About the Program

Program Work and Affiliations

The program was inaugurated over 30 years ago as the Community, Regional, and Environmental Studies program. Today, it ranks among the largest Bard programs in terms of faculty, students, financial resources, and affiliations. A generous grant from the Mellon Foundation supports curricular development as well as EUS projects designed and executed by students and faculty.

Historians consider the Hudson Valley to be the cradle of the modern environmental movement. The Hudson River, its estuaries and wetlands, the Catskill Mountains, the valley communities, and other historical and natural resources provide a laboratory for empirical research in environmental studies. Bard is home to Hudsonia and the Bard College Field Station. The EUS program has links to the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program in New York and to a rich variety of internship and junior-year abroad programs. Students can also draw on the resources of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Cary Arboretum, the Institute for Ecosystem Studies, the laboratories of The Rockefeller University, as well as many other local institutional partners.

EUS majors with a strong foundation in science and/or economics may apply to the 3+2 program with the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, earning both the BA and the Masters degree in five years. EUS may also be undertaken as a concentration (20 credits) alongside a disciplinary major.

See EUS requirements, courses, 4-year study plans, and senior projects.