< Back Steven Arms David and Jan Blittersdorf Frank Bryan Mary Cushman David Marvin Raymond J. McNulty Lindsey Melander Miriam E. Nelson Germain Njila David Perez Andrew Siebengartner Bridget Thabault John Todd Mary C. Watzin Jody Williams		ANDREW SIEBENGARTNER Class of 2003, College of Arts and Sciences Andrew Siebengartner noticed a change in the air when he returned to campus for his senior year. “The general topic of conversation was ‘We’ve got a lot more work than usual.’ The atmosphere had become more academic and intense.” Part of this was the newfound seriousness of seniors contemplating life after college, but another cause was UVM’s surging intellectual vitality, a vitality that Siebengartner, who spent the summer studying vernacular Latin in Vatican City, exemplifies. The son of a financial consultant who has lived in Europe and the U.S., Siebengartner “fell in love” with classics at boarding school and was delighted to learn when he looked at colleges that UVM has an excellent department. “Classics teachers are uniquely charismatic,” he says, “because you don’t do it if you don’t love it.” Majoring in Latin with minors in Greek and mathematics, he maintained a perfect 4.0 average and wrote his thesis on how Cicero translated Greek in his philosophical works, essentially Romanizing Greek philosophy. Classics, Siebengartner says, are important to America, “where there is a lack of awareness of history.” And they are fun: “They teach you a puzzle-solving, analytical kind of thinking that is strikingly like mathematics.” Three other things bound Siebengartner to Burlington: a George V. Kidder Scholarship he received after his first year; the golf team, on which he excelled; and the John Dewey Honors Program. An honors course exploring euthanasia that was taught by a political scientist “got me out of the Classics Department and helped me realize there are ways of looking at problems other than your own discipline’s. That’s why I went to a liberal arts college in the first place.” Siebengartner expects to enter a one-year master’s program at the University of London and then to earn his Ph.D. in the U.S., with a view to sharing his love of classical languages with the next generation of students and scholars.