What Middlebury student has never experienced the platonic professor crush? It’s hard not to become enamored with our various instructors’ talent, enthusiasm, kindness and quirks. And what is the only thing better than finding one great professor whom you admire? Discovering a faculty couple, a dynamic duo that works and lives together at the College and in the community.
One such couple never imagined they would wind up in rural Vermont.
Visiting Lecturer in Italian Ilaria Brancoli-Busdraghi was born in Switzerland and grew up in downtown Rome. Pieter Broucke, director for the arts, associate curator of ancient art and professor of history of art and architecture, was raised in Bruges, a small Belgian city steeped in medieval and renaissance history. After college, Pieter came to the Unites States to get his P.h.D in History of Art and Architecture from Yale University. While at Yale, he spent a summer at the American Academy in Rome. There, a mutual friend introduced Broucke and Brancoli-Busdraghi. Broucke recalls at their first meeting, “looking over to Ilaria, and deciding I wanted to marry her.” The couple will celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary this June.
Brancoli-Busdraghi and Broucke speak to each other in English at home despite the fact that it is neither of their native languages. With their children Simon, 13, and Tobias, 11, they speak English and Italian.
Broucke attributes his skill in speaking Italian to his father-in-law, a “gregarious and generous Italian” who, according to Broucke, “was not going to sit at the dinner table for a couple hours speaking anything but Italian.” Brancoli-Busdraghi admits to knowing some Flemish phrases and children’s songs and asserts, “I love to say them!”
Broucke joined the Middlebury faculty in 1995, and Brancoli-Busdraghi moved to Middlebury with him. Brancoli-Busdraghi had never lived anywhere but Rome, so the transition to Middlebury life was “a real shock.” Similarly, Broucke had grown up in an urban area, and according to him for a while they “disliked Middlebury a bit for everything it was not,” but “once we had children we began to like it for everything it does have.”
The couple cites skiing, hiking, seasons, great food and the close-knit community of colleagues, students and friends as the things they love about the area. The couple also appreciates the beauty of the landscape and the relatively small amount of time they spend in the car (Broucke explains this is a sharp contrast to his five siblings who live in European cities).
With regard to working at the same place, Broucke and Brancoli-Busdraghi have few complaints. Their similar calendars allow them to travel extensively. When time permits they have lunch together, “usually in the lounge of Johnson,” said Brancoli-Busdraghi, or off-campus (“Like a date — fun!” said Broucke).
Their shared workplace also allows them to be a one-car family (with some organization as they have “resisted” getting a cell phone).
“I love our shared commute,” says Broucke.
In the end, Brancoli-Busdragi says that it is important to, “love what you do, and do it with the person you enjoy.” Brancoli-Busdraghi and Broucke are a couple who does just that.
Power Couples Series Part One: Ilaria Brancoli-Busdraghi and Pieter Brouke
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