All Middlebury faculty and staff will receive two extra vacation days and a $1,500 bonus this December, according to an email from the Vice President for Human Resources to all staff and faculty.
The announcement came as a surprise, said Landscape Horticulturist and Staff Council member Tim Parsons in an email to The Campus. Staff Council was not informed prior to the announcement.
The Vice President for Human Resources sent out an email on Wednesday, Nov. 10, to all faculty and staff, thanking them for their hard work and acknowledging the difficulty of the present times. At the end of a thank you poem lay the words “Actions Matter,” and the announcement of vacation days on Nov. 24 and Dec. 23, as well as the $1,500 bonus. Only benefits-eligible employees who have worked at the college since July 1 will get the bonus and days. Staff who started at the college after July 1 will not be eligible for the bonus.
For frontline workers in the holiday season, a bonus of this size “borders on life-altering,” Parsons said.
The announcement also said that the “small but mighty team” that needs to work on the given vacation days could choose two other days that worked for the team.
“There is a tight turnaround from when students leave, when our holiday break starts, and when students return to campus, and two extra days of vacation makes all those tasks that need to be done in that time a little more compressed, but a little extra work to spend additional time with friends and family makes it well worth it,” Parsons said.
Katie Futterman '24 (she/her) is a Managing Editor.
Katie previously served as a News Editor and Staff Writer. This past summer, she was a news intern at Seven Days, and she held the same position at the Addison Independent the prior summer. In her free time, she loves to read, write, and bask in the sun.
