A Community Update: Partnership with Nuvance Health, New Common Courses, and Summer Advising
A COVID-19 Update
We are pleased to announce that Bard has signed a contract with Nuvance Health, one of the largest health care providers in the region, for planning and consulting services to establish and implement protocols relating to COVID-19. Through this partnership, Nuvance and Bard are working together to design and implement plans for testing and screening, contact tracing, quarantine practices, and social distancing across the Bard campus. Nuvance operates Northern Dutchess Hospital in nearby Rhinebeck, as well as six other hospitals in the region, with more than 2,600 doctors serving 1.5 million people in the Hudson Valley region and western Connecticut. Their expertise and close proximity to the college make Nuvance an ideal partner for navigating the new academic year.
In addition to planning the logistics and processes of a safe return to the classroom, since before the spring semester ended the faculty have been deeply engaged in preparing new interdisciplinary courses to engage our students with a unique academic experience relevant to the extraordinary global impact of COVID-19. This fall, the College will be offering a suite of multidisciplinary Common Courses available to all incoming first-year as well as interested second-year students. Each of these courses will address a critical global or local contemporary issue from interdisciplinary perspectives and allow for instruction either in person or online.
New Common Courses for 2020-21
- Epidemics, Society, and Culture: What do epidemics tell us about microbes, markets, and ourselves? This course will cover the history, science, and art of protecting the health of populations and the social, political, philosophical, and cultural implications of public health catastrophes.
- The Making of Citizens: Local, National, Global: This course aims to interrogate and analyze the concept of citizenship. Drawing on different disciplinary approaches, faculty will encourage students to think about how citizenship emerges, exists, and differs at the local, national, and global levels, and what forms of participation are necessary to sustain meaningful citizenship for themselves and others.
- Resilience, Survival, Extinction: How do individuals, species, languages, and cultures survive, show resilience, and become extinct? This course introduces students to methods of biological analysis and cultural interpretation that explore the many ways we understand resilience, survival, and extinction.
- Designing the Futures Around Us: This course invites students to approach design as a tool for reflecting on the existing worlds in which we find ourselves and as a means to rethink them and invent new ones. In the spirit of critique and experimentation, students will engage in visual projects, design practices, and study the history of the ways the spaces around us have been constructed and understood.
- Alternate Worlds: In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien responds to accusations that fantasy constitutes an irresponsible “escapist” flight from reality. In this course, we will be considering the relation between imagination and reality by considering counterfactual histories, fantastical literary works, and utopias or dystopias.
Incoming first-year and transfer students are being invited to complete questionnaires before the end of this month and connect in early July with special faculty advisers who will guide them through a newly reimagined summer advising program and registration process. Webinars are also being planned for July to connect rising seniors with faculty from across the college in anticipation of making the most of the Senior Project experience. Students will be contacted directly via email with details.
All students--entering first-years, rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors--will be offered additional opportunities to connect with faculty and alumni/ae in the coming weeks as they look forward to the coming academic year. Incoming first-year students, for instance, have been invited to participate in one of four workshops offered by Language and Thinking and the First-Year Seminar in June and July. Through these workshops, students are meeting their future classmates while discussing the reading, writing, and conversation practices that make these programs such formative experiences for Bard students.
As we have communicated previously, we intend to welcome students to campus for the Language and Thinking Program and fall 2020 semester, while also developing blended and online learning options for those unable to attend in person. With forthcoming guidance from NY State, we are fine-tuning our 2020-21 planning and will continue to provide updates through Response Team messages and on the Bard COVID-19 Response website.
Sincerely,
Bard College COVID-19 Response Team
[email protected]
Coleen Alexander Murphy, Vice President for Administration
Kimberly Alexander, Director, Human Resources
Jonathan Becker, Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Barbara Jean Briskey, Director, Health Services
Erin Cannan, Vice President Student Affairs/Dean for Civic Engagement
Deirdre d'Albertis, Dean of the College
Malia Du Mont, Chief of Staff, President's Office/Vice President for Strategy and Policy
John Gomez, Director, Safety and Security
Emily Mclaughlin, Associate Dean of the College
Jennifer Murray, Dean of International Studies
Bethany Nohlgren, Dean of Students
Kahan Sablo, Dean for Inclusive Excellence
Éric Trudel, Chair, Faculty Senate
For more information, call 845-758-6822.
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