Notes from Meeting with Erin Quinn

Role of sports in social entrepreneurship:

  • ACCESS: We have the opportunity to access large communities of students through sports – it unites students in a way that simply being at Middlebury does not.
  • Neither he nor Dan believe that athletes are inherently superior.
  • Dan Doyle sees Midd as a community with a lot of involved athletes.
  • Erin’s suggestion: include the Athletic Director as a member of whatever advisory board we create. This should be sufficient to address Dan Doyle’s preference for athletes.

His view of the proposal

  • It is all negotiable. Securing $5M from the trustees is not a requirement, per se.
  • Erin sees the potential place of such a building as not at the top of any pyramid, but not alone either — there are synergies that can be created between this center and the existing organizations on campus.
  • We should pay attention to the Project on Creativity and Innovation. Ron and Jessica Liebowitz started this so, politically speaking, we need to respect this as we go forward and even seek out ways to improve it with our proposal.
  • He thinks we should  create a Vice President of Creativity and Innovation position that would oversee the Center as well as everything under Education in Action (ACE, MiddCORE, Fellowships, CSO, Proj. on Creativity and Innovation). This would be an additional title for an existing faculty/staff member.
  • This would assure the Hassenfelts that we are giving the Center a central position at the College, also the other Education in Action groups would probably get behind this.
  • We would then create a Director position for the Center who would work with this VP. Perhaps an administrative support staff would work for this director as well.
  • He doesn’t believe we should have a building quite yet but perhaps we could reorganize to include it with “Education in Action”

Stuff about Dan Doyle

  • Dan Doyle is a big NESCAC guy (went to Bates, coached at Trinity) and sees Midd as a place with a huge amount of TALENT and a strong athletic program. He is a believer in the liberal arts.
  • Dan is an unbelievable organizer of people. He is expecting 25,000 people for this Youth Peace Summit this summer.

People we may want to talk to

  • Dave Donahue, Special Assistant to Liebowitz – has talked some with Erin and Jon about this proposal, he is an expert on local and state economic development and has something to say about each of these. He’s a good ally to have.
  • Alex Wolf – senior sports writer at Sports Illustrated, currently finishing a long feature article on Sports and Social Entrepreneurship (small world). He lives in Cornwall and is close with several people at the athletic department, we could get in touch with him through Jon.
  • Mike Morgan, womens’ tennis coach – he is responsible for this event Jan. 20-22. Also he is the brother in law of Tommy Clark who started Grassroots Soccer. He would be an amazing contact to have for this center.

That’s pretty much it. Hope that’s helpful.

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