Middlebury College
Mission:
At Middlebury College we challenge students to participate fully in a vibrant and diverse academic community. The College's Vermont location offers an inspirational setting for learning and reflection, reinforcing our commitment to integrating environmental stewardship into both our curriculum and our practices on campus. Yet the College also reaches far beyond the Green Mountains, offering a rich array of undergraduate and graduate programs that connect our community to other places, countries, and cultures. We strive to engage students' capacity for rigorous analysis and independent thought within a wide range of disciplines and endeavors, and to cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community. Through the pursuit of knowledge unconstrained by national or disciplinary boundaries, students who come to Middlebury learn to engage the world.
About the College:
Middlebury College, one of the country's top liberal arts colleges, located in Middlebury, Vermont, is an institution with a long-standing international focus, a place where education reflects a sense of looking outward, and a realization that the traditional insularity of the United States is something of the past. Middlebury seeks to bring to its campus those who wish not only to learn about themselves and their own traditions, but also to see beyond the bounds of class, culture, region, or nation. Indeed, the central purpose of a Middlebury education is precisely to transcend oneself and one's own concerns. This transcendence may come for some through the study of other cultures; for some through the study of the environment; for others it will come through inquiry into such fields as physics or philosophy, mathematics or music.
Middlebury's undergraduate college is enriched by its other programs. Every summer, the main campus in Vermont is transformed into an institution single-mindedly devoted to the study of nine foreign languages and cultures, and the use of English is virtually banned for the participants, among whom are many Middlebury undergraduates. In the Green Mountains lies Middlebury's Bread Loaf campus, where for six weeks each summer the Bread Loaf School of English is in session. This is followed by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, which brings together 200 authors and aspiring authors for 11 days of intensive exchange about the art of writing. The Bread Loaf School of English is in session each summer not only in Middlebury but also at Lincoln College, Oxford, in the United Kingdom; at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
There is also an overseas dimension to Middlebury College. The C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad are located in Alexandria, Belo Horizonte, Berlin, Bordeaux, Buenos Aires, Concepción, Córdoba, Ferrara, Florence, Florianópolis, Getafe, Guadalajara, Hangzhou, Irkutsk, La Serena, Logroño, Madrid, Mainz, Montevideo, Moscow, Niterói, Paris, Poitiers, Santiago, Temuco, Tucumán, Valdivia, Valparaíso, Xalapa, and Yaroslavl. These schools enroll more than 300 undergraduate and graduate students who seek to further their foreign language skills and immerse themselves as fully as possible in the host culture through academic study as well as direct experience.
Middlebury's Global Education:
Every summer for the past 93 years, Middlebury has created a unique linguistic environment, one that provides students with unlimited opportunities to speak their target language. Students in Middlebury's summer Language Schools use their target language exclusively—Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish—in classes, dining halls, dormitories, and co-curricular activities.
Middlebury's summer programs are the international standard for excellence in language instruction. Most students gain a year or more of college-level language learning in one intensive summer session. Five of its summer schools—French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish—also offer graduate programs, six weeks in length, leading to the Master of Arts or to Middlebury's unique Doctor of Modern Languages.
A summer at Middlebury can also prepare students for study abroad, by improving language skills, deepening cultural understanding, and strengthening confidence and learning strategies.
All Language School students agree to abide by the Language Pledge, 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 Office of International Programs and Off-Campus Study
During the 2006-2007 academic year, more than 400 Middlebury students studied abroad in more than 40 countries at more than 90 different programs and universities. This is nearly 60 percent of the junior class.
Middlebury has programs in Argentina (Buenos Aires and Tucumán), Brazil (Florianopolis, Belo Horizonte, and Niterói), Chile (Concepción, La Serena, Santiago, Temuco, Valdivia, and Valparaíso), China (Hangzhou), Egypt (Alexandria), France (Bordeaux, Paris, and Poitiers), Germany (Berlin and Mainz), Italy (Ferrara and Florence), Mexico (Guadalajara and Xalapa), Spain (Córdoba, Getafe, Logroño, and Madrid), Russia (Irkutsk, Moscow, and Yaroslavl), and Uruguay (Montevideo).
Middlebury is also a member of two academic consortia: one with the Associated Kyoto Program in Japan and one with the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (ICCS) program in Rome.
Middlebury has exchange agreements with Keio University in Tokyo, Japan and with the University of East Anglia and the University of Nottingham in England. Also in England, Middlebury has an arrangement with Lincoln College at Oxford University.
In addition, each year a significant number of Middlebury students study abroad on non-Middlebury programs in countries such as Australia, Denmark, Greece, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and more.
C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad
For over fifty years, participants in the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad have not just studied the language, they have lived it as well. Participants take courses in most disciplines, often with host country students, intern or engage in volunteer work, and live with a family or local students. Indeed, at every juncture of your time abroad, you have the chance to "live the language" and immerse yourself in the host culture. Please use the following links to learn about the more than thirty programs in twelve countries:
China | France | Germany | Italy | Latin America | Middle East | Russia | Spain
The Rohatyn Center for International Affairs (RCFIA)
An internationally oriented resource and research center, the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs (RCFIA) supports the College's goal of advancing global understanding that radiates from a core linguistic and cultural competency. RCFIA works with a faculty committee to create co-curricular programming that expands opportunities for students and supports faculty in their teaching and professional development. Programs include Executive-in-Residence, Scholar-in-Residence, International Studies Colloquium, international symposia and lectures, and outreach activities.
RCFIA disseminates current research through our Working Paper Series, and also administers institutional grants in international studies, an undergraduate international research travel grant program, and a sponsored internship program. We work with the Career Services Office and other campus organizations to expand opportunities for internships and other types of direct experience that give students a sense of how the world looks and works from perspectives other than their own.
Alliance for Civic Engagement
The Alliance for Civic Engagement integrates community-based learning, service, and action into the undergraduate experience—in the classroom, across Vermont, throughout the nation, and around the world—linking Middlebury’s liberal arts tradition to 21st century challenges and opportunities.
The Davis United World College Scholars Program
Middlebury is the institutional home of The Davis United World College Scholars Program. The Davis United World College Scholars Program is a major philanthropic force in promoting international understanding. At present, the program provides scholarship support for 1,100 current Davis UWC Scholars, from around the United States and the world, at a growing number of American colleges and universities. The program and these scholars are committed to building cross-cultural understanding across their campuses and around the globe in the 21st century. The stability of our world, and ensuring America’s place in it, demands no less than initiatives as large in scale, innovative in design, and powerful in impact as this.
Career Services Office
The Career Services Office (CSO) works in partnership with students' academic programs to provide students with "real world" experience that aids them in identifying and attaining their service, career, and lifelong learning goals. To this end, CSO provides state-of-the-art resources and services to help students better understand and practice the skills needed for success in today's global community. By engaging in the CSO's full range of programs, which include education, exploration, and support services, students will be prepared to take their place as thoughtful and ethical leaders, able to meet the challenges of informed citizenship.
CSO international initiatives include:
• Three new international internship sites that were developed as part of the Middlebury/Nature Conservancy program: Kunming, Yunnan, China; Monterrey/Chiluahuan Desert, Mexico; and Maya Forest/Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
• Facilitating the process for international students to secure internships in their home countries for Winter Term and Summer.
• All students registered on Middlebury's jobs and internships database can search for international internships, volunteer, and educational programs there.
• Students who are seeking
internships before, during, and after their study abroad experiences receive counsel on how to find them, which includes getting the advice of MiddNet Online Volunteers located in their target countries.
Environmental Affairs
Being sustainable is not easy. Being sustainable is essential. How does a growing global society learn to meet its needs while enhancing the opportunities for future generations to meet their needs? How does one person make a difference?
Middlebury College accepts this challenge and demonstrates its sustainability ethic in all its undertakings, from policy to practice. It’s apparent at every turn—from its commitment to reduce its emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide to levels below its 1990 levels, to the natural landscape design of the campus, to its award-winning campus-wide recycling program, and to the dining hall waste that is turned into compost and used to nourish Middlebury's landscape and greenhouse plants.
The Environmental Council, a committee of students, staff, and faculty, advises the president on sustainability policies—environmental purchasing policies for example—and provides incentives through a grants program for students, faculty, and staff to keep sustainability at the forefront.
The Office for Institutional Diversity (OID)
The Office for Institutional Diversity (OID) is dedicated to advancing the College’s mission to build and maintain a diverse and inclusive community committed to broadened educational opportunities within an atmosphere of respect for others. As part of the President's staff, the dean for institutional diversity and her team work with all segments of the Middlebury community to insure that diversity is a critical part of making the college an academically vibrant and challenging place as students prepare to engage the world. Through strategic leadership, policy development and college-wide diversity initiatives, the Office for Institutional Diversity aspires to make Middlebury College a model of what a 21st century liberal arts education should truly be.
International Student and Scholar Services
International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) provides advising, programs, and immigration services to international students, staff and faculty at Middlebury College. ISSS also serves as a place of support for students who have international roots through having lived abroad or immigrated to the U.S.
International Student and Scholar Services manages the College's involvement with the U.S. government's Student & Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). It also coordinates International Student Orientation and the Friends of International Students (FIS) host program.
The College enrolls approximately 250 international undergraduates from more than 75 countries during the academic year. In addition, well over 200 international students, scholars and faculty participate in its summer programs: the Bread Loaf School of English and the Language Schools.
Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life
The Charles P. Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life facilitates the development and integration of religious, ethical, and intellectual practices. Toward this end, the Scott Center:
• Creates a campus atmosphere that is open to spiritual exploration, and that links such exploration to the intellectual and ethical life.
• Fosters interfaith and interdisciplinary dialogue as avenues to constructive community engagement, both on and off campus.
• Expands curricular connections and interdisciplinary attention to contemporary ethical and religious issues across academic and other college departments.
• Supports the College's longstanding commitment to the education of the whole person.
• Provides contexts in which a student's intellectual, spiritual, and moral character can grow and flourish.
• Offers financial and logistical support to many different student religious organizations and connects people to a variety of nearby faith communities.
• Provides pastoral and liturgical resources to college community members.
• Works in concert with Human Resources to assess issues of community and human relations, including staff and faculty wellness, and makes recommendations for services and programs.
• Supports diversity initiatives on campus.
ACADEMIC DEPARTMENTS:
Environmental Studies
The Environmental Studies major at Middlebury College was established in 1965, making it the first undergraduate ES major in the nation. The ES Program is an interdisciplinary, nondepartmental major that draws upon 52 faculty members from 26 departments. The ES major is a popular and vibrant one at Middlebury College, ranking among the five most popular majors at the College over the last five years. The ES Program offers a major, a minor, and a number of its own courses. Environmental Studies and Awareness is one of the six peaks of excellence at Middlebury College, based on the College's long tradition of being on the forefront of environmental education in both the classroom and on campus.
Geography
The primary mission of the Geography Department is to introduce the substance and methods of modern academic geography to Middlebury students. It provides its majors with the foundation necessary to succeed in related careers and competitive graduate programs, but it is even more committed to offering a curriculum that contributes meaningfully to its students' appreciation of an increasingly complex, shrinking world and to prepare them in ways that are immediately stimulating and challenging but that have lasting value and significance.
International Politics & Economics
The carefully structured international politics and economics major provides students with the opportunity to study two disciplines as well as areas that cut across traditional departmental and disciplinary lines. Through courses developed and taught by economics and political science faculty, students examine the globalizing world through a variety of conceptual lenses supplied by the social sciences, learn multiple ways of solving problems, and explore areas of inquiry that intersect traditional disciplines. This approach, in combination with the study of languages and the immersion in another culture during study abroad, prepares students for a wide array of opportunities after college, including further study in graduate and professional schools. IPE alumni are engaged in careers ranging from investment banking to the Peace Corps, from teaching to government service, journalism, public policy and management consulting.
International Studies
African Studies | East Asian Studies | European Studies | Latin American Studies | Middle East Studies |
Russian & East European Studies | South Asian Studies
The international studies major provides a carefully constructed blend of language, regional, disciplinary, and global courses that, together with study abroad, seeks to impart to students a deep understanding of a specific geographic region, as well as its place within an interdisciplinary and transnational context. In pursuit of this mission, the major is designed to ensure that all IS majors graduate with:
(1) advanced competency in a language taught at Middlebury, sufficient to read scholarly materials and engage in complex interaction with native-speaking professionals in their field of concentration;
(2) broad exposure to the historical and cultural heritage of their region of focus;
(3) solid grounding in one or more of the liberal arts disciplines other than language; and
(4) some understanding of the transnational and global context that affects all regions.
The faculty for the international studies major is drawn from the following departments and programs: Arabic, Chinese, Classics, Economics, Environmental Studies, Film & Media Culture, French, Geography, German, History, History of Art and Architecture, Italian, Japanese, Philosophy, Political Science, Portuguese, Religion, Russian, Sociology and Anthropology, and Spanish.
Sociology & Anthropology
The Department of Sociology/Anthropology has the unique feature of combining two disciplines within a single departmental major. It encourages students to take full advantage of this opportunity to develop a perspective for the systematic analysis and understanding of human behavior. Based on the empirical findings of the closely related disciplines of sociology and anthropology, this perspective is inherently comparative, in that the department is concerned with the impact of culture and society in various settings.
Although these disciplines share common concern about human behavior, each has its own history, concepts, and theoretical commitments. Anthropology essentially focuses on the role of culture in human experience, and sociology is concerned primarily with the role of social interaction and the social structure in human experience.