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Robert
Major: Economics
Hometown: Rego Park, NY
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Choice, flexibility, and rigor are the hallmarks of the Bard education. Students are not expected to accept passively a rigid structure or prescribed plan of study, but rather are required by the way in which the curriculum is structured to create their education by making a series of active choices. Each student shapes the subject matter of his or her education by the exercise of imagination and intellectual engagement.
Besides the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Libraries,
the Bertelsmann Campus Center's indoor and outdoor areas provide some of the
many quiet locations around campus to study or read.
In designing, adjusting, and reforming the curriculum, the faculty consider all of its elements—academic organization (programs and divisions), course offerings, course content, and students' progress through the four years—in light of how these elements interact with one another. The goal is to create a flexible system comprising courses that work together and a planned series of intellectual steps that give coherence, breadth, and depth to the four years of study.
The pillars of the Bard education are:
Students move from the Lower College (the first and second years), which focuses on general education and introduces them to the content and methodology of the academic and artistic areas in which they may specialize, to the Upper College (the third and fourth years), which involves more advanced study of particular subjects and more independent work, all the while maintaining equilibrium between breadth and depth. By the end of the four years the student has become knowledgeable across academic boundaries and is able to think coherently within a disciplined mode of thought.
Structure of the First Year
All first-year students participate in a common curriculum and also take elective courses. The common curriculum consists of the Workshop in Language and Thinking, the First-Year Seminar, and first-year advising.
Workshop in Language and Thinking The Workshop in Language and Thinking is an intensive, three-week writing program that begins in early August. Students read extensively in several genres, work on many different kinds of writing projects, and meet in small groups to discuss their reading and writing. Through these activities, they learn to read and listen more thoughtfully, to articulate ideas, to review their own work critically, and, most basically, to recognize the link between thought and expression. The workshop is also an introduction to college-level instruction and exchange and to the Bard community. Satisfactory completion of the Workshop in Language and Thinking is required for matriculation into the College. Students failing to meet this requirement will be asked to take one year's academic leave.
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First-Year Seminar All first-year students are required to take the two-semester First-Year Seminar, which introduces important intellectual, artistic, and cultural ideas that serve as a strong basis for a liberal arts education as it develops in subsequent years at the College, regardless of the field in which a student decides to specialize. These fundamental ideas are presented in the context of a historic tradition and on as broad a scale as feasible within a framework that emphasizes precise, analytical thinking through class discussions and frequent writing assignments. The heart of the seminar is a series of core texts (which may include a painting or a symphonic work) that focus on a common theme. Whatever the theme, the spirit of the course is exemplified by the observation that in our daily lives we frequently encounter (and ourselves invoke) ideas and concepts drawn from the texts studied in First-Year Seminar; but without a concrete historical and critical context, we risk allowing others to define such ideas and concepts for us.
The current theme of First-Year Seminar is "Revolution and the Limits of Reason." The seminar examines a series of crucial questions, beginning with one framed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1784—What is enlightenment?—as it revisits moments and texts in the history of European thought from a distinctly 21st-century perspective. The yearlong course contains a number of modules, each of which poses discrete critical problems pertaining to the formation of the modern disciplines. Core texts for the fall semester include works by Plato, Ibn Tufayl, Descartes, Galileo, Locke, Diderot, Equiano, Austen, and Defoe. Core texts for the spring semester include works by Kant, Rousseau, Lu Xun, Weber, Marx, Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Nietzsche, and Freud. Guest lectures, panel presentations, and films supplement seminar readings and discussions.
First-Year Advising All first-year students are assigned an academic adviser. The faculty member and the student have a series of meetings at strategic points during each semester when the faculty member can be of optimal assistance: at registration; two weeks into the semester, when course selection is final; shortly before midterm; two weeks after midterm; and just prior to registration for the next semester. The first-year advising system is intended to help students begin the process of selecting a program in which to major, meeting the requirements of that program, preparing for professional study or other activities outside of or after college, and satisfying other interests. Advising may be particularly important as students' intellectual outlooks change and expand throughout the first year at the College.
First-Year Electives A student selects three elective courses in each semester of the first year (the fourth course each semester is the First-Year Seminar). The central purpose of the elective track is to allow students to take courses in fields in which they know they are interested and, perhaps more important, to experiment with unfamiliar areas of study. The electives help them expand their range of interests and knowledge and narrow the choices from which to select a major.
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Program Approach to Concentration
Students at Bard major in a program—a course of study designed by faculty (and sometimes students in conjunction with faculty) to focus on a particular area of knowledge or a particular approach to an area. When a curriculum based on programs replaces a structure based on more traditionally defined departments and fields of concentration, faculty members are forced to rethink traditional boundaries between divisions, disciplines, or departments; to examine the content of their courses in terms of how the courses interact with one another; and to design new courses to satisfy divisional and interdivisional approaches. Within this more flexible framework, students can create individual plans of study that integrate the content and methods of more than one field.
Chinua Achebe, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor Languages and Literature |
Courses are still listed in traditional categories (for example, history in the Division of Social Studies and photography within the Arts), but majors (fields of concentration) are not limited to these categories. Some programs have a divisional home (for example, physics in the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing), and many are interdivisional (for example, American studies and Asian studies).
Each program, then, is not limited to its own faculty and course-list choices, but can take advantage of the offerings of the entire College. For example, the Classical Studies Program requires language courses (Division of Languages and Literature), classical art history courses (the Arts), and civilization courses (which might be a theater course in the Arts, philosophy in Social Studies, literature in Languages and Literature, or history of science in Science, Mathematics, and Computing).
Each program establishes requirements for Moderation, course work, and the Senior Project; each contains courses that are considered required or recommended and are related to its particular focus. A student may begin his or her studies by choosing a trial major in one of the divisional or interdivisional programs, and may later develop a multidisciplinary program of study. However, all students are required to declare a major in a program in order to moderate from the Lower College to the Upper College and become a candidate for the bachelor of arts degree.
Current programs are listed in this catalogue, but new programs will continue to be developed to meet student and faculty interests and needs.
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Moderation
Moderation is undertaken in the second semester of the sophomore year. Through this process students make the transition from the Lower College to the Upper College and establish their major in a program. (Transfer students entering with the equivalent of two full years of credit should, if possible, moderate during the first semester of residence, but in no case later than the second.) Moderation requires students to examine their experience in the Lower College, their goals, and their interests; to evaluate their performance and their commitment to their chosen field; and to plan their work in the Upper College.
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Each program specifies the course work that a student entering the program should be in the process of completing at the time of Moderation. Each student prepares two Moderation papers, the first assessing his or her curriculum, performance, and experience in the first two years and the second identifying his or her goals and proposed study plan for the last two years. The student also submits a sample of work he or she has done in the program, for example, a long paper written for a course. The papers are reviewed by a board of three faculty members, who then meet with the student for a discussion that is likely to range from the content of the papers to the state of the field in general to the student's accomplishments and progress toward his or her goals. The board evaluates the student's past performance, commitment, and preparedness in the field, makes suggestions for the transition from the Lower College to the Upper College, and approves promotion of the student to the Upper College.
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Distribution Requirements
The distribution requirements at Bard are a formal statement of the College's desire to achieve an equilibrium between breadth and depth, between communication across disciplinary boundaries and rigor within a mode of thought. Distribution exposes the student to unfamiliar areas that might have remained unexplored. Investigating a range of academic areas and approaches may help students discover the field on which they want to focus, contribute to their specialized study by putting it in a wider perspective, and expand their intellectual horizons.
In order to introduce the student to a variety of intellectual and artistic experiences, and to foster student encounters with faculty members trained in a broad range of disciplines, each student is required to take one course in each of the nine categories listed below. The categories are based on fundamental subject areas that have been selected to promote intellectual breadth and versatility; they are not meant to provide a complete portrait of the current organization of academic fields of study or to be exclusively identified with a particular program or group of faculty. No more than two requirements may be fulfilled within a single disciplinary program. High school Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses may not be used to satisfy the requirements. Non-native speakers of English are exempted from the Foreign Language, Literature, and Culture requirement.
- Science (A laboratory course in the physical or life sciences)
- Mathematics and Computing (A course in mathematics, computing, statistics or
logic; all courses require passing the Q-test as a prerequisite)
- History (A course focused on historical analysis)
- Social Science (A course in the empirical social sciences other than history)
- Humanities (A course focused on the analysis of primary texts in philosophy, reli-
gion, or social thought)
- Foreign Language, Literature, and Culture (A course focused on language acqui-
sition and/or the analysis of literature or culture via an engagement with a non-
English language)
- Literature in English (A course focused on the literary analysis and explication of
texts in English, either in the original or in translation)
- Practicing Arts (A studio course in the visual or performing arts, or creative writ-
ing)
- Analysis of Arts (A course in the analysis of nonverbal art)
In addition, all students must fulfill a "Rethinking Difference" requirement. Courses with this designation focus on the study of difference in the context of larger social dynamics; they may consider the contexts of globalization, nationalism, and social justice, as well as differences of race, religion, ethnicity, class, gender, and/or sexuality. A single course may simultaneously fulfill both the "Rethinking Difference" requirement and another distribution requirement.
Distribution Requirements for Students Matriculating Prior to Fall 2004
In a system consistent with the curriculum's hallmarks of choice and flexibility, the faculty assign courses to distributional categories not by divisional or program location, but by content, that is, by intellectual focus and methodology. For this reason courses often fall into more than one category. There are seven subject area categories plus the quantitative, or Q, course category. A course may be designated as being in two areas (but not more than two), and it may at the same time be a Q course.
- A: Philosophical, aesthetic, and theoretical study
- B: Literary texts and linguistics
- C: Social and historical study
- D: Foreign language and culture
- E: Science, mathematics, and computer science
- F: Practicing arts
- G: Laboratory science or computationally based study
- Q (quantitative) course: A course designated as having a significant mathematical skills, or quantitative, component; such courses have a prerequisite of passing a mathematical skills evaluation exam
A student is required to take at least one course from each category over four years. A single course cannot satisfy two distribution area requirements; if a course has been designated as being in two areas, the student must select one requirement to be fulfilled with that course. However, a course from any area that is also designated a Q course may satisfy both the area requirement and the Q requirement.
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Senior Project
Viewed by the College as the capstone of the student's education in the liberal arts and sciences, the Senior Project is an original, individual, focused project growing out of the student's cumulative academic experiences. Students have great flexibility in choosing the form of their project. For example, a social studies project might be a research project, a close textual analysis, a report of findings from fieldwork, or a photographic essay; a literature project might be a critical review or an original work; a language project might be a translation, an essay on literature, a historical study, or a sociological analysis; a science project might be a report on original experiments, an analysis of published research findings, or a contribution to theory; an arts project might be a theoretical monograph, an exhibition of original artwork, a film, or a musical or dance composition or performance.
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Preparation for the Senior Project begins in the junior year with consultation with advisers, course work, and work in tutorials and seminars directed toward selecting a topic, choosing the form of the project, becoming competent in the analytical and research methods required by the topic and form, and, of course, studying the subject matter. Students in some programs design a Major Conference during their junior year. The Major Conference is intended to prepare the student for the Senior Project. It may take whatever form is appropriate for the student's field and project; it might be a seminar, tutorial, studio work, or field or laboratory work. The primary emphasis in the first semester is on the standard works, research methods, style, or concerns of the discipline or artistic field into which the Senior Project falls; by the end of this semester the student establishes plans for his or her particular project. The emphasis in the second semester is on work specific to the Senior Project.
One course each semester of the student's final year is devoted to completing the Senior Project. The student submits the completed project to a committee of three professors and participates with them in a Senior Project Review. Written projects are filed in the library's archives; samples of each arts project appear with a statement by the student in Word and Image, an online publication.
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The Charles P. Stevenson
Jr. Libraries include 280,000
volumes and more than four thousand journals available in print or online.
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