Middlebury College
AC-5: Immersive Experience

MAlt is Middlebury’s alternative break program, which provides affordable, service-learning alternatives to traditional February break activities. The goal of the trips is to engage Middlebury students with outside communities in order to share, provide service, and learn about the systems that shape community realities around the world. A recent MAlt trip to Puerto Rico focused on environmental conservation efforts in Puerto Rico’s El Yunque Rainforest. Service included forest maintenance projects and environmental education projects to support the El Yunque National Forest Service’s efforts to educate the thousands of tourists who visit El Yunque every year. Participants on the trip also engaged with researchers in the rainforest to learn the effects of climate change and land use in El Yunque. Another recent trip, 'Exploring Energy: Collecting stories from natural gas production in Bradford Co., PA' explored perspectives surrounding natural gas extraction, and collected stories from landowners and gas field workers to share with the broader community. The trip aimed to develop nuanced and personal understandings of what natural gas development has looked like in Bradford County. They worked with the Pennsylvania Landowner Group for Awareness and Solutions, which intended to collect such stories but had not yet had the capacity to do so.

Environmental Studies offered several immersive experience classes in the 2014 Winter Term. 'Conservation and Land Management in Practice' investigated conservation and resource management issues with a focus on Trinchera Ranch, a 265-square mile ranch in the greater Sangre De Cristo Conservation Area in southern Colorado. Students in 'Education for Sustainability in Action' spent the third week of the semester living together at Shelburne Farms, a global leader in Education for Sustainability (EFS), as they observed and participated in EFS in K-12 classrooms.

In addition, Middlebury College offers a 9 week summer intensive program in three location focused on food and food systems called Food Works. The for-credit program is a combination of field study, classroom and internship experiences.

Middlebury College also offers a 6 week summer program called Middlebury College School of the Environment. It offers two different tracks of study, one designed for students with little or no previous college-level environmental studies courses, and one for students with substantial college-level background in environmental studies. Its curriculum includes elective courses in environmental science, environmental management, environmental video, environmental humanities, sustainability studies, and systems thinking.

Website for FoodWorks: http://www.middlebury.edu/foodworks
Website for school of the Environment: http://www.middlebury.edu/environment