Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• If you missed the Narrative Journalism Showcase on Tuesday, you still have a chance to listen to the amazing stories in the “How Did You Get Here?” series on middmag.com. Check out the trailer to get a taste of what’s in store!

• Not only is Sue Halpern the director of the Narrative Journalism Fellowships, she is also the author of A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher.
  She talked to the folks at the Dish about what surprised her most as she visited nursing homes with her therapy dog, Pransky.

• The Solar Decathlon team is hard at work on its entry for the competition next fall, Insite. Recently the Burlington Free Press highlighted the students as they worked to deconstruct a historic barn so they can repurpose the wood to use as siding for their house. Check their website to stay up to date on their progress!
• The school year is winding down, but some athletic teams are still going strong. Both men’s and women’s tennis won their respective NCAA Regionals and are headed to the NCAA Quarterfinals. The women’s lacrosse team is making its 16th trip to the NCAA Final Four this weekend, and the women’s golf team is competing in the NCAA Championship in Destin, Fla.

• Senior Andrew Ackerman has been working hard on this thesis project and as part of his research, he’s been training in extreme mixed martial arts. Recently he took part in an amateur fight night in Plattsburgh, N.Y., in his first competitive fight ever. And he won!

• Finals begin on Wednesday, so it’s quiet on campus and things to do other than studying are scarce. Downtown, at 51 Main, good music is available as usual with a Blues Jam Wednesday night and Mint Julep on Friday night, performing an ecletic mix of swing and Latin rhythms.

• Artist and photographer Edward Burtynsky is receiving an honorary Doctor of Arts from the College at Commencement on May 26. His exhibit, Nature Transformed, will be on display at the Museum of Art until June 9. If you haven’t seen it yet, you still have a few weeks to check it out!

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• Midd alum Andrew Forsthoefel ’11 walked from Philadelphia to California, and his story was featured on NPR’s This American Life.
• Laurie Essig shared her latest take on beauty-product advertising in her blog “Love, Inc.” at PsychologyToday.com, and it ain’t pretty…
• Harvard professor and tour de force political theorist Eric Nelson made an incredibly complex historical concept both graspable and engaging for a packed house during last Thursday’s Fulton Lecture in Dana. You can read about it and see the entire hour-plus talk here.
• President Liebowitz sent a message to the College community this week reaffirming the College’s support for the construction of the natural gas pipeline project that will come through Addison County.
• On Wednesday at 5 p.m., the women’s lacrosse team will host Castleton in a first-round NCAA game for its 19th tournament appearance in 20 years. Tickets are $3 for adults, $2 for students.
• Make time on Friday at 8 p.m. to catch Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence Francois Clemmons for his final solo concert before he retires this month. The beloved tenor will take center stage at the Concert Hall in the Mahaney Center for the Arts, and it’s free!
• Tuesday, May 14, is Arbor Day, and campus horticulturist Tim Parsons and student volunteers have plenty of activities planned–live music, tree tours, tree planting, food, a kids’ race–spelled out at go/arborday. Can’t make it? Enjoy our ligneous, leafy friends by virtually touring the trees here on campus.
• Stop by Axinn 229 on Tuesday from 5–7 p.m. and check out this year’s “How Did You Get Here?” audio slideshows from the Narrative Journalism Fellows.

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• The fossil fuel divestment issue continues to heat up. This week we heard different views from a student panel, and the Socially Responsible Investment Club released a new video featuring interviews about divestment with several Middlebury faculty members.

• Middlebury lost a friend near and dear to our hearts last week. Read about the remarkable life of 106-year-old philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis.

• Major League Baseball may be in full swing, but Middlebury senior Ryan Moores is thinking NFL. The 6-6, 315-lb. Panther offensive lineman was invited to the Atlanta Falcons rookie camp this weekend, where he’ll vie for a coveted spot on the preseason roster.

• If you missed the Middlebury TEDx talks this year, you missed some incredible speakers — like Natalie Randolph, the first female varsity football coach in Washington, D.C., or Derek Amato, who had a major concussion, then suddenly discovered a virtuosic ability to play piano. The good news is that all those Middlebury TEDx talks are viewable online!

• Harvard professor of government Eric Nelson will give this year’s Fulton Lecture, “The Lord Alone Shall be King of America: Hebraism and the Republican Turn of 1776,” on Thursday, May 2, at 4:30 p.m. in Dana Auditorium. It’s free and all are welcome.

• The theatre program opens its spring production of Howard Barker’s The Castle, on Thursday, May 2. Set in the 13th century, the historic drama also reflects contemporary themes.

• Looks like it will be a beautiful weekend to watch some lacrosse, and the Midd men’s team will host the NESCAC championships starting Saturday, May 4, at noon.

Professor Olinick did not disappoint. His multimedia presentation included pictures of Turing as a child in a sailor suit, a song about Turing, and a scene from Breaking the Code, a play about Turing by Hugh Whitemore.

“At the age of 23” said Olinick,  “Turing made the modern world possible.” And yet, until recently, he could have been “easily described as the most important person you’ve never heard of.”

Turing was born in London in 1912. He attended Sherborne School, where he was at the bottom of his class according to Olinick, preferring to study math on his own. He attended King’s College at Cambridge University as an undergraduate and received his PhD from Princeton. And during this time, he was laying the groundwork for computer science and artificial intelligence.

“He published relatively few papers in his lifetime,” Olinick said,  “but almost all of them are considered landmarks in their field.” At a very young age, he conceived of his Turing Machine, which could do possibly any mathematical computation. It used an infinitely long tape divided into squares that would be left blank or encoded with a one or a zero as the machine worked on a problem. Turing demonstrated that “anything computable could be computed by such a machine.” He also developed the Turing Test, which measured machine intelligence, including the ability to learn.

Olinick’s presentation included two artifacts from the WWII era—Enigma machines. These machines, which look like typewriters with an extra keyboard, were used to encipher messages. Tom Perera, an expert on “everything enigma” brought them for audience members to try out at the conclusion of the talk.

The Enigma machines used a series of rotors that could be interchanged and rearranged and were connected to a “plug board.” They could be configured in so many combinations that, for all practical purposes, they were nearly limitless.  When a letter was typed, it cycled through the rotors and emerged as a different letter altogether. To give the audience a sense of how complex deciphering the code was, Olinick tried to explain in terms people could grasp.

“Suppose you had a high-speed computer that could process 100 million configurations per second,” he said. “Imagine that we had a computer this fast that started running the day the universe was created and was running continuously ever since, examining different configurations of this machine, trying to find all of them—and among all of them, finding the correct ones. This machine, which has been running since the dawn of creation, would be 1/800,000 of the way through.” Yet, Turing broke the code.

But for all of his success, “Turing’s life took on the dimensions of a Shakespearian tragedy,” Olinick said. He was an openly gay man during a paranoid, unaccepting time. When he was young, his closest, dearest friend, probably his lover, died tragically just as they were about to go to Cambridge together. In 1952, he reported a burglary, and during the investigation the police discovered that Turing had a homosexual relationship, which he admitted. He was arrested, lost his security clearance, convicted, and subjected to chemical castration (estrogen injections).

Olinick said that the estrogen had a terrible effect on Turing, feminizing him and destroying his sexuality. He died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning. According to Olinick, it’s widely believed to have been suicide, but Turing did not leave a note and had been making future plans; he’d even just purchased new socks. Some speculate that his death could have been a political assassination. And his mother believed it was an accident, because he worked with cyanide.

As appreciation for Turing’s contributions and tribulations has grown in recent years, a “plethora of novels and short stories, five dramatic plays, three operas, a musical now on the London stage, and a monopoly set” have been devoted to Turing. The play Lovesong of the Electric Bear by Snoo Wilson, directed by Cheryl Faraone, debuted at Middlebury College in 2010. It was later performed by the Potomac Theater Project.

In the wake of public demands for restitution for Alan Turing, Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an apology in 2009. Printed on a handout at the lecture, it read in part, “Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. . . . This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality, and long overdue.”

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• Middlebury admissions continue to thrive with a record number of applicants this year. And a record number of admitted students visited campus during Middlebury’s Preview Days last week, enjoying everything from the Spring Student Symposium to a Quidditch demonstration.

• As any NESCAC athletic director can tell you, Middlebury has always had a strong athletics program. Recently the Burlington Free Press pointed out why that is: it has a stellar athletics department with a dedicated and talented staff.

• In keeping with the “stellar” theme, Middlebury’s alums fit right in. Time magazine recently released its 2013 list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” In the “Pioneers” section is Middlebury’s own Don Yeomans ’64, asteroid hunter. Read about why you can sleep easy at night, thanks to Don.

• It’s back! The third annual Bach Festival will be held this weekend, April 26–28, featuring guest conductor Martin Pearlman of Boston Baroque. The festival kicks off Friday night with the College choir and chamber orchestra at 8:00 p.m. in the Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Activities continue all day Saturday, culminating with the Festival Concert in Mead Chapel at 8:00 p.m. Sunday morning area churches will be adding Bach music to their services. Everything is open to the public and it’s all free, except for the Saturday night concert. Come celebrate the music of Johann Sebastian Bach!

• If jazz is more your thing, the 4:30 Combo will be playing at 51 Main on Thursday night from 8–10:00 p.m. Swing to the music of members of Middlebury’s jazz community!

• Other activities abound over the next few days. On Thursday at 12:30 p.m. the Woodin ES Colloquium Series continues with the lecture “The Sufficiency Principle: A Key to the Sustainable Future,” given by Katherine Follert Ebner ’87. Friday afternoon is the start of the annual Relay for Life, the all-night fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society. And on Saturday both the men’s and women’s lacrosse teams begin the NESCAC tournaments with a home-field advantage.

• And for a unique experience in music, come hear a concert featuring a repertoire of varied East African instruments, vocal selections, and dance. The performance takes place Tuesday, April 30, from 8–10 p.m. in the Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall.

As things kicked off on Thursday evening at the Mahaney Center for the Arts, students, faculty, and staff enjoyed musical presentations, dance and theater performances, and a keynote address with actor and activist Cassidy Freeman ’05 (listen below).

On Friday, the Great Hall and adjacent classrooms of Bicentennial Hall were packed with the day’s full schedule of poster sessions and oral presentations, capped off with an evening reception and more music and theater performances.

Below is a slideshow that briefly captures the excitement of the event, followed by an audio clip of Freeman’s keynote address in its entirety.

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The 2013 Student Symposium kicked off the weekend in the Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall with welcoming performances by a cappella groups the Mountain Ayres and the Mamajamas (pictured above).

Hear what actress and activist Cassidy Freeman ’05 had to say about Middlebury, creativity, and writing your personal mission statement:

Professor Stephen Whitfield

The first is the force of anti-Semitism that endured until the late 1960s, and the second is the rise of multiculturalism in the 1980s—a movement that continues today, Whitfield said, as Americans of the 21st century embrace diversity as a source of national pride and strength.

American society has changed over the past 70 years, and the Jewish people’s place in that society has evolved along with it. Making references to American literature (Richard Wright), theatre (Arthur Miller), film (Otto Preminger), music (Louis Armstrong), sports (Jackie Robinson), and journalism (Look magazine), the guest speaker took the audience on a scholar’s tour of the Jewish-American experience over the past seven decades.

Whitfield was at Middlebury College on April 14 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Quint Lectureship during the day-long symposium on “The Jews in America: Past and Future.”

The Max Richter Professor of American Civilization at Brandeis—a chair he has held since 1985—Stephen Whitfield is the author of eight books, the writer of 60 articles, and the recipient of Fulbright teaching professorships in Israel and Belgium. And while Whitfield’s C.V. says his “curricular and research interests are primarily in the intersection of politics and ideas in the 20 century,” it is clear from his scholarship and his talk at Middlebury that his expertise also extends into civil rights, foreign languages, modern American and European history, philosophy, and of course Judaism.

Whitfield was one of four speakers invited to give presentations at the conference. The others were: Riv-Ellen Prell, professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota, speaking about “Women, Men, and Families: The Axes of Jewish Cultural Change”; Ted Sasson, professor of international studies at Middlebury and visiting research professor in sociology at Brandeis, on “American Jews’ Changing Relationship to Israel”; and Michael G. Holtzman, rabbi of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, on “The ‘Joining’ Paradigm and the Future of Communal Life.”

Historian Stephen Whitfield (l.) greets Adam Jones ’13 (r.) and faculty member Larry Yarbrough at the symposium.

Professor Whitfield, in the Sunday afternoon lecture delivered in McCardell Bicentennial Hall, equated the anti-Semitism of the post-war era with the racism that was prevalent in America at the time, and yet he said there was always a sense that intolerance was at odds with American values.

Bigotry in America was “seamless” in the years immediately after the Second World War, Whitfield said. “Prejudice was seen to spring from a single psychic source or distortion, even if the targets might be multiple. Who the minorities were was fluid because the hostility toward them was sometimes generic.” This tendency demonstrated historian John Higham’s theory of the “unitary character of prejudice,” the guest speaker said.

Something extraordinary was going on in the 1950s and 1960s that made the nation more democratic, something Whitfield called “a tectonic shift in the definition of the American identity.”

“An awareness of the heterogeneity of the pot increasingly gathered momentum. The American way of life that was so frequently invoked in the 1950s, increasingly needed to be expressed in the plural. The republic was increasingly appreciated as a collection of groups.

“The pot had not melted,” Whitfield noted. “It meant that all sorts of changes would be taking place, and it also meant that the place of Jews in American society could rise to extraordinary influence and conspicuousness.”

By the 1980s, the differences between peoples ceased to be a cause of divisiveness in the United States. Diversity became a source of national pride for minorities, and thus did multiculturalism provide the framework for Jews to strengthen their place in society.

Whitfield, who mentioned earlier that his family’s name was originally Weissfeld, or “white field,” concluded with remarks about the “conundrum of Jewish identity” in America today where “prejudice has been replaced by popularity, hostility has given way to hospitality.” In this context Whitfield related a remark by Elvis Presley who apparently had taken to wearing the Star of David around his neck. Elvis explained his choice of jewelry saying: “I wouldn’t want to be kept out of heaven on a technicality.”

So where Jews in America had once been subject to widespread anti-Semitism, today they live in a pluralistic society in which they are appreciated for cultivating their heritage in ways that could not have been anticipated in the 1940s or 1950s.

The Quint Lectureship was established at Middlebury in 1987 by the late Hannah A. Quint and her son Eliot Levinson, a member of the Class of 1964. Its purpose has long been to provoke thought at the College and within the community on issues of Jewish history, religion, and culture.

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg delivered the first Quint lecture in 1988 on the topic “Israel and Palestine: A Battle of Two Rights.” Since it was founded, the lectureship has always been delivered by a different speaker, with one exception: Rabbi Hertzberg, a prominent scholar and activist, was invited back in 1997 to mark the 10th anniversary. His subject: “The Future of the Zionist Movement.”

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• Jay Parini weighed in at CNN.com on whether paper-grading software could replace the human, professorial version. The D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing drew on his 40 years of teaching (and paper grading) to limn the difference.

• With a Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action in the wings, Professor of Political Science Erik Bleich wrote in Atlantic.com that “A collective, nationwide effort by private institutions can transform the debate about affirmative action.”
• Cold stone seats and leaden skies fit the occasion. On Tuesday, April 16, Middlebury joined 300 venues worldwide marking the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” with public readings.  The lunchtime audience sat in the wind at Gifford Amphitheatre as theatre professor Dana Yeaton first read the letter from the eight white Birmingham ministers who scolded that the freedom march was “unwise and untimely.” A tag team of 26 student and faculty readers then delivered the fruits of King’s mighty pen. Read the letter here.
• The Spring Student Symposium kicks off Thursday evening with a keynote address by actor and alumna Cassidy Freeman ’05 and performances of all kinds. Friday is filled with visual art and architecture exhibits, oral presentations, and poster sessions. The range and sophistication of student work is mind-blowing. Plus it’s all very fun. The full schedule is here.
• Boston Globe jazz critic Bob Blumenthal calls him “a jazz treasure.” Now a Middlebury resident, sax and trumpet master Miles Donahue will bring his quintet to the Town Hall Theater Friday evening. Everyone gets a free CD, too.
• Earth Day is Tuesday, but since many Earthlings gotta work, the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op will host a party on Saturday from 12-3 pm at the store on Washington Street. Live music, a seed and seedling exchange, stuff for kids. Not to mention our planet’s signature contribution to the Milky Way—food.

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/04/18/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-april-15/feed/ 0 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/04/11/academe-science-on-the-brain/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/04/11/academe-science-on-the-brain/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:57:14 +0000 Blair Kloman http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=11759 Academe is Middmag’s occasional check-in on what students and faculty are talking about.

Last week President Obama announced an ambitious plan called The Brain Initiative—a $100-million project to study brain function. The goal is for scientists working in the field of brain research to further their understanding and continue to develop resources that will lead to breakthroughs in treating conditions such as Alzheimer’s, autism, and stroke.

That announcement got the attention of some neuroscience faculty and student researchers here on campus. Middmag caught up with Professor Tom Root and Stephen Lammers ’13, Ben Wagner ’13, and Deirdre Sackett ’13 during a break from their studies. Here’s what they had to say about Obama’s plan—and what it might mean for the future.

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• Last Thursday the 2013 Solar Decathlon team invited the campus to walk through its solar house under construction next to the recycling center. It was a spirited event with students cheering, a band playing, and the president speaking, so in case you missed it watch this short video produced by Stephen Diehl. What happens next? Once “InSite” house is completed it will be disassembled, transported to Irvine, Calif., and reassembled again for next fall’s international competition held by the U.S. Department of Energy.

• Middlebury graduates have supported their alma mater again! In March, when a generous donor offered $20,000 if 2,000 alumni would make a gift during the month, the grads rose to the challenge and made donations. Our hats are off to the alumni, the donor, and the hard-working College Advancement staff for reaching their Spark A Match! goal.

• The College has earned news coverage over the past few days: on Bloomberg.com for Middlebury’s position on divestment in fossil-fuel companies; in USA Today for Assistant Professor Joyce Mao’s course “Mad Men and Mad Women”; in the Boston Globe for winning an EPA award for reducing the College’s food waste; and in the Washington Post for Associate Professor Jason Mittell’s view on DVR’ing TV premieres.

• The Gensler Family Symposium on Feminism in a Global Context continues through Friday with discussions, lectures, and a film – all on the subject of “Body Parts.” 
  

• “Jews in America: Past and Future” will be the topic of a one-day symposium on Sunday, April 14, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Hannah A. Quint Lectureship in Jewish Studies. Speakers from Brandeis University, the University of Minnesota, the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, and Middlebury College will discuss American Jewry from four different perspectives.

• The “Real Food Week” keynote speaker, author Philip Ackerman-Leist of Green Mountain College, will discuss higher education’s role in creating just, humane, and sustainable food systems on Thursday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Jones House Conference Room. Then, next Monday, April 15, there will be two talks about food: at 12:15 p.m. in Warner Hemicycle about creativity and food in the “elBulli” ecosystem, and at 7:30 p.m. in the Jones House Conference Room on the Arab influence on Mediterranean gastronomy.
• Global Vision, Global Reach: The Middlebury-Monterey Lecture Series will continue on Monday, April 15, at 12:30 p.m. in Franklin Environmental Center, Room 103, with John Balcom, a professor at MIIS in the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education. His topic: “Serving Two Masters: Reflections on Literary Translation.”

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at 

• Assistant Professor of Biology Catherine Combelles has received the Perkins Award for Excellence in Teaching. Combelles, who specializes in reproductive biology, will be honored at a ceremony and reception open to the College community on Thursday, April 4, at 4:30 p.m. in Room 104 of McCardell Bicentennial Hall.
• Last week Middlebury announced it had offered admission to 1,750 students, who will make up the class of 2017, out of an applicant pool of 9,112 — a 19% acceptance rate. The new admits come from 44 states and 73 countries.
• Forbes online raised Middlebury up as an example of how colleges can promote the idea of a “bridge year” between high school and college to help students avoid burnout and further prepare for their academic road ahead.
• The Solar Decathlon ’13 team kicks off their spring construction season this Thursday, April 4, at 4:30 with a ceremonial celebration at their building site in the Ridgeline parking lot, just west of campus on Route 125. All are welcome.
• Davis Projects for Peace recipient Jihad Hajjouji ’14 started an “entrepreneurship boot camp” in Morocco. On Friday, April 5, at 12:30 p.m., she’ll give a public talk about her project at the Axinn Center, Room 219.
• Middlebury College Affiliate Artist Mary Rowell will perform music for violin, viola, and electronics in a free concert on Friday, April 5, at the Mahaney Center for the Arts. Rowell has earned international acclaim as a performer and proponent of new music.
• Cellist Sophie Shao, a perennial favorite in the Middlebury College Performing Arts Series, returns with her piano quartet on Saturday, April 6, at 8 p.m. in the Mahaney Center for the Arts.
• Finally, if you’re planning to attend the New Play Festival, “Undressing Cinderella,” next week, you’ll get some interesting insight at a Behind the Scenes lunch and discussion on Monday, April 9, at 12:30.

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/04/03/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-april-1/feed/ 0 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/27/hope-and-climate-change/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/27/hope-and-climate-change/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:19:02 +0000 Maria Theresa Stadtmueller http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=11660  

Klyza gave a nuanced view of Obama’s first term and what might come next.

The question mark was key. In a recent talk entitled, “Change We Can Believe In?” Christopher McGrory Klyza, the Stafford Professor in Public Policy and professor of political science and environmental studies, parsed President Obama’s environmental record for progress, setbacks, and possible future action. Not surprising for the co-author of an award-winning book about recent U.S. environmental policy, Klyza went beyond a mere scorecard to suggest the subtleties of achieving any gains in the current political climate.

Klyza began by giving the full Orchard at Franklin Environmental Center some political context: Obama’s actions (or lack of them) must be weighed against his having taken office while the U.S. was fighting two wars and suffering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Add to that a Congress that has been gridlocked—and worse—since 1990. Klyza quoted California Congressman Henry Waxman’s 2012 comment: “I have never experienced as much hostility toward the environment than exists in Congress today.” In fact, Klyza noted, recent studies show political party polarization has reached levels not seen since Reconstruction. “There’s virtually no environmental middle,” he said, referring to a graph of congressional environmental voting that showed red bars crowding the anti-environment extreme and blue bars crowding the pro-environment edge. Meanwhile, although most Americans support environmental protection, that support is too shallow to pressure politicians. “There’s support, but not salience,” he said.

Still, the Congress and Obama managed to pass two significant laws in the first term. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act consolidated 159 bills and produced the greatest expansion of the wilderness system in 15 years. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus act), invested $80 billion in energy efficiency, public transit, and renewables. What Congress and Obama didn’t pass was a comprehensive climate bill; in both the House and Senate climate and cap-and-trade bills died, Klyza said, due to overcomplexity and failed tactics. After Republicans took the House in the 2010 midterm election, Obama and the Democrats fell back into defending the “green state” from attack. (The “green state,” Klyza explained, is “the set of laws, rules, institutions, and expectations regarding conservation, pollution control, and resource management”—such as the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Forest Service, and the Antiquities Act.) That defense was successful, he said, quelling 39 anti-environmental riders attached to the House’s 2012 Interior-EPA appropriations bill designed to weaken greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation and vehicle fuel efficiency and to promote oil and gas leases in wilderness areas.

Klyza then considered some of Obama’s executive actions. His appointments of Lisa Jackson (EPA administrator), former EPA chief Carol Browner (energy czar), Van Jones (green jobs czar), and Steven Chu (energy secretary) were environmentally credible. When the EPA roused from its Bush-era slumber to respond affirmatively to the Supreme Court’s charge (Massachusetts v. EPA, 2007) that the agency determine if greenhouse gases are a “danger to public health and welfare,” the gates opened to stronger regulation of motor vehicle and power plant emissions.

For example, Klyza explained, California has the right under the Clean Air Act to seek a waiver from the EPA allowing it to require stricter motor vehicle emissions standards than those nationally set. The Bush administration denied the waiver; Obama granted it. A state and federal collaboration helped establish national greenhouse gas standards for cars and light trucks that translate into stepped limits of 35.5 mpg by 2016 and 54.5 mpg by 2025. Higher mpg standards for heavier vehicles were also established.

Klyza also noted that a 2011 rule requiring 90 percent cuts in mercury emissions from fossil-fueled power plants by 2016 resulted in utilities closing many older coal-fired plants (mercury pollution’s greatest source) rather than incur retrofitting costs. The EPA also tightened standards for other air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, but in a major disappointment, Obama wouldn’t support ground-level ozone reduction.

Despite a gridlocked Congress, environmental progress continues through what Klyza called “green drift.” “Green state” laws often include provisions that require review and action based on the best available science, he said, giving the example of the health consequences of particulates. New data show that lower levels than anticipated can damage human health, which requires the EPA to adopt stricter air quality standards—unless Congress intervenes. Since gridlock renders that unlikely, stricter standards accrue. In this scenario, GHG could, through green drift, decline to levels close to what the defeated Waxman-Market climate bill would have achieved through 2020, but not beyond. Unfortunately, he noted, “green drift will not lead to the fundamental changes in the U.S. economy and society that are necessary to make far deeper cuts in GHG emissions.”

Reviewing several other advances, Klyza concluded that in light of first-term pressures, “Obama’s executive politics are making a difference.” But lack of real presidential action on climate change and land conservation left many feeling “the environment never seemed on the top of his to-do list.”

And the second term? Klyza found Obama’s actions hard to predict. Changes to the National Environmental Policy Act could put “some sand in the gears of polluters,” Klyza said, by allowing some lawsuits over greenhouse gas outputs; a spokesperson for the National Association of Manufacturers responded with, “It’s got us very freaked out.” It remains to be seen what Obama will do about the Keystone XL pipeline and other planned fossil fuel infrastructure, or leasing of federal lands for coal extraction, although Klyza considers it essential that issues such as Keystone and fossil fuel divestment have made it to the front page and popular awareness.

“So how do we influence the president to keep global temperature rise below two degrees Centigrade?” a student asked during the lively question and answer period. Klyza responded, “Ceaseless pressure, ceaselessly applied.”

Hang Du

With support from a faculty research grant, Du went to the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School in Hangzhou, China, while on her sabbatical in 2008.  Twenty-nine students on the Middlebury program gave her permission to study their every move, and so she went to classes with them, observed them in academic and non-academic settings, and interviewed them in Chinese before, during, and after the semester.

For three months she ate meals with the students, analyzed their questionnaire responses, spoke to their teachers, administered language proficiency tests, and even read their journals (with permission, of course)—all in an effort to understand how American students handle their immersion in her native country.

Hang Du transcribed all of her conversations, observations, and analysis into more than 2,400 pages of hand-written notes, and recently published an article on her quantitative findings in the Modern Language Journal, with a second article due out later this year.

On March 20 she presented her qualitative findings in a Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture at Middlebury entitled “Study Abroad in China: Language, Identity, and Self-presentation,” to a gathering of about 60 students, faculty members, and community members. And as she shared stories about her observations in Hangzhou, about a dozen students smiled and nodded their heads indicating that a sizeable share of the audience had studied in China on the Middlebury program and had “lived” similar experiences.

For example, she told a story about a Middlebury student who took a 10-hour train trip to Beijing. As soon as the other passengers noticed her high level of proficiency in the Mandarin language, she was besieged by questions because her language skills exceeded people’s expectations. Added Du, “The Chinese people can be very blunt.”

She told about a student with Korean parents, who identified with the international students at Middlebury, but felt she was part of the majority in China. Or about the student-musician who was invited by strangers to perform at their wedding, and did so willingly. Or about the student who found he was “less eager” to defend American policies after living and studying in China.

Du, a veteran language teacher who first came to Middlebury in 2001 as a member of the summer Chinese School faculty, was particularly interested in the students’ awareness of dialects and accents. She played an audio clip for the audience in which one of the students in the program impersonated a Hangzhou resident’s less-than-perfect pronunciation of Mandarin.

Her qualitative findings fell into three categories: language proficiency, identity and self-presentation, and interaction with native speakers. “Soon after I analyzed the data,” she said, “these three themes jumped up and called out my name.”

Du was inspired to conduct her study when, in 2006, she found extensive research on study abroad in other countries such as Russia and France, but “there was nothing about American students studying abroad in China.” Her interest was compounded by the fact that more than 50 study-abroad programs had been established in China since the 1980s, and the realization that China ranks fifth on the list of the most-popular destinations for U.S. students studying abroad.

And yet, Chinese-language teachers in the U.S. did not have access to valid research findings about American students in China, she said. “Year after year we send students over there and then they come back, but we didn’t really know what [their experiences were,] so that’s why I wanted to study it.”

From her research, Du has concluded that Middlebury students felt “respected and valued” in China because of their language proficiency, and their positive images of themselves has motivated them to keep learning and practicing the language. Students told her that they could “fend for themselves” in the marketplace or with taxi drivers because of their language skills. They felt validated because they could make their opinions or feelings known in conversation with others in Chinese.

She also noticed a shift in students’ perspectives about non-speakers of Chinese, as demonstrated by the student who thought Westerners in Tiananmen Square who could not converse in Chinese were “shameless,” and by the student who observed that Europeans sitting at an adjacent table in a restaurant were actually “disappointed” to hear him speaking Mandarin.

Some students in study-abroad programs are ascribed “half-wit status” by native speakers because of their lack of language skills, Du explained, but for Middlebury students in China the opposite was true. “Our students were appreciated and honored by the Chinese people for their language skills.”

Mapping Vergennes was just one step students took to suggest safer walking and biking routes.

What keeps residents driving around town instead of biking or walking to school, work, and errands? What could change those habits? Four environmental studies (ES) seniors spent a semester looking for answers by getting to know the people, traffic lights, and crosswalks of the City of Vergennes, VT. On a recent Tuesday evening they presented their findings—3 main causes and 18 recommendations for change—at a joint meeting of the Vergennes city council, planning commission, and recreation committee. A reaction from Shannon Haggett, chair of the planning commission, was typical of the response: “I was blown away by the quality of the work.”

Since the late 1980s, ES seniors have developed community-related projects for their capstone senior seminar, focusing on diverse topics such as land management, climate, energy, and water issues. Last fall’s “Cultivating Community Through Sustainable Transportation” resulted in a 52-page report, a highly professional presentation to Vergennes officials, and hopes that the research could be adapted to other Vermont communities.

The students who chose this project among several transportation-oriented options (18 seniors participated in fall semester’s ES 401) brought a cross-section of ES foci to the task: Aaron Kelly’s is policy; Jessica Lee’s is creative arts and dance; Angela Todd focuses on chemistry, and Carlton “Carly” Westling on biology. Their first concern was “Where do we start?”

Fortunately, the semester’s faculty advisor, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Environmental Studies Molly Costanza-Robinson, is an experienced guide in these seminars. “The transportation focus is newer to me, but I’ve been interested as a citizen for a long time,” she says. She also brought ideas from a recent research project in which she and faculty members from six other institutions visited European cities with model sustainable transportation networks. “I learned more about what’s possible and how it was achieved,” she says.

Working with the students and Costanza-Robinson was Diane Munroe, the College’s veteran coordinator for community-based environmental studies. Munroe’s many local and state-wide partners have come to welcome the collaboration—and results—a team of ES401 seniors typically achieve.

The seminar kicked off with a primer on transportation—intensive reading and discussion on such issues as equity, access to jobs, climate change, and a new federal transportation funding bill. That process, at least, was familiar student territory. As they moved toward fieldwork, familiarity gave way to many moving parts. The students set up selection criteria (resident density, number of nearby employers, etc.) that pointed to Vergennes as a workable site. Munroe’s contacts there and with the Addison County Regional Planning Commission were eager to participate. The students met with local officials and conducted detailed walking and mapping trips in Vergennes to measure its crosswalks and assess sightlines. There were days of surveys about residents’ transportation habits and their perceived barriers to biking or walking. They talked with mothers who struggled to push strollers along broken sidewalks and with shoppers too wary of traffic to walk to the nearby supermarket.

The students had some of their own apprehensions: “How do we organize all this?” and “How will we be graded?” Costanza-Robinson advised, “Don’t worry about the grades. Worry about the process. And don’t be afraid to flail around a bit. That’s where the learning is happening.” After many drafts, lots of feedback from their community partners and their advisers, and a particularly rigorous three-hour session with a white board, they started to clarify the issues. As Aaron Kelly notes, “We came in with an untarnished perspective, so we could offer creative solutions. The persistence paid off.”

So what drives Vergennes residents to drive? Three main themes emerged: safety, connectivity, and perceptions and habits. For example, the truck Route 22A turns into Main Street in Vergennes, and residents worry about not being seen, not having time to cross safely, and about being passed too closely on bikes; the city’s infrastructure doesn’t always let someone walk from here to there;  and people perceive walking or biking as too time-consuming or unpleasant in extreme weather.

Matching these results with data from transportation studies and from local research by the county planning commission, the students crafted 18 recommendations ranging from simple (signage and enhanced stoplights) to more complex and costly (a connecting biking/walking trail on a former railbed). “We designed the recommendations to stand on their own,” noted Westling, “so the city could choose which they could afford without weakening the others.” All of their recommendations held multiple benefits—to residents’ physical health, a sense of community, or the local economy. “They knew they couldn’t sell this only on a ‘save-the-planet’ basis,” says Costanza-Robinson. “They had to show the many benefits of sustainable transportation.”

At the Vergennes meeting, the planners and council members raised fine points about town boundaries and state regulations. The students answered questions about streets and paths as if they’d grown up there. “It was so gratifying that they let us present our ideas,” said Jessica Lee afterward. The City Council’s budget vote this June will determine which changes to adopt and what might need outside funding (the report includes suggestions). The students’ success won’t be measured only in future crosswalks and bike lanes, however. As Westling said, “I remember the moment during this project when I realized, ‘this isn’t just what I’m learning in my class; it’s also how I should live my life.’”

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/22/street-smarts/feed/ 10 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/20/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-march-18/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/20/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-march-18/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:43:46 +0000 Regan Eberhart http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=11573 Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• The two-state option to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may seem like an obvious answer to many people, but Dennis Ross, former special assistant to President Obama, delivered an address to the College on May 12, in which he explained why this idea is still languishing. He said that the primary problem lies in the beliefs (or “disbeliefs”) of the parties involved. The talk can be viewed here.
• Last Saturday,women’s hockey had to let go—of the dream of a fourth NCAA championship, when they lost to Elmira in the title game in Wisconsin. On a more optimistic note, men’s basketball won a Sweet 16 game over Ithaca and will play in the quarterfinals in Salem, Virginia, on March 22.
• The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced the 2013 Literature Award winners on March 16. Bill McKibben was one of eight recipients of the award in literature for exceptional accomplishments in any genre.
• Students who study abroad in China seem to be able to put their best foot forward more often than those studying in other countries, and they seem to more easily embrace and get benefit from their identity as foreigners. Professor Hang Do reports on her research into this aspect of study abroad in a talk Wednesday evening, March 20, at the Franklin Environmental Center.
• Thursday, March 21, is packed with to-do options. Among them:  At lunchtime, on March 21, Professor Chris McGrory Klyza talks about  environmental-policy debates and outcomes during Obama’s first term. His talk is called Change We Can Believe In? (We wish that question mark were an exclamation point.)  Over at BiHall, hot pizza served at 12:20 may attract even the technically clueless to  Sven Anderson’s (Computer Science Program, Bard College) talk about the problem of text simplification using computer-based artificial intelligence techniques. Anderson will report on his lab’s recent research.
• The early evening of March 21, presents a tantalizing discussion with three editors of n + 1, one of the most highly regarded literary magazines in the U.S. Among the things they will talk about: the trials and tribulations making a living as a writer. And  there will be a screening of Five Broken Cameras, an award-winning film about popular resistance to the Israeli Occupation in a Palestinian village,  in Dana Auditorium.  Afterwards, Palestinian Professor Ahmad Almallah will discuss this complex situation.
• The evening of March 21 includes an interesting program  at the Sheldon Museum. Professor Bill Hart will present a gallery talk about Henry Freeman, Class of 1849, who advocated that Negroes return to Liberia as “the only way by which the Negro of the U. S. can rise to the full status of manhood.” This talk is part of the museum’s ongoing series about African Americans in Vermont, marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.  And over in Mead Memorial Chapel, Nathan Laube will bring the building to life with an organ concert celebrating Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday, March 21,1685. Laube, known for his brilliant playing, will also deliver a pre-concert lecture.
• On Friday night as students head out for spring break, head over to 51 Main for festive fare from the kitchen and fresh Latin-jazz-fusion music by Mogani, a local band with some of the finest area musicians.

]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/20/things-that-happened-things-to-do-week-of-march-18/feed/ 0 http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/20/eight-minutes-3000/ http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/2013/03/20/eight-minutes-3000/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:39:06 +0000 Blair Kloman http://sites.middlebury.edu/middmag/?p=11562 Eight minutes. $3,000.

That’s pretty much what it boiled down to last week when MiddChallenge gave 17 student groups a very brief opportunity to explain why their business, outreach, or arts venture deserved one of its six cash awards.

MiddChallenge, part of the College’s Project on Creativity and Innovation (PCI), is a student-driven annual event that encourages other students to pitch ideas for projects or businesses that can solve problems or enhance society in some way.

Basically you apply, prepare an eight-minute presentation (often with the help of a mentor), make your pitch to a panel of professionals who volunteer their time as judges, and find out whether you’ve won—all over the course of one week.

The winners then spend the summer implementing their projects, and the only follow-up requirement is that each of them must submit a written reflection of the process.

It’s a highly efficient and fast-paced way to get start-up funding for an idea—and then put that idea to the test. And, as Liz Robinson, director of the Project on Innovation in the Liberal Arts, points out, “It’s really less about the ultimate success of a particular project and more about the process—the people who mentor these students and the things they learn along the way.”

And they learn a lot. PCI makes available to all the students a stream of valuable resources—from professional mentors who help with presentations and business plans to opportunities for additional funding from other PCI programs such as MiddStart, PCI’s microphilanthropy network.

The student committee—energetically made up of Joanie Thompson ’14, AJ Guff ’13.5, Kate Robinson ’16, Logan Randolph ’14, Will Potter ’14.5, Hannah Bristol ’14.5, and Olivia Tabah ’16—received 37 applications and, practically overnight, narrowed it down to the 17 who were invited to make presentation pitches in one of the three categories: Business; Education, Outreach, and Policy; and Arts.

“It’s a huge time commitment,” said Liz Robinson, “but they take it very seriously.”

The students invite the judges from the professional community, create the criteria for judging, and organize and introduce the student presenters. The 11 judges included young entrepreneurs Chris Eaton ’99, Eliza Eaton ’05, and Corinne Prevot ’13, as well as former Vermont governor Jim Douglas ’72, widely experienced businessman Charlie MacCormack ’63, and the director of the Vermont Women’s Fund Catherine Kalkstein, among others.

The whole event, which took place over two days in Axinn, held an air of professionalism and pragmatism. These were not pie-in-the-sky ideas, but well-thought-out ventures that would in some concrete way add to our society and address an immediate need. Students presented detailed implementation plans and proposed budgets. Several of the groups included first-years and sophomores who were as articulate and poised as their senior peers in presenting and discussing their goals.

This year’s winners include the development of a new method for managing the invasive Eurasian milfoil in waters across Vermont using a patented process called MiddFoil®; Uncle B’s Firenuts, a spicy snack food that a student started last year in a Middlebury Entrepreneurs class and wants to expand this summer; two food-related projects: Share the Surplus, which will deliver untouched and leftover dining hall food to local communities, and Middlebury Foods, which will provide low-cost and highly nutritious grocery items to people who don’t have access to grocery stores; a creative mixed-genre film about the Los Angeles music collective WEDIDIT; and a multimedia narrative featuring stories from people who have experienced bullying in New England schools. For a complete list of the winners, as well as the groups of students involved, see below.

MiddChallenge 2013 Winners:
Business:
Uncle B’s Firenuts
Ben Stasiuk ’14

Uncle B’s Firenuts is a spicy nut snack, based on a recipe developed by Stasiuk’s Uncle Bill, that blends the intense heat of homegrown heirloom hot peppers with the flavors of bourbon and wood smoke. Stasiuk started a business selling Firenuts through the Middlebury Entrepreneurs course last January and hopes to expand the family business over the summer.

Integrated Milfoil Management
Austin Ritter ’13, Greg Dier ’13, with Samuel Carlson ’10, Professor of Biology Sallie Sheldon, Meghan Short

Waterbodies across North America are threatened by Eurasian milfoil, an invasive plant that inhibits recreation, lowers property values, and decreases native species diversity in its surroundings. In the 1990s, Professor Sheldon discovered a native insect that selectively feeds on the milfoil plant. She developed the MiddFoil®  process to efficiently grow and distribute this insect. After a decade of research has shown the MiddFoil® process to be a safe and effective method for providing lasting milfoil control, Integrated Milfoil Management intends to bring the MiddFoil® technology to waterbodies in Vermont.

Education, Outreach & Policy:
Share the Surplus
Cailey Cron ’14, Molly Shane ’14

Addison County is home to nearly 4,000 food-insecure people while Middlebury College dining system produces 300 tons of food waste a year, a portion of which is untouched and servable. In collaboration with Dining Services, Share the Surplus will collect excess prepared food from the dining halls and make it available to local people in need.

Middlebury Foods
Nathan Weil ’15, Harry Zieve Cohen ’15, Chris Kennedy ’15, Jack Cookson ’15, Oliver Mayers ’15, Elias Gilman ’15, Eduardo Danino-Beck ’15

Through Middlebury Foods, Vermonters will be able to purchase supermarket-quality food at fast-food prices. High-quality meats and vegetables will be bundled in food boxes and sold at local delivery sites including churches and community organizations. Each box provides a week’s worth of affordable and nutritious food for approximately $1.50 per meal by eliminating overhead costs and piggy-backing on the established purchasing power and infrastructure of Middlebury College.

Arts:
WEDIDIT
Moss Turpan ’14, Dylan Redford ’14

The project is a mixed documentary/fiction film about WEDIDIT, a collective of electronic musicians based in Los Angeles and one of the few in which members collaborate on work but release music individually. The film will explore the unique collaborative creative process and will employ documentary language to investigate the creative process of the artists and fictional language to represent the emotional experience of the music.

War at Home(room)
Aidesha-Kiya Vega-Hutchens ’14, Jun Chen ’14

The War at Home(room) project will compile oral histories of bullying in New England school systems. The coordinators will travel throughout the region documenting how these experiences follow people over the course of their lives and then produce multimedia narrative that illustrates the struggles endured by those bullied as well as those who eventually rise above their experiences.

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• Chief Diversity Officer Shirley M. Collado and Sheyenne Brown ’09 talked with NPR’s “Tell Me More” host Michel Martin on March 7 about campus diversity—both creating and maintaining it.
• The NCAA Skiing Championships came to Middlebury and things couldn’t have gone more smoothly for the 148 athletes representing 21 teams. Middlebury posted the best team score in the men’s slalom for the second straight year and Nordic skier Ben Lustgarten ’14 turned in his second All-America performance, helping the Panthers complete a 10th-place finish on their home snow.
• TEDx returned to Middlebury over the weekend for a second year of inspiring ideas and discussion. The theme was “The Road Not Taken” with more than a dozen speakers taking the stage to share their interpretation.
• Starting March 14th, the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs brings us “The Politics of Freshwater: Access and Identity in a Changing Environment,” a three-day, interdisciplinary conference featuring scholars from both national and international institutions, in addition to our own from Middlebury, the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad, and the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
• On Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in Dana, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose show has been at the museum since February, will discuss his work and the current exhibition, which focuses on abandoned quarries throughout Vermont and “nature transformed through industry.”
• First-year saxophonist Zitong (Bruce) Jia, winner of the 2013 Beucher Concerto Competition, will be the featured soloist in Friday’s Middlebury College Orchestra concert at 8 p.m. in the Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Jia rose above a strong field of musicians to earn his distinction, and the evening should be impressive.
• Don’t miss the premiere of “The Opulence of Integrity” March 15 and 16 at 8 p.m. in Mahaney Center for the Arts Dance Theatre. This performance, inspired by the life and legend of Muhammad Ali and incorporating elements of boxing with martial arts and an original score, is the fine work of dance faculty member Christal Brown and her company INSPIRIT.
• Several upcoming film screenings around campus offer something for everyone—MCAB’s “Free Friday Film” featuring Les Miserables at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. in Dana Auditorium; the Hirschfield International Film Series featuring Little Birds on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., also in Dana; and the Education Studies Film Series featuring Bag It, about the effects of plastic on our world, on Wednesday, March 20, at 7 p.m. in Dana.

The exquisite paintings on wooden panels are attributed to the “Master of the St. Ursula Legend,” an unnamed artist working in Bruges between 1475 and 1500. The panels are the outside wings of a triptych – a popular format for religious art – and the whereabouts of the third or center panel is also unknown.

And yet Monod, the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History at Middlebury, has determined almost to a certainty the identities of most of the major figures depicted on the panels. He has also determined when the works were painted, and has informed opinions about who the Master of St. Ursula was, why the paintings were commissioned, and what might constitute the subject of the missing middle panel.

“I have been in love with these two panels ever since we acquired them and they have fascinated me since I first set eyes upon them,” said Professor Monod, who acknowledged that he is not an art historian by training. Rather, he is an expert in 17th- and 18th-century European history, particularly the history of the British Isles, and he was motivated to delve deeply into the origins and symbolism of the panels because “they are very, very rare and very, very fascinating.”

Monod sees a direct British connection in the right-hand panel of the Middlebury triptych, particularly in the “protecting saint” shown carrying a scepter, wearing an open crown, and dressed in a gown bearing the coat of arms of England. Monod concludes that the figure in the painting is King Henry VI, although Henry VI was never canonized. The painter depicted the king to appear much as British royalty did on the coinage of the day: “a generic portrait of a king…with long flowing hair and a youngish look.”

Monod is certain that the man shown kneeling before the king commissioned the making of the triptych, the outside panels of which measure just over 20 inches in height and eight inches in width. “It is quite clear that he wanted something small and quite possibly portable, but he also wanted it packed with saints…for every possibility and every occasion.”

So who commissioned the work? “The man in the right-hand panel is well dressed, but not well dressed enough to be a nobleman, nor is he carrying a nobleman’s sword,” which leads Monod to believe that the patron of the triptych was “a wealthy merchant, an alderman of a town, or someone high-ranking within a city,” presumably in England.

Paul Monod says the “d” in his surname is silent and the accent goes on the first syllable

The author of five books and an assiduous researcher, Paul Monod examined the iconography associated with the eight saints in the left wing of the triptych and used those “clues” to determine who they are and how they might hold meaning to the patron.

According to Monod, the saints in the background of the left panel are: St. Anthony Abbot, shown with fire coming from his feet; St. Barbara, who is about to be decapitated; St. Sebastian, who is naked and shot with arrows; and St. Giles, who is carrying a crosier in front of a hermit’s cell. The saints shown as bishops in the foreground of the left panel are: St. Nicholas, who has at his feet two little boys in a barrel; St. Omer, with a thick pair of eyeglasses; St. Eligius, who is holding a goldsmith’s hammer; and St. Blaise, with a wool-combers carding tool.

Each of the eight saints must have held significance to the patron who paid for the creation of the triptych, Monod explained. For example, it was believed that St. Barbara guarded against thunder and lightning, St. Blaise protected those in the wool trade, and St. Anthony was appealed to for infectious diseases.

Before Paul Monod concluded his research, the identities of St. Giles and St. Omer in the triptych were not known, and the identity of King Henry VI had never been confirmed.

The Middlebury historian and others have deduced that the triptych was painted in the studio of Pieter Cassinbroodt, a free master of the Bruges Guild of St. Luke. Based on his research, Monod believes that the Middlebury panels were most likely painted in 1495 by one or more of Cassinbroodt’s apprentices. (Cassinbroodt was known to take on as many as seven apprentices.)

The final piece of the puzzle is the center panel: where did it go, what did it depict, and why did it get separated from its wings? We may never know the answers to those questions, Monod remarked, but it’s likely that the missing center panel showed a powerful religious image such as the body of Christ being brought down from the cross.

The one certainty, though, is why the triptych was commissioned. It was intended to be  “a declaration of a kind of political loyalty and it’s meant to show that the patron has accepted the political transition and change of power” from King Henry VI to Henry VII.

He concluded: “This is a very rare piece that has a big, important story to tell, if not by me then by others in the years to come. These two panels – these two tiny, little panels – will reveal more and more about the history of the times, about the person who commissioned them, and about these charming little saints who are posed so mysteriously against this fascinating landscape.”

Middlebury College acquired the two painted panels in 2011 through the Christian A. Johnson Memorial Fund. The Museum of Art is open to the public without charge Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. 

Montana State? In Middlebury?

It’s not every day you hear skiers from the western schools announced over the loudspeaker at Middlebury’s Snow Bowl. But today is not every day.

Wednesday morning marked the start of the 2013 NCAA Championship for both alpine and Nordic skiing, hosted this year by Middlebury.

“It’s been a long time in the works,” said an appropriately bundled Director of Athletics Erin Quinn, who stood among a crowd of other fans at the finish line, watching the first of the women’s giant slalom runs. “We’ve been prepping for this for more than a year, and it’s just a great feeling to have the day finally be here—and the weather cooperating!”

Indeed, an overcast day with slight flurries and temps in the 20s made for the perfect race day. According to one finisher from New Mexico, “It was a little windy at the top, but most of us really like these conditions.” Another skier, from the University of Denver and a native of New Hampshire, was excited to be back East skiing among old friends. “This is awesome,” she gushed, fresh over the line. “Middlebury’s a great hill. And such a fun town! We’ve tried a different sandwich shop every day—so far we like Noonie’s the best.”

Waiting for their daughter Anne to race, Rocky and Betsy Rockwell from Moosehead Lake, Maine, were well prepared for the day in warm Bates hats and scarves—including the one on their dog. “This is a trip,” said Rocky. “It’s a dream for these college kids to make it to this day. It’s Anne’s first time here. She might’ve been a little nervous.”

At the foot of the chairlift, a giant flat screen TV captured each skier as she sped through the gates. Once she was visible in person on the lower half of the mountain, the cheers and clanging cowbells were deafening.

Inside the lodge, the temperature was warmer but the atmosphere just as frantic. Skiers stretched, changed uniforms, inhaled egg sandwiches, and prepped for their second runs on the GS course. Snow Bowl staff were busy answering questions and generally enjoying the excitement of the day—and days to come. “It’s wonderful to see so many faces from so far away,” said Susie Davis, director of the Snow School. Ticket master Don Swenor, with his characteristic smile, said the best part of the day was “everything happening outside on the mountain,” and added, “It ought to happen every five years instead of ten.”

Upstairs, tucked in a corner room with a clear view of the course, Doug Lewis, a former Olympian alpine skier and local Vermonter, announced each skier’s progress from start to finish with the flair and ease of a seasoned commentator. A sign hastily taped to the half-open door requested “Silence please, no cells or electronic devices.”

With only a few skiers left to go, he finally announced Anne Rockwell from Bates, whose parents waited so patiently at the finish. “And she’s looking smooth at the start…bing bang she’s through the midway gates…a little thin at the bottom…and that’s 1:05.89 at the line.”

She was 26th after that first run, 29th overall—not bad for a first outing among some of her most talented peers. Her parents were beaming.

For more details on the NCAA Championships, please use these links:

http://www.ncaa.com/content/2013-ncaa-skiing-results

http://www.middlebury.edu/athletics/about/sportsnotes/201213sn/2013sn/march13/031113/node/448304

http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/node/447735

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu.

• If you are at all familiar with the late Minimalist artist Sol LeWitt, you know that he designed a number of temporary installations to be completed by others according to his instructions. A History of Art and Architecture class at Middlebury recently got in on the action for an installation in the College museum.
• About a year ago, a couple of students decided they wanted to reinvigorate the music scene at Middlebury. This week, the duo was invited to guest blog on “One Dean’s View,” updating the community on their work.
• Speaking of “One Dean’s View,” the blog’s author—Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer Shirley Collado—appears this week in The Chronicle of Higher Education, where she is lauded for her efforts to recruit minority scholars to liberal arts colleges.
• The College’s Sustainability Office has launched an energy literacy campaign on campus. Be forewarned: the campaign’s tumblr is fascinating—and will certainly be a time-suck for any curious individual.
• TEDx Middlebury takes place on Saturday at the Mahaney Center for the Arts, as a host of fascinating folks engage with the event’s theme “The Road Not Taken.”
• The NCAA skiing community has descended on Middlebury for the 2013 national championships, taking place at the Snow Bowl and Rikert through Saturday, March 9. Watch this space for an upcoming story capturing the scene on the mountain.

In what might be the epitome of hands-on learning, a group of art history students installed LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #394 last week as part of their class, “Minimalism: Art, Objects, and Experience,” with professor Eddie Vazquez.

The drawing came to Middlebury’s Museum of Art with a detailed set of instructions, including specifications for materials used and orientation of lines. Museum designer Ken Pohlman and preparator Chris Murray created the pencil grid guidelines, and each student could choose from a limited selection of lines to draw. The whole process took about 50 hours to complete, and the finished product will be on view in the Overbrook Gallery through April 21.

Our regular recap of goings on at the College and a look ahead to events on the horizon. As always, we hope to call your attention to items that captured ours and alert you to events that you won’t want to miss. If you have a news item that you think we’d be interested in, drop us a line at middmag@middlebury.edu. 

• A provocative question posted on Middblog last week asked, “When’s the last time you took a risk?” In the post, blogger Cody Gohl ’13 decried the propensity of the Middlebury community to play it safe. He posited that we have created a culture that awards “risklessness.” An interesting discussion has ensued.

• Professor Jessica Holmes and her creative work with MiddCore, which teaches skills and perspectives that foster the development of leaders, were the subject of the Visionary Leader Radio Show, on February 25.  The show focuses on people shaping our future.

• Middlebury alumna Dena Simmons ’05 was among the many influential women featured in The Makers: Women Who Make America, screened at Dana Auditorium on February 26. The film documents the sweeping social revolution underway as women have gained in personal and political power over the last 50 years.

• The last day of the shortest month is jam packed with things to do. Among them, two lunchtime offerings:  Robert Orsi, historian and scholar of Catholic studies, discusses the practice of confession and how it has contributed to the ongoing crisis of sexual abuse of children by priests in his lecture, “Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned.”  And the Woodin ES Colloquium hosts cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram, who will talk about the ecology of sensory experience, and how language influences our perception of the “more-than-human” natural world.

• The late afternoon of February 28 brings a panel discussion about how emerging technology can be used to further Middlebury’s mission to foster qualities essential for leadership in our rapidly changing global community. And, Professor of History Paul Monod discusses the mysterious identity of one of the figures in the museum’s early Renaissance panel painting The Bearded Monk in the Middlebury Triptych by the Master of the St. Ursula Legend.

• In the evening of February 28, the conclusion of Black History Month will be marked with a screening of Black Power Mixtape, highlighting the era of the Black Panther Party. For those who want to know what they are eating, VPIRG is sponsoring a labeling law forum to generate grassroots support for a campaign to require labeling of GMO foods.

• A lot more goes into a cup of coffee than just the beans. On Friday, March 1, Writer in Residence Julia Alvarez and Bill Eichner will talk about the lessons they have learned from establishing their sustainable coffee farm and literacy center in the Dominican Republic. The talk is part of the Center of Social Entrepreneurship Speaker Series.

• Dinaw Mengestu, MacArthur Fellow and award-winning author, will deliver the keynote address for the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity Symposium, on March 1.  He will talk about race and migration and the vocabulary of migration, which reflects our prejudices, biases, and fears.

• A fabulous weekend of sports is ahead. Among the events: the women’s hockey team hosts the NESCAC championship; men’s basketball makes its sixth consecutive NCAA tournament appearance; and men’s hockey heads to the NESCAC semifinals/finals.
  

Journalist Dimiter Kenarov ’03.5 speaks on shale gas fracking in Poland and Pennsylvania.

Journalist Dimiter Kenarov ’03.5 has covered the hunt for a Macedonian serial killer and Baghdad’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal training program (think “Hurt Locker”) but says of his current assignment, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” The young Bulgarian writer, now a resident of Istanbul, returned to Middlebury recently to talk about the complexities of “Shale Gas: From Poland to Pennsylvania” at the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest. The widely published Kenarov is partially supported in this project by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, a clue to how combative the issue of drilling for this so-called “energy game changer” has become.

The affable Kenarov began, at the audience’s request, with a brief presentation explaining what shale gas is and how drillers recover it from rock through hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Small-scale shale gas drilling has gone on for years, but new horizontal drilling technology puts gas on the leading edge of the “unconventionals,” or fuels (tar sands, ultra deepwater oil, coalbed methane, etc.) being developed now that supplies of the world’s “cheap and easy” fossil fuels are waning. One benefit of shale gas, he noted, is that it’s found worldwide and doesn’t require expensive exploratory drilling.

After Kenarov outlined some of the risks and costs, however, it was hard to understand why Poland was leading the shale gas charge in Europe and how the practice has already achieved such a foothold in the U.S. As Kenarov explained, horizontal fracking wells cover a large surface area. To force and keep open the shale fissures and release the gas within, drillers inject at high pressure from three to seven million gallons of fresh water per well, mixed with sand and toxic chemicals such as benzene and lead. Some of that water is then recovered as “flowback.” “Then what do you do with it?” Kenarov asked. Much of Pennsylvania’s flowback is sent for underground disposal to Ohio. “The water picks up 200 times the salts contained in seawater—in the Marcellus Shale [in the U.S. Northeast] it’s 3,000 times more,” he said. The water also carries as much as 1,000 times the safe drinking levels of radioactivity from its travels through the rock. Chemically tainted water from the wells can seep into underground aquifers; if pumped out and sent to standard water treatment plants, which are not equipped to decontaminate this flowback, the water seeps into rivers, water tables, and food chains.

Then there are the noise and air pollution of huge trucks needed to move water and drilling rigs; the methane released from the wells that cancels out natural gas’s comparatively modest carbon footprint; the quick decline of many of the wells, which prompts more drilling; and the pipelines extending for thousands of miles through previously scenic farmland.

In Poland, one word explains an enthusiasm countered by many other European countries’ fracking moratoriums: Russia. Poland’s longtime nemesis provides two thirds of Poland’s natural gas, and while gas comprises only 13 percent of Poland’s energy mix, many Poles want to make sure it’s “Polish gas.” The writer noted that only eight percent of Europeans overall support shale gas, but any Pole questioning gas development is branded a “national traitor” supporting Russian interests. Despite the U.S. State Department’s technical support for fracking in Poland, and the fact that the state, not farmers, owns subsurface mineral rights, “Poland doesn’t have the infrastructure,” Kenarov said. “The economy of scale doesn’t exist in one small country.” In response, Exxon has withdrawn its interests.

Scale limitation is not the problem in the U.S., where millions of square miles are mapped for fracking and half a million active wells exist. Kenarov described coming into Pennsylvania to report on fracking as “going into a mosh pit at a punk rock concert.” In northern regions of the state that lie over the Marcellus shale gas play, towns are dealing with higher crime rates, accidents caused by huge trucks, and tensions between neighbors on either side of the issue. Struggling dairy farmers who sold their mineral rights for additional income have found their supply chains collapsing as businesses shift to ride the gas wave. Vegetable farmers are either concerned about their water quality or are discovering that their customers, wary of toxicity, are buying elsewhere. (As Kenarov noted, thousands of contamination accidents caused by faulty well casings and other mishaps throughout the U.S. have been registered with the Environmental Protection Agency.)

Still, enough interests are benefiting that the shale gas drive continues (Audience members noted that Vermont is the first and only state so far to ban fracking). Kenarov commented as he showed aerial photos of vast expanses of well clusters that looked more extraterrestrial than Texan, “the scale of development is striking.”

In a panel discussion on Feb. 19 in McCardell Bicentennial Hall, Professor Barbara Hofer of the psychology department said that the method of assessing students, such as quizzes or short-answer tests vs. term papers or presentations, often drive how students go about their learning and what they’ll gain from it in the future.

“When students think what they are going to be tested on is discrete facts, then they make flash cards, right? They use rote memorization strategies. [But] if we are asking them to do higher-order tasks in our assessments, they are far more likely to use the strategies that lead to deeper understanding and knowledge,” she said.

It comes down to whether we want our students to remember disconnected bits of information or whether we want them to develop an entire web of knowledge, Hofer explained. Students don’t always see that the goal of learning is acquiring “rich, flexible, generative knowledge”; all too often they are concerned simply with the intake of information without any depth of analysis.

Cognitive psychologist Jason Arndt, an associate professor who specializes in human memory, supported Hofer’s views on knowledge acquisition.

In terms of a human being’s “working memory,” i.e., a person’s ability to think about things in the moment, people have an “exceedingly limited” capacity to hold onto data in the short term, said Arndt.  Teachers should be aware that working memory serves as a gateway to longer term retention, and if information “doesn’t get past working memory, it’s just not going to be there over the long term.” One of the techniques that Arndt uses when teaching highly complex material is limiting the number of words and ideas on each of the slides he shows his students.

He also pointed out that doing things in the classroom that demand deep, active thinking is much better for long-term retention as opposed to cursory activities that don’t demand active engagement.

“When left to our own devices,” Arndt said, “we don’t do a ton of things on our own that require a lot of effort to process it or to think about it, and that has consequences for later retention. If we do things in a relatively shallow way, that information is not likely to be there for us five minutes down the line, 10 minutes down the line, or three days down the line.”

Room for space and improvisation

The other two faculty members on the panel looked at the question of how students learn from vastly different points of view than that of their faculty colleagues from the psychology department.

Jonathan Miller-Lane, an associate professor of education studies, said that students’ curiosity should be at the center of teaching-learning process. “Before we talk about learning, we need to talk about which questions matter to students and what students are curious about,” he said.

Professors should be willing to give up their own preconceptions in honor of emphasizing the student’s place in the exchange of knowledge because, he explained, the student’s experience is more important than the teacher’s. To illustrate his point, Miller-Lane pointed to a quote from author and educator Parker Palmer: “To teach is to create a space, not to fill it.”

Said Miller-Lane, “We often assume as professors that the syllabus must pre-exist the arrival of the student and that the essential content pre-exists the arrival of the student. That’s a really interesting assumption to unpack, and this statement – to teach is to create a space – suggests that maybe there is something in the interaction between us that is at the heart of what learning means.

“Space for what then? If teaching is to create a space, where do we go but to John Dewey with this beautiful sentence: ‘Intelligently directed development of the possibilities inherent in ordinary experience.’ That’s what we are creating a space for. Where learning [is] acquiring abilities to engage that.”

Penny Campbell, senior lecturer in dance, said, “I am an improviser. That’s the bottom line in my life, [and] what I have been doing the whole time I have been here is bringing the body into the classroom, bringing the body to the center of our inquiry and our study.”

To foster improvisation, Campbell puts her dance students into situations without actually telling them what the expectations are. (She demonstrated her point by asking the audience of faculty, students, staff, and Middlebury parents to put their arms in the air and move them around. Some people moved their arms about wildly while others were more passive. Still others declined her request. But the point of the exercise soon dawned on everyone: our bodies were front and center, and none of us knew beforehand what the outcome of the exercise would be.)

“Living on the edge of chaos is something we can learn to do. We can learn the skills of operating that way. And also, we can have faith that if we are developing this amazing system of perception that the body-mind is – a continuous, active, self-organizing system in a way – if we can learn how to use that and open it and learn how to be comfortable with it, because I think we live in a culture that’s very, very suspicious of bodies.”

Every one of us has an “enormous amount of potential as a living being to perceive and pay attention to ourselves, to our environments, to the people around us, to what is going on” in life, and Campbell probes that potential in her students through improvisation.

The panel was moderated by Professor James Calvin Davis, the associate vice president of academic affairs, and was organized by his office to further the campus-wide conversation on the future of the liberal arts.

The next program in the series called Core and Change in the Liberal Arts will be held on Thursday, Feb. 28, at 4:30 p.m. in room 220 of Bicentennial Hall. Speakers from three academic disciplines and from Library and Information Services will broach the question: How can we use emerging technologies to support Middlebury’s mission “to cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community?”