Middlebury College has kicked off 2015 with a new look and family of names for its schools and programs. The Vermont institution today introduced a brand identity system that embraces the full breadth of its educational endeavors by placing the Middlebury name on each of its schools and programs. While best known for its undergraduate liberal arts college, which was founded in 1800, Middlebury has, over the last 100 years, built itself into a more complex institution that meets the educational needs of many types of students around the world. Today Middlebury educates as many graduate and summer students as it does undergraduates.
“This new system greatly clarifies the relationships among our rich and varied academic entities, while ensuring that each of them retains its unique identity and mission,” said Middlebury President Ron Liebowitz. “Educational institutions do not make these changes lightly, and that certainly was true here. But the need for this was impossible to ignore. Our most recent reaccreditation report noted that few people understood all that Middlebury had become and that the identities of our programs blended together, which created unnecessary confusion. I’m confident the clarity we’ve achieved with this new system will benefit our individual programs and Middlebury as a whole.”
Middlebury will also get a new president at the end of this academic year, as Liebowitz concludes his tenure and hands the position over to Laurie Patton.
Middlebury campus community meets president-elect Laurie Patton
In addition to Middlebury College, Middlebury is comprised of a number of other schools and programs identity.middlebury.edu:
- TheMiddlebury Language Schools offer intensive immersion graduate degree and non-degree language programs in 11 languages. The Middlebury Language Schools will celebrate the centennial of their founding this year and have conferred more than 12,000 master’s degrees since their inception.
- TheMiddlebury Bread Loaf School of English, founded in 1920, is an intensive summer graduate program offering a diverse curriculum in the fields of literature, creative writing, and theater arts. It awards, on average, 80 master’s degrees a year.
- TheMiddlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferencehas for nearly 90 years brought together aspiring writers who wish to improve their craft by working with distinguished writers and poets. It was the first writers’ conference in the U.S. and remains the most esteemed gathering of its kind.
- TheMiddlebury C.V. Starr Schools Abroad, which started in 1949, provide undergraduate students from many colleges and universities, and graduate students from the Language Schools, with an academically rigorous experience at 36 sites in 16 countries around the world.
- TheMiddlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, formerly known as the Monterey Institute of International Studies, offers excellent professional graduateprogramsin translation and interpretation,language education, anda number of policy andmanagement, nonproliferation, andsustainable development fields. The Institute was founded in 1955 and was formally acquired by Middlebury in 2010 following a five-year affiliation.
- TheMiddlebury School of the Environment, Middlebury’s newest school, is a six-week summer program that builds on the institution’s long-standing leadership in environmental education, most notably the first undergraduate major in environmental studies in the country.
The news seal, left. The earliest known depiction of the old one is from an early diploma, that of Noadiah Moore, class of 1808. The College’s motto, Scientia et Virtus (Knowledge and Virtue), is written on either side of the book. Around the edge of the seal are four abbreviated Latin words: Coll. Med. Virid. Mon. Their full form is Collegium Medioburiense Viridis Montis; in English, Middlebury College of Vermont. Source: Middlebury.edu
Middlebury spent more than a year developing, refining, and testing the new brand identity system, which the Board of Trustees unanimously approved last September. An essential part of the system is a new visual icon in the form of a shield that is built upon a set of elements that are familiar to the Middlebury community: the mountains; a book; a globe, which represents the institution’s global focus; the historic and iconic building at the center of the Vermont campus known as Old Chapel; and the founding date of 1800.
All of the Middlebury schools will use the shield with the exception of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. For the Institute, Middlebury has created a modified design that replaces the Green Mountains of Vermont and Old Chapel with the historic Segal Building from the Monterey campus and the year of the Institute’s founding. The traditional Middlebury seal will remain in service for ceremonial uses.
“We took great care with our process,” said Middlebury Vice President for Communications and Marketing Bill Burger, who oversaw the project. “In all, we spoke with nearly 400 people—faculty, staff, students, and alumni—over the last year. With that many people, you receive a lot of feedback, and it was indispensable. And in the end, that gives you a better product and greater confidence in the work.”
Middlebury has created a website, http://identity.middlebury.edu, that explains the system and the process that led to its creation, and a companion website, http://identity.miis.edu, that addresses the unique elements of the Institute’s new identity.
Source: Middlebury College middlebury.edu 1.7.2015