Founded in 1800, Middlebury College is recognized as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the United States. With a broad curriculum embracing the arts, humanities, literature, foreign languages, social sciences, and natural sciences, the College challenges students to participate fully in a vibrant and diverse academic community. The College's Vermont location offers an inspirational setting for learning and reflection, reinforcing our commitment to integrating environmental stewardship into both our curriculum and our practices on campus.
Yet the College also reaches far beyond the Green Mountains, offering a rich array of undergraduate and graduate programs that connect our community to other places, countries, and cultures. We strive to engage students' capacity for rigorous analysis and independent thought within a wide range of disciplines and endeavors, and to cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community. Through the pursuit of knowledge unconstrained by national or disciplinary boundaries, students who come to Middlebury learn to engage the world.
More than just a liberal arts college
Middlebury's undergraduate college is enriched by its other programs. Every summer, the main campus in Vermont is transformed by our Language Schools into an institution single-mindedly devoted to the study of 10 languages and cultures. The use of English is virtually banned for the participants, among whom are many Middlebury undergraduates. In the Green Mountains lies Middlebury's Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, where for six weeks each summer the Bread Loaf School of English is in session. The School of English also has sessions each summer at Lincoln College, Oxford; at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. In Ripton, the School of English is followed by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, which brings together 200 established and aspiring authors for 11 days of intensive exchange about the art of writing.
Another Middlebury graduate program is the Monterey Institute of International Studies, based in Monterey, California, and offering master’s degrees in international business, environmental policy, translation and interpretation, international policy studies, and language teaching.
Middlebury's international dimensions
There is also an overseas dimension to Middlebury College. The C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad are located in Alexandria, Belo Horizonte, Beijing, Berlin, Bordeaux, Buenos Aires, Concepción, Córdoba, Ferrara, Florence, Florianópolis, Getafe, Guadalajara, Hangzhou, Irkutsk, Kunming, La Serena, Logroño, Madrid, Mainz, Montevideo, Moscow, Niterói, Paris, Poitiers, Rome, Santiago, Temuco, Tokyo, Tucumán, Valdivia, Valparaíso, Xalapa, and Yaroslavl. These schools enroll undergraduate and graduate students who seek to further their foreign language skills and to immerse themselves as fully as possible in the host culture through academic study as well as direct experience.