According to Beth Coleman, professor of writing and new media at MIT, the virtual identity, while a source of entertainment for gamers and movie viewers, is also an incredibly powerful tool. The ability to dive into alternate realities, she said, provides us with opportunities for widespread influence ...
Author, professor, renowned speaker and Middlebury graduate Stephen Kiernan '82 kicked off the series by reminding attendees of what it means to be part of a nation. Citing some alarming economic statistics (the average age of U.S. citizens below the poverty line, for example, is nine), Kiernan emphasized ...
Jessica Riley '98 recalls when, in a sculpture class in Paris, her instructor came up and smashed to pieces a beautiful sculpture she had just completed. “That was good, now do better,” he told her. She remembered this experience years later, when she lost her job in screenwriting and stopped ...
Frank Sesno '77, whose resume includes but is not limited to “Director of School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University,” “CNN White House correspondent” and “Middlebury graduate,” introduced a theme that would come to pervade many of the presentations to follow: the ...
Michael Silberman '02 knows a lot about the power of technology to connect people. As a Howard Dean staffer, he saw the launch of the “Meet Up” program, which attracted 189,000 people in 1,200 neighborhoods at its peak. He’s seen a student organize a march to Washington, D.C. for immigration rights, ...
Philip Conkling can trace the beginning of his career back to the discovery of an ancient cellar hole on Flint Island in Maine. The history seemed fascinating. “I couldn’t get it out of my head,” he said. “Who were these people?” Thus began a lifelong interest in island culture, which he’s ...
Sunny Bates is all about networking. Adrift after college, with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and Energy Economics but, perhaps counterintuitively, no desire to work “for an oil company in Saudi Arabia,” Bates found herself in a series of jobs that yielded no apparent career advancement. Except ...
“The last five years of my life have been profoundly influenced by trash,” Cummins began her talk. Specifically, the plastic trash that is filling our ocean. Plastic is was that “miracle material” that we could just throw away, Cummins said. But, she asked, “Where is away?” She flashed ...
When the author of five books whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair and Time comes back to his alma mater, students might be curious to know what life advice he has to offer. Alex Prud’homme '84, who helped his aunt, Julia Child, write her memoir, provided those in attendance ...
Chris Maxey’s mother believed that her children should be thrown in the ocean before they could walk … people frequently tried to come to the children’s rescue. Maybe it worked: Maxey grew up loving the water. He joined the Navy because of it, and became committed to environmental stewardship ...
We’ve all heard of the “career ladder,” but Yelizavetta Kofman '07 and Astri von Arvin Ahlander '07 advocate another model: the more flexible “career lattice.” The ladder, Kofman and von Arvin argue, is set up for “the ideal worker”: the worker who can work year-round and overtime, and ...
As I arrived at Gamaliel Painter Bicentennial Professor of Physics Frank Winkler’s office, the nameplate on his door informed me that I was visiting the “Astrologer and Chief Wizard.” “That goes back to a story run in The Campus from many, many years ago,” he said, laughing. “A student ...
Each fall, numerous Middlebury students search for work on campus. The College offers a variety of positions, each with advantages and disadvantages. Some have flexible hours but are especially taxing; others allow for interactions with interesting people but require waking up in the early morning ...
On October 3, Victor Zhikai Gao spoke about China’s transformation under President Deng Xiaoping, for whom he served as translator. Gao is the first influential politician from mainland China to speak at Middlebury, and he held the undivided attention of a packed Dana Auditorium for almost two hours. Gao ...
Manual sex is really the perineum of the sexual repertoire — usually appreciated as a road to get between interesting places, and not as an actual place to linger and take in the view. Most often serving as an appetizer to limber up for voyages in more tropical climes, as a main course it’s often ...
While a number of the small houses that compose Middlebury’s campus have served various roles throughout the history of the College, the conversion of Munford House and Meeker House is, for many, reminiscent of the school’s wild “Fraternity Days.” The return of the largest senior class in the ...
On Sept. 29, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Chellis House, sponsored a talk with former journalist Marie Ridder titled “The Making of a Renaissance Woman.” Ridder came to Chellis House as part of the “Lunchtime Lecture” series. “The Chellis House lunchtime lecture series provides ...
I asked a friend of mine a personal question this past week, and he responded very thoughtfully, ending his answer with, “And I mean that. Really. This week, I’ve decided that I’m not going to lie. To anyone. About anything.” I took a page out of his manuscript, and tried it myself for a few ...
How do we interpret “helping our fellow man?” Are we ethically responsible for helping to solve global health issues? These are just some of the questions posed at Friday’s Clifford Symposium event, “Roundtable: Teaching at the Intersections.” At the 4 p.m. event held on Sept. 24, professors ...
Keynote speaker Dorothy Roberts knows how to grab an audience’s attention, and Friday night she did it by announcing that in 2002, there were 83,570 “excess” black deaths. If the mortality gap between blacks and whites was eliminated, she said, these 83,570 people would still be alive today. She ...