Middlebury Headlines

When University of Florida administrator Jeanna Mastrodicasa was a student living in a dorm at the University of Georgia, she had to dial collect to call home. And she didn’t do it all that often.

Fast forward two decades, and you find college students like Tiana Johnson, who talks to her mother every day, “maybe every couple of hours.” The two also exchange frequent text messages. And they’re connected through Facebook, the increasingly popular social networking site that allows Tiana’s mother to see pictures and “status updates” documenting Tiana’s college experience.

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“When a student and parent are calling and texting all day, what happens is the kid has the parent in their head, so there is not that liberation there once was in college to just make your own decisions,” said Middlebury College psychology professor Barbara Hofer. “There is not a lot of independent decisionmaking going on.

“It’s a serious concern in terms of who they become in the workplace and in society.”

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Allison Stanger is the Russell Leng ‘60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury  College. Her book, One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, will be published by Yale University Press in October.

Recent revelations of contractor involvement in CIA covert operations have been shocking. Plotting assassinations of al Qaeda operatives. Planning and executing the harsh interrogation (torture) of suspected terrorists. Loading Hellfire Missiles on Predator drones. At first glance, this looks like free-market fundamentalism taken to its logical extreme, something to blame on the Bush administration. But that conclusion misses the real reasons why the work of government is increasingly in corporate hands. The CIA deploys contractors because it no longer has the in-house capacity to pursue new mission-critical tasks without an assist from the private sector.

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For the unemployed, the standing advice about how to find work involves doggedly attending job fairs and reaching out to everyone in your e-mail address book. But increasingly, a lesser-known avenue with the potential to be effective, thanks to the emotional bonds formed during undergraduate years, turns out to be the alma mater.

… In April, Middlebury College assembled an evening panel in downtown Manhattan — “Career Advice for Tough Times on Wall Street” — featuring graduates at Goldman Sachs and the Blackstone Group, as well as a career services representative from the college.

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In the 1800s, Middlebury College freshmen were instructed to pack a cord of wood for their dormitory fireplaces. “We’ve kind of got the modern version of that,” said Jack Byrne, the director of sustainability integration.

A $12 million modern fireplace — although it’s more akin to a high-tech wood stove. Middlebury officials estimate that they cut their fuel use by 50 percent, and their carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent, by building a biomass gasification plant. It went online in January.

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Tall, fair-haired, and patrician, strongly emitting that ineffable thing called presence, Timothy Rub [Middlebury Class of 1974] is wandering through the galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art late one recent night like a kid let loose in a candy shop.

“Isn’t that fantastic?” he says, sidling up to Monet’s Water Lilies, Japanese Footbridge. “This is a superb painting.” He points out the unusual thickness of paint and the diffuse ochres, tans, and greens that make the piece seem almost more abstract than impressionist.

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WASHINGTON — It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese [Class of 2000 at Middlebury], a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

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Writing From Sydney – All around the world, national governments are trying to hammer out their global warming policies, preparing for the United Nations’ climate-change conclave in Copenhagen at the end of the year. And in too many places, the effort seems to be going nowhere.

Here in Australia, for instance, the government last week decided to postpone any real action for another year, citing the recession. It weakened major elements of its so-called emissions trading scheme, bowing to pressure from the coal industry, which is the country’s biggest exporter, and other major polluters.

In Washington, meanwhile …

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Each quarter, labor statistics report sobering news of the number of jobs the economy has lost. For college seniors, finding job amid competition with jobless professionals is especially daunting. It leaves some graduates debating whether to take jobs outside their field of study, pursue unpaid internships or consider offers they’d prefer not to take.

VPR’s Jane Lindholm talks with Jaye Roseborough, Executive Director of Career Services at Middlebury College and Pamela Gardner, Director of Career Services at the University of Vermont about the career decisions facing college seniors, and how to search for jobs in a down economy.

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John Kassel is perhaps an obvious choice to be the new head of the Conservation Law Foundation.

After all, the Middlebury College alumnus (Class of 1979) knows about conservation as a former secretary for the Agency of Natural Resources, and has a background in law as a former litigator.

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Middlebury College is featured in the April 27 issue of Fortune magazine in an article titled, “Hard times on campus: Even elite colleges can’t escape the impact of the economic slump. Here’s how one New England school is working to stay on top in the face of a smaller endowment, needier students, and the bursting of the higher-ed bubble.” The article was added to Fortune’s Web site on April 10.

The article includes several photographs and quotes from President Liebowitz, Vice President for Administration and Treasurer Patrick Norton, Senior Director of Student Financial Services Kim Downs and Dean of Admissions Bob Clagett.

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