Programs and Scholarships

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Bard High School Early College Brooklyn Opens with Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) celebrated the opening of its new Brooklyn campus with a ribbon cutting ceremony at 301 Vermont Street in the Brownsville/East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Both Bard President Leon Botstein and Bard Vice President and Dean of Early Colleges Dumaine Williams were in attendance. BHSEC Brooklyn is Bard’s fourth early college campus in partnership with New York City Public Schools and its 10th early college campus nationwide. Like BHSEC’s other campuses, BHSEC Brooklyn is a public high school where students can earn up to an associate’s degree from Bard College, with 60 transferable college credits, alongside their New York State Regents diploma, entirely tuition free by the end of 12th grade. BHSEC Brooklyn provides students a strong foundation in the liberal arts and sciences and will ultimately serve up to 500 students, with 90% of seats committed to students from across Brooklyn. Importantly, 40% of seats are specifically for families living in East New York and Brownsville.

Post Date: 09-02-2024

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Bard College Receives Nearly $2.8 Million Grant from New York State Department of Education for Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program

Bard College has been awarded a $2,790,494 grant from the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) for its Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP). This grant will provide funding over five years (2024–2029) to significantly increase support of HEOP students at Bard. Bard College is one of the first and longest-running HEOP schools in New York, having run a program since 1969. HEOP provides full-tuition scholarships as well as a broad range of services to New York State residents who, because of educational and economic circumstances, would otherwise be unable to attend a postsecondary educational institution. These awards are highly competitive.

This grant will enable Bard to increase enrollment in its successful Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program from 36 scholars to 53. Bard will increase full-time HEOP staff to support this expansion. The College will continue its recent focus on recruiting students living in the Hudson Valley and Capital Region who come from under-resourced academic backgrounds and meet the financial criteria for economic disadvantage set by NYSED. 

During the five-year grant cycle, Bard will be able to provide more direct support to students by increasing the amount provided for tuition assistance, medical insurance, textbook allowance, and personal expenses. Bard will also offer additional benefits to its HEOP students including loan support for graduating seniors, loan buybacks for returning scholars, and support for travel to off-campus academic programs or conferences.

Bard anticipates that this increase in support, coupled with Bard’s multi-faceted network of academic and socio-emotional support programs (including the launch of a new course for first-generation students titled “Exploring the Hidden Curriculum” cotaught by Dean of Inclusive Excellence Claudette Aldebot and First Year Dean Cylon George), HEOP scholars will continue to thrive in the College’s academically challenging liberal arts environment, thereby buttressing Bard’s excellent HEOP scholar retention rate of over 95 percent and five-year graduation rate of 92 percent.

Director of Bard’s Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) Jessica Gonzales Purcell says: “Opportunity programs like HEOP are an integral component of building the kind of pathway to higher education that is important to me and, more broadly, to Bard. My commitment is to create as many opportunities as possible for young people to experience the kind of educational journey that Bard provides. Higher education changes lives, and having traditionally underserved students on college campuses makes the campus a better place for all. Here at OEI, students have access to multiple layers of support and a community of peers. HEOP has been at Bard since the beginning, and we are incredibly thankful to the New York State Education Department and Office of Opportunity Programs for allowing us to build a bigger and more vibrant program than we have ever had. We’re just so excited to be able to welcome so many new individuals into our community.”

Post Date: 05-15-2024

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Two Bard College Graduates Win 2024 Fulbright Awards

Two Bard College graduates have won 2024–25 Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects and English teaching assistantships. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. The Fulbright program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Sara Varde de Nieves ’22, who was a joint major in film and electronic arts and in human rights at Bard, has been selected for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Chile for the 2024–25 academic year. Their project, “Regresando al Hogar/Returning Home,” aims to preserve the legacy of Villa San Luis, a large-scale public housing complex built in Las Condes, Santiago, Chile from 1971 to 1972. Through a multi-format documentary comprising interviews with former residents and project planners, archival documents, and footage of the current buildings, Varde de Nieves seeks to capture the collective memory of Villa San Luis’s original residents and planners. In executing this project, Varde de Nieves aims to expand the label of “heritage conservation” to include buildings and infrastructure that are not considered culturally significant as classic historical monuments and to make connections among narrative, memory, ephemera, and the historical archive. “I’m very excited to conduct in-person research on Villa San Luis, an innovative project that strove for class integration and high-quality construction. During my time abroad, I hope to foster long-lasting relationships and get acquainted with Chile's fascinating topography,” says Varde de Nieves.

While at Bard, Varde de Nieves worked as an English language tutor in Red Hook as well as at La Voz, the Hudson Valley Spanish language magazine. Their Senior Project, “Re-igniting the Clit Club,” a documentary about a queer party in the Meatpacking district during the 1990s, won multiple awards at Bard.

Jonathan Asiedu ’24, a written arts major, has been selected for an English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) Fulbright to Spain. His teaching placement will be in the Canary Islands. While in Spain, Asiedu plans to hold weekly poetry workshops in local cultural centers, communities, and schools. He hopes to invite the community to bring in their work or poems that speak to them, to share poets and writers and the ways they speak to us. “Studying poetry, learning pedagogical practices to inform my future as an educator, and mentorship opportunities throughout my college career have shaped both my perception of education and the work that needs to be done to improve students’ experiences within the educational system,” he says.

At Bard, Asiedu serves as a lead peer counselor through Residence Life, an Equity and Inclusion Mentor with the Office of Equity and Inclusion, admission tour guide, and works as a campus photographer. Moreover, this past year, he gained TESOL certification and has served as an English language tutor, as well as a writing tutor at the Eastern Correctional Facility through the Bard Prison Initiative. Asiedu, who is from the South Bronx, decided early on that he wanted to speak Spanish and has taken the Spanish Language Intensive at Bard, which includes four weeks of study in Oaxaca, Mexico. After the completion of his Fulbright ETA, he plans to pursue a master degree in education with a specialization in literature from Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching program.

Three Bard students have also been named alternates for Fulbright Awards. Bard Conservatory student Nita Vemuri ’24, who is majoring in piano performance and economics, is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Hungary. Film and electronic arts graduate Elizabeth Sullivan ’23 is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Germany. Mathematics major Skye Rothstein ’24 is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Germany.

Fulbright is a program of the US Department of State, with funding provided by the US Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.

Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.

Post Date: 05-07-2024