Dear Bardian,

Alumni/ae Reunion Weekend is done and dusted for another year. Thank you to all the alumni/ae who made it back to Annandale. (Hi 1989'ers, nice to see you!) Check out the photos here.

Welcome Class of 2024 to your first Triangle, the monthly Bard Alumni/ae Newsletter. Alumni/ae from 1944 to 2023 welcome you to the Bardian and Proud family. Follow @bardalumni on social, and stay in touch.

Commencement this year saw a cohort students crossing the stage to become alumni/ae, which included 15 displaced students from Afghanistan, 41 from Bard Prison Initiative, 7 from the Posse program in Atlanta and 68 students who were the first generation in their family to graduate from college. There were also a record breaking 234 students receiving graduate degrees, including three getting a Bard PhD! You can read Leon's charge to the graduates here. 

As always, Bard student senior projects never cease to amaze me—"Slime Mold The New Civil Engineer?", "My Gangster Grandma" and "What Did I Do That For? Toxic Masculinity, Incarceration and the Arts." (For a full list of all Bard graduates, their projects, the honorary degree and Bard College Awards recipients, you can see the iconic red book for yourself here.)

Some of the highlights for me, included honoring such a wide variety of alumni/ae at the Bard College Awards; meet Carla Sayers Tabourne '69 at the dedication of the Carla Sayers Tabourne '69 Reading Room with its amazing collection of books focusing on the global Black experience; catching up with Cynthia Dantzic '54, who came back to share her memories through slides of Bard in the 1950s and her talk about her work as an author. The Tear the Roof Off dance party at Manor, hosted by the Class of 1994, was hot, loud and magical. 

As I zoomed around on my 'JANE' golf cart over Reunion Weekend, caught up with old friends, classmates and fellow alumni/ae, I saw the smiles, the camaraderie, the joy of shared experience all played out on a sea of blankets at Blithewood, children playing in the shadow of Tewksbury and late-night dancing within the paneled walls of Manor. There's no friendship like a Bard friendship.

This is my last newsletter of the 2024 fiscal year (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024). Thank you to everyone who has already supported Bard—every gift is appreciated. 

So, as we close this year please don't forget to join me and add your name to our list of supporters. Gifts of all sizes are meaningful—it really is participation that matters. Please make your gift by midnight Sunday, June 30th.

I am wishing you all a happy and healthy summer, and if your travels bring you to the HV, please stop by the Anne Cox Chambers Alumni/ae Center to say hello or join us at The Twentieth Anniversary of La Voz Magazine on Saturday, June 22nd at the Spiegeltent.

Be seeing you,

Jane

P.S. LAST CALL FOR CLASS NOTES FOR THE NEXT EDITION OF THE BARDIAN! Please email [email protected] before Monday, June 17th with your news! 

P.P.S. Save the Date for Bard Alumni/ae Reunion Weekend: May 23-25, 2025! 0s and 5s you are up! (and 2025-2026 is Leon's 50th year here as President so it's going to be a BIG celebration!)

Bard College Names Dariel Vasquez ’17 Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Institutional Initiatives

Bard College is pleased to announce that Dariel Vasquez ’17 has been appointed Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Institutional Initiatives, a newly created position at Bard. In this role at the College, Vasquez will help to usher in a new wave of transformational change and collaboration with other collegiate institutions across the country. While his main focus will remain on leading Brothers@, he will also expand the College’s reach through partnerships and initiatives, including facilitating a center between Bard College and Howard University. 

Led by Co-Artistic Director Bard Alumna Morgan Green ’12, Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater Wins 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award

The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is led by three co-artistic directors including Bard Theater and Performance alumna Morgan Green ’12, will receive the 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award. This honor recognizes a regional theater company that has displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theater nationally and is accompanied by a grant of $25,000.

The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College Welcomes Five Writers for Its 2024 Summer Residency Program

The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College, now in its third year, welcomes its cohort of five writers, Kay Bell, Theresa Lin, Vivian Rivas, Gwendolyn Shaw, and Dessie Zagorcheva. The Hurston Fellows are in residence for three weeks from June 2–22. Founded and directed by Visiting Associate Professor of Literature and American Studies Donna Ford Grover, the Hurston Fellowship enables writers from all disciplines who have not had the opportunity to develop their scholarship, and supports writers who are currently employed as adjuncts or visiting professors with terminal degrees and who have not yet published a book-length work.

Bard College Professors Mona Simpson and Adam Shatz Awarded 2024–25 Berlin Prize

Bard College is pleased to announce that Writer in Residence Mona Simpson and Visiting Professor of the Humanities Adam Shatz have each been awarded the 2024–25 Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, Germany. The 2024–25 class of Berlin Prize fellows includes 24 US-based scholars, writers, composers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields, from the humanities and social sciences to journalism, public policy, fiction, the visual arts, and music composition.

Bard Professor Tanya Marcuse Receives American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship for 2024–25

Tanya Marcuse, associate professor of photography at Bard College, has received an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship for 2024–25. The fellowship will support her creative arts project Tree of Yggdrasil: Photographing Fragility and Growth, which will focus on Iceland’s vividly contrasting landscapes of treeless expanses and small forest enclaves.