain passion in her voice during the Chinese song that wasn’t quite as noticeable during her English songs. Through her voice, the audience could feel her love and appreciation for Chinese language and culture.
In between songs, Washburn would introduce a member of her four-man band to the audience. It was certainly a unique crew. For instance, drummer Jamie Dick — also known as “Whistlin’ Dick” — performed a whistling ditty as his introduction and joked how great it sounded thanks to the acoustics of the Concert Hall, while violinist Rob Hecht sported a light pink scarf throughout the performance.
“I find it very attractive,” said Washburn of her bandmate’s attire.
In fact, the entire performance was filled not only with Washburn’s music, but with her quirky sense of humor as well. For example, after one of her songs called “Molly Put the Kettle On,” Washburn was quick to clarify why she chose that particular title.
“It’s not to be confused with ‘Polly Put the Kettle On.’ Polly has problems putting the kettle on. Molly enjoys it,” she said, prompting chuckles from the audience. Washburn also poked fun at the stereotype of the ‘overly dramatic’ singer-songwriter. Before performing the song “Last Train,” Washburn noted wryly that the song was “an exploration of the relentlessness of time or something.”
A few students came to listen to Washburn and her band, but the audience consisted mostly of older members of the Middlebury community. It’s a shame that there were not more students in attendance — there was certainly the possibility of Washburn’s lively bluegrass gaining a small fanbase on campus had more students been there to hear her original music and stunning voice.
Though she performed in a band for this concert, Washburn usually performs and records as soloist. Her third album, City of Refuge, will be released in early 2011.
(10/07/10 4:01am)
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Center, which was founded in 1980 to provide critical services to refugees resettling in the state. Since efforts began in 1975, the US has resettled about 2.6 million refugees, as of 2009. Around 300 refugees a year arrive in Vermont.
Burlington was designated a refugee resettlement center because it has sufficient employment and housing opportunities to support an influx of immigrants. Vietnamese were among the first to arrive, followed by large numbers of Bosnians in the 1990s and then refugees from various African countries. In recent years, Somali-Bantus, Iraqis, Bhutanese, Nepalese and Burmese have been the largest groups of refugees. Somali-Bantu women in brightly colored headscarves and wraps have become a common sight in the Old North End, and recent immigrants have brought their ethnic food to restaurants, street carts, farmers’ markets and even to the local co-op.
But why Vermont? As one of the whitest states in the nation, it does not immediately bring to mind an image of diversity or acceptance. Yet over 200 volunteers in the Burlington area have made a commitment to helping individual families.
I grew up in a small town that did not have its own high school, and my brother and I chose to attend Burlington High School because it offered a diverse community in homogenous Vermont.
I was lucky to have the chance to tutor in an ESL class with a Somali-Bantu girl named Amino. She was a couple of years older than I was, and was already married and taking care of a young daughter. Amino wanted to make sure her daughter would grow up being able to speak English, and was therefore trying to learn herself. Every so often we would practice reading an English children’s book so that Amino could go home and read it to her daughter.
Amino’s story is representative of the experience of other Somali-Bantu teenagers who move to the United States. They may have had limited access to English in a refugee camp, and they enter the American school system at a time where most students have formed somewhat rigid friendship groups. It was difficult to talk with Amino about her life outside the classroom.
Language represents the crucial barrier between many high-school-age refugees and their American peers. Younger refugees who enter the school system pick up English quickly and become better integrated socially with their classmates. Often these younger children act as interpreters for their parents, significantly altering the family dynamic. Somali-Bantu adults who have little experience with English tend to rely on the tightly-knit Somali-Bantu community in the Burlington area.
Still, Vermont is one of the few states where individuals can attend school after the age of 18, which is an essential opportunity for many immigrants. Even if they come to the U.S. as 17 or 18-year-olds, they can take advantage of English classes at the high school for several years.
Middlebury students can explore their interests in international issues not just by studying abroad, but by engaging in the critical experience of refugees resettling here in Vermont. Two groups on campus are working to address the language needs of the refugee groups in the Burlington area – one with primarily Burmese youths and the other with Somali-Bantu adults. Look into how you can get involved!
(10/07/10 3:57am)
The College is currently in the process of reaccreditation, a process that all institutions of higher learning must undergo every 10 years. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) performs the reaccreditation; a team from that organization will visit campus in the fall of 2011 to complete their study.
“The question is not so much necessarily whether we will be accredited, but whether there will be particular areas of concern,” said Susan Campbell, Dean of Planning and Assessment and director of the College’s self-study.
“[NEASC] has a very specific outline for what we are required to submit,” said Campbell. “That includes measuring ourselves against 11 different standards. We have to write a self-study that addresses how well we think we are doing in all of those areas … where we think our strengths and weakness are.”
The self-study addresses the following standards: mission and purposes, planning and evaluation, organization and governance, the academic program, faculty, students, library and other information resources, physical and technological resources, financial resources, public disclosure, and integrity.
According to Campbell, NEASC has informed the College that serious attention will be paid not only to the undergraduate college, which has been the focus of all the previous reviews, but also to the College’s other degree-granting entities — the Language Schools, the C.V. Starr Schools Abroad, the Bread Loaf School of English and the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a graduate school of the College.
“One thing that we are trying to figure out how to do well now that wasn’t so relevant in the past is institutional integration,” said Campbell. “The undergraduate college is the primary focus of the institution, but we also have significant, important and high-quality programs in very different parts of the world with somewhat different missions.”
The self-study process began about a year ago, after having been postponed for two years in order to let the process of acquiring the Monterey Institute play out. In the fall of 2009, the steering committee and subcommittees were organized and began to meet to form plans and outlines for evaluating the College.
“We meet once a week and have been since last year and will be through this semester,” said Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research Kathy Skubikowski. Skubikowski is also a member of the committee on faculty and academic standards.
At this point, faculty members are deeply involved in the reaccreditation process.
“You would be hard-put to find a faculty member who doesn’t have some involvement in it or know about it,” said Skubikowski.
NEASC examines institutions in a structured way. The organization “requires that we not only identify our challenges and strengths but that we say what specifically we are going to do to maintain those strengths and address those challenges,” said Campbell.
“Sometimes [data collection] involves some very basic information about the institution, but it can also involve more focused attempts to gather data on things that we think matter and that we want to look at,” Campbell continued. “It is not one big data collection effort, it is the compilation of a whole lot of different data collection efforts.”
For example, a class on survey methodology taught by Professor of Sociology and Religion Burke Rochford aided in the reaccreditation process last year.
“As part of that class they do a pretty large scale survey of about 200 students every year on different topics depending on what the students in the class want to do,” said Campbell. “[Rochford] met with me before the class started and asked if there was any way that [the class] could be helpful to the reaccreditation process and I said ‘Yes, please!’”
The class included questions about the Commons and students’ experiences with and evaluations of the Commons, an initiative about which Campbell said the College has never really collected statistical evidence.
The class also collected survey data from students about diversity, stress and workload. They made presentations at the end of the semester, submitted a written report and gave Campbell their data file, allowing the reaccreditation committee to perform more data analyses.
“The students seemed really pleased to be gathering data that they knew would be useful beyond the class,” said Campbell.
The reaccreditation committee also has a large body of survey data that is routinely collected from students, including the annual senior survey and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program survey submitted to first-years during orientation.
Student involvement
The self-study of student life will most directly affect the student body.
“The bulk of our report will be focused on the kinds of student services we provide and what changes might need to be made in those areas,” said Gus Jordan, Dean of Students and chair of the subcommittee on standards of student life. “I suspect a focus on three areas: the Commons system, diversity and concerns about stress levels.”
The committee on student standards will be looking at many facets of student life. They will address the admissions process, the financial aid process and all of the services available to students, including athletics, health services and career services.
“The self-study is prompting some departments to do more formal thinking about ways they can measure their effectiveness,” said Jordan. “In the changing education scene that we exist in, we are recognizing that we need more objective measures of measuring how effective our services are.”
The self-study will include much information from ongoing studies on campus. For example, the English department, along with the English departments of several other schools that have been similarly funded by the Teagle Foundation, has been conducting research on progress in writing skills. Even before the process of reaccreditation began, they had been studying the progress of about 45 students by looking at writing samples and conducting interviews.
The committee on faculty and academic standards studied members of the Class of 2010’s development as writers during their four years on campus. A small group of English department faculty members read through their first-year papers with a rubric the committee had developed to evaluate desirable features of writing.
“There was significant growth overall,” said Skibikowski, “and most importantly, writing improved significantly from the first first-year seminar paper to the last. Progress plateaued in the second semester.”
“The thing that is most interesting is the feedback loop,” said Skubikowski. “We revised the rhetorical goals of a first-year seminar. One of the areas that didn’t grow significantly was the capacity to form an interesting thesis.”
As a response to this observation, the committee moved to much more heavily emphasize this writing skill in the rhetorical concerns of the first-year seminar.
Campbell emphasized the importance of disseminating the results of the self study to the entire College community.
This will occur “probably very early in the spring term,” she said. “At that point it will be considered technically a draft in the sense that we will still have the opportunity to make any changes, additions, or revisions that we think are appropriate based on feedback from the community.”
Students will be minimally involved in this process until the draft is released, at which point the community’s input — particularly student input — will be strongly desired.
“I’m anxious to get students involved in the process soon,” said Jordan. “We might discover that we have missed an area of concern. … I’m hopeful that by the time we hit the end of spring, students will broadly feel a sense of connection to the process and that they have had opportunities to contribute.”
Jordan plans to hold forums to involve the Student Government Association and the Community Council in the revision process.
The NEASC team’s visit
Once the community has reviewed the self-study, it will be sent to NEASC in the fall of 2011. At that point, a review team will visit campus. Skubikowski served on a review team last year, so she has some insight into the process.
“They will be a group of five or six people from schools like Middlebury and the president of another college will head that committee,” said Skubikowski. “They will arrive on campus armed with questions. They’ll go around and talk to not just the people who wrote the report, but they’ll also have all sorts of open meetings with students and faculty. They are looking to find information that … corroborates what they have read in the report, gives a wrinkle to it, complicates it or helps them understand it better.”
The Vermont campus is not the only location affiliated with the College that will receive visitors as part of the reaccreditation process. According to Campbell, NEASC will send “a small subset” of the review team abroad, perhaps two or three members of the team that will come to Vermont in the fall. These reviewers will visit the Bread Loaf School of English, the Language Schools, one of the Schools Abroad and the Monterey Institute.
“All of those people gather back here on campus,” said Campbell. “So they will be looking at the undergraduate college but also putting together everything they have learned from their visits elsewhere.”
Before they leave campus, the NEASC team will give an open presentation to the community with their preliminary findings.
“The best case scenario is that they find sufficient evidence … that we are doing everything we are supposed to be doing and doing it well, and that we have identified our own weaknesses and have plans to deal with them — and they say ‘We’ll see you in 10 years,’” said Campbell.
According to Skubikowski, there have been cases at other schools in which the review team decided to return sooner to make sure adequate progress was being made.
Larger implications of the reaccreditation process
The NEASC reaccreditation process, though lengthy and time-consuming, has broad institutional implications that will greatly benefit the College in the long run, say those involved in the process.
“You get involved and often forget to step back. NEASC is giving us the opportunity to step back — it’s forcing us to take a step back,” said Skubikowski.
“We are really changing our notion of what the process of reaccreditation means,” said Jordan. “Whereas it used to be that every 10 years you go through this whole thing then it all disappears, I think that now we will be in a continuous evaluation process. … We need to be more attentive year by year as to how we are doing. Many offices in student life already do that internally. We just need to systematize that.”
Campbell echoed Jordan’s views regarding the larger, thematic implications of the reaccreditation process.
“This is an opportunity for the entire community to take a look at the projections we make and comment on those, on the direction the institution is going and about how we feel about that as a community,” said Campbell. “This is part of a broader national movement pushing for assessment and accountability. We will provide evidence not only that we hire excellent faculty and we have very well qualified students, but that we also have some process in place for actually assessing the degree to which students in general achieve the goals we set for them.
“We are starting to ask more nuanced questions about what exactly students are learning and where they might not be developing their skills to the degree that we would want,” Campbell continued. This means thinking about “what we can do about that in terms of enhancing the curriculum, refining our teaching, or whatever it might be. That’s new in terms of NEASC’s expectations and new for us as an institution.”
Jordan highlighted the central role the student experience plays in this process.
“We want to directly support the students in their work life and social life and make sure they feel connected to that process,” he said.
Students, faculty and staff can expect to see the effects of this largely behind-the-scenes project in coming months.
(10/07/10 3:53am)
As part of the College’s “Meet the Press” lecture series, acclaimed New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer will visit campus on Oct. 11 at 4:30 p.m. to give a talk on civil liberties and torture.
Though Mayer has an impressive resume, including a 12-year stint with The Wall Street Journal where she was a war correspondent and foreign correspondent and was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize, Mayer began her career in Vermont, working for two small local weeklies before joining the staff of The Rutland Herald.
As another part of the “Meet the Press” series, John Hockenberry, host of National Public Radio’s “The Takeaway” news show and former host of their “Talk of the Nation” program, visited the College on Oct. 5 at 4:30 p.m. in McCardell Bicentennial Hall 220. The talk he gave was entitled “Fasten Your Seatbelts: American Voter Anger Crash Lands in 2010.” His talk, as a Meet the Press event, was given in question-and-answer format, and therefore led to extensive discussion on a variety of topics.
Hockenberry, who also worked as a war correspondent for ABC News in Kosovo, Iraq and Somalia, has been a paraplegic since the age of 19. He is a four-time Emmy Award winner and three-time Peabody Award winner. The talk was co-sponsored by the Institute for Working Journalism, the Office of the Dean of the College, the Department of English and American Literatures and the Department of Political Science.
(10/07/10 3:52am)
On Sept. 30 the citizens of the world’s only totalitarian state were able to view the individual who will likely succeed their current dictator. Through a low-resolution image fed to the state-run national newspaper, they saw a round-faced young man in between his father and a general, unsmiling and with his hair combed straight back.
That young man is Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of North Korea’s current dictator Kim Jong Il.
Last Thursday, following the nation’s largest Workers Party gathering in 30 years, the dictator announced the appointment of his son as a four-star general of the Korean People’s Army. Jong-un was also named to the Military commission of the Worker’s Party. While these titles mean little to many in the West, they represent a significant shift in the power structure in the impoverished nation.
Analysts believe that the appointments indicate that Kim Jong-un will succeed his father as the dictator of North Korea, whereby extending the family’s control over the impoverished nation to its third generation. Analysts note that the current dictator likely felt the necessity to begin to create a succession framework following a “stroke-like illness” two years ago.
Though the international community has long suspected that Jong-un would succeed his father, the announcement was a monumental, as censorship in the country pervades to such an extreme that the North Korean public had never before heard the young man’s name.
According to the New York Times, Kim Jong-un is either 27 or 28. The Washington Post noted that he spent a year studying in Switzerland at some point during his adolescence. CNN also stated that he has allegedly performed “some duties at the national defense commission,” and that he speaks English and German.
The BBC added further weight to the claim of succession when noting that the government has also begin writing songs and creating poems in honor of the new leader. They also reported that some 10 million portraits of the young man have been created, and are now ready to be hung alongside the pictures of his grand father and father all around the nation.
With such a limited range of experience and training however, regardless of when the young man actually takes the role of dictator, it is suspected that much of the control of the nation will actually rest on the shoulders of Jong-un’s uncle, Jang Song Taek. Taek is the wife of the current dictator’s sister, Kim Kyung-hee, who also received the title of four star general on Thursday. Taek is believed to be Kim Jong-il’s closest aid and ally within the government.
With a government whose values are so deeply entrenched in its totalitarian framework, it is difficult to see how the installment of a new leader will mean anything more than a change in the size of a military tracksuit (that Jong-il has made so widely-recognized in recent years). It seems apparent that the state, so fuelled by aggression and a dictatorial mentality will be difficult to stop in its progression towards a totally self-sufficient socialist system. As history has shown us, often it takes some sort of catastrophic political, economic, social or military event to dislodge a dynasty such as this. Let us hope that it does not come to that, and both the starving people in the North Korean countryside and the international community at large can be spared the worst of this totalitarian state’s wrath.
(09/30/10 4:06am)
“Whistling” 。
“You don’t need an instrument.
No money, no teacher, no room, no audience.
Anywhere, whoever, it’s the music for any ordinary person.
The melody just flows out from your body…
That is whistling.”
— Yuki Takeda
With the arrival of every first-year class, a great diversity of fresh voices, talents and backgrounds are added to the Middlebury community; the campus is bursting with new world travelers, newspaper editors, volunteers, poets, photographers, scientific researchers … and this year championship whistler. Yuki Takeda ’14, of Tokyo, Japan, won second place overall in the Japanese National Whistling Competition this year, and placed first for teens in the worldwide competition.
This whistling bears little resemblance to the pretty little tunes that some can recreate when they find themselves in a happy mood. Imagine instead a melody clearer than any human voice, and capable of flitting rapidly between notes and reaching unbelievably high pitches.
Takeda whistles classical, jazz and his favorite, café music, and he also plays the alto saxophone, guitar, flute, piano and drums.
While competitive whistling is most popular in Japan, Takeda still had never met another whistler before he discovered the talent. Surprisingly, this discovery sprung from normal pre-teen boredom; rather than entertaining himself with Nintendo or MySpace, Takeda decided one day to google “whistling.”
Through an incredible amount of dedication and practice, he taught himself a number of new whistling techniques which he found on the internet, such as teeth whistling, tongue whistling, hand whistling — which makes a sound somewhat like a bird call — and wolf whistling. He even invented his own style of whistling, in which he rolls up his tongue and whistles through it.
A year later, he saw a man featured on television for his amazing ability to reach the breadth of three octaves with his whistling. Takeda realized that he himself already possessed this remarkable range.
Takeda’s vast musical repertoire draws upon his unique life experiences. In addition to Tokyo, he lived in both Canada and Holland with his family, learning to speak English, Dutch and some French, on top of Japanese.
He discovered his love of languages and began to teach himself Spanish from a radio station, and then decided to move to a small town in Mexico for a year, despite the fact that studying abroad is not especially popular among Japanese high school students. In Mexico, Takeda became friends with a musical family, who, it turns out, was also the most famous band on the Pacific coast of the country. He was faced with the opportunity to travel and whistle with the band across Mexico.
Each new culture and language Takeda experienced added to his sense of music. And when four languages weren’t enough, he became intrigued by a type of Brazilian music called Bossanova, so he taught himself Portuguese as well!
Upon returning from Mexico, Takeda thought, “I was seen as a weird person,” because of his whistling abilities. Through his music, however, he began to find great friendship and even fame. During the summer before he arrived at Middlebury, he attended a university in Tokyo where he found himself to be “popular.” He was, after all, the second best whistler in the country.
Whistling has given Takeda a voice. As many of us turn to our favorite bands to heal us when we feel hurt, Takeda turns to his whistling. Drawing upon his knowledge of five languages, four countries and five instruments, he expresses himself through his beautiful music wherever he goes. Now, at Middlebury, he now shares his talent with a whole new community.
The title of “the championship whistler” doesn’t bother Takeda here in college. He sees the fact that he is already so well known in the Class of 2014 as an advantage at getting started here.
“I think it’s very nice that everyone talks to you,” he said.
The only drawback he sees to his innumerable new acquaintances is that, “I sometimes feel guilty that I can’t remember all their names.”
Following in the footsteps of the indie/rock band Dispatch, which began in Battell basement, Takeda and other talented first-year musicians, mainly from Battell, have already formed a band that played at the Grille last Saturday night.
“It’s really fun playing music,” said Takeda of performing in front of his peers.
The band played again at the Grille on Tuesday night and will perform at 51 Main from 8-10 p.m. tonight. Check it out — you might see history in the making.
(09/30/10 4:04am)
Stocked with pies, crumbles, syrups and nearly every kind of apple you could ever want, the Champlain Orchards farm shop is as Vermont as Vermont gets. Go upstairs, though, and you’re in Jamaica.
Bill Suhr, the owner of the Shoreham orchard, opened the door to the Jamaican immigrant workers’ second-story apartment in front of me, letting loose a wave of steamy hot air.
“It’s hot up here, and they keep it that way,” Suhr said. “Welcome to Jamaica.”
Suhr employs Jamaicans each year through the H2-A program, a government initiative that allows nonimmigrant foreigners to work in the agricultural sector for one season per year. This year, Suhr has employed 25 Jamaicans to maintain the orchard and help with the apple harvest.
I had walked right into the middle of dinner. The kitchen was a beautiful chaos: sizzling meats and vegetables, a blaring TV, a warm barrage of Jamaican, English and Creole and about a dozen Jamaicans each preparing their own massive masterpiece of a feast. They had just finished a 12-hour day, so a hefty tub of pork, potatoes and dumplings seemed appropriate.
“It’s hard to get used to your food, man,” Utneil Hines said to me. “Foodkind, you can’t get it as easy as you can get it in Jamaica. There, you can just step over and pick your food. Here, you go to the supermarket.”
Hines, 22, is a first-year worker at Champlain Orchards. He’s three weeks into his stay at Shoreham. (“Vermont is very, very cold,” he said. I apologized in advance for January.)
Hines is from St. Elizabeth Parish, one of the Jamaica’s most popular tourist destinations, as he was quick to let me know. He is a farmer, a self-employed car mechanic, and a cab driver. He heard about the H2-A program from his father and brother, veteran apple pickers at the orchard who are also working there this season.
The Jamaicans’ work schedule is extraordinarily demanding, by their own design. They work throughout the day filling large bins called jacks with 13 sacks of apples each, completing about 11 jacks a day. Although they do have the option to take time off or finish work while the sun is still out, they rarely choose to do so.
“It’s from 7 until we say when, sometimes even later,” Hines said. “We just do our stuff, normal. We don’t really force it. It’s fun, because we’re all here. We get along quite well.”
Suhr takes the Jamaicans into Middlebury on Tuesday nights to go shopping, but that’s their only scheduled break off the orchard.
“I don’t really get to know this place a lot, don’t really get a clear view of the place. We just go (to Middlebury) for one food stop and then we go back,” Hines said.
Curtis Barclay, 35, shared this point of view.
“It’s cool so far. The only thing is we don’t get to go out a lot. The only thing we know is Hannaford. Or T.J. Maxx,” he said.
Barclay is a native of Portland Parish and a father of three children. He said he isn’t frustrated about the self-imposed constraining hours of his work schedule, however. After all, he has been working at Champlain Orchards for four years now. “Really we come here to work and we need the money, so that’s where it comes from. Work the 15 hours,” he said.
“This is my vacation. I work and make some money and I bring it back. Yeah, it’s no problem,” Ken James told me.
James, 54, has picked apples through the H2-A program in Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida and Vermont. He lives with his wife and two children in St. Elizabeth Parish when he’s not in Shoreham.
“I do a little bit of everything in Jamaica: carpentry, farming, I drive for a funeral home,” he said.
The day-to-day isolation of this Jamaican microcosm is somewhat inevitable given the demands of the apple harvest and their own financial goals. There’s just no time to experience Vermont off the orchard. Interactions with Americans who aren’t fellow workers are also rare.
“Down in Jamaica we actually socialize with Americans more. Sometimes we are out (in the orchard), and they are like scared of us,” Hines said, a big smile contrasting this somber observation. I asked him why and he shrugged, nonplussed.
“I don’t know. Maybe the color,” he said, laughing lightheartedly. “I’m just doing my job. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t live here so I don’t have to get used to it.”
This cheery levity in the face of an exhausting work regimen and an isolating foreign environment was both humbling and inspiring to witness. A subtle nostalgia seemed to underlie this overarching “no problem” attitude, though.
“I’ll be even more excited that that is home,” Hines said when I asked him about his return. “That’s home. We’re just staying here because of work. In Jamaica, that’s our home. Here is your home. Home is everything.”
Hines, Barclay and James all said they feel very welcome here and would love to come back next year, continuing a Champlain Orchards tradition of over thirty years. After such a long history, the Jamaicans are an integral part of the business and family at the Shoreham orchard.
“Bill is constantly in touch with these guys everyday, and they give him a lot of feedback every year.
“They are a key part of what runs our business,” said Andrea Scott, Suhr’s wife. “They’re just wonderful people. We love them.”
I asked James and Barclay if there was anything they’d like to tell the students who’d be reading this article. After some thought, Barclay said, “I would want all the college kids to take a trip to Jamaica.” I told him that visiting his country is one of my dreams, to which James replied, “You should sleep more often.”
(09/30/10 4:01am)
From painting to literature, sculpture to drama, Japan has always been an innovative nation when it comes to the arts, so much so that they have often ended up creating their own school of a particular art form. Naturally, the Japanese also have their own unique dance form, but one that is vastly different from Western dance.
Professor Bruce Baird, associate professor of Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, visited Middlebury on Sept. 27th. Baird, who received his Ph.D in Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is an expert on Japanese Butoh dance. Early in the lecture, he showed the audience two clips of Butoh performances. The first one consisted of a dance that involved several athletic men running back and forth across traditional tatami mats and then playing baseball. The second was of a single man in very sparse light. I could barely make out the actual dynamics of his movements but I did notice a giant golden phallus strapped to his groin. The performers were all nearly naked.
Butoh is a theater movement that was started in 1959 by choreographer and dancer Hijitaka Tatsumi. The characteristics of Butoh movement include tension, contortion, changes of direction and being off-balance. Hijitaka took inspiration from watching the movements of all sorts of figures, from animals to prostitutes, from farmers to handicapped people. Baird even threw in a few demonstrations in which he would pose in a way that his upper body was contorted around one axis and his lower body around another.
According to Baird, the purpose of Butoh is for the performers to access “a transcendent, primal reality” and to “yield authentic movement.” It is based on the “particularities of the Japanese body.” He also made the point that the movements in Butoh are incredibly restricted. Much of this restriction comes down to the performer controlling their body. What was most interesting, however, were the restrictions imposed by the imagination. Not only might a typical dancer imagine a bug crawling on their neck while doing a move but also he or she would have to consider how that movement would be affected with an extra bug — or an extra hundred.
Central to Baird’s lecture was the ability of Butoh to mimic the movements in pieces of visual arts. An example was the notes for creating the figure in English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley’s “The Peacock Skirt”. Professor Baird included Hijitaka’s actual notes on how to create this figure. The directions were fascinating and unconventional. One of the notes, for example, calls upon the performer to imagine that they are made of nerves and that they have a nerve extending out of the back of their neck. Another called for the performer to imagine a deer was nearby. Baird himself said he didn’t know how one achieved this but that it would allow the performer to mimic the figure in “The Peacock Skirt”.
The origin of the “grey grits” idea is confusing but an amazing concept. It comes from a story in the collection A Certain Lucas by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, in which a scientist discovers that it is possible for humans to swim in grey grits. The discovery becomes a phenomenon, particularly in light of a Japanese swimmer, who sets a world record for swimming through a five-meter long pool of grey grits. One of the lines in the lecture mentioned how the swimmer who could dive further over the grits than the next would have a crucial advantage of centimeters. Baird further linked this to Phelps beating Cavic in 2008 Olympics and how the difference came down to millimeters. This hits home at the central point of Butoh: complete control over the tiny movements of the body. With this control comes freedom and with freedom comes catharsis.
Baird said his goal was simply to examine dances and try to figure out what is going in them, perhaps so that he might come closer to defining this form that Japanese consider indefinable. Overall, the lecture did well to provide a thorough insight into this fascinating form of dance. Amidst all its restrictions, Butoh challenges the audience to reconsider the nature of movement altogether and the dancers to reinvent it.
(09/30/10 3:56am)
The Monterey Institute of International Studies will offer 50 new scholarships each year for applicants that fund attendance of Middlebury College Language Schools, the Monterey Institute Summer Intensive Language Program or Monterey’s Intensive English Program before beginning graduate enrollment at the Monterey Institute.
The Betty and David Jones Language Scholarships will fund students studying Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian and Spanish at the Middlebury Language schools. The scholarships will also fund students studying at the Monterey Institute Summer Intensive Language Program, which offers studies in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish and the Monterey Intensive English Program, which enrolls English as a Second Language (ESL) students.
According to a press released published by Communications Office, the scholarships are “designed to strengthen the linguistic competency of incoming Monterey Institute students.”
“The program will award the scholarships to highly qualified applicants to the Monterey Institute to help these students enhance their language skills prior to enrolling in graduate programs at Monterey,” explained the release.
The scholarships will fund a range of expenses, from full tuition for students who attend the Summer Intensive Language Program or the Intensive English Program at the Monterey Institute, to full tuition, room, and board for those who attend the Middlebury Language Schools.
Betty Jones is an alumna of the Middlebury School of French and served on the Board of Trustees for 15 years. Her husband, David Jones, is a member of the Monterey Institute board of governors. The two are regarded as strong supporters of both the College and the Monterey Institute.
The Monterey Institute of International Studies became an official graduate school of the College on July 1, 2010.
The Betty and David Jones Language Scholarships will work along with the Kathryn Davis Fellowships for Peace, another source of funding for Monterey Institute students who attend Middlebury’s Language Schools.
