Editorial President Liebowitz's big news and How to make Midd manageable

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President Liebowitz's big news

News that President Ronald D. Liebowitz is considering launching one of the largest capital campaigns on record for a liberal arts college has us pretty excited. The optimism and sense of possibility projected by such an ambitious goal not only inspires our donors, but also inspires students and faculty to take pride in the College's strategic plan. If met, the half-billion dollar target would ensure that funding would not stand in the way of the President's future projects. The unprecedented campaign would also expand the College's global presence, drawing in new supporters and spurring the creation of an expanded network of donors.

President Liebowitz's prediction that a significant portion of the fundraising, roughly $225 million, will be met by the conclusion of the "silent phase," is absolutely impressive. We still wish our president were more a "man of the students," someone who casually dropped by dining halls and campus events to engage us informally and share updates and progress on his major projects, but we are nonetheless proud to learn of the accomplishments he is making "behind-the-scenes" on Middlebury's behalf.

Because the possibilities for collaboration and teamwork on the capital campaign are tremendous, we do hope that the College will continue to enlist faculty, as well as students and staff members, to represent Middlebury's past achievements and future goals. Just as these community members make the most compelling cases to apply for and matriculate into the College, we can imagine no better ambassadors for this campaign.

A half-billion dollars is a high bar to set for a small college in rural Vermont. But for a school like Middlebury, nothing less than the highest bar would seem to be enough.


How to make Midd manageable

Middlebury's academics this time of the year are hard, and that's an understatement. Some argue that having several exams to study for, a list of papers to write and hundreds of pages of reading to finish means we are getting our money's worth from our tuition. But are we really? When students begin missing paper deadlines, skimming important readings and showing up for class fully sleep-deprived, are we really getting the most out of this education?

Classes at Middlebury should be hard, but there are simple things that some professors do, and more should do, to make the hard work manageable:

While we may groan in the beginning, the most effective syllabi are frontloaded with the densest, most important reading planned for the first weeks of class. Professors with this foresight improve the quality of both student work and class discussions by laying the complex foundations of their courses early in the term.

Faculty can also help by consistently distributing discussion questions in advance of heavy reading weeks, so students know how to organize their thoughts when tackling a long reading list. Such guidelines help students without simply saying to read certain texts and breeze through others, which often leaves us wondering why we had to buy a book in the first place.

And the most helpful professors keep a constant pulse on students' performance. This could mean calling the class out when students clearly have not kept up with a week's reading, but it also means inviting students, through midterm reviews and other means, to give feedback on the workload and assignments.

As professors finish their spring syllabi, we hope they will help us make our workloads both more manageable and more meaningful.