Midd, Monterey agree to affiliation

Author: Jason Siegel, News editor

On Wednesday, June 22, available members of the Middlebury College community gathered in Dana Auditorium to hear President Ronald D. Liebowitz formally announce his recommendation for the Board of Trustees to sign a letter of intent establishing an affiliation between Middlebury and the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS).

The Board signed the letter the next day and the MIIS Board of Trustees approved the letter of intent on June 24. The Institute, which is located in southern California, consists of the Graduate School of International Policy Studies, the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, the Fisher Graduate School of International Business and the Graduate School of Language and Educational Linguistics. Informal discussions pertaining to a potential Middlebury acquisition of MIIS began in mid-2003 when a representative from MIIS spoke with a College Trustee, but formal discussions did not begin until December 2004.

"Knowing Monterey as a former worthy competitor with our Middlebury Language Schools, I was aware of the Institute's year-round graduate programs and saw the programmatic fit between the two institutions, based on the commitment to proficiency in the foreign languages," Liebowitz said in his address.

Last week's decision came after months of speculation, debate and negotiation. Opposition to the proposed acquisition was strong within the College community throughout the past academic year: the Faculty Council voted 80-21 against Middlebury's acquisition of MIIS on April 1 and on April 16 the Student Government Association passed a resolution opposing any acquisition that would require funds otherwise intended for undergraduate programs.

Liebowitz said that faculty reservations based on financial risk, administrative reach and potential tarnishing of the Middlebury name "were issues that I viewed as serious and in need of resolution in order to offer a positive recommendation to the Board for us to pursue a relationship with Monterey."

The College tackled these issues via an investigative due diligence process and by consulting several outside professional leaders in higher education.

Liebowitz pointed out that the final arrangement agreed upon is not an acquisition but an affiliation. The principal distinction is that although Middlebury will gain administrative control of the Institute, it will not be responsible for any financial shortcomings that MIIS, which recently emerged from financial probation from its accrediting body, might face.

The College will make an initial investment in the Institute to help the MIIS meet Middlebury operating standards, but Liebowitz says the investment will have "no impact on the College's operating budget or endowment." The College will not be liable for the institution's debts as it would have been if Middlebury had acquired the Institute.

Middlebury will have other responsibilities to the MIIS, however. The College's Board of Trustees will appoint the president of the Monterey Institute as well as direct its programs. President Liebowitz has already recommended Professor of Chinese Clara Yu, former vice president for Languages and head of the Language Schools and Schools Abroad, as the next MIIS President.

The letter of intent marks the first step in a negotiation process expected to last three to five months. This time frame will allow specific details of the arrangement to be worked out. For example, Monterey currently offers intensive, non-immersion summer language programs in most of the same languages as Middlebury. The College will therefore work to prevent curricular redundancies at the two schools. Other fine points include basic environmental inspections of MIIS buildings.

Division still exists within the College community about whether or not the decision was a wise one. Professor of Mathematics Priscilla Bremser's principal objection was the effect that the pursuit of this relationship has had and will continue to have on the President's ability to concentrate on the issues of the undergraduate programs in Vermont.

"I honestly can't see any benefits to our undergraduate program [from] this affiliation," Bremser said. "The [potential benefits] offered by the President seem vague or questionable: how would our reputation be strengthened by affiliating with an institution on the verge of collapse, and what happens to our reputation if it does collapse?"

Liebowitz said he disagreed with the notion that Monterey is an incompatible addition to Middlebury, citing the fact that Middlebury already awards 250 advanced degrees each year through the Language Schools, the Schools Abroad and the Bread Loaf School of English. Liebowitz also noted that the College's renowned Language Schools started out as graduate programs and eventually evolved into programs that involve undergraduates as well. Furthermore, the Monterey decision echoes the recommendations from the Bread Loaf and Language Schools Task Force assembled as part of the Strategic Planning Process, another major Liebowitz initiative.

Liebowitz distinguished the faculty's April vote on an acquisition of Monterey from the Board of Trustees recent agreement on an affiliation. It is impossible to know whether some opponents of the acquisition might have been in favor of an affiliation, though Bremser maintains that faculty opposition to any kind of Monterey connection was "deep as well as broad."

One of the possible benefits Liebowitz named for affiliating with the institute was an increased Middlebury presence in Asia. Thirty-five percent of MIIS's students are international, and the majority of these students are Asian. Though Middlebury recently opened a school abroad in China, it has no such connection to Japan.

Liebowitz also said that in the future, joint degree programs between Middlebury and Monterey, not unlike the dual degree programs Middlebury already offers with Washington University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, could be possible. Such arrangements would only materialize if the initiatives passed through the proper channels, including the Faculty Council and the Board of Trustees.

The Trustees' decision is the second in a row to run contrary to the resolutions passed by the main governing bodies on campus. On Feb. 14, the Faculty Council voted to eliminate a clause that permits discriminating employers to recruit on campus after giving a presentation explaining why the offending policy exists from the College's Handbook. The Community Council subsequently passed a similar recommendation on March 15, but the Board of Trustees voted to maintain the policy as it stood at its May meeting.

Noting the upcoming one-year anniversary of his tenure as President, Liebowitz asserted that the Monterey affiliation and the on-going Strategic Planning Process were the two major achievements of his first year in office.

"Though this proposed affiliation would not affect our undergraduate curriculum, at least in the near term," Liebowitz said in his recent address, "adding the graduate programs in international studies as affiliates to our current graduate offerings would strengthen the College's reputation in the area of international education, thereby allowing us to play on a larger and more visible national and international stage."