MiddChallenge Announces Winners

 

On Friday, March 15 and Saturday, March 16, this year’s MiddChallenge finalists pitched their ideas to a distinguished panel of judges in hopes of winning a $3,000 grant, summer boarding and mentorship in one of three categories: business; arts; and education, outreach and policy.

MiddChallenge is an annual competition, begun in 2011 as Stonehenge, that allows students to take ideas and turn them into reality. This year 37 applicants vied for 15 finalist spots, with four to six in each category of competition.

Competitors in the business category presented Friday night, while those competing in the education, outreach and policy category and the arts category presented on Saturday morning and afternoon, respectively. Each presenter or group of presenters received time for an eight minute presentation and a seven minute question and answer session with the judges.

Each of the three categories has two winners. This year’s winners in the business category were Ben Stasiuk ’14 for his project “Uncle B’s Firenuts” and “Integrated Milfoil Management” by Austin Ritter ’13, Greg Dier ’12.5 and Samuel Carlson.

Both winners in the Education, Outreach and Policy category were food-based projects. Elias Gilman ’15, Nathan Weil ’15, Christopher Kennedy ’15, Oliver Mayers ’15, Eduardo Danino-Beck ’15, Harry Zieve-Cohen ’15 and Jack Cookson ’15 won with their project “Middlebury Foods,” which aims to create boxes of low-priced, high-quality food for Vermonters and sell them at local churches and community centers weekly.

Winners Cailey Cron ’13.5 and Molly Shane ’13.5 will take excess food made in the college dining halls and deliver it to people in need at events like the community dinner with their project, “Share the Surplus.”

Arts category project winners included Moss Turpan ’14 and Dylan Redford ’14 and their project “WEDIDIT,” as well as Aidesha-Kiya Vega-Hutchens ’14 and Jun Chen ’14 and their project “War at Home(room).”

“WEDIDIT” will be “collaborating with an L.A. based electronic music collective to produce an experimental film,” wrote Redford in an email about the project. Meanwhile, “War at Home(room)” will compile oral histories of bullying in New England school systems.

“There were no proposals where we questioned how great the idea was,” said Joanie Thompson ’14, head organizer of choosing finalists out of all the applications for this year’s competition. “It was really tough to choose.”

Judges ranged from Jim Douglas, the former governor of Vermont, to Executive-in-Residence at the College and former president of Save the Children Fund Charlie McCormack as well as Corinne Prevot ’13, founder of the popular headband brand Skida.

“The judges come from all walks of life, but they are all entrepreneurs,” said Liz Robinson, director of the project on innovation in the liberal arts, of the distinguished men and women asked to select the MiddChallenge winners.

Criteria for judging was based on the impact of the idea, the impact of the MiddChallenge prize on the success of the idea and how well put together the proposal was, among other factors. Courtesy of the Projects on Creativity and Innovation Office (PCI), all finalists received coaching in improving their oral presentation skills and constructing a presentation earlier in the week.

“The process of competing in MiddChallenge was as valuable as the grant itself,” wrote Ritter, a winner in the business category, in an email. “The comprehensive application process forced us to think through all of the different components of our business model. And for the presentation component of the competition, the judges were not hesitant to criticize the weakness of our business, but they also encouraged us to overcome these weaknesses, to move forward with our idea and to think big.”

Ritter’s experience with the MiddChallenge program is exactly what PCI and the donors that support MiddChallenge hope students will take away from the experience. Regardless of whether they win or lose, all students receive guidance and mentorship. All of them will return to PCI later this week to reflect on their presentations and evaluate their own performances.

“MiddChallenge is about providing students with the opportunity to take an idea through the process of evaluation, preparation, presentation, action and reflection,” said Robinson in a final note about the overall goal of the competition. “There is a huge amount of learning that comes from students taking their own ideas and taking them forward.”