There are 41 majors and one independent study program plus two distribution requirements. One can take courses in The Russian Mind, Surrealism in Latin America, Women and Fascism, Bedrock Geology of Vermont, and Primary Health-Care Preceptorship, not to mention Winter Term offerings of Lego Robot Design, Race and Ethnicity on Television, La Tour Eiffel, and Introduction to Bangladesh. The link between scholarship and teaching has always been assumed in the academic world. One cannot be a good teacher if one does not know his field of research. One cannot be a good scholar if one cannot teach what one knows.
Teaching always leads back to research, and research to teaching.
I would argue here that the explosion of faculty publication in 2000, many in fields not conventionally academic, transforms what happens in the classroom. New subjects require different ways of thinking about them, particularly if they are not established academic subjects. New ways of thinking require new ways of teaching. This exhibit of faculty publications in the past year underlines how education at Middlebury is being transformed. Or already has.