A frequently asked question at college fairs and high school visits is “Why should I consider Bard College?” It is a perfectly reasonable question, and various sections throughout our website provide details that address the question. This summary highlights some of the characteristics that we believe make Bard a college of choice:

 

1. Student-Faculty Interaction

Bard students develop a close and dynamic relationship with faculty.  In part, small classes and a 9:1 student to faculty ratio foster this, but Bardians know that professors are a prime resource, and they use them well.  First year students are assigned a faculty adviser during L&T when they have had a chance to rethink their academic interests.  They meet at strategic points during each semester: before registration, two weeks into the semester, and before and after midterms. Using the adviser as a sounding board is particularly valuable as students’ intellectual curiosities can and do change.  Students work very closely with faculty advising boards as they prepare for Moderation and Senior Project. Seminar classes, tutorials, and independent study projects deepen the intellectual experience.

2. Personalized Programs of Study

Bard refers to a major as a program of study, acknowledging the multidisciplinary nature of the world.  This approach asks students, with the help of the adviser (see above) to draw from the offerings of the entire College to develop an area of concentration.  Courses are listed within a Divisional structure rather than departmental, and programs of study can be interdivisional as well.

3. Exceptional Teaching Faculty

There is no question that the Bard faculty is distinguished and fully committed to teaching and to advising. Of the current 230 faculty members, 91% hold terminal degrees in their fields. They are regular recipients of prizes and awards, including the MacArthur, Nobel Peace Prize, Grammy, Edith Wharton Achievement, Erasmus, Prix Medicis Etranger, Booker International, Guggenheim, Fulbright, Obie and Pen/Nora Magid to name a few. Each year renowned scholars are invited as visiting faculty to offer courses of special interest to the Bard community.  Faculty members teach classes at all levels; there are no classes taught by graduate assistants.

4. Campus Environment

A good college experience locates the life of the individual within the campus community, and Bard’s location, on the east bank of the Hudson River, under two hours north of New York, affords an idyllic setting for learning, free from the daily distractions of urban life that can intrude on concentration, study habits, access to resources, and opportunities to interact with classmates and faculty. Bard has a significant presence in New York with two public high school early colleges (BHSEC I & II), a Ph.D. and an M.A. program at BGC and important work-study internship programs in international affairs at BGIA and through the Rockefeller semester.  Finally, President Botstein conducts and is the musical director of the American Symphony Orchestra, based at Lincoln Center.  In many ways, Bard is the best of both worlds with urban access and country living.

5. Facilities

Bard has all the requisite basics: dormitories, dining commons, classrooms, laboratories, studios, athletic fields, and student activities spaces. It also is an architectural destination for those interested in styles ranging from Georgian to contemporary. The most recent additions are the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation, a 10,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility; the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts a 110,000-square-foot facility with a 900-seat concert hall, a 200 seat black box, and teaching studios for theater and dance; the Hessel Museum of Art; and the Center for Film, Electronic Arts, and Music at the Milton and Sally Avery Center for the Arts. Others include the Levy Economics Institute; the Bertelsmann Campus Center; and the Stevenson Library.

6. Student Life/Culture

Bard is a self-contained 600-acre village in the hamlet of Annandale-on-Hudson.   All Bardians are members of the student government; there is no elected representation. There is an elected Central Committee.  The government annually allocates almost a quarter of a million dollars to fund 80-100 clubs. Many clubs, like the newspapers and radio station and the various affiliation groups like the International Student Organization or Latin American Student Organization, have long histories.  And every year students form new clubs according to interest. With a multiethnic and multicultural population Bard engenders a mini-United Nations atmosphere of cultural, social, and political events.  The fifty eclectic residence halls range in size from six to one hundred, with a typical size being twenty-five.  The flow between academic and residential life is almost seamless.  Students can, and have in the past, initiated new areas of study such as Film, Africana and Gender studies, and the most recent New Orleans Urban Studies program.  Innovative programs such as the Bard Prison Initiative or New Orleans Project both started as Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) projects and are now integral to the College.  The campus calendar overflows with events, the hard part is choosing. And New York City is just a train ride away. 

7. Academic Resources

The resources of the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library and satellite libraries in the Levy Economics Institute, Center for Curatorial Studies, and Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts include 400,00 volumes and more than 14,000 journals available in print or online. The library has more than 50 computer stations available for consulting online databases, newspapers, texts, encyclopedias, and dictionaries.

The F.W. Olin Language Center is the hub of foreign-language learning – the College offers fourteen. Its “smart” seminar space consists of 20 multimedia computer stations that provide access to multilingual word processing and many foreign language audio, video and software programs via the Sony Virtuoso/Soloist learning system and an integrated audio-video media server. All language classrooms are linked to this network.

Hundreds of public-area computers are distributed throughout the campus. Wireless networking zones are located throughout: residence halls, library, campus center, performing arts center, and the science and computation center. These machines and related information technology services are managed from the central computing facility Henderson where a computing lab is open 24/seven.   

8. Global Study

Over their time at Bard, about 50% of the students participate in global or international programs.  And when they do, they are encouraged to seek out programs in foreign universities, as opposed to those attended primarily by Americans. Bard offers integrated programs at universities in Germany, Hungary, Russia, and South Africa. Bard also has intensive language programs in China, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Morocco and Russia.

9. Satellite Programs, Internships, and New Programs

As an intentionally small residential college of the liberal art and sciences, Bard provides a campus-based community designed to encourage students to realize the power of their voices and their role as citizens in a democracy where each member contributes to the quality of campus life by real engagement with others who hold different and similar values and beliefs. Learning at Bard does not take place in a rigidly proscribed curriculum; rather it is a dynamic process that is advanced through coursework, discussion and interaction with faculty and classmates engaged in various programs of study, and with an evolving awareness of world events. Bard has a robust record of being particularly able and flexible, perhaps unique, in its ability to launch very special programs to respond to student and faculty interests and changing current events. Following are a few examples:

In 2000, Bard College and The Rockefeller University in New York City established a collaborative program in science education. Rockefeller faculty offer courses to Bard students on subjects at the intersection of biology and medicine and reserve places for them in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, which allows college students to work in Rockefeller research laboratories. Bard faculty may obtain adjunct status at Rockefeller, which enables them to participate in research projects in the university’s laboratories.

In 2001, Bard launched the Program in Globalization and International Affairs (BGIA) in New York City.  Here students engage in the study and practice of human rights, international law, political economy, global public health, ethics, and writing on international affairs. BGIA merges advanced coursework in international affairs with substantive professional experiences in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, providing a new generation of young leaders insight into careers while still in college.  Through the internship and coursework, the program ensures a deep understanding of not only international relations theory, but also its practical applications.  All classrooms and living facilities are in New York City.

Since 2001 the Human Rights Project, based from campus, has supported many student internships at organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the International Center for Transitional Justice, Memorial (Kiev), the Center for Law and Justice (Albany), Cambodia Daily, the Committee for Rehabilitation Aid to Afghanistan (Peshawar), the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Solidarity Movement (West Bank), Public Interest Law Initiative (Budapest), and Zena Zenama (Women to Women) in Sarajevo.

In 2002 Bard inaugurated the first full major in human rights at a U.S. college. The Human Rights Program offers a series of core and specialized courses in human rights across the undergraduate curriculum. In addition, a number of existing courses have been reshaped to emphasize questions of human rights. The College also created a new faculty chair, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism.

In 2005, students crafted The New Orleans Initiative in response to the storms and the long aftermath faced by the city of New Orleans. The Initiative seeks to explore and develop the many capacities of the liberal arts institution for collaborative engagement with the neighborhood revitalization process in New Orleans. Towards this end, students have taken on projects ranging from rehabilitating homes, schools, and clinics to creating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps of available resources in relation to spatial concentrations of specific needs. These projects are ongoing and are the products of long-term commitments to several community-based groups. In all of these projects, students are working alongside local neighborhood associations and community-level groups to design their projects and collaboratively oversee their sustainable implementation. While engaging uneven geographies of class, race, and political agency in this neighborhood-level work, students are given opportunities to take on similar questions in rigorous classroom settings at Bard: their work represents a unique and vital intersection between their lives as students and citizens.  The Initiative established a semester in New Orleans offering rigorous courses in urban planning, legal studies, and human rights.  Students serve as interns in local community-based organizations and neighborhood associations. Informed in the classroom, their work as interns and research assistants is a powerful tool for communities seeking to analyze and address their needs.

In 2006, Bard College and the United States Military Academy at West Point launched the West Point-Bard Exchange. WPBE is designed to provide opportunities for students and faculty from Bard and West Point to exchange ideas in the classroom, during public presentations and in informal settings. Bard and West Point students take joint seminars each semester on international relations theory. The classes meet jointly several times during term, with Bard students visiting West Point and cadets traveling to Annandale-on-Hudson.  In May, six Bard seniors attend West Point’s Project’s Day, and present the findings of their senior theses to West Point faculty and cadets.

In 2007 The Bard-Rockefeller Semester in Science began as a companion program to BGIA, it centers on competitive internships in Rockefeller research laboratories.

10. Financial Aid and Scholarships

Sixty-five percent of Bardians receive financial aid, including students from abroad. Scholarships and awards are need-based and competitive and include the following:  Distinguished Scientist Scholars Program (DSS)—full-tuition scholarships for four continuous years of study to outstanding high school seniors bound for a major in biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, or mathematics; Conservatory of Music Distinguished Musician-Scholar Program—full tuition scholarships for five continuous years of study to high school seniors of outstanding achievement and talent in both music and academic subjects; Excellence and Equal Cost Program(EEC)—public high school seniors whose cumulative grade point averages are ranked among the top 10 in the graduating class are considered for an award that allows them to attend Bard for what it would cost to attend an appropriate four-year public college or university in their home state; Levy Economics Institute Scholarships—full-tuition scholarships to outstanding high school seniors committed to majoring in economics; New Generations Scholarships—full-need scholarships to approximately 20 students each year who demonstrate intellectual curiosity and academic excellence and whose parents were born abroad and came to the United States within the past 20 years. Students must be permanent residents or US citizens to receive this scholarship.