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.”