Honorary Degree Recipients Named, Faculty Lauded for Achievements

Author: Dan Phillips

President John McCardell called the second of three Faculty Meetings of the 2002-2003 academic year to order on Monday afternoon to address issues tabled at last December's meeting as well as releasing new announcements.
The first announcement was the identity of this year's commencement speaker, Gov. William Blaine Richardson of New Mexico. McCardell then revealed the list of honorary degrees which will be awarded at the end of this year. These include: Gov. Bill Richardson (Doctor of Laws); Frederic W. Allen (Doctor of Laws), who served as Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1984 to 1996 and currently serves as a justice emeritus; Deborah Bial (Doctor of Humane Letters), founder and President of the Posse Foundation; David Herbert MacDonald (Doctor of Letters), the Charles Warren Professor Emeritus of American History at Harvard University and one of America's leading Civil War historians; Eve Ensler '75 (Doctor of Letters), playwright of The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day; Julie Johnson Kidd '67 (Doctor of Humane Letters), President of the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation in New York City; and Ruth Stone (Doctor of Letters), the 2002 National Book Award recipient in Poetry for In the Next Galaxy. It was also announced that Guy Spielmann, hailing from Georgetown University, is the newly appointed director of the French Summer Language School.
Faculty and staff achievements and publications were also announced at the meeting. Visiting Instructor in German Kai Evers was recently promoted to Assistant Professor of German. Professor of Russian Kevin Moss's translation of a paper presented in Dubrovnik in 2001 was published in Rec. Assistant Professor of Economics William Pyle has received a Policy Research Fellowship from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER) to support research in Russia during his 2003-2004 academic leave. Assistant Professor of Biology Andrea Lloyd received the Perkins Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Division of Natural Sciences. Assistant Professor of History and Spencer Fellow in African Studies Jacob Tropp won the American Society for Environmental History's 2003 Rachel Carson Prize for best dissertation in environmental history. Assistant Professor in Political Science and C.A. Johnson Fellow in Political Philosophy Kateri Carmola recently had an article published in the February 2003 volume of the journal Political Theory, entitled "Noble Lying: Justice and Intergenerational Tension in Plato's Republic."
Additionally, Assistant Professor of Economics Jeff Carpenter has had an article published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, entitled "Bargaining Outcomes as the Result of Coordinated Expectations: an experimental study of sequential bargaining." Finally, Director of Public Affairs Phil Benoit noted that his book Announcing - Broadcast Communicating Today has been released for its fifth printing by Thompson/Wadsworth.
Issues on the table included term limits for faculty serving on the Council on Reviews (COR), the Faculty Council's proposals concerning the reappointment of faculty members in the Department of Athletics, the withholding of degrees resulting from academic dishonesty or penalties, the EAC proposal regarding Advanced Placement examination credit and Moss's proposal to amend the College's non-discrimination statement.
The merits of the proposal on COR term limits was the only issue discussed at length Monday's meeting, with the rest of the topics set to be brought up again in May.
Moss's proposal to the Board of Trustees and the administration to amend the College's non-discrimination statement to include 'gender identity and expression' is among the issues to be discussed in May. "The College policy currently does not protect the rights of transgender or transsexual people or of those who are perceived to be of a gender different from that assigned to them at birth," states the proposal. "Currently 'gender identity and expression' is not protected in non-discrimination laws in the state of Vermont, though it is included in the hate crimes law (1999)."
Last on the agenda, McCardell announced the College recently learned that it has received three "considerable" grants, totaling $1,120,000, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The three grants include: $720,000 to support program development at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE), $400,000 to support the Center for Educational Technology as a regional center for the Mid-Atlantic and New England colleges and $650,000 to Vassar College and Middlebury College for a collaborative venture to support faculty career enhancement. "In this case, the grant went to Vassar, though the proposal was jointly submitted," elaborated McCardell.
Also addressed at the meeting was the upcoming influx of newly accepted students who will visit Middlebury College on the following two Mondays. Professors holding classes those days were asked to consider allowing the visitors, both the prospective students and their families, to enter classes in hopes of attracting the highly qualified group to matriculate for the next academic year.