MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE

'Middlebury College' is a small, private, highly selective liberal arts college located in the rural town of Middlebury Vermont, United States. Drawing 2,350 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, the college is particularly well known for the strength of its foreign language, writing, international studies, and environmental studies programs. In the 2007 admissions cycle, the college admitted approximately 22 percent of the record 7,188 applicants.

Background

Mead Chapel sits atop the highest point on campus, overlooking the main quadrangle

Founded as the ''Addison County Grammar School'' in 1797 before receiving its charter on November 1, 1800, the college has a long history of distinguished scholarship. In addition to its undergraduate program, the college offers graduate study in foreign languages and in literature and creative writing.
The 350-acre (1.4 km²) main campus is located in the Champlain Valley between Vermont's Green Mountains to the east and New York's Adirondack Mountains to the west; the nearby 1,800-acre (7.3 km²) mountain campus hosts the college's Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference every summer. The Conference was founded on an idea first born of poet Robert Frost.
The German school founded in 1915, began the Middlebury Language Schools, which take over the campus during the summer, teaching about 1,200 students Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad host students at twenty-one sites in Argentina, China, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, and Uruguay.
Alexander Twilight, class of 1823, was the first black graduate of any college or university in the United States; he also became the first African American elected to public office, being elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 1856. In 1883, the trustees voted to accept women as students in the college, making Middlebury one of the first formerly all-male liberal arts colleges in New England to become a coeducational institution.
In May 2004, an anonymous benefactor made a $50 million donation to Middlebury. It was the largest cash gift the school has ever received. The donor asked only that Middlebury name its recently-built science building, Bicentennial Hall, after outgoing President John McCardell Jr. In February 2007, Middlebury's endowment stood at approximately $887 million.[1]
In 2005, Middlebury signed an affiliation agreement with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a graduate school in Monterey, California. While the Monterey Institute will remain a separate institution, the affiliation will enable both schools to further their programs in international studies and foreign languages.
Middlebury is part of the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission.
All Middlebury students agree to abide by its Honor Code.

The campus

Old Chapel, completed in 1836, served as Middlebury's primary academic building for a century. Today it houses seminar classrooms and administrative offices.

Middlebury's bucolic campus is referred to affectionately by students as "Club Midd." It is characterized by quads and open spaces, views of the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks, and historic granite, marble, and limestone buildings. ''Old Stone Row'', consisting of the three oldest buildings on campus — Old Chapel, Painter Hall, and Starr Hall — is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Painter Hall, constructed in 1815, is the oldest extant college building in Vermont. Of the campus, famous postmodern architect Robert Venturi said, "If anyone had told me that gray stone boxes set in lawns could be so beautiful, I would have said they were crazy. Middlebury looks like what everyone thinks an American campus should be but seldom is."[2] The campus is situated on a hill to the west of the village of Middlebury, a traditional New England village centered around Otter Creek Falls.
Since the mid-1990s, student housing has been grouped into five residential Commons: ''Atwater'', ''Brainerd'', ''Cook'', ''Ross'', and ''Wonnacott''. All are named for illustrious college figures. The creation of the Commons accompanied an increase in the size of the student body and an ambitious building campaign. Recently completed building projects include the 220,000 sq ft McCardell Bicentennial Hall (1999), a 135,000 sq ftlibrary (2004), two Atwater Commons Residence Halls (2004), and a new Atwater Dining Hall (2005). Hillcrest Hall, an Italianate-styled farmhouse constructed around 1874, is being renovated to provide a home for the environmental studies program according to LEED standards. Starr Library, a Beaux-Arts edifice completed in 1900, is set to become The Donald Everett Axinn '51 Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Starr Library pending restoration of interior spaces and addition of two wings for faculty offices. It will house various academic departments and will add lecture halls, screening rooms, and a television production studio for the film studies department.[3]

The Bread Loaf School of English

The Inn at the Bread Loaf Mountain Campus

The Bread Loaf School of English is based at the college's mountain campus () in Ripton, just outside Middlebury, in sight of Bread Loaf Mountain and the main ridge of the Green Mountains. The poet Robert Frost is credited as a major influence on the school. Frost "first came to the School on the invitation of Dean Wilfred Davison in 1921. Friend and neighbor to Bread Loaf, (he) returned to the School every summer with but three exceptions for 42 years."[4] Every summer since 1920, Bread Loaf has offered students from around the United States and the world intensive courses in literature, creative writing, the teaching of writing, and theater. Prominent faculty and staff have included George K. Anderson, William Carlos Williams, Herschel Brickell, Bernard DeVoto, Edward Weismiller, Theodore Roethke, John Crowe Ransom, Elizabeth Drew, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Lawrence B. Holland, Nancy Martin, Perry Miller, Catherine Drinker Bowen, Carlos Baker, Harold Bloom, James Britton, Cleanth Brooks, Reuben Brower, Martin Price, Donald Stauffer, Charles Edward Eaton, Richard Ellman, Cedric Whitman, Paul Muldoon, William Sloane, John Ciardi, John P. Marquand, and Wylie Sypher.[5] [6]
The Bread Loaf School has campuses at five locations: Vermont, Oxford (England), North Carolina, New Mexico, and Alaska. The primary campus, near Middlebury, enrolls some 250 students every summer. The Oxford campus (at Lincoln College) enrolls 90 students. The fledgling North Carolina campus, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, is affiliated with the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and enrolled its first class of 50 students in 2006. The New Mexico campus at St. John's College, Santa Fe, enrolls 80 students every summer. The Alaska campus, at the University of Alaska Southeast near Juneau, also enrolls 80 students.
Students at Bread Loaf can either attend for one or two summers as continuing graduate students, or work toward a Master of Arts (M.A.) or Master of Letters (M.Litt.) degree over the course of four or five summers spread over different campuses.
In addition to the six-week summer program, Middlebury College's Bread Loaf campus is also the site of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference for established authors. "Two weeks of intensive workshops, lectures, classes and readings present writers with rigorous practical and theoretical approaches to their craft, and offer a model of literary instruction."[7] Participants have included John Gardner, Charles Baxter, John Irving, Toni Morrison, and Barry Lopez. The conference takes place in late August, after the School of English summer session has ended. Additionally, The New England Young Writers' Conference brings together emerging writers every May for workshops and readings.

Language study, summer language schools, and schools abroad

General language study

During the regular academic year, Middlebury presently teaches Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek (Attic), Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The college provides students with extensive opportunities to speak their target language.
The general method of language study — and particularly summer language study — is properly characterized as "immersion," i.e., extensive use of the target language both in and outside the classroom. The isolated, residential nature of the college allows budding speakers to study, eat, and live with fellow speakers and to minimize the use of English and other languages. Each language has a House associated with it, where speakers and teaching assistants lodge to create distinct linguistic communities. Students and faculty may attend lunch daily at "language tables;" during the meals, students and faculty speak only in their target language and are served food by fluent student workers.
Professors with primary appointments in other departments have been known to offer natural science and social science courses in foreign languages.

Summer language schools

Middlebury’s summer programs enable students to undergo the equivalent of a year of college-level language study in seven- or nine-week summer sessions. As of August 2007 there are summer programs in 9 languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish), and a 10th program in modern Hebrew is slated to open in summer 2008.^[1] Six of Middlebury's summer schools — Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish — also offer graduate programs. These are completed during six-week summer sessions, with an option of combining the sessions with overseas study. The graduate degree most often conferred is the Master of Arts. Middlebury also offers a Doctor of Modern Languages degree.
All Language School students agree to abide by the "Language Pledge" (tm), a formal commitment to speak, listen, read, and write the language of study as the only means of communication for the entire summer session. The Pledge helps students focus their energies on the acquisition of language skills and to internalize the patterns of communication and cultural perspective associated with the target language. Each language school is allocated specific residence halls, where students, teaching assistants, and professors live to further aid in the immersion. Students and faculty eat lunch and dinner at separate times during the day to maintain the exclusivity of the target languages. Due to class schedules, however, breakfast is not at separate times for each language school, which often leads to comical gesticulated conversations between members of different language schools.

Study abroad and the C.V. Starr schools

Middlebury College has designed C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad to offer graduate and undergraduate language students the chance to enrich and expand their skills in a setting where they can fully live the language.
The college has schools abroad at twenty-one locations including Argentina (Buenos Aires and Tucumán), Brazil (Belo Horizonte and Niteroi), Chile (Concepcion, La Serena, Santiago, Tumuco, Valdivia, and Valparaiso), China (Hangzhou), France (Paris, Poitiers and Bordeaux), Germany (Berlin and Mainz), Italy (Ferrara and Florence), Mexico (Guadalajara and Xalapa), Russia (Irkutsk, Moscow, and Yaroslavl), Spain (Getafe, Logroño, Madrid, and Segovia), and Uruguay (Montevideo).
In January 2007, the college announced that it had established the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School Abroad in the Middle East, the first of the Middlebury Schools Abroad in this region. Located in Alexandria, Egypt, and affiliated with Alexandria University, the school will begin offering classes in the fall of 2007.
The C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad are designed to immerse every student as completely as possible in both the language and the culture of the host nation. All course work is taught in the target language. Students often have the opportunity to enroll directly in the local university, where their classmates will be from the host country, or to take courses designed exclusively for program participants.
Many of the newer sites abroad give students the opportunity to live and study in a provincial setting, where they will have less interaction with other Americans, and with tourists in general. Students looking for a more international city can still choose the programs in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Florence, Madrid, Moscow, and Paris. Each of the Schools Abroad has a resident director and other support staff.

The Rohatyn Center for International Affairs

Middlebury College is home to the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs,[8], founded by Felix Rohatyn a Middlebury alumnus, former U.S. Ambassador, and founder of Rohatyn Associates. Located at the Robert A. Jones House, the center combines Middlebury's noted strengths in linguistic, cultural, and political studies to offer a packed schedule of internationally focused symposia, lectures, and presentations. In addition, the center regularly publishes working papers by prominent international scholars and offers several grants for faculty and student research. A growing collection of online documentary and video archives preserves some of the events recently hosted by the Center.
Most events at the Center take a broad interdisciplinary approach and are divided evenly between contemporary political problems and historical topics. Students regularly propose, create, and moderate symposia with the Center's assistance. A sampling of recent conferences and presentations is as follows: ''The Idea of Jerusalem'', ''The Privatization of American National Security'', ''Genocide in Africa: The Method behind the Madness'', ''The Infrastructure of American Democracy Promotion'', ''The International Relations of the South China Sea'', ''Islam and Globalization'', ''Rebuilding Afghanistan'', ''The Confucian Conception of Proper Humor'', ''Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art'', ''The Oral Transmission of Cultural Traditions'', etc.

Environmental studies and college environmentalism

The new Atwater Dining Hall (2004) features a living roof

The Environmental Studies major at Middlebury College was established in 1965, making it the first undergraduate major of its kind in the nation. The Program is an interdisciplinary, nondepartmental major that draws upon 52 faculty members from 26 departments.
Middlebury has a reputation as an environmentally conscious campus. The student population is considered active in environmental issues, with several student groups operating on campus and organizing frequent trips to the state capitol and beyond. Students recently retrofitted a bus to run on biodiesel and drove it to Detroit in summer 2005 to protest the auto industry's environmental practices. This was based on the successful Project Biobus initiative, an educational cross-country tour of 13 Middlebury students promoting biofuel use in local communities.
In January 2005, the Sunday Night Group (SNG) was formed by several student activists to assist other students in coordinating various environmental campaigns, especially those concerning global warming. SNG was responsible for January 2006's Get Outside Week,[9] the Two Degree Campaign,[10] and a current effort towards carbon neutrality[11] of all Middlebury College operations. SNG pushes its activism beyond the campus, including co-organizing a rally in support of clean-energy legislation, called Fossil Fool's Day (April 1st), at the Vermont State House in Montpelier[12]. Over 130 student activists attended the December 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal where some served as official observer delgates. Internationally-renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben serves as an informal advisor to the organization. The organization and its members have received positive recognition from on-campus offices and from statewide media sources[13].
The college is also a leader in sustainable agriculture and recycling programs. Local farmers and the student-run organic garden supply more than a quarter of the food consumed in the dining halls, and the campus-wide recycling program has a 60% diversion rate. Moreover, the college has steadfastly used "green" building techniques in its recent construction. The college is committed to environmental sustainability and stewardship, both in its academic programs and in practice.[14]

Athletics

View of Bread Loaf Campus and the Champlain Valley from the summit of the Middlebury College Snow Bowl

Middlebury competes in the New England Small College Athletic Conference. Middlebury leads the conference in total number of National Championships, having won 27 individual titles since the NESCAC lifted its ban on NCAA play. Middlebury enjoys national success in tennis, cross country running, lacrosse, hockey, and skiing, and fields 30 varsity NCAA teams and over 10 competitive club teams. Middlebury's success in intercollegiate sports is evidenced by the college's second place ranking in the 2007 National Sports Academy Directors' Cup standings. From 2004 to 2006, both the men's and women's ice hockey teams won three consecutive NCAA Division III National Championships, an unprecedented feat for a college at any level. The baseball program is also on the rise, winning their first NESCAC championship in 2006, while finishing fourth in New England. In 2007, the Middlebury College Rugby Club won its first national championship by defeating Arkansas State in the Division II game 38 to 22. Middlebury's athletic facilities include a state-of-the-art 50-meter by 25-yard swimming pool, 3,500-seat football/lacrosse stadium, a 2,600 spectator hockey arena, a downhill ski area, a regulation rugby pitch, the Middlebury College Snow Bowl (), the 18-hole Ralph Myhre golf course, and the Carroll and Jane Rikert Ski Touring Center at the Bread Loaf mountain campus. The college mascot is the panther.

Selectivity and reputation

In the August 2007 edition of U.S. News and World Report's ''America's Best Colleges'', Middlebury was ranked as the nation's fifth-best national liberal arts college. In the 2007 edition of the Princeton Review's ''Best 361 Colleges'', Middlebury was cited as having the best professors of any college or university in the country. The college also was included on lists for "best overall academic experience for undergraduates"; "school runs like butter"; "the toughest to get into"; "best campus food"; and "best quality of life."
In Greene and Greene's guide , the authors write that Middlebury has "scaled the heights of prestige and selectivity and also turn away thousands of our best and brightest young men and women." Applications to Middlebury have increased by 38 percent since 2005. In the 2007 admissions cycle, the college admitted approximately 22 percent of the record 7,188 applicants.
Middlebury often is referred to as one of the "Little Ivies."

Policy on Wikipedia

In February, 2007, Middlebury made news headlines when the school's History department issued a policy stating that although Wikipedia is useful as a starting point for research, it must not itself be cited as an authoritative source in the creation of academic papers.^[2] The genesis for this policy, according to a ''New York Times'' article, stemmed from an instance in which six Middlebury College students taking a Japanese history course wrote on a test that Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion. This false claim was, at the time, displayed on the wikipedia entry page for the rebellion.
A student editorial written in ''The Middlebury Campus'' described the new policy as “the beginnings of censorship.”^[3] Assistant Professor Jason Mittell defended Wikipedia in ''The New York Times'': “The message that is being sent is that ultimately they see it as a threat to traditional [institutions of] knowledge.”^[4]
On February 26, the college hosted a lively forum on this topic with audio and video available online. ^[5]^[6]
In July 2007, Jimmy Wales, spoke about using Wikepedia as a reference at the Common Wealth Club in San Francisco .

Presidents of Middlebury

#Jeremiah Atwater, 1800-1809
#Henry Davis, 1809-1818
#Joshua Bates, 1818-1840
#Benjamin Labaree, 1840-1866
#Harvey Denison Kitchel, 1866-1875
#Calvin Butler Hulbert, 1875-1880
#Cyrus Hamlin, 1880-1885
#Ezra Brainerd, 1885-1908
#John Martin Thomas, 1908-1921
#Paul Dwight Moody, 1921-1943
#Samuel Somerville Stratton, 1943-1963
#James Isbell Armstrong, 1963-1975
#Olin Clyde Robison, 1975-1990
#Timothy Light, 1990-1991
#John Malcolm McCardell, Jr., 1991-2004
#Ronald D. Liebowitz. 2004-current

Commencement speakers

★ 2007- William Jefferson Clinton

★ 2006- Ann M. Veneman

★ 2005- Rudolph Giuliani

★ 2004- Christopher Reeve and Dana Reeve

★ 2003- Bill Richardson

★ 2002- Dava Sobel

★ 2001- Fred Rogers

★ 2000- Lech Wałęsa

★ 1999- John Wallach

★ 1998- Daniel Moynihan

★ 1997- Robert Brustein

★ 1996- Frank Sesno

★ 1995- Stephen Jay Gould

★ 1994- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

★ 1992- Jeff Danziger

★ 1990- Bill Moyers

★ 1989- Bill Bradley

★ 1988- David K. Shipler

★ 1987- Barbara Jordan

★ 1986- David McCullough

★ 1985- Ted Koppel

★ 1984- Burgess Meredith

★ 1981- Jane Bryant Quinn

★ 1980- Elliot Richardson

★ 1976- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Notable Alumni

Names and achievements of notable Middlebury alums in all fields can be found at the List of Middlebury College Alumni.

Points of interest

★ Gravity Research Foundation monument

References

1. http://www.middlebury.edu/about/pubaff/news_releases/2007/pubaff_633205459226601622.htm
2. Wikipedia distresses History Department Brian Fung
3. Op-Ed: Wikipedia ban is a slippery slope Chandler Koglmeier
4. A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia As a Research Source Noam Cohen
5. Post-debate Wiki-blogging Jason Mittell
6. Wikipedia in academia: Open forum at Middlebury tackles the issue

External links

★ Middlebury College official website

★ The Middlebury Campus - The student newspaper of Middlebury College

★ Monterey Institute of International Studies homepage

★ A Walking History of Middlebury - A description of the history and architecture of the Middlebury College campus

★ NESCAC

★ U.S. News and World Report's Ranking of Liberal Arts Colleges

★ Distinctively American: The Residential Liberal Arts Colleges

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