Category: Uncategorized

For those of you who missed this session, here are the slides on projected changes in the finance area that will result from reorganization and integration.  And here are slides showing the recent round of office moves (before and after) that aim to foster collaboration and cohesion within the two new schools and advising center. For those of you who would like to have a quick guide to where people ended up after the extensive office moves this summer, the later slides in the presentation (4-10) will be especially useful.

FirstClass email will cease to be used on September 15, 2009, as the Monterey Institute completes its transition to Exchange email hosted by Middlebury College.  If you are still using FirstClass to send email, you should plan to transition to Exchange email before the fall semester begins. Contact the Helpdesk (ext. 6656) for assistance.

We will be undertaking a software upgrade to the Institute course management system: Moodle, accessible online at http://elearning.miis.edu.

This upgrade will bring the site software up to date and help resolve authentication protocols with the Middlebury network as we continue to align systems with Exchange and Bannerweb.

Our goal is to make this process as minimally disruptive to students, faculty, and staff as possible.

Please mark your calendars for the upgrade currently set for August 17th & 18th.  The Moodle server will be down for these two days.

A notice about the site maintenance schedule will be prominently posted on the Moodle homepage, and reminders will be sent out as we approach the upgrade dates.

If you have any specific concerns or course conflicts with the upgrade schedule, please contact Bob Cole or John Grunder.

The Student Council is responsible for recruiting 40+ volunteers to facilitate the Community Building Activities during New Student Orientation in late August.  Greg Freeman, the SC President, recruited a good number of student volunteers; however, students have requested that we add more faculty and staff into the group of facilitators.

As a Community Building volunteer, you will co-facilitate a group of 10-20+ incoming students from a mix of programs and cultures in getting to know each other and MIIS.  Peter Shaw will train you in many creative icebreakers and team-building activities.  You will also lead the Great MIIS Campus Treasure Hunt (with prizes for the winning team).  Past facilitators have had great fun meeting new people and practicing their facilitation and cross-cultural skills.

If you are on campus during the dates listed below and you would like to volunteer, please click on the link to the Google Spreadsheet and add your information to a new row. Your participation will be greatly appreciated.  For those that will volunteer, more information will be sent to you by email the week prior to Orientation.

If you have already signed up to volunteer, but your plans have changed, please update the Google Spreadsheet accordingly.

DATES & TIMES:

Monday, August 24, 2009
Facilitator Training
10:30am-11:30am
Holland Center
Food and beverages provided

12:00-2:30pm
Community Building Activity Session With New Students

Thursday, August 27, 2009
Community Building Activity Session Part Two
2:30pm-5:00pm

Friday, August 28, 2009
Facilitator Debrief Meeting and Luncheon
12:00- 1:00pm – B106

Monterey Institute student Nikita Perfilyev was awarded the special prize “New Talent in Nonproliferation” by the Russian Center for Policy Studies (PIR Center) on July 3, 2009. In addition to studying nonproliferation at the Institute with the support of a Fulbright fellowship, Nikita is a research assistant at the James Martin
Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He is currently studying Chinese at the Middlebury Language Schools.  More information.

AFS Steinbeck Coast  is currently seeking a Sending Coordinator (description attached). This is a volunteer opportunity that two people can share. Each year AFS has a training gathering and invites coordinators from throughout the United States to attend. In past years they have met in Portland, OR, Chicago, IL, St. Louis, MO, and Baltimore, MD. AFS pays all expenses to attend.

If you are interested, please contact:
Roy Michaels, AFS Volunteer
831-783-1747 office
831-422-9176 home

Professor Tsuneo Akaha has been elected to serve on the Board of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC), a regional affiliate of the Association for Asian Studies for another two-year term, beginning in June 2009. Jeet Sapkota, a Waseda University student from Nepal, whom Professor Akaha advised while in Tokyo last year, won the best graduate student paper at this year’s ASPAC annual convention.

Intensive English Programs is hosting a three-week Pre-academic Program for Fulbright students this summer from July 20th-August 7th. These students come from all over the world and will be pursuing Master’s degrees and PhD’s in fields as diverse as engineering, veterinary medicine, music, and political science. One of the activities the students participate in is a host family dinner. We are looking for families who would like to welcome 3 or 4 Fulbright students into their home and serve them dinner on the evenings of July 27th or August 3rd. The homestay dinner is a wonderful opportunity for the Fulbrighters to learn more about American culture, and for your family to meet and develop bonds with people from around the world. A small stipend is available for the families that participate. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact the Fulbright Pre-academic Program Coordinator, Kate Braun, at english@miis.edu.

Among the non-degree program offered by GSTILE this summer is a three-day simultaneous interpreting workshop in Portuguese/English and Portuguese/Spanish. The instructor, Professor Ewandro Magalhães in Brasilia, Brazil, is a native of Brazil and a seasoned conference interpreter, translator, trainer and author. He has logged over 1,100 days of conferences in Brazil, Africa, and the United States. He is a contractor with the U.S. Department of State, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Defense Board and College. He served as personal interpreter to the Speaker of the House and Vice-President in Brazil and has accompanied several heads of State and Government during their official visits. He holds a Master of Arts in Conference Interpretation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.