April 26, 2016

Dear Faculty and Staff,

As part of our yearlong conversation, Envisioning Middlebury, we will be conducting a Connections Survey designed to give us a visual map of the communication and collaboration networks that cut across the institution. Envisioning Middlebury is designed to bring the community together to share and discuss ideas about the institution. The results of our work this year will help guide our strategic planning process next year.

The Connections Survey will help us understand the relationships and networks within and among programs. To create the survey, we have worked with the META Lab at the Middlebury Institute, whose staff will apply social network analysis methods to allow us to visualize those relationships and networks. Survey data will be kept confidential.

The survey will launch this week, at which time you will receive an individual invitation to participate. We acknowledge that this is a busy time of year; nevertheless, we urge you to complete the survey so that we can create as accurate a picture as possible of our interconnected community.

If you would like to learn more about how the survey and the social network analysis work, you may watch this brief video or visit the Envisioning Middlebury website.

Faculty and staff of the College and the Institute, as well as the directors and permanent staff of the Schools, are all invited to participate. In the fall, we plan to share what we learn in a report to the Middlebury community.

We look forward to and greatly appreciate your participation.

Sincerely,

Susan Baldridge
Provost