12th President of Middlebury College
President Emeritus James I. Armstrong was president of Middlebury College for 12 years, from 1963 to 1975. He came to Middlebury after teaching for 12 years in the Department of Classics at Princeton University. He accepted appointment because he believed Middlebury offered an attractive opportunity for advancing liberal education. He was convinced that the way of the liberal arts and liberal sciences is of incalculable value for young men and women -- a way to sensitize their values for living. The College was, he said, "like a coiled spring -- ready to release new energies."
He believed the faculty to be the mainspring of educational action, realizing that the quality of the faculty determines to an overwhelming degree the quality of a college's programs. Thus he helped create new opportunities for faculty leave and research, based not on time served, but on the advancement of faculty competencies. In keeping with these initiatives, new facilities in the arts, music and the sciences became imperatives. President Armstrong led the way with a strong staff to fund and provide for these facilities. Teaching and learning prospered as did compensation for faculty. New resources were sought with convincing commitment in two capital campaigns.
Armstrong's tenure as president coincided with a stirring time in the national environment. The civil rights and feminist movements and the Vietnam War created a turbulent, questioning atmosphere on campuses across the nation, and Middlebury students were lively in their response. Students and faculty grappled together with the emerging issues. Constructive changes occurred in student life, and the College became truly coeducational.
President Armstrong, in 1975, was referred to as the man "who made the College bloom." And at Armstrong's 103rd and last faculty meeting as president, Professor Grant Harnest read a tribute that went in part as follows: "By good management, prudence, and ferocious fund-raising, he led us through a period of expansion when the College grew in size, in endowment, in every facet -- but most of all in quality.
"The budget grew four-fold and stayed in balance. Real curricular reform captured the imagination of the campus. Applications rose in number, and standards remained high. Like the tomato patch he proudly but secretly tends each summer, the College was tended lovingly, and flourished."