A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION 7 Taking a dive into a critically important field.
BOOK MARKS 12 Two gripping reads that speak to global issues.
Communiqué FALL 2018
Closing the Gender Pay Gap ow Zara Nanu MPA ’06 is taking on H an intractable problem. PAGE 5
THE VIEW FROM SEGAL
Conquering Headwinds
2018
Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Institute Jeff Dayton-Johnson.
has been a challenging year for all of higher education, but especially for graduate education. Enrollment is down at graduate schools across the country, which is often the trend during periods when the economy is especially strong, making it less attractive for students to forgo one or two years in the workforce to further their education. It’s also more difficult to recruit international students right now due to the political atmosphere in the United States and uncertainty about the availability of visas both during and after graduate studies. The Institute is one of hundreds of graduate institutions across the country facing these headwinds and working to adapt to them. Over the past two years we’ve revisited and updated our recruiting strategy, sharpening our focus on the prospective students who are most likely to choose the Institute. We believe these efforts have reduced the impact the Institute has felt compared to other schools around the nation. While our incoming class this fall is on the small side, it’s not an outlier in terms of the ebb and flow we have experienced over the past two decades. Compounding our challenge is the fiscal landscape we must navigate at the same time. For a number of years, the overall Middlebury enterprise—including the College, the Institute, the Language Schools, the Schools Abroad, and other components—has run an operating deficit. Over the past two years, we’ve made
significant progress in reducing the deficit through a variety of creative cost-saving measures. However, the largest portion of Middlebury’s operational costs—68 percent—consists of faculty and staff compensation and benefits. As a result, the next phase of spending reductions in spring 2019 will include elective, incentive-based separation plans designed to reduce faculty and staff numbers in both Vermont and California. Even as we’re making hard choices designed to lower costs, however, we’re also exploring a variety of strategies for growing our existing programs. Demand is increasing for lower-residency hybrid programs where a significant portion of classwork is done in an online environment. We have already piloted courses in this vein—notably our successful Spanish Community Interpreting Certificate program—and are working steadily toward introducing new options that promise to attract a wider range of prospective students. At this time, we’re also grateful to be celebrating two of the largest individual gifts the Institute has ever received (see stories on pages 15 and 17). With our continuing focus on delivering innovative programs and the continuing support of the Institute’s global community of alumni and friends, I’m confident that we will conquer these headwinds together, buoyed by our shared commitment to training the next generation of global changemakers. n
Even as we’re making hard choices designed to lower costs, however, we’re also exploring a variety of strategies for growing our existing programs. 2
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COVER ILLUSTRATION BY STEPHANIE DALTON | PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIDGET BESAW
TEN MINUTES
New Deans, New Perspectives
On July 1, longtime Institute faculty members Laura Burian MATI ’98 and Fernando DePaolis became, respectively, dean of the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education (GSTILE) and dean of the Graduate School of International Policy and Management (GSIPM). Our wide-ranging conversation dug into the myriad issues the new deans are facing. Q: What one story from your past tells people everything they need to know about your approach to serving as dean?
A:
depaolis: I was very unhappy with the strategic planning process that happened here in 2006 and actually left for a year. After I came back, at the first meeting of the Academic Excellence Task Force, with 10 people around the table, we were asked, “What do you want to get out of this thing?” I went last and said, “What I want to do is to bury that terrible strategic plan so that we can do something else.” There was a moment of silence and the temperature in the room went down about 25 degrees. Everybody looked at me, and I said, “What? I didn’t think we wanted to BS each other.” I’m going to be absolutely transparent
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT ELLIS
about my ideas and my convictions. That approach is not always great for diplomacy, but it gives people confidence that you’re not going to hide things from them. burian: What I hope my past as Faculty Senate president and a professional interpreter says about my priorities in my new role is that I will try to ensure that administration and faculty are really hearing what the other is saying. My hope is that we can cut through the static and get to the heart of issues in order to help us be a team and a community that engages with one other and works together shaping the future. Continued on page 14
Fall 2018 3
ZARA NANU 4 Communiqué
Mind the Gap
As a cofounder of a company that helps organizations narrow the gender pay gap, Zara Nanu MPA ’06 is seeking to resolve one of the corporate world’s most persistent problems.
A
ccording to estimates from the World Economic Forum, it will take 216 years to close the pay gap between men and women. Zara Nanu mpa ’06 is not going to wait. As she points out, the same forum predicts that by 2030 many of us will be sitting in our self-driving cars thinking about travel to Mars since scientists will by then have figured out how to stay healthy in space. And yet, as we pack for our trip to the Red Planet, we will still be 200 years from reaching equality in pay. Nanu is one of the founders of GapSquare, a company that uses advances in software development and data sciences to help organizations and companies narrow the gap faster. After graduating from the Institute, Nanu returned to her native Moldova to work for the international development organization Catholic Relief Services on a project to help prevent the trafficking of women to other countries, mainly for sexual exploitation. “We were doing that by raising awareness about trafficking and providing women with livelihood opportunities and skills.” The idea was that by improving the employment situation and offering women a chance to earn a proper living, they would be less likely to fall prey to human traffickers. “It was really exciting the first few months but then the more I went out into the field to visit the women, the more it looked like they ended up being employed in sweatshop-like jobs without
PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM WELLER
any possibility of career progression, with limited access to employment rights— sometimes toilets were a five-minute walk away from where they were working. So it didn’t seem as exciting anymore. That is when I started thinking that helping women with skills and employment is one thing, but actually ensuring that those places offer equal opportunities for them is another thing.” Nanu brings to her work at GapSquare a wealth of experience working for charities in the United Kingdom, where she now lives, mostly on issues related to women’s rights. “I kept on coming back to the same thing—in the nonprofit world we are doing so much on human rights, but once you get into the private sector, things are not moving as fast in that direction.” She decided to bring the values of her nonprofit experience to the business world. “Technology is bringing about rapid changes to our world and I thought, how can we use it to create more equal work places for men and women?” Nanu and her business partner started building software that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to look at companies’ payroll data and HR information to understand key insights that explain why they have gaps in gender or in ethnicity, and how they can address those gaps by using data. In less than three years they have grown to a team of 10 with over a hundred companies as clients. “One of the key things that we are seeing is that the problem is connected
to flexible working. A lot of the higher paying jobs do not offer opportunity for flexible hours. We also see occupational segregation where the pay is higher in fields that are dominated by men than those that are dominated by women. For instance in the tech sector, pay per hour is much higher than in nursing. Biased recruitment is another issue. There is more recruitment of women into lower paying jobs and men into the higher paid roles.” Nanu adds that around 45 percent of pay difference can be explained by experience, education, or other factors, but 55 percent of the gap cannot be explained away. Underlying are issues related to entrenched cultural norms and societal pressures that can often be politicized. Nanu says that only by bringing in numbers and data is it possible to turn this into a management issue. “We know that companies can become a lot more profitable if they close the gap and become more diverse.” Studies in Europe have shown that more diverse companies have seven percent higher annual share price growth. Other studies show clear financial benefits to having a diverse workforce. Tangible benefits help move the discussion away from being a separate women or diversity issue, sort of a “tick-box” issue, to one that is vital to continued growth. “There is still a need for a societal shift,” Nanu says, “but once you start talking about numbers and next steps this big task becomes more doable.” n
Fall 2018 5
WESLEY LAÎNÉ
ILLUSTRATIONS BY GWEN KERAVAL
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PHOTOGRAPH BY EMMANUEL FRADIN
A Matter of Interpretation “
T
he language industry”—of which interpretation is a significant part—“is probably the largest industry that you have never heard of,” says Barry Slaughter Olsen maci ’99, an associate professor at the Institute and an active member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters. Of course, the “you” in this case speaks more to the general public, rather than anyone associated with the Institute, but the point is clear. As this feature demonstrates, anywhere there are people who don’t speak the same language, there is a need for interpreters—and people from the Institute are interpreting at the highest levels. n
MAY I HAVE A WORD Over the past year, Institute alumni, students, and faculty have served as interpreters at some of the world’s most important global gatherings, from large events to intimate one-on-one meetings between heads of state. Here’s a glimpse at some noteworthy occasions. washington, d.c. State Department interpreter Lam Chung-Pollpeter MACI ’00 interpreted for Melania Trump when President Xi Jinping of China and his wife visited the White House in November 2017. sochi MIIS student Vipin Kumar MATI ’19 interpreted for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia, in May 2018, and again when the two leaders met in New Delhi in October 2018. tokyo Lefteris Kafatos MACI ’10 was assigned by the State Department to interpret for U.S President Donald Trump when he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Japan in November 2017, and again at the UN Security Council in September 2018. singapore MIIS alumna and former professor Yun-hyang Lee simultaneously interpreted the high stakes meeting between President Trump and North Korean President Kim Jung Un held in Singapore in June 2018. lima On hand to interpret at the 2018 Summit of the Americas in Peru were alumni including Camila Gonzalez-Misas MATI ’13, Diana Tomioka MACI ’10, and Maria Covadonga Soto Casar MATI ’13. new york Several Middlebury Institute alumni helped facilitate communications between world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York in September, including UN staff interpreters Sheila Shermet MACI ’88, Sarah Irene MACI ’10, Adrian Delgado MATI ’93, Daniel Casanova MACI ’95, and Laurence Binnington MATI ’00.
Fall 2018 7
On the Front Lines of Medical Interpretation Lissett Samaniego mati ’10 of Stanford Hospital and Clinics answers questions about a critically important field. Q: What are the necessary
qualifications for a medical interpreter?
A:
Medical interpreting is an emerging field, which saw its official birth as a profession in 1994 with the formation of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. Although some medical interpreters start out without much formal academic training, at a minimum a candidate must have a strong command of the full range of language needed to communicate in at least two languages— from highly technical medical jargon, to the various regional colloquial vernaculars found in the countries where the language is spoken. In the case of Spanish, that would require a familiarity with the regionalisms of the 20 or so nations where Spanish is spoken in the world.
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At university hospitals such as Stanford, medical interpreters must have a bachelor’s degree; however, many also have advanced degrees in translation and interpretation or in some other biomedical field. In addition to the academic training, medical interpreters at these centers are required to pass a written and spoken language test. Additionally, many hospitals and medical centers are requiring that medical interpreters be certified by a recognized certifying body. Many hospitals and clinics also require a minimum number of years of direct patient work, which many candidates acquire through internships or freelance work.
Q: What is the most rewarding part of the job?
A:
It really is a privilege of the highest order to be present during some of the most vulnerable moments in a person’s life, and to play a small role in helping them gain discernment and understanding or merely help them voice their hopes, their concerns, and fears during these times. I think about this every day as I step into the double doors of the hospital’s main entrance.
Q: What is the most challenging part of the job?
A:
Staying abreast of the latest treatment therapies across so many medical specialties, from bone marrow transplant, to lung, liver, heart, and kidney transplant to the more common chronic heart disease and diabetes treatment and management protocols can feel like running a marathon that never ends. Managing a constantly growing terminology base in at least two languages is an ongoing challenge. As a medical interpreter you are learning every day, every hour, every moment. It can be daunting and exhilarating all at once. n
The Ethics of Interpretation The role of diplomatic interpreters became the subject of intense interest following the summits President Donald Trump held with North Korean and Russian leaders this spring and summer. In the wake of the two summits, both legislators and pundits speculated about the possibility of trying to compel the interpreters to testify about the substance of the conversations they witnessed. Experts and interpretation professionals immediately objected. “You are bound by a canon of ethics for interpreters in general,” said longtime professional interpreter Laura Burian MATI ’98, dean of the Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education. “When you’re a diplomatic interpreter, there are laws that will prevent you from speaking out about whatever transpired in the room. Typically, if you are an interpreter for the U.S. Department of State, you have a top secret security clearance, meaning that you treat every interaction that you interpret for as top secret.” The International Association of Conference Interpreters, an organization that represents 3,000 members, states in its code of ethics that members are “bound by the strictest secrecy” when interpreting at private meetings. Confidentiality is “a rock-solid tenet,” Professor Barry Slaughter Olsen MACI ’99 told PBS NewsHour in June. Breaching it “could significantly undermine the faith that people have in our profession,” he said, adding that undermining that faith could further endanger interpreters working in conflict zones, where being perceived as untrustworthy can put their lives at risk. In an interview for NPR’s All Things Considered with reporter Ailsa Chang, Olsen called her comparison of confidentiality for interpreters with attorney-client privilege “a very good analogy. But I would add that you could also say it’s similar to the kind of privileged communication that goes on between a doctor and patient.” Olsen said compelling an interpreter to divulge private conversations is not a good idea. “People have to have trust that an interpreter is not going to share information that comes from a confidential encounter.” n
Entertainment* Education* Politics Law Health care
Sports*
Diplomacy
See inset below
Here, There, Everywhere The number of scenarios requiring
the presence of interpreters has grown exponentially during the past 75 years. Most people are aware of the key role interpreters play in fields like diplomacy and business. We asked Professor Barry Slaughter Olsen maci ’99 to suggest three examples of situations where the average person might not realize interpreters are a vital part of the action. (Olson, an experienced practicioner, says his most unusual assignment was for automaker BMW, riding shotgun in a car going 120 miles an hour, simultaneously interpreting lessons from the trainer next to him to other drivers via a radio.) n
Sports You’ve seen them at the Olympics, but did you know every team in Major League Baseball now has at least one interpreter on staff? Entertainment When press junkets take actors abroad, they’ll usually have an interpreter by their sides. education Whether at larger district council events or at parent-teacher conferences, interpreters often play a critical role connecting officials and nonEnglish speaking parents.
Fall 2018 9
WHAT I’VE LEARNED JEFF LANGHOLZ
When Global Climate Issues Go Local
P
erhaps the greatest life lesson recent graduate Elea Becker Lowe maiep ’18 can share is one she herself has heeded: when presented with an opportunity, go for it. She came to the Institute in 2016 to pursue a degree in international environmental policy with the intention of working on conservation efforts in South America. “However, the presidential elections had a huge impact on my plans, as they did for many other students. California quickly became a global leader on climate change in the midst of major political shifts.” She secured a position with the California Natural Resources Agency, where she writes policy and manages collaborative efforts to help the state adapt to current and future climate change events. This summer she worked on California’s ambitious response to the federal government’s lack of commitment to global environmental leadership—the Global Climate Action Summit held in September.
is to meet these goals. Many were showing up to say we were not doing enough. The whole point was to motivate people, to learn from one another, and to move forward on climate change action. The fact that so many diverse and opinionated groups came out to one place to take a stand was a sign of success and a beacon of hope against a much larger challenge.
It takes incredible vision to put something like this on. The Global Climate Action Summit included multiple events all over California. When the planning first started, it was hard to see how an event of this magnitude could be pulled off, but with a huge collaborative effort it all came together.
We can’t look to the past to create our policies on climate change because we cannot be certain exactly how and when climate change events will manifest. Instead, social and environmental policy must look to projections of future scenarios to determine the way forward. Infrastructure plans now have to take into account unprecedented scenarios for drought, forest fires, and other events, and the same applies to other policies.
Protesters outside the venues were at least as important to the cause as the official events that week. Part of the rationale behind the summit was to maintain the commitments of the Paris Agreement, celebrate the achievements of changemakers all over the world, and let people know that there is still a lot of work to do to reach the ambitious goals that states like California have committed to. The protesters highlighted just how difficult it
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It is really exciting to see how much is actually being done to combat climate change around the world today. I was very lucky to have a small part with the planning team. The amount of people actually working on innovative initiatives to combat climate change impacts, safeguard against adverse events, and develop technology to remove and sequester carbon from the atmosphere is beyond inspiring. If we continue to share our best practices, challenges, needs, and resources at a global scale, I believe that we have a real chance to affect climate change.
Growing up in the woods of Vermont, I was always interested in environmentalism, but as I pursued my degree in environmental engineering, I realized I wanted a career more focused on the social experience. I turned my engineering degree into a math major and added minors in economy and philosophy. Vermont is a
beautiful and amazing place to call home. While I grew up in a very open-minded family, it wasn’t until I started traveling that I realized I’d been living a sheltered life. After college I started traveling in Central and South America, then spent almost two years living and working abroad in New Zealand and Australia. Wake-up calls are often unexpected. Whereas during the week, I spent my time working in finance for a large telecommunications company in New Zealand, on the weekends I found myself planting trees, restoring native habitat, and doing other conservational tasks. My boss was an amazingly strong, action-oriented lady who almost immediately became my most inspiring career role model. When she suddenly quit her job, I was crushed and confused. But before she left she told me that if I had any motivation to pursue something else, something that really fed my soul, I should go after that instead, and soon. Shortly after, I too quit my job, began traveling once again, and started researching graduate schools. You have to believe hard work pays off. I am a big believer in making the most of every opportunity, and most of the time that means working hard even when it is difficult to see where your efforts will lead. Groundwork for real change happens on the lower levels. As we learn in many classes at the Institute, no lasting change happens without the participation of the people. The Trump administration’s opposition to environmental policy and regulations has motivated many stakeholders to take matters into their own hands. Local governments, private businesses, and individuals are stepping up; that is where the change will happen. n
PHOTOGRAPH BY ED CALDER
Protesters outside the venues were at least as important to the cause as official events that week. ELEA BECKER LOWE
Fall 2018 11
BOOK MARKS
Trolling the Truth Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News. By Clint Watts Review by E. Phil Morgan
clint watts maips ’05, has two objectives in his new book, Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News: to chronicle the evolution of how bad actors are using social media platforms, and to identify the processes by which the illusion of increased preferences and choices actually influences the erosion of democratic norms. A former military officer and FBI special agent who found himself in the world of counterterrorism before and after two years at MIIS in the mid-2000s, Watts became the operations manager of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. There he worked with a team trying to understand the canny ways in which terrorists communicated and recruited converts from the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s to ISIS in 2013–14. The structure of the book reveals the experimental methodology by which he tried to get into the heads of individual terrorists in his private time via email and later online to have direct conversations. These efforts complemented collective efforts to understand how quickly various jihadi groups adopted new communications methods. Bin Laden used print and audiotapes to build networks; al-Qaeda in Iraq used Yahoo Groups, private forums, websites, and online video; al-Shabaab in Somalia quickly moved on to social media; while
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ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MIA
ISIL and ISIS developed multiplatform social media and even their own apps. It soon became clear that the Islamic jihadis were not the only ones using social media to troll foreign institutions and project disinformation. Before the Russians invaded Crimea in 2014, the chief of the general staff issued a policy shift on how warfare was to be conducted—less on battlefields and more in the cyber world. They cited the very success of social media by actors in the Arab Spring countries in mobilizing activists. The Russian media network RT and the military GRU activated information programs and collected data on political candidates, parties, and donors. Watts moved out of government work and into consulting and writing in order to raise the alarm directly with the public and the Congress that the U.S. government was not very good at information warfare. He offers a solid analysis of how social media creates the illusion of choice through what he calls “preference bubbles” that lead to the hardening of beliefs and actions instead of debate and compromise. He calls this process “social inception.” “A hidden elite core will social engineer an unwitting crowd into choosing the policies, politics, and preferences of this elite . . .” This will occur via the very mapping exercises the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet, formerly Google) now use to collect data on one’s purchases, entertainments, chats, posts, and pictures. How to counter these trends? Watts suggests a Consumer Report–type evaluation to certify a given media outlet along two measures: “fact versus fiction in the content it produces, and subjective opinion versus objective reporting.” He also suggests pushback using methodology he developed to communicate with bad actors: “target a troll, prank it, troll back, feed it misinformation, and otherwise trap it in an information battlefield where things are only partly what they seem.” n
Looking Back on a Nuclear War with North Korea
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States By Jeffrey Lewis
what is most terrifying about The 2020 Commission, the new novel by Jeffrey Lewis, Middlebury Institute nuclear expert and professor, on a nuclear war with North Korea “is how much of it is true,” according to the Economist. Critics call The 2020 Commission on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Lewis “the Dr. Strangelove of our times,” “the gut punch everyone needs,” and “an attempt to give us hindsight before it’s too late.” The novel is presented in the form of a fictional government report published three years after horrific nuclear attacks on South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. It lays out a plausible scenario for how a nuclear war with North Korea might unfold, through a series of unfortunate errors and circumstances—and one provocative presidential tweet. A leading expert on North Korea’s nuclear program, Lewis is often called upon to provide analysis and insights in the national and international media. The founder of the Arms Control Wonk blog and podcast of the same name, Lewis has frequently warned of the dangers posed by what he sees as the Trump administration’s unrealistic expectations and lack of understanding
of the North Korean regime. Julian Borger writes in the Guardian/Observer that Lewis and his team at the Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies have “played an important role” in revealing the extent of North Korea’s nuclear program, and goes on to say, “It is quite likely that if the worst happened, Lewis would be summoned by an investigative commission seeking to determine what had gone so disastrously wrong.” The fictional crisis begins when a South Korean passenger airliner, temporarily off course because of a software issue, is mistaken for an air bomber and shot down by North Korea. South Korean leaders, for a variety of reasons, decide to respond independently without consulting with the U.S. The president of the United States is playing golf at his “Winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, which poses logistical challenges in terms of dealing with the crisis, and his ill-tempered, ill-timed tweet reaches a leader of North Korea who is dealing with his own communication problems. The novel is full of historical information and insight, as well as painstaking details, supported by the extensive notes Lewis shares from every chapter. There is also no shortage of the bleak humor Lewis is known for: “In its black comedy, surfacing in the deadpan prose, it is a Dr. Strangelove for our times,” Borger writes. The Economist says that fans of the Arms Control Wonk who are expecting notes of absurdist and scornful humor will not be disappointed. Lewis himself told the New York Times that although he cares “a lot about people getting the right lessons from the book,” he also promises that “it’s not like eating your vegetables.” n
Fall 2018 13
TEN MINUTES Continued from page 3
Q: What’s
your favorite thing about working at the Institute?
A:
burian: That we have faculty, students, and staff who are doing remarkable things, and who have their eyes on continuing to make a contribution that is bigger than themselves. I’ve been student, faculty, and staff myself now, so it’s been my professional home for over two decades. It’s a group of amazing people. depaolis: For me, it’s understanding that the students come here to get better at what they do, or to learn a craft that they feel passionate about. I’ve taught in more academically oriented, less purpose-driven places, and it was different. Here, our students will go on to do extraordinary things for others. And I get to work with my friends.
Q: What was the biggest factor in your decision to accept the job of dean?
A:
depaolis: [pointing at Laura] Her. [laughter] We’ve been on committees
together and know each other well and can work very well together. And she is really good at keeping me in check. Sometimes when we’re in private, she’ll say, “Are you sure you want to say that?” [laughter] or “Now that you’ve said that, how are you going to answer these three questions?” It’s a tremendous reality check for me and gives me confidence. burian: For me, I had been serving as a liaison between the administration and the search committees, and I saw the effort that went into trying to find the right fit for these positions. It was clear that it was going to be a steep learning curve for anyone, but perhaps not as steep for me, given my previous roles. My attitude about the searches was, let’s take some of the energy and momentum and ideas and move forward with what we learned. depaolis: I really cannot imagine a new person from the outside plunged into some of the issues we’re facing. They would be flying blind. I’m sorry for my colleagues that they ended up with me, but it’s like the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want, but you might get what you need.” [laughter]
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depaolis: That also means the return on investment today is a heck of a lot more uncertain—not just for our students, but throughout the entire education system. We need to move decisively to make hard choices and live with them.
Q: Imagine
it’s years from now and you’re looking back on your tenure as dean. What does success look like to you?
A:
burian: That we successfully expanded our audiences and offerings. That we placed bets in the right places so that we could be an institution that continued to offer excellent, high-quality education while opening up that education to more people—
Q: What do you expect to be the most challenging part of your new role?
depaolis: Elite education, but not just for elites.
A: depaolis: How do we position the Institute for the real challenges that we’re going to be facing three to five years from now? How do we take all the right steps so that, three deans into the future, there is a clear path to ensure the intellectual and financial vitality of the Institute?
burian: Exactly. Right now we only attract students who can take a year or two out of their lives to come here. I hope we’ll be able to say that we made changes that helped this institution adapt to the new reality.
burian: In addition to the workforce planning exercise we’re going through right now, I think there’s a real challenge with enrollment in light of the headwinds that graduate education is facing. We need to position ourselves to expand the type of people we can serve, meaning not just
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traditional residential MA students, and not just full-time students. We have to look at our pricing vis-à-vis the student debt that people are taking on, and length of time to degree, and modes of delivery— it’s all intertwined. We’re training our students to do very specific work, but the job market is such that they also have to be very flexible. They don’t go into “a job” or “a career” necessarily, they go into multiple jobs and multiple careers.
depaolis: I hope people say that we made difficult decisions that had to be made for the institution, and for the ultimate goal of serving an audience of professionals who want to make a significant change in the quality of life of millions of people. n
ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT NEUBECKER
NUMBERS
NEWS
The Mixed-Methods Evaluation, Training, and Analysis (META) Lab is collaborating with
Former President Donates $1.8M Home to Fund Scholarships
the Monterey County Initiative for Homeless Women to survey women experiencing homelessness on the Monterey Peninsula. This summer, 12 Middlebury Institute students worked on the project, under the supervision of faculty members Phil Murphy and Netta Avineri.
114 Number of women surveyed this summer
58
Number of respondents who are bilingual; languages spoken include Spanish, French, German, Hindi, and Tagalog
780 The average annual income of respondents in U.S. dollars
35
Percentage of respondents who listed relationship abuse as one of the reasons they became homeless
62
Years between the youngest respondent (20) and the oldest (82)
27
Hours of training each research assistant received in fieldwork and ethics, survey design, interviewing, tool design, beta testing, and implementation
This spring, former Institute President Robert Gard and his wife, Dr. Janet Wall, designated the proceeds from the sale of their $1.8 million Pebble Beach home to two scholarship endowments at the Institute. Gard served as president of the Institute from 1987 to 1998 after retiring from the U.S. Army with 31 years of service and the rank of general. Upon Gard’s retirement from the Institute in 1998, several trustees and Wall, who made the largest contribution, seeded the Robert G. Gard Scholarship Fund, which provides tuition support to enable graduate students to attend the Institute. Less than a decade later, the couple established a second endowment, the Gard ’n’ Wall Non-Proliferation Scholarship Fund, which supports students studying issues related to weapons of mass destruction at the Institute. “Having served 31 years in uniform,” said Gard, “it’s evident to me that the only major threat to the viability, even the existence, of the United States, is an attack with weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, as president, I supported Dr. Bill Potter’s initiative to establish the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), which has achieved international acclaim.” Now that their Pebble Beach home has been sold under the aegis of an established unitrust, the proceeds from the sale have been reinvested to provide lifetime income to both donors. Once released at their passing, the unitrust assets will be split between their two scholarship funds. This gift is expected to be one of the largest in Institute history. n
Fall 2018 15
IN BRIEF
recent news from members of the institute community in monterey and around the world. SIGHTINGS ›› As has been the case at every Olympic Games since the summer of 1984, the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, featured a substantial contingent of Middlebury Institute faculty, former faculty, and alumni among the interpreting corps. This year’s contingent included Julien Brasseur MATI ’02, Professor Andrei Falaleyev, Professor Andrea Hofmann-Miller MATI ’91, Jeanyoung Lee (former faculty member), Yun-hyang Lee (former faculty member), Andrey Medvedev MATI ’98, Katya Mostovaya MAcI ’10, Alexandre Ponomarev MAcI ’00, Jingbo Shen MAcI ’06 (former faculty member), and Fernanda Strasser MAcI ’91. In October we learned that Ponomarev and Maureen Sweeney Mpa ’94 will serve as chief and deputy chief interpreters for the 2020 Summer Olympic games in Tokyo, Japan.
Childress BAIS/MAIPS ’08, Lauren Day Mpa ’19, Geoffrey Fontana MAIPS ’05, Katya Gamolsky MAIPd ’18, Roger Gillespie MAnptS ’18, Brianna Hartley MAnptS ’18, Yona Koch-Fienberg MAnptS ’19, Mitchell Leong MAnptS ’18, Tracy Lyon Mba ’18/MAnptS ’19, Lizzie McGowan MAnptS ’18, Nate Riley MAIPS ’12, Rory Roccio BAIS/MAIPd ’19, and Vanessa Zhang MAIPS ’14. ›› On September 17 the Washington Post published an article coauthored by two participants in CNS’s Summer Undergraduate Nonproliferation Program, Jack Nassetta and Ethan Fecht. Analyzing a database of over 850,000 tweets collected following the April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria, Nassetta and Fecht crafted a “cheat sheet” for users on how to identify Russian troll accounts on Twitter. ›› Professor Christiane Abel
›› The West Coast Anti-Money Laundering Forum attracted a substantial cohort of Institute students and alumni, including a group of students invited by Professor Moyara Ruehsen, the driving force behind the Institute’s Financial Crimes Management specialization. Attendees included Amelia
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MAtI ’96 interpreted for RadioFrance Internationale at the Global Climate Action Summit in September. Also attending and participating in the summit in various roles were Professors Kent Glenzer and Lyuba Zarsky; alumni Michael Blakeley MAcd ’01, William Giller MAT ’18, and
Lama Ranjous MAIPD ‘18; and student Nicolas De Golia MBA/ MAIEP ‘19.
PRESENTATIONS In September, Professor Moyara Ruehsen traveled to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to conduct Counter Terrorism Financing Training and Counter Proliferation Financing Training for ministry officials, intelligence agency personnel, and police on behalf of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Terrorism Prevention Branch. ›› In June, Professor Sharad Joshi of the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies program was invited to brief the Top Level Group of U.K. Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation at the U.K. Parliament in London. The briefing covered a broad range of nonproliferation issues. Separately, Joshi also presented papers at the European Workshops on International Studies in Groningen, the Netherlands, and at the British International Studies Association annual conference in Bath, United Kingdom. ›› Kimberlie Hansen MATESOLPCMI ’18 was serving her Peace Corps assignment in Dominica when Hurricane Maria struck the Caribbean, devastating the island. The school where she had been teaching was ruined, and she was evacuated. After returning to Monterey
to complete her degree, she returned this summer to present the principal of the primary school where she had been teaching with “an enormous (84-pound) suitcase stuffed with school supplies” she had collected.
AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS ›› This spring Sylvia Mishra MANPTS ’18 was one of three 2018 Scoville Fellows chosen from 180 applicants. The Scoville Fellowship is a highly competitive national fellowship program that provides recent graduates with the funding and opportunity to work with senior-level policy experts at leading think tanks and advocacy groups in Washington, D.C., for six to nine months. Mishra will be working with the Nuclear Threat Initiative. ›› Students Bryce Bray MAIEP ’20 and Siobhan Gibbons MAIEP ’19 each won a Boren Fellowship, the first time that two students from the International Environmental Policy program have been awarded a Boren in the same year. ›› Student Jaewon Oh MANPTS ’20 was awarded a Pickering Fellowship, which provides financial support for tuition and living expenses for a two-year master’s degree in a field related to the Foreign Service (up to $37,500 annually). Oh, a 2013 graduate of Middlebury College, hopes to work on nuclear policy relating to North Korea.
›› Amy Mendenhall MACI ’18 passed the United Nations’ extremely competitive language exams this spring, qualifying her to serve as an interpreter or translator at the UN. While many Institute alumni go on to pass these exams after graduating, Mendenhall achieved the rare feat of doing so while still a student at the Institute. ›› Jillian Flavin MBA/MAIEP ’18 and Khadija Hafiz MBA/MAIPD ’18 won first place in the student division of the Monterey Bay Start-Up Challenge. Their social enterprise, the BOHO (Buy One Help One) Marketplace, is an insurance marketplace that allows corporate clients, their employees, and eventually all individual consumers the option to compare and purchase insurance policies while also helping provide insurance to a chronically underinsured individual or family in an emerging market. Flavin, Hafiz, and fellow students Celina Lima MBA/MAIPD ’18 and Ruth Lai MBA ’18 originally came up with the concept as a solution to a class assignment, and Professor Yuwei Shi encouraged them to take it further. ›› Student Theresa Waldhäusl MAci ’19 won the United Nations’ annual St. Jerome Translation Contest in the English into German category, traveling to Switzerland in May to accept her award at the UN’s Geneva headquarters. The contest, named for the patron saint of translators, is open to both current and former UN
staff members (in the general division), and students from partner universities such as the Institute (in the student division). ›› Bella Wan MAci ’18 won silver in the highly competitive seventh Cross-Strait Interpreting Competition in Hong Kong. Wan competed against 27 other students representing the top translation and interpretation programs from Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, the U.S., and the U.K. ›› The student team of J. Ryan Bolt MANPTS ’19, Paula Granger MANPTS ’18, C. Scott Milne MANPTS ’19, and Yona Koch-Fienberg MANPTS ’19 was awarded “Best Written Brief” at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber 9/12 Student Challenge in Washington, D.C., for a brief judges described as best in the history of the competition. The team, coached by Dr. Elaine Korzak, advanced to the semifinals of the competition and ultimately placed fifth out of 38 teams. ›› “True Economics,” a blog
$4.5M Bequest Is Largest Gift in Institute History
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his summer the institute received a bequest of more than $4.5 million from a trust established almost 50 years ago by Samuel F. B. Morse, the legendary founder of Pebble Beach. The bequest, the largest single gift in the Institute’s 63-year history, will establish a special fund in Morse’s name to support student scholarships, academic programs, and other priorities of the Institute. After Morse’s death in 1969, the trust established in his will provided income to his heirs until the passing of his longest-living child, Mary Morse Shaw, who passed away in April at the age of 97. At that time, the remaining funds were divided between three educational institutions—the Middlebury Institute, Yale University, and the Stevenson School in Pebble Beach. Morse was an early supporter of the Institute, and as it grew he underwrote the loan to purchase the former city library, now the Segal Building, the first permanent home for the Institute. In his role as president of the Monterey Foundation, he supported grants to the Institute. After his death, his family remained involved with the school during its formative years. “We are honored and deeply grateful to Mr. Morse and his family for believing in the Institute’s mission during its early years and for planning to provide generous support well into the future,” said Middlebury President Laurie L. Patton. “This fabulous gift will be applied to our highest priorities—student scholarships and immersive learning opportunities—and also used to explore new avenues and approaches in teaching and learning.” n
authored by Professor Constantin Gurdgiev, was rated one of the top 100 economics blogs by the Intelligent Economist. Gurdgiev’s blog covers economic ideas and analysis of current news stories and global economic events.
Japan Education Exchange Graduate Fellowship for 2018–19. Hanaoka will receive $30,000 toward the completion of her PhD in Japanese language and linguistics at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
›› Alumna Vera Hanaoka
›› Beating out PhD students
MATFL ’07 was selected as the sole winner in the nation of the Kobe College Corporation
in their chosen field of language education, two recent graduates, Tiffany
Diebold MATESOL ’18 and Hiba Al Ghabra MATESOL ’18, were awarded “Most Innovative Research” at the UC Davis Symposium on Language Research this May. The team began the research for the paper as a project for a class they both took with Professor Netta Avineri in the fall of 2017; the following semester Professor Thor Sawin
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IN BRIEF
“ Professional interpreters are bound by a strict code of ethics. . . . It’s similar to the kind of privileged communication that goes on between a doctor and patient.” —Professor Barry Slaughter Olsen MACI ’99 speaking to NPR’s All Things Considered after the Trump-Putin summit in July.
suggested they submit their paper to the symposium. ›› Britt Johnson MATESOL ’02 received the University of Oregon’s University Senate award for Shared Governance, Transparency & Trust, which “is given to the administrator or other member of the UO community who has best exemplified the values of trust, transparency, and shared governance during the year.” Johnson works at Oregon’s English Language Institute. ›› Carol J. Yee MBA ’88, an owner and chief operating officer of the Arlington, Virginia-based development consultancy KANAVA International, was named to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. Yee was also selected to participate in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses (10KSB) program. ›› Alumna Randi Freeman MATESOL ’95 has been awarded a 2018 Doctoral Dissertation Grant from the International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF). Freeman successfully competed with applicants from 34 countries and is only
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the second alumna to receive a doctoral dissertation grant from TIRF, after Dr. Joyce Kling MATESOL ’88 in 2012. Freeman is pursuing her doctorate at Anaheim University.
COLLABORATIONS ›› Staff of the Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) were very active at the 2018 Nonproliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee Meeting in Geneva this spring. CNS Director William Potter served as advisor to the Chilean delegation, whose members included CNS Senior Research Associate Sarah Bidgood MANPTS ’16 and students Joseph Rodgers MANPTS ’18 and Paul Warnke MANPTS ’18. Maggie Rowland MANPTS ’18 and Daria Selezneva MANPTS/MGIMO ’18 participated as members of the Secretariat. Potter; Bidgood; Andrea Berger; and Angela Kane, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation Senior Fellow, also participated in various side events, including one where Bidgood and student Tiara Shaya MANPTS ’18 both gave presentations. ›› A team of CNS researchers— including Jeffrey Lewis, Melissa Hanham, Dave
Schmerler MANPTS ’15, and Grace Liu MANPTS ’18—used publicly available satellite imagery and geolocation analysis to locate a suspected covert uranium enrichment plant in Kangson, North Korea, resulting in widespread media coverage of their discovery. ›› Three students in the Institute’s International Trade and Economic Diplomacy program helped draft a new antidumping and countervailing duty law for the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Brigid Flay MAITED ’18 called the opportunity to work with Professors Robert Rogowsky and Warren “Wes” Small on the project “something really exceptional.” The team also included Richard Nworah MAITED ’18 and Cameron Small MAITED ’18. ›› In August, CNS Director William Potter convened a high-level workshop on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament for American and Russian experts and policy makers that included former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, former Soviet and Russian Ambassador Sergey Batsanov, Congressman Jimmy Panetta, and Inga Yumasheva, a member of
the Russian Duma. California Governor Jerry Brown delivered the keynote address.
PUBLICATIONS ›› Professor Kathi Bailey is the coeditor of a new book in the TIRF-Routledge series, Global Research on Teaching and Learning English. The new volume is a collection of research reports on language planning and policy in a range of international contexts. “One of the great things about this project,” said Bailey, “was working with TESOL student Kelly Donovan MATESOL ’17. She was an amazing editorial assistant and project manager.” ›› In August, CNS Director William Potter and Sarah Bidgood MANPTS ’16 of CNS celebrated the publication of their new coedited volume Once and Future Partners: The United States, Russia, and Nuclear Non-proliferation. ›› A translation by Professor John Balcom ba chinese ’84, The Great Flowing River: A Memoir of China, from Manchuria to Taiwan by Chi Pang-yuan, was published by Columbia University Press. ›› Professor Avner Cohen and student (and Pickering Fellow)
Communiqué Ben McIntosh MANPTS ’19 coauthored an opinion essay for the Israeli newspaper Haartez critiquing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation on Iran’s nuclear program. ›› “The Shadow Sector: North Korea’s Information Technology Networks,” a groundbreaking report by CNS researchers Andrea Berger, Cameron Trainer, Shea Cotton, and Catherine Dill MANPTS ’13, highlights how a North Korean global network of information technology front companies and intermediaries continues to operate in defiance of sanctions. ›› Graduate Joshua Morris MAIEP ’17 authored a report by the Nature Conservancy on sea level rise vulnerability analysis and conservation guidance, a project he began as an IPSS fellow in 2017. For more coverage of faculty and alumni publications, see Book Marks on page 12.
(Bill) Weber, her successor and later dean of the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at MIIS. “For example, she brought in simultaneous interpreting equipment and booths for the first time.” In 1978, Arjona enrolled at Stanford, where she earned her PhD in education. Later, she was the founding director of the Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation Studies at Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan’s first graduate school of T&I. In 2005, her work in promoting the status and reputation of the translation profession at the international level was recognized by UNESCO’s International Federation of Translators Council, which presented her with its top professional award. Her impact on the Institute was substantial and her legacy continues to this day. “Etty was a mentor to many students, including me,” said Professor Holly Mikkelson MAICC ’76 / Cert. Translation & Interpretation ’76. “If it hadn’t been for Etty, I wouldn’t have pursued a career in T&I.”
PASSAGES ›› Etilvia Maria Arjona
›› Dr. Raymond A. Zilinskas,
Chang—known during her years at the Institute as Etty Arjona—passed away in her native Panama in September. Arjona was the director of the Translation and Interpretation (T&I) program at the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies from 1974 to 1978. “She turned the T&I program into a serious professional school and set it on the path to becoming what it is today,” said Wilhelm
the director of CNS’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Program and an adjunct professor for 20 years, passed away in September after a brief illness. Zilinskas was one of the world’s foremost experts on biological weapons and was frequently called upon to answer questions about both their technical aspects and policy implications by journalists, academics, and
governments. CNS Director Dr. William Potter described him as “a towering figure internationally in the field. For two decades he was the ‘go-to’ person at CNS on these subjects. I’m not sure whether he was most proud of his major book publications, his work as an inspector for UNSCOM in Iraq, or the role he performed as a consultant to the classic television series The Americans.” His publications include The Soviet Biological Weapons Program (Harvard University Press, 2012), coauthored with Milton Leitenberg, and its sequel Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2018), coauthored with his former student Philippe Mauger MANPTS ’16. Said Mauger, “Ray was my mentor and a dear friend. He invested countless hours into teaching and advising me, and many other students at MIIS. I will remember him for his meticulous working style and his frankness, and as someone who always seized opportunities to help others.” Added Philipp Bleek, acting chair of the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies Program, “Ray will be deeply missed. He was a passionate teacher and mentor.” In recent years Zilinskas was the subject of feature stories in both Communiqué and Middlebury Magazine. His career as a researcher, writer, and teacher leaves a remarkable legacy of scholarship and mentorship. n
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A Gift for the Future former institute president Robert Gard and
his wife, Janet Wall, wanted to make a large gift to the Middlebury Institute. Gift planning provided a way. They donated their $1.8 million Pebble Beach home, and the proceeds from its sale were invested in a trust. That trust provides them with income now and will fund scholarships at their passing. Visit go.middlebury.edu/giftplanning or email giftplanning@middlebury.edu to find out how gift planning can help you to achieve your financial and philanthropic goals. Read more about the couple’s gift at go.miis.edu/gard.
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