As a culminating orientation week experience, Middlebury College sends its first year students off campus with various MiddView trips. These three day excursions allow students explore Vermont, wilderness, and/or community engagement. The Center for Community Engagement (CCE) advises the eight community engagement trips, supporting new students to learn more about pressing social issues in the Vermont community. This year, based on student interest, the CCE addressed six central themes across the trips: Access to Affordable Housing, Animal Advocacy and Rehabilitation, Bridging the Health Gap, Exploring Education in Rural Communities, Immigration and Vermont’s Diverse Communities, Working Together to Effect Change. Sixteen student leaders with experience in these areas led the trips, after two weeks of hard work in training and preparation.
One of the Animal Advocacy and Rehabilitation trips, led by Tyler DeStrong ’22 and Noelle Ruschil ’22, learned and served at Homeward Bound, Addison County’s Humane Society.
By the end of the weekend, students worked with forty six Vermont organizations. Each group partnered with Vermont community organizations that embodied the theme of their trip. The Access to Affordable Housing group worked with organizations like the Charter House Coalition and Addison County Habitat for Humanity, while the Immigration and Vermont’s Diverse Communities trip worked with Migrant Justice and the Open Door Clinic. Some other partnering organizations included Homeward Bound, North Branch Nature Center, Adison Central Teens, and Bixby Memorial Free Library.
Middlebury first year students had a chance to not only get to foster new connections with their peers, they also got to start engaging with new communities. Alex Dobin ’22, a Juntos Board member who supported an information panel with the Immigration and Vermont’s Diverse communities trip, shared, “It was awesome to meet first years who dedicated their first few days at Middlebury to thinking about immigration and social justice, and to engaging with the Addison County community.” In my experience as a student (Alondra Carmona, ’21), I value MiddView trips because as the academic year progresses and things get busy, it becomes harder to initiate engagement with the community outside of Middlebury College. As participants return to campus and classes get started, students take with them a fun and meaningful introductory experience that is shared among their new classmates.
Middlebury’s community partners, College, and CCE welcomes the class of 2023 and hopes to hear amazing stories from our future leaders!