Equity and Inclusion Programs at Bard College support scholars from a variety of backgrounds who seek to attain a rigorous liberal arts education. With the guidance of professional staff and peer mentors, scholars can create a path of personal and academic success at Bard. If you'd like to help support our students in their academic pursuits, please consider making a gift.
The philosophy of the Equity and Inclusion Programs remains consistent with the College’s desire for diversity to be part of the learning experience of all students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Our office recognizes that students with identities historically underrepresented in higher education seek to attain a rigorous liberal arts education and often need support to realize this aim. Such students bring to the College a wealth of knowledge and insight not necessarily gained in the classroom. Our scholars benefit from the Bard experience, just as Bard benefits from their presence. The Equity and Inclusion Programs work closely with HEOP, BOP, ECO, and Posse Scholars (from Atlanta) on campus. To learn more about Posse, visit possefoundation.org.
Scholarship Programs
We offer scholarships to high-achieving, low-income scholars from all 50 states. If you think Bard College might be right for you, please call or e-mail us! [email protected]
Bard's Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), which began in 1969, is one of the oldest and most successful programs of its kind in New York State. HEOP is sponsored jointly through a grant from the New York State Education Department and Bard College. Many students aspiring to attend college face a reality of few options and fewer opportunities due to a lack of economic and educational resources. HEOP seeks to confront this reality. In this regard, Bard’s BEOP Office is unsurpassed in its financial commitment to its students. (HEOP and its activities are supported, in whole or in part, by the New York State Education Department.)
In 2008, Bard expanded its commitment to access and to equity in higher education through the creation of the Bard Opportunity Program Scholarship (BOP). Bard Opportunity Program Scholars may come from all 50 states and possess a high level of achievement in academics, leadership, and the potential for success in a competitive academic environment. Often BOP scholars exhibit a nontraditional profile, and do not posses the financial means to afford a college such as Bard. Learn more about BOP
Bard Opportunity Program (BOP) Scholarship
In 2008, Bard expanded its commitment to access and to equity in higher education through the creation of the Bard Opportunity Program Scholarship (BOP). Bard Opportunity Program Scholars may come from all 50 states and possess a high level of achievement in academics, leadership, and the potential for success in a competitive academic environment. Often BOP scholars exhibit a nontraditional profile, and do not posses the financial means to afford a college such as Bard. Learn more about BOP
The BEOP Office commits to providing BOP scholars with the academic and financial support necessary for success at Bard. A full-tuition scholarship, with grants and loans cover the cost of attendance. BOP recipients also receive a small stipend each semester to help purchase books and supplies. The office fulfills this commitment through sustained academic support in the form of a pre-college summer program, workshops, and tutoring, as well as through career development, internships, and alumni/ae networks.
Bard College Posse Scholar Sakinah Bennett ’21. Photo by Shocarra Marcus
The Posse Arts Program for Students from Puerto Rico
The Posse Arts Program recruits, trains, and supports cohorts of students interested in majoring in the creative arts.
Bard College now offers full-tuition Posse Scholarships to students from Puerto Rico in partnership with the Posse Foundation and Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Miranda Family Fund. The first class of Posse Arts Scholars began at Bard in the fall of 2022.
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 for its successful Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP). This grant will provide funding over five years to significantly increase support of HEOP students at Bard. HEOP provides full-tuition scholarships as well as a broad range of services to New York State residents who would otherwise be unable to attend a postsecondary educational institution.
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 campus. Photo by Chris Kendall ’82
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
Two Bard College Graduates Win 2024 Fulbright Awards
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. 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. Jonathan Asiedu ’24, a written arts major, has been selected for an English Teaching Assistantship Fulbright to Spain. His teaching placement will be in the Canary Islands.
Two Bard College Graduates Win 2024 Fulbright Awards
L-R: Fulbright winners Sara Varde de Nieves ’22 and Jonathan Asiedu ’24 (photo by Chris Kayden).
Two Bard College graduates have won 2024–25Fulbright 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
Bard High School Early College to Open New Campus in Brooklyn, New York
In September 2024,Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) will open its newest campus in the Brownsville/East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Like BHSEC’s other campuses, which now total nine campuses across six states, 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.
Bard High School Early College to Open New Campus in Brooklyn, New York
Bard College President Leon Botstein joins Saskia Brutsaert, Daniel Weisberg, Janet Peguero and community leaders and students in last year's ribbon-cutting ceremony for Bard High School Early College Bronx. The new Bard High School Early College Brooklyn opens September 2024. Photo by Danny Santana Photography
In September 2024, Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) will open its newest campus in the Brownsville/East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. A campus of the Bard Early College network, this new high school early college was approved by the New York City Panel for Education Policy in a unanimous vote in February. With the recent opening of BHSEC Bronx in the fall of 2023 and its fall ’24 opening of BHSEC Brooklyn, Bard College has doubled the number of its New York City BHSECs in the past year. Like BHSEC’s other campuses, which now total nine campuses across six states, 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. This model enables high school students to pursue an intellectually inspiring course of study in the liberal arts and science while earning credits towards a two-year head start on higher education at no cost to students or families.
“We are excited to launch a new campus in Brooklyn as we expand Bard College’s partnership with the NYCDOE,” said Dumaine Williams, Vice President and Dean for Early Colleges at Bard. “The new campus will allow the core components of the Bard Early College model, including providing students with rigorous college level coursework, deep immersion in the liberal arts and sciences and close contact with faculty who are active scholars and practitioners in their fields, to be accessible to even more students and families in New York City.”
“Our family was thrilled to learn that Bard High School Early College is establishing a Brooklyn campus,” said prospective BHSEC Brooklyn parent Meghan LeBorious. “We are huge fans of the model and I think that the school would be a great fit for our son, who is very excited to apply.” BHSEC Brooklyn represents a significant expansion of Bard’s work and impact in New York City, expanding its reach from two locations to four locations across the city’s boroughs within just two years. Through the partnership and leadership of New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) Chancellor David Banks, BHSEC Brooklyn has established a formal agreement with NYCDOE to prioritize enrollment for students from some of Brooklyn’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods including Brownsville, Ocean Hill, East New York, East Flatbush, Canarsie, New Lots, Bushwick, and others. Four out of every five seats at the Brooklyn campus will be dedicated to students living in these neighborhoods. Similarly, BHSEC Bronx prioritizes admission to South Bronx residents, and BHSEC Manhattan and Queens reserve a majority of seats for students who qualify for free/reduced price lunch.
The Brooklyn campus will ultimately serve up to 500 students, prioritizing enrollment for local Ocean Hill/Brownsville-area residents. In the 2024–2025 school year, the location for BHSEC Brooklyn is 301 Vermont Street, making the school immediately accessible to young people in Ocean Hill, Brownsville, East New York, and other Brooklyn neighborhoods. For its first year, BHSEC Brooklyn will enroll 125 students entering 9th grade and 25 students entering 11th grade. The admission application for rising 9th or 11th graders opened on March 18 and is available on MySchools. The deadline to upload the Bard assessment is April 19. Learn more and register for the BHSEC Brooklyn Open House on Thursday April 4 here.
The new BHSEC Brooklyn builds on more than 20 years of successful partnership between Bard College and the City of New York. At the request of city leaders, in September 2001 Bard launched its high school early college network by opening the first Bard High School Early College. Since then, the success of the BHSEC Manhattan students, combined with local community demand for outstanding public education options, has led Bard to open additional early college campuses in the Bronx, Queens, Newark, Cleveland, New Orleans, the Hudson Valley, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. The College has awarded more than 4,000 AA degrees to BHSEC students across the Bard Early College network, where over 3,000 students are currently enrolled. More than 95 percent of BHSEC students, the majority of whom are first-generation college students and Pell eligible, graduate from high school with at least one year of tuition-free, transferable college credit from Bard.
Equity and Inclusion Programs, formerly known as BEOP, is currently home to over 120 students. Reconnect with our office by joining our LinkedIn group to learn about news, events, opportunities to connect with our office, and so much more. We would love to know where you are now and what are you doing!