1:1 Chat with Douglas Hall

Douglas Hall joined the faculty at University of Southern Florida in 2015 after ten years on the faculty at CAP 21/NYU in New York City. He has directed at theaters across the country including The Williamstown Theater Festival, Mountain Playhouse, Seven Angels Theater and The Finger Lakes Musical Theater Festival. He directed the New York premiere of THE RELIGION THING, other past credits include directing Austin Pendleton in the one-man play KEATS, both off-Broadway and in Los Angeles and the World Premiere of DUSE’S FEVER on Theatre Row. He has directed several plays at the Finger Lakes Musical Theater Festival including GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, TENDERLY, and ALWAYS… PASTY CLINE. Douglas has directed FOREVER PLAID, THE DYING GAUL, OF MICE AND MEN, THE LONESOME WEST and freeFall Theatre’s production of DADDY LONG LEGS, among others. Douglas directed the short film, “Second Glance,” starring Valerie Wright and Robert Clohessy. He directs the annual New York Industry Showcase for The Federation of Drama Schools, a consortium of the top drama schools in Great Britain. In addition to CAP 21/NYU, he has taught at Pace University, The Growing Studio and Broadway Classroom. He holds BA in English from University of California at Berkeley and an MFA in directing from Rutgers University.

Douglass Hall will be on campus on Tuesday, April 30 from 10am – 12pm. Click here to schedule your 1:1 chat!

Food Justice Activism with lauren Ornelas & Bina Ahmad – Webinar, 4/29 @ 8:30pm EST

The Animal Rights Activism Committee (ARAC) is proud to host this public webinar with our co-founder Bina Ahmad and founder and Executive Director of Food Empowerment Project (FEP) lauren Ornelas! 

Please RSVP on Facebook to get updates, including the webinar link which will be made available closer to the date. 

This webinar will highlight FEP’s groundbreaking work and activism in food justice, FEP’s focus on cross movement solidarity, and how lauren Ornelas inspired much of ARAC’s politics viewing food justice through an intersectional lens, including ARAC’s Food Justice Guidelines.

SPEAKER BIOS:

lauren Ornelas is the founder/director of Food Empowerment Project (FEP), a vegan food justice nonprofit seeking to create a more just world by helping consumers recognize the power of their food choices. lauren has been active in the animal rights movement for more than 30 years. She is the former executive director of Viva!USA, a national nonprofit vegan advocacy organization that Viva!UK asked her to start in 1999 and for which she investigated factory farms and ran consumer campaigns. In cooperation with activists across the country, she persuaded Trader Joe’s to stop selling all duck meat and achieved corporate changes within Whole Foods Market, Pier 1 Imports, and others, and she helped halt the construction of an industrial dairy operation in California. She was also the spark that got the founder of Whole Foods Market to become a vegan. In addition, lauren served as campaign director with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition for six years. Watch her TEDx talk on “The Power of Our Food Choices.” Learn more about FEP’s work at foodispower.org and veganmexicanfood.com.

Bina Ahmad is a social justice attorney, and has worked with numerous animal rights and human rights organizations. She lived and worked in Palestine with Al-Haq, served on the legal team for the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, was a legal consultant to Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights as well as the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Palestine Division. She currently serves on the Steering Committee of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, as well the advisory board of the Food Empowerment Project, and the ARAC advisory board, which she co founded. She conducts Know Your Rights trainings for radical left movements and state targeted communities. She currently works as a public defender in Manhattan, New York.  

BOLD Scholarship–Apply by April 30!

Are you a sophomore/sophomore Feb woman? Applications for Middlebury College’s fourth cohort of the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network are being accepted now! With funding and inspiration from the late Helen Gurley Brown’s foundation, the Pussycat Foundation, BOLD focuses on facilitating opportunities for women’s career development and networking through scholarship funding, programming, and post-graduation fellowships.

If you are interested in applying for the BOLD Scholarship, please do so by Tuesday, April 30, 2019.  

A complete application consists of this form and a copy of your unofficial transcript and a photo sent tobold@middlebury.edu.  The criteria candidates must meet to be considered for the BOLD scholarship are:

●    Junior standing (as of Fall 2019); Class of 2021 or 2021.5

●    Students who identify as women

●    Full-time enrollment

●    Good academic standing

●    Exceptional leadership ability

●    Demonstrated ability to work well in groups

●    BOLD Scholars are required to reside on campus for the duration of the official programming (Spring2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021); students studying abroad in Fall 2019 may apply.  BOLD Scholars who will be on campus in Fall 2019 may participate in unofficial programming in the first semester. 

From the pool of all applicants, finalists will be invited for individual half-hour interviews on Thursday, May 9, 2019 sometime 4:30-7pm so please save that date/time window. The Middlebury cohort of 7 women will be selected by early summer 2019.

Feel free to email BOLD Director Elaine Orozco Hammond with any questions.  

Weekly Web Updates – April 22, 2019

Updates

  • Drupal 8.6.15
  • Drupal 7.66
  • Drupal dropzonejs 8.x-2.0-alpha4
  • Drupal twig_tweak 8.x-2.3
  • WordPress badgeos plugin 2.3
  • WordPress osm plugin 5.1.4
  • WordPress redirection plugin 4.2.3
  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.9.0
  • WordPress wptouch plugin 4.3.37
  • WordPress parabola theme 2.3.2

Fixes and Tweaks

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.
  • Improvements to the Service Catalog.

What Should I Do This Summer as a Pre-Med?

Check out these helpful tips from Rachel Rizal and Rishi P. Mediratta, MD at Prospective Doctor. Read the full article here.

If you are pre-med or thinking about going to medical school, use your summer wisely to strengthen your application. Here are a few activities that you can explore to make your summer fruitful and beneficial for your future career as a physician!

Clinical Experiences:

  • Apply to be a medical scribe.
  • Shadow a doctor. Ask your own doctor to see if you can shadow them. Ask anyone you know who is a doctor to see if you can spend time shadowing them. If you do not know anyone, you could also e-mail physicians in your area or who are affiliated with a medical school. Ask to spend one day with them so you can learn about their field and what it’s like to care for patients.
  • Volunteer with children. Some hospitals have schools where you can teach children or read to them. Some hospitals have hospital BINGO programs or other activities that students can pursue with children.
  • Volunteer with the elderly. Veterans Affairs Hospitals are the largest integrated health care system in America. VA Hospitals have volunteer programs for students. Additionally, nursing homes are places where you can spend time with the geriatric population. Lastly, if you are interested in fields of medicine like oncology or hematology, then volunteer with a local hospice. Hospices are programs for people who are terminally ill, and volunteers are needed to spend time individuals who are dying.

Non-Clinical Opportunities:

  • Get involved with research. Research experience is helpful in a medical school application because it shows your academic curiosity and ability to delve deeply into problems. Research can range from basic sciences to public health research. The best way to get involved with research activities during a summer is to contact Principal Investigators and ask them about short-term research opportunities. Search departments in medicine that interest you and look for the faculty members and their research experiences.
  • Volunteer with children. Even outside the hospital or clinics, there are numerous opportunities to work with children. For example, you can be a camp counselor. You will learn how to motivate children and work in a team. Additionally, you can work with organizations that support children with special needs.
  • Summer classes. You can use your summer to tackle some of those pre-med requirements. Many students take physics or organic chemistry over the summer. Remember, these classes can be very demanding since they are 1-2 semesters worth of work compressed into 6-10 weeks. So balance your time wisely among classes, extra-curricular activities, and jobs.

How to Prepare Yourself Before the Start of an Internship

This is excerpted from from Penny Loretto’s article in the balance careers. Read the full article here.

One thing all students should consider before even starting their summer internship is “what do I need to do to become a successful intern?” Getting an internship is just the beginning, and it isn’t the most important part of the internship process. Sure it may have been tough finding an internship and getting an offer, but the truth is that the value of doing an internship is based mainly on how you decide to handle the internship based on what you have to offer. That’s right; the burden is on you to make the internship successful and to perhaps even turn your internship into a full-time job.

It’s not about the company telling you what to do; it’s about you showing your value through your own initiative, motivation, and personal and professional skill set. 

Tips:

  • Read important literature and trade magazines about the field
  • Take time to review the company’s website
  • Get yourself a mentor

You may also be interested in watching these Internship Tips from Former Peer Career Advisors.

Tech Resources from the Folks at Google University

Coding Practice:

Polish up your technical skills by practicing some coding problems this summer. Google offers a Tech Dev Guide created specifically for students to explore and direct their learning. They also highly recommend Cracking the Coding Interview, LeetCode, and HackerRank to help get your coding skills into tip top shape!

Recommended Courses:

Taking courses such as Algorithms and Data Structures is highly recommended to help with Google’s coding interviews. If you have not taken these courses at Midd, or just want a refresher, Stanford offers a free online Algorithms course that Google loves! For a deeper dive, Pluralsight offers a two part course that shows day to day applications of algorithms and data structures.

Resume Tips:

Google has plenty of resources to help you polish up your resume this summer. Check out their tips for how to apply to Google.  It has everything you need to know from what they would like to see on your resume to how to prepare for interviews!