From 2011 to 2016, I was first the faculty director and then the director for the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship, located on campus at 118 South Main St.  Our mission statement goes like this:

The mission of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship is to be a world leader in social change and development. Based on our conviction that social entrepreneurship education is integral to the 21st-century liberal arts, we offer students opportunities to reflect, to connect, to analyze, and to engage. Building on and complementing Middlebury’s commitment to educating students in the tradition of the liberal arts, our students learn to be effective agents of social change by reflecting on who they are, connecting with others, analyzing systemic challenges, and engaging the world around them. The center is designed to be a hub within a global network of schools, NGOs, government agencies, businesses, and foundations that share a commitment to creating 21st-century solutions.

Background work on the center was lead by Middlebury students in my 2011 winter-term class “21st Century Global Challenges.” In fall 2011, Middlebury became an AshokaU Changemaker Campus  In a 2012 winter-term class, a dozen students and I made more progress of the idea.

As emphasized in our mission statement, the foundation for our center is the theme of social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts. Here’s an essay I wrote on the topic in 2011 year; a 2012 recent essay, “Putting the Liberal Arts to Work,” can be found here. And I recorded a fun 12-minute lecture on this theme in 2013: take a look! My most recent work looks at slow learning.