So one thing that continues to amaze me about Middlebury College is the amount of funding that is available to students.  Recently, Middlebury has revolutionized the way that we do funding for community service groups and initiatives.  We now have something called the SCB (service cluster board) which takes care of all the budgeting requests for community service organizations.  One of the most exciting aspects of this is that students now have access to something called the flex fund.  The flex fund is open to all students and all they have to do is come up with a proposal for how they will use the money, and they can request a sum from the SCB.  Want to take your community friend to Burlington?  Use the flex fund.  Want to tutor migrant workers in central Vermont, but don’t have a car?  Use the flex fund.  Want to plan some sort of bigger community service trip?  Say to a different state?  Use the flex fund.  You get the idea.  If you can dream it, we will (try our best) to fund it. 

           Another really interesting fund available to students is the student travel fund.  This is pretty self explanatory.  If you want to travel somewhere (for an academic purpose) the student travel fund will do its best to help you get there.  Unfortunately I did not know about this option (do your research if you decide to come here, at lease do more research than I did) until senior year so I did not get the chance to use it.  I know of someone who wanted to go to an experiential education conference in Las Vegas and she was given funding to attend by the student travel fund.  Las Vegas?  On Middlebury’s dime?  I’ll take that.  Additionally, a lot of academic departments have funds that they can give to students to help them get to conferences, do research, write thesis, etc.  Basically what I am trying to say in this post is that if you have a goal that you want to accomplish or a project you want to complete, Middlebury will help you achieve it.