The week before our Thanksgiving break, first year students in Blake Jones and Fortune Ononiwu’s First-Year Forum courses had the opportunity to complete and share the collaborative work they’ve done with the local Bennington community over the past semester. As I am Fortune’s co-leader, I attended their celebratory gala at the Bennington Museum and was able to speak with some of the local students they engaged with, the community members involved in the program, and see the wonderful results.
Blake and Fortune’s First-Year Forum courses are both connected with the Bennington Rising Program, an initiative that began during Yasmine Fundi’s (’25) FWT at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC). While working with the Director of Planning at SVMC, James Trimarchi, she was encouraged to look into the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. What she found is that the majority of children in the Bennington area did not have a trusted adult outside of a parent or teacher in their lives. She also found that many did not engage with activities in the area. Her work with the Learning Tree Childcare Center at the hospital, creating a project entitled ‘Move and Bond,’ became the inflection point of what is now Bennington Rising. Her advisor, notably, was Blake Jones, who has certainly helped the longevity of this project alongside Barbara Alfano, associate dean for First-Year Forum.
The ethos of Bennington Rising, as communicated to me by James Trimarchi on November 20th, the night of the Gala at the Bennington Museum, is to connect students with adults near their own age group and engage the college with the local community. As I am sure many of us know from experience, the College can feel like an island at times, and that distance is impactful on both our community as well as the community in town.
The Bennington Rising Gala comprised of two main parts. One is the display of the work students in Fortune’s FYF created in collaboration with local middle and high schoolers entitled “What’s in Your Food?” The teams picked a commonplace food or otherwise consumable item, such as table salt or probiotic sodas, and researched its chemical composition. Then, using that research, they created an art piece. These ranged from posters to photography to sculpture to animation. The second aspect of the event was a guest-lecture from R. Thomas Zoeller, an Emeritus Professor at UMass Amherst and expert in chemical effects of food packaging on human health.
Blake Jones’ FYF class had gone into local elementary classrooms earlier in the week to teach short workshops on a scientific subject of their choosing. Some of those kids they worked with and taught came to the event with their parents, as the event was open and free to the public.
Bennington Rising reflects a growing effort from the college and its students to engage more deeply with the community that surrounds us—and it was ultimately a very lovely show of that.
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