Dear Families,

I hope this December edition of the Annandale Insider finds you well and enjoying the holiday season!

Congratulations to all of the Bard families who have a student graduating in December! The Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs has organized a celebration for students who are handing in senior projects this month. The event will be held in the Achebe Space in the Stevenson Library from 5:30-7pm on December 9, 2024.

Registration is now open for the BardWorks 2025 Annandale x NYC conference, taking place from January 21 to 24, 2025. The deadline to register is December 8, 2024. BardWorks is a collaborative initiative between the Career Development Office (CDO) and the Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs (ODAA) designed to support Bard students in their career exploration and preparation after graduation. BardWorks offers skill-building workshops, professional panels, and alumni/ae networking sessions. You can learn more about the program by clicking here.

Also from the CDO, applications for the annual Winter '25 LAUNCH recruiting consortium will be open to juniors and seniors from December 9, 2024 through January 2, 2025. This program invites students to apply for consideration for first-round interviews for post-grad employment and paid summer internship experiences. Participating employers represent a variety of fields including community engagement, science research, business, hospitality, education, and legal. For more information, students should contact Maureen Aurigemma in the CDO at [email protected].

As the year comes to a close, campus is lively with concerts, recitals, athletic events and exhibitions, like the Bard International Student Organization Cultural Show pictured above, which filled Sosnoff Theater in the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts with music, dancing, and other performances from around the world on Sunday, November 24, 2024. If you find yourself in Annandale, be sure to check out the events calendar, as there is so much to see and do. 

On behalf of all of us at Bard, I want to thank you for your generosity this December. I am happy to report that a total of $58,079 was raised on GivingTuesday to support the Bard College Fund. We are grateful to everyone who has included Bard in their giving plans this year - there are still 26 days left to make a gift before the new calendar year begins so please consider making a donation to the Bard College Fund this month!
 
Best Wishes,

Mackie Siebens ’12
Assistant Director of Development for Family Programs
[email protected] | 845-758-7316

P.S. Check out the "Meet Our Donors" page with testimonials from Bard alumni/ae and parents! If you would like to write your own, we’d love to hear from you. Please complete this form to submit your testimonial. 

First US Survey of Artist Stan Douglas in Over Two Decades Opens June 2025 at the Center for Curatorial Studies’ Hessel Museum of Art

North American Premiere of a New Video Work Critically Re-envisioning D.W. Griffith’s Landmark Film “The Birth of a Nation”

The acclaimed artist Stan Douglas will be the subject of a major survey organized by the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College’s (CCS Bard) Hessel Museum of Art, marking the first US survey of his practice in over 20 years. On view June 21 to November 30, 2025, Stan Douglas: Ghostlight will be the North American premiere of an immersive, multi-channel video installation that revisits D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” framed by a selection of nearly 40 works from the 1990s to the present that explore topics ranging from settler colonialism in the Americas, to the legacies of transatlantic slavery, to modern movements for liberation in Africa and Europe. Douglas’ deeply researched and longtime commitment to these histories provide an expansive view of the present, one that sheds light on moments of breakdown and chaos that attend societies in upheaval.

Ronan Farrow ’04 Interviewed in NPR and the Guardian

Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist and Bard alumnus Ronan Farrow ’04 spoke to NPR and the Guardian about his new HBO documentary, Surveilled, in which he delves into the shadowy world of surveillance and the private companies that sell powerful commercial spyware technology. “In the film, I am motivated by having come face-to-face with surveillance and understanding how intrusive that is, how devastating it can be personally and invasive,” Farrow told NPR. “But also, more consequentially, how much it shrinks the space for the free flow of information and the expression of dissent.”

Beekeeper Titus Ogilvie-Laing ’13 Featured in the New York Times

Bard alumnus Titus Ogilvie-Laing ’13, a beekeeper who maintains hives on New York City rooftops, was featured in the New York Times. “At the Empire State Building, on a roof of Madison Square Garden and on a terrace adjacent to the Chrysler Building, thousands of veritable worker bees have been turning nectar into honey,” writes Patrick McGeehan for the Times. On a recent warm day as he tended to hives belonging to the Danish Consulate, Ogilvie-Laing “blew smoke from silver canisters to calm the bees before opening the hives.”

Stevenson Library Converts to Geothermal Heating and Cooling

Bard celebrates the completion of a major project to convert the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library’s outdated fossil fuel–fired heating system to a state-of-the-art geothermal heating and cooling system. A leader and early adopter of geothermal technologies, Bard College has ground source heat exchange systems on campus dating to the 1980s. Almost 50% of buildings on the main campus utilize geothermal technology for heating and cooling, and it is the default for all new construction projects on campus.

Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking and Master of Arts in Teaching Program Receive Library of Congress Grant Award

The Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking (IWT) and Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching Program (MAT) have been awarded their fourth grant, in the amount of  $74,911, to support their collaborative one-year project “Mapping Boundaries: Writing to Read Primary Sources in Middle School Classrooms,” imbedding digitized Library of Congress primary sources into their programming for teachers and students.