After Friday’s grand opening, Pistou Restaurant will be open for breakfast on weekdays with new homemade pastries and breads each day. Lunch will be served seven days a week, offering new menus based on the array of local, farm-fresh food that enters the kitchen. Dinner at Pistou will be available Wednesday through Saturday.

The duo held a special dinner for friends and family on Monday, receiving rave reviews from the Middlebury students who attended (and we like to assume that their bias was kept to a minimum).

Shaved beef tongue, burrata, summer squash, radish, cucumber, herbs and flowers. (via Pistou Facebook page)

Sam Miller ’12, who claims to have tried every item on the menu, said that his favorite part of the Pistou dining experience on Monday “was the obvious care put into each plate. Not only was the food delicious, but it was beautifully presented.”

Mackinnon’s training at the French Culinary Institute and several of New York’s most famed restaurants have influenced his dishes at Pistou, blending unique flavors and textures in an unexpected way.

Silas Wong ’12 said of the creative dishes, “The goat cheese yogurt and the pretzel ice cream were new to me, and both were great. The food that [Chef Mackinnon] cooks is constistently some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. He always impresses me with new twists and flavors.”

The drive to Burlington can sometimes be a hassle, but Miller says that it’s worth it, suggesting that students, parents and town residents alike go with a group, to “[order] as many dishes as possible and [share], so that the full breadth of Pistou’s offerings can be experienced. The food is worth every cent, and the 45-minute drive each way. Prepare to be satisfied.”

Pistou Restaurant
61 Main Street
Burlington, VT 05401

802-540-1783 

MiddBlog asked Nate a few questions in a quick break from his non-stop campaign trail:

What sparked you to run for state representative? “My responsibility to make the world a better place for all people.”

What’s your favorite part of campaigning? “Having a good excuse to meet ridiculously nice to people.”

What’s the first thing you will do if you win? “Say ‘Thank You.’”

Nate Blumenshine '10

Nate respectfully supports:

• raising taxes for Minnesota’s 1%
• passing Minnesota’s Universal Healthcare Plan
• increasing education funding
• strengthening environmental and emission regulations
• continuing funding for mass transit and biking infrastructure

Nate respectfully opposes:

• any state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman
• all proposed sulfur and copper mining in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area
• war (for “moral, human, environmental, and economic reasons”)
• funding the new Vikings stadium

Nate has some tough competition in his district with 3 older candidates running for the same seat, but his honorable campaign base and optimistic outlook should lend him an advantage. It might also help (or so I’d like to think) that Nate is young and Middlebury-educated, meaning he will bring fresh ideas and perspectives to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Nate is also running a notably open campaign, posting all campaign donations on an online spreadsheet and revealing his phone number and email address online. Impressively, he is not taking any money from organizations that engage in political advocacy work, which lends even more legitimacy to the “respectful” basis of his campaign.

To find out more or to give support to Nate Blumenshine’s campaign, you can visit his website here or like his Facebook page here!

Look out for other Middblog live chats on future episodes of Survivor (Wednesdays at 8pm) and of the Real World with another Midd alumnus Frank Sweeney ’11 starting soon.

Sophie Clarke ’11 joins Frank Sweeney ’11 in what’s shaping up to be Middlebury’s big brush with TV stardom this Fall. Clarke taped the 23rd season of the popular reality show just after graduation and was pegged as: “one of the smartest women to ever play the game [and] one of the most athletic.” This season takes place in Upolu, Samoa. Take a look at the promo videos below. The series begins September 14th.

Read Sophie’s public bio. Also check out Sophie’s Facebook fan page.

According to a thread begun on the site Vevmo, an online entertainment discussion community with a focus on reality television, recent Midd grad Frank Sweeney ’11 has been cast in the upcoming season of the Real World. Set in La Jolla, San Diego this will be the twenty-sixth season of the hit MTV reality series.

The bio of Frank on the discussion forum mentions his studies at Middlebury and even links to his hit performances at the Middlebury Moth. Other forums on the site claim that the show is to air this coming November or December.

Below are selected excerpts from the Middlebury College Community LinkedIN group in a discussion titled: “What I wish I had known at Middlebury”:

Jackie H. ’07: “Networking is not just about getting jobs—actually, that’s only a small part of it. As a young professional, your primary goal in networking should be learning from people who are older and more experienced than you. So reach out to people who are doing something you think you might someday like to be doing, and have a real conversation with them. Find out how they found their passion, what hurdles they met along the way, and what their favorite movie is. And breathe. Oddly enough, people really love talking about themselves if you show a genuine interest in their lives, so don’t be afraid that you’re burdening anyone. In this day and age, virtually everyone’s contact information can be obtained somehow, so do a little sleuthing and reach out to a variety of different people.”

Gordon M.F. ’66: “When our son, Art, was at Middlebury my wife and I came up for a Parents’ Weekend and heard then President Robinson address the students and parents in the Chapel. I’ll never forget the outburst from an angry father who challenged the President from the back of the Chapel. The father was angry and frustrated that his son was due to graduate the following spring and had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do after college and had no marketable skills. It was as if the guy had pitched a slow ball across the plate. Robinson slugged the ball out of the ballpark with his response. He cited all sorts of statistics on the careers of alumni. He said that less than 1% of the alumni 25 years after graduation were doing anything remotely related to their undergraduate majors. Rather, the typical Middlebury graduate may have three to five different careers by the time they retire. He stated the true value of a superb liberal arts foundation gives the graduate critical analytic tools, intellectual curiosity, and self discipline to adapt and move in different directions as we face inevitable setbacks and pursue new opportunities. From the perspective of one of “the old guard,” my advice to the new grads is to find your passion, continue your live long learning, and have fun. And don’t hesitate to jump into another career or two along the way.”

Bruce C. ’83: “Sometimes the most difficult aspect of a “career” is doing something not approved by family members and friends, even though you enjoy the work. I have sold commercial Real Estate (yuck), worked with Xerox (fun), Hitachi (also fun), moved sight unseen to Australia and found work with a small company that went out of business, HP and Data General. After moving back to the States, changed to J&J pharmaceutical research (huh?… not sure what I was thinking) and then NYC pharmaceutical advertising for about 7 years (truly great fun). When life began moving faster than my wife and I wanted…. we regrouped and moved to a small VT town, where I shifted to high school teaching, administration, etc. My liberal arts education helped in my thinking big picture. With a little courage and the will to part from others expectations of what a “career” looks like, anything is possible.”

(photo via flickr/charlestilford)

The band that met at Midd reunited for a six-song EP released yesterday. And today they found themselves climbing up the iTunes charts to number two, second only to the 23 year old Adele.  The group (made up of Chad Urmston, Pete Francis Heimbold and Brad Corrigan) is scheduled for three June concerts (two already sold out) in Boston’s TD Garden.

We learn from Tourguiding Myths that:

Dispatch was formed at Middlebury, playing in Battell basement and having their first show in McCullough Social Space in October 1995, but only two members actually graduated from Middlebury.

The band split in 2004, after playing together after college, and each of the members went their own way. Urmston went on to the band State Radio. Heimbold and Corrigan became a solo musicians and appeared several times at Middlebury in recent years. The EP release is Dispatch’s first new music in about a decade.

Recording one of the new songs from the EP:

This year, Middlebury will again attempt the feat of trying to reach back up close to that ~60%. And the school has set its sights on young alumni, specifically the classes of 2001-2010, as the subset of alumni who will make or break achievement. That’s the reason for the “Your Voice, Your Choice: Young Alumni Challenge,” in which young alumni that donate any amount get a vote for $100,000 from the President’s Fund to go to one of three projects. Those projects are: 1) Internship funding, 2) Projects for Peace, 3) Language School Scholarships.

In the lead so far: internship funding for unpaid internships obtained by Middlebury undergraduates with 60.29% of the vote.

It’s smart marketing – get young alumni involved by giving them a voice greater than the pure dollar amount. And who doesn’t want to vote? Even if you only donate a dollar, you still get a vote. But behind the voting challenge is this percentage participation goal and reaching the goal can get us that pride-boosting “most loved” moniker yet again. It really is a challenge: participation in capital G-Giving can be a tough thing for younger classes. And it’s a big competition among liberal arts colleges… no really, it is a fight of sorts according to a new campaign by Wellesley College:

Note when the announcer in the video says: “This will prove a crucial match for Wellesley in securing its position in the national rankings. But it’s really about protecting its prominence as one of country’s top educational institutions.” This is the line that could be used at any the top-tier liberal arts school. It applies to Midd too.

Here’s how Middlebury is doing this year in that critical “young alumni” category versus the rest of the alumni. As of May 1st – here are my back of the envelope calculations for the average percentage of alumni that have already donated in 2011 (as grouped by decade of graduating class to correspond to the young alumni challenge):

Classes of 2001-2010 – 26.1%

Classes of 1991-2000 – 25.3%

Classes of 1981-1990 – 30.9%

Classes of 1971-1980 – 36%

Classes of 1961-1970 – 42.1%

Classes of 1951-1960 – 48%

Classes of 1941-1950 – 41.5%

While this is just a snapshot before the June 30 deadline, I’m thinking either the younger classes are procrastinators or there is a trend. I’m going with mostly the latter and saying that it is hard to get young people to participate and that’s a great reason for launching the voting challenge. By getting young alumni to increase their percentage participation, it drags the average among all Middlebury grads up.

But again, why the fascination with this percentage? Who cares? What goes often unsaid is that alumni participation percentage matters in the U.S. News rankings of National Liberal Arts Colleges. That number accounts for 5% in “weight” that produces the score to determine the rankings, according to the U.S. News methodology. 5 percent doesn’t sound like much, but it does make a difference when the top ten liberal arts colleges are often separated by tenths of a point. I remember some trying to make the argument that Middlebury’s big jump in rankings, from outside the top ten list to #5 in 2006, was the result of minor recalculations of self-reported numbers to U.S. News like student-teacher ratio. It’s the same idea – little changes make big differences in the oddity that is the rankings game.

It’s not my intention to give rankings more of a spotlight than they already have. But is there another compelling reason for caring so much about this one metric? Sure, alumni that donate when they are young also continue that habit of donation as they grow older, so it’s important to start early. Fine. It’s also possible that Middlebury just really cares about its young alumni or maybe feels that they are not as engaged as the College wants. Also fine. But even beyond this push for the magical number of percentage participation in alumni giving, it is still hard to understand how this makes Middlebury “most loved.”

That’s no specific fault of the College. If anything, it’s the fault of U.S. News for linking some easy, self-reported metric to winning some title. But while we’re at it, I think Middlebury really is loved by its alumni even if the title is phony, and the school should set out on a new path to prove it. It requires a new metric too because I believe strongly that those younger graduates have far more to give to their alma mater in non-monetary sums than the strict dollar value of what they’re giving now. Middlebury must think about how it can engage its young alumni in ways beyond the monetary donation.

Can you imagine if 60% of young alumni mentored a current student over the summer during an internship? Or let that a current student crash on their couch? Or even offered to have lunch with a current student? Or gave career advice via skype to a current student? I think this is valuable at a time when Middlebury realizes that career-preparation in a liberal arts setting is going to be critical for the success of not only graduates but Middlebury as an institution. Meanwhile, I cannot even tell you the graduated friends of mine that get angry that Middlebury calls to ask them for money when they are unemployed or just trying to eek out their existence in the world. But those same people still love Middlebury deeply, but they aren’t being counted toward our alumni giving merit badge. If the College wants a relationship with this specific group of alumni so bad, then give alumni something to engage in beyond that one phone call every year (and if you’re lucky, you hear about how to be an alumni interviewer which is cool but removed or how to join MiddNet so that your name can be on a list on the Internet). (For reference, here is the current list of the obvious volunteer/non-dollar-donation opportunities as an alumnus.)

In other words, you can’t win “most loved” in my book until the College breaks from whatever compels the fascination with “percentage of alumni” giving and starts looking for a new metric to engage alumni beyond the “did you give?” checkbox.

UPDATE: Part 2 of the video:

and the tweets start a rollin’:

Middlebury's ahead!!! Help us catch up: http://bit.ly/j3ZPuE—
Wellesley College (@WellesleyColleg) May 10, 2011

Count me in! Wellesley Young Alums will be VICTORIOUS against Middlebury. Also, the red classes are winning. http://bit.ly/cV6y4X—
Erin (@Dead_hook) May 10, 2011

UPDATE: Midd student Laura Heiberlin ’12 also opened for Anaïs. Watch their duet of “O My Star” here:

(via @aadragna ’10)

Brian Deese ’00 Credit: Official White House photo by Pete Souza

A quick congratulations to Brian Deese ’00 on being named Special Assistant to the President of the United States and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. Deese is from Belmont, Mass. and while at Middlebury reportedly had a “college radio-show called ‘Bedknobs and Beatniks,’ which was described as a mix of news, music and banter,” according to WhoRunsGov.com. (tip via @BlakeRutherford)

Antoinette Rangel ’09, former Student Co-Chair of Community Council at Middlebury, is asked about her New Year’s resolution in this official White House video from a few weeks ago. She started as a press assistant recently. Start it about 4:07 just to see Antoinette. (tip via Vincent Recca ’12)

What other Midd alumni are doing interesting things? tips [at] midd-blog [dot] com

MiddBlog: What is the Residency, and how did it come about?

Governor Douglas: [President Liebowitz] asked me.  Upon learning of my decision to leave government he suggested that [my] experience and knowledge might be of value to the College, and I jumped at the opportunity.  I decided to offer a Winter Term course on Vermont government and politics, since that’s what I’ve been doing all these years.

MB: The College’s press release and an article in the Addison County Independent both mentioned that you’ll also be advising students who are interested in politics. What does that mean?  Do you know what it means yet?

JD: That’s a part of the relationship with the College that’s still evolving. [I]t’s been a half-century since a Middlebury alumnus served as governor [Robert Stafford]. [T]he President and others on campus believe that the 38 years I’ve spent since leaving Middlebury [College] have been full of exciting opportunities and experiences, and they want to [give me] a chance to share them.  We’ll see what develops in terms of exactly what role I’ll play.

MB: You’ve done a lot of public speaking, but what particular challenges do you anticipate from teaching?

JD: It’ll certainly be a different kind of experience, although I’ve been involved in a lot of interactive settings before. I could spend far more than the hours allotted telling war stories from my political career, but … I always want to be sure that what I have to say is of interest and relevant to the audience, so I hope the students will participate actively. … If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get some good ideas from the students about where the state should go from here.

MB: Middlebury has a liberal student body; do you expect to be challenged on some issues by your students? Are you looking forward to it?

JD: We’re a liberal state, let alone the campus, so I’ve always had to swim upstream in my political career. [Vermonters] often are prepared to support someone even if they don’t agree with him or her on everything, as long as someone is straightforward and sincere.  I certainly welcome whatever discussions might ensue.

MB: I’ve read that you were active in the College Republicans. Beyond that, what was your life like at the College?

JD: I was heavily involved in WRMC. … We didn’t have blogs in those days, so that was an important source of information and entertainment. … I was News Director for a couple of years and really enjoyed [it].  That, and my service as Young Republican Chairman on campus and state-wide, along with my academic pursuits, pretty much consumed my time.

MB: As a senior wondering what to do next, I’m pretty amazed that you went almost immediately from college to public office [as a state representative]. Were you campaigning during your senior year?

JD: No, I didn’t become a candidate until after I graduated.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up — sometimes I don’t think I do now — but I’d been interested in the political process and there was a vacancy in the legislative delegation from Middlebury, so I decided to go after it.  I worked very hard, knocked on every door in the district, which then was three towns, and won a contested primary and general election. It was a great opportunity to get involved.

MB: How will your relationship with Middlebury College change in the future?

JD: We’re still working on what the long-term relationship means [and] how it will look, and I will be having some further conversations with President Liebowitz very soon.

MB: Anything in particular you’re looking forward to about working at the College?

JD: [Middlebury is] a community in which I’ve lived ever since leaving college, so it’ll be a much shorter commute than I’ve been used to. I look forward to spending more time with folks in the community. … I’ll cut my carbon footprint, that’s for sure. … It’s going to be fun to get back on campus after a 30-year hiatus.  I’ve been in public office for most of that time and hope and believe I have something to impart to the next generation of leaders. I look forward to spending time with students.

Some of his friends have graciously shared memories of Jeff with us. Here are a few excerpts:

Hussein Alramini ’09:

One night, during my sophomore year, I was walking to the Grille with my girlfriend at the time when we heard footsteps closing in on us from behind. We turned around and saw a guy carrying a snow shovel. He jokingly raised it and for a second gave us a scare, but for the rest of the night we laughed about it. For two years I knew him as “the shovel guy” and would laugh every time I remembered that night. But it wasn’t until senior year that I became friends with him. It was during that year that I realized what a nice person Jeff was. His sense of humor, above all, is what made him stand out for me. Jeff was on a mission to instill laughter in the life of those around him. For the rest of my life I will have a memory of him that will put a smile on my face. Thank you Jeff and rest in peace my friend.

Mohammed Almzayyen ’09:

…I’m pretty sure he didn’t miss a single college basketball game, even the trivial ones. I remember having three hour long dinners with him in Atwater dining hall and talking about politics, sports etc. Jeff was very outgoing and he genuinely loved his friends and Middlebury. He left us too early.

Logan Rutheford ’09:

Jeff and I lived next door to one another our senior year; I hadn’t met him before then. As my mother and I were moving in just before school began, Jeff came over to introduce himself. He was just so friendly; as he left the room, my mom said: “He’s a nice boy. You should be friends with him.” Over that next year we ate lunch and dinner together frequently. That friendly first impression turned out to be very accurate; Jeff was always nice to me and everyone I was around.

One funny memory occurred on the night of November 4, 2008. Jeff had been watching the election coverage somewhere else, and he came back into the dorm hooting and hollering because he was so excited about President Obama’s victory. He could hardly contain himself.

from Daniel Roberts ’09:

Jeff was an active athlete. He and I played together every year on an IM hoops team, but more funny is how every Sunday morning, we played tennis in a doubles round robin with a bunch of adult professors. We always joked about how it was slightly weird that we were the only students in the group, but we also loved getting onto the courts and hitting.

…He was in KDR and active with it, but also loved going to Tavern or to the Atwater suites. He loved to play beirut, just for the fun of the game. One of those competitive guys. One of those guys who was good at a number of different things– naturally athletic, smart, sociable. At some point during our freshman year, a bunch of upper-classmen girls actually created a facebook group about Jeff, called “Junior Girls for Jeff Klein.” I remember asking him how this could have happened and him being sort of charmingly bewildered, like “Eh, yeah, weird. Kind of funny.” And that was all he said about it.

That was Jeff– easy to please, happy to just grab some beers with the guys and say goodnight after.

Patricia Dawson Gomez ’11:

Jeff Klein was one of the kindest people that I’ve had the pleasure to encounter. A fellow Kappa Delta Rho brother of mine, his stories were always a source of amusement and his support was unwavering. Underneath his sometimes quiet demeanor, Jeff was very passionate about a lot of things–including basketball. On many occasions we played pick-up games in the courts behind Ross, or one-on-one at the gym. An incredible person to the core… his passing is a great tragedy.

Nejla Calvo '12: "This is a photo of Jeff and I the night before his graduation on the Midd football field. As you can see, he was always smiling and joking... At this time, I remember him teasing me for not being a Senior."

Nejla Calvo ’12:

Jeff Klein was one of the first people to welcome me to Middlebury College. …My first impression of Jeff was that he was absolutely genuine, he actually cared to reach out to me as a Freshmen and invited me to sit with him anytime I saw him in the dining hall. …During Thanksgiving break of 2008, Jeff’s senior year, my friend missed her train and was stranded in Grand Central Station with no ride back to campus. She called Jeff in a panic, and without hesitation, he drove out of his way in rainy weather to come pick her up and drive her to Midd. That’s just the kind of guy Jeff was, always willing to lend a helping hand. My interactions with Jeff were always light-hearted and warm. …It’s people like Jeff who understand how to make people feel welcome. I hope his memory can live on through the actions of us here at Midd. So Jeff, if I see someone needing a friend to share a meal with, I’ll remember how you wouldn’t think twice to clear a spot for a stranger.

This post is written in collaboration with the Middlebury Campus.

An all-student email from President Liebowitz on Firday confirmed that Governor Douglas will indeed spend January at the College. He will teach a course called “Vermont Government and Politics” and write about his experiences during his career in Vermont politics.

At Middlebury, Douglas majored in Russian Studies. (What is it with important Midd alumni and Russian degrees?  The President of NPR is a Summer Russian School alumna.)  He took a number of PoliSci classes, from professors including Murray Dry. He was an active College Republican.

After graduating in 1972, Douglas went on almost immediately to win a seat in the Vermont House of Representatives — a pretty intense senior-year job search. By age 25, he had moved up to House Majority Leader.  Before succeeding Howard Dean as Governor, Douglas served as a top aide to Governor Richard Snelling, as Vermont Secretary of State and as State Treasurer.

Douglas meets with Obama on the stimulus bill in 2009 (click image for source).

The Addison County Independent has already published an article about Governor Douglas’s upcoming residency at Midd.  Here are some excerpts:

“I jumped at the opportunity [to teach the course],” Douglas said. “I feel I have something to offer the next generation of leaders.

“My ideas will be quite fresh,” he noted of what will be an almost immediate matriculation to the classroom from the governor’s office in the Pavilion Building in Montpelier.  [...]

“Some people were expecting me to go on a cruise or take a long vacation,” Douglas noted of speculation surrounding his immediate exit plans. “But that’s not in my nature. I need to stay active to remain intellectually challenged.”

MiddBlog is hoping for a chance to talk with Douglas sometime soon.  In the meantime, take a look at a few important moments in Douglas’s tenure as Governor (after the break):

• Served from 2009 to 2010 as Chairman of the National Governors Association, a group that serves as a liaison and lobby in Washington for state governors.
• Received the National Order of Quebec in 2010 for improving relations with the nearby province.
• Vetoed the gay marriage bill in 2009, arguing that marriage ought to be between a man and a woman, and that the state’s preexisting civil union laws were sufficient. (The veto was overridden — also unprecedented.)
• Known as a moderate Republican.  Supported Obama’s stimulus bill and worked with Democrats to expand heath care coverage in the state and to offer a state-run insurance plan (Catamount Health).
• Helped reform Act 250, the law that regulates business permits and screens companies for environmental and other concerns before they can invest in the state.*

More on Governor Douglas:

• His website.
• The Washington Post‘s ”Who Runs Gov?” listing.
• Wikipedia (as if I need to suggest it).

*UPDATE 11/9/10: In the original post, I neglected to describe Act 250.

He’s now in Iceland. Posting yesterday from Reykjavik, he says:

I have assumed responsibility for shipping and insuring a half-million-dollar turbine gear from Iceland to Germany via the Netherlands. It’s a complex task to say the least, and surprisingly educational. I’ve also spent a few days talking with the owner of www.thinkgeoenergy.com. This website is the de facto source for all news geothermal. The site’s owner is also the Director of Sustainable Energy at the Bank of Iceland, so I’ve enjoyed a few top-floor powwows in the Islandsbanki headquarters.

… I called up the Director of Safety at Calpine, which operates The Geysirs geothermal field in California (largest geothermal development field in the world), and told him about Landsvirkjun’s gas problem. He literally laughed at the policy – achieve 99.5% abatement in 4 years. It took Calpine 30 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve the same results. He told me to “queue up the mission impossible music,”…

Macia is making a full visit of his trip to Middlebury. He’ll be around September 30th through October 2nd and is happy to chat with students. Below are his thoughts in talking with the aftermidd.com team this summer. Judging by his brief thoughts on Middlebury, liberal arts, and study abroad, he will have lots of good advice to give students who are willing to ask… (use headphones for video below)

It’s refreshing to hear fundraising talked about so openly and clearly at the ALC . It’s very hard, perhaps purposefully so, to hear about fundraising back on campus. I think the majority know about the big donors: how else are you going to get a name on a building? But there are a ton of small donors that really do count both in percentage participation and in actual dollar amount. That’s why most alumni will get a call (or ten emails and a facebook reminder) in the late Spring asking for money. The small guys usually contribute to the annual fund, the pool of money that the school relies on (partially) to keep the school running every year — lightbulbs, staff salaries, etc. Usually the push is for unrestricted funds but last year the push was to give to financial aid which totaled up to a reported $2.4 million translating to financial aid for around 70 students. Nearly 3000 people gave small amounts to that financial aid challenge. Other times people give to endowment. Recently valued at $815 million, it’s hard to see the effect of the endowment as clearly as the annual fund, but it is the driver of long term growth.

It struck me that there is a real disconnect between all these fundraising activities and recent graduates. Maybe it takes the time to reach the 5th or 10th reunion to “get it,” but anecdotally, I find more and more friends saying: “I’m not giving to Middlebury.” And worse, they don’t know why they would give to Middlebury even if they wanted to or had the money to. Is that why my very own Class of 2009 did 29% participation last year, the lowest among all classes? Or is that because my classmates in particular don’t have jobs? To be fair, the classes of 2005-2008 averaged 50.5% participation in giving to Middlebury last year. Maybe one could postulate that once graduates get beyond the first year post-grad and begin to feel nostalgic for Middlebury, they begin to give back.

Still, I see that most young alumni have little context for how donations fit into a continuing Middlebury and their own lives. We didn’t hear about fundraising as students, why would we suddenly know how it works as graduates? You can’t tell me that the senior class gift really teaches seniors about giving — didn’t you just want the Class of 2009 pint glass? Further, what is your relationship with Middlebury (outside of donating) supposed to be once you graduate? How are you supposed to act? The formal institution would say that you should be giving back to your College. Become an alumni admissions interviewer. Come back to reunions. Read Middlebury Magazine. Go to ALC. But I’m convinced that the strongest bonds for young alumni are actually the informal: the current students you know, the student organizations you were apart of, the professors that continue to teach, knowing Muchadei Zvoma, athletic teams you keep up with, the fellow alumni you meet in random corners of the globe, etc. But how, then, do you give back to Middlebury in informal contexts?

Middlebury must model both the formal and informal for current students what those very students will be doing as recent alumni in a few short months or years. If you want alumni to “get” fundraising, then Middlebury should be talking about fundraising way back when they’re students on campus. If you want alumni to be invested in campus news and community, then Middlebury should model how to get that information as students. I think Middlebury does a decent job of all this in the formal context, but I’ve recently wondered how to harness the power of the informal connection to Middlebury. What’s the role of an informal space like MiddBlog in the alumni community? How should MiddBlog be asking students to stay interested in their own community while on campus and then continue that interest once leaving?

I don’t think I’ll ever be one to use this blog to promote donating to Middlebury’s annual fund even if I donate myself, but I do see a need to create a clearer context of how Middlebury sees its alumni and vice versa. Ultimately, alumni are stakeholders in Middlebury, and it’s important that they know, value, and maximize their sense of ownership whether they’re the class of 2010 or the class of 1938.

Check out her new blog that’s serves as her storytelling place: Champlain Sounding. She describes her website as: “a conversation about this thing – this movement, this trend, this religion, this burden – called environmentalism. Everyone has something to say, but certain voices often get drowned out.” A recent sample below:

The video itself is also produced by Midd folk – Ian Durkin 10.5 edited the piece. Evan Daniel ’10, Edge Trullinger’10 , and Mike Waters ’10 are all working up at WhistlePig Whiskey for the summer.

Thanks to a MiddBlog tipster who sent this in. Have something for MiddBlog? tips@midd-blog.com.

The couple met in 2000 at Middlebury College, from which they graduated. Until last month, Ms. Conrad and Mr. Farrell were apprentice goat-cheese makers at Blue Ledge Farm in Salisbury, Vt. …The bride, 28, is keeping her name. She is an artist who specializes in photography and drawing. Her work has been shown at the Freies Museum in Berlin; Exit Art, a gallery in New York; and Anthony Greaney, a Boston gallery….The bridegroom, 29, is a poet. His manuscript “The Many Woods of Grief” won the 2010 Juniper Prize for Poetry.

Read the full article and you’ll find that the newlyweds will be moving to Brattleboro, Vt. where they will open a goat farm. The MiddBlog tipster sees it this way, “While I am on one level impressed and more than a little envious of the artist, award winning poetry writing, back to the land commitment of these two, you have got to admit that on some level it reads like a parody and is absolutely hysterical. I am so pleased to know they have already received the 10 gallon milking can, other wedding quests still have the tractor fund to contribute to.”