About Student-Led Initiatives
The Trustee Leader Scholar Program, one of Bard's longest-running civic engagement programs, is the College’s undergraduate leadership development initiative. TLS serves as an outstanding model for student-inspired civic engagement, and is deeply rooted in the mission and outreach efforts of Bard College.
At the core of the TLS program is an unwavering belief in each student’s ability to take complete ownership of his or her own work. TLS provides opportunities for motivated students to develop their skills through the design and implementation of diverse projects. At any given time, TLS supports 25 to 30 student-led efforts through leadership workshops, guided reflections, program development, and administrative coordination. These student endeavors promote energetic involvement in campus life and cultivate Bard's relationships with local, national, and international communities.
Challenges Addressed by the TLS Program
A hallmark of Bard College and the TLS program is the willingness to take risks and make a difference under difficult circumstances. Long-standing TLS projects include the Red Hook ESL program, which provides free language instruction to non-English speakers in the Hudson Valley, while doing advocacy work with recent immigrants; after-school tutoring programs in Hudson and Rhinebeck; and an expressive arts program in a residential school for children with behavioral and emotional health issues.
Campus Support
TLS has broad support at Bard, reflecting the College’s mission to enhance student experience through civic engagement. The program is a cornerstone of the newly created Center for Civic Engagement, whose outreach efforts are global in scale. TLS works with 50 student leaders and oversees upwards of 300 student volunteers, shepherding them through everything from trainings to international travel. TLS has support from every administrative office on campus, including: transportation, building and grounds, admissions, and financial aid.
FAQs
Click below to view common questions about the TLS program, its participants, and how it works.
MORE >>
National Partnerships
Students join with local, national, and international community partners. See
local and
international partners for more information.
- New Orleans Project
Since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Bard students have exercised a commitment to the needs of New Orleans’ Broadmoor neighborhood. Through close contact with the Broadmoor Improvement Association, students have gutted buildings; biannually surveyed property damage; created geographic information system (GIS) maps of resources and needs; facilitated therapeutic expressive arts workshops for children coping with displacement trauma; worked as teachers’ aides at the recently rehabilitated Andrew H. Wilson Elementary School; and have started and continue to operate a summer enrichment program for Wilson School students. In addition, upwards of 20 Bard graduates have moved to New Orleans after their senior year to continue work they began through this project.
MORE >>
- Vermont Harmony Project
Music is a constructive, nonconfrontational way of bridging cultural divides and creating harmony in communities. The Vermont Harmony Project is working to build cross-cultural understanding through music by sharing, preserving, and celebrating the singing traditions of immigrants new to Vermont. Project volunteers interview immigrants about the role music plays in their lives, and organize singing workshops and performances to promote cultural awareness. Volunteers are also creating an audio archive of the vocal traditions and experiences of first-generation immigrants, which will serve as a resource for generations to come.
MORE >>
Affiliated Programs
The following affiliated programs began as student-led TLS projects:
- Bard Prison Initiative
The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is the most extensive prison education program in the country. The program was initially developed in 1999 by a Bard sophomore interested in tutoring inmates, and at a time when funding for prison education was drastically cut. BPI now annually enrolls more than 250 women and men within the New York State prison system, offering a full-time liberal arts program modeled after the one on Bard’s main campus. BPI has awarded more than 80 associate’s degrees and 10 bachelor’s degrees to incarcerated students, and is an active force for penal reform. TLS students supply the program with volunteer tutors and workshops leaders. Students also oversee a prison community garden, which supplies fresh produce to a local food bank. The same student who began BPI now directs the program, partnering with other liberal arts institutions to reimagine prison education on a national scale.
MORE >>
- New Orleans Project
Bard has sent more students to post-Katrina New Orleans than any small college. In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, 200 Bard students participated in the cleanup. Bard continues to send 50 to 75 students a year to New Orleans to work closely with the Broadmoor neighborhood, run an annual summer camp for over 150 children, serve as teachers' aides in the Wilson Elementary School, and develop sophisticated mapping systems for the Broadmoor Improvement Agency.
Significantly, the TLS student who initiated the Bard New Orleans Project now administers Bard Early College New Orleans. This program provides high school students with rigorous college classes for which they receive Bard College credit, closing the achievement gap between high school and college for many underserved students. By September 2011, 15% to 20% of the 11th and 12th grade students in the New Orleans Recovery School District will be enrolled in Bard early college programs, taking classes at a building provided by the State of Louisiana.
MORE >>
- La Voz
La Voz is an award-winning, Spanish-language newsletter distributed widely in the four counties adjacent to Bard. It began as a student project in TLS, and continues to be written by and distributed by TLS students.
La Voz is a free magazine, read by over 10,000 people a month, which informs the growing immigrant population in the Hudson Valley about health, legal, educational, and cultural issues.
MORE >>
Featured Project
Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative
Every summer the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative runs summer camps in a small Palestinian village called Mas-ha. In 2010 the BPYI students also raised money for and helped build the first children’s library in the West Bank. In 2011 the BPYI received a Davis Peace Project grant and will soon build a playground in Mas-ha. The BPYI sponsors cultural exchange trips, and took the first formal group of Palestinians to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. The BPYI has worked closely with Bard’s home village of Red Hook, New York, and the town recently passed a resolution to become a Sister City with Mas-ha.
MORE >>
Impact
Over the years TLS students have built schools in Africa and homes in Nicaragua; run summer camps; led arts workshops in Myanmar; created widely read publications that affect a growing immigrant population; and promoted tolerance in local high schools. TLS workshops ensure that students consider the community impact of their programs, while challenging them to also explore the personal meaning of their work. Most TLS students leave the College capable of starting their own nonprofit organizations; some have chosen to do so, demonstrating that TLS has an immeasurable real-world impact. The TLS belief in student ownership of extensive projects—for example, hosting 20 students in the West Bank—prepares highly accountable young people.
TLS emphasizes engagement rather than service. Projects are an in-depth exchange, often running for three or four years. Bard’s Human Rights Project, launched after the TLS program, helps TLS students make connections between their engagement projects and academic work. Many Senior Projects—an independent, yearlong, required paper similar to an honors paper—are directly linked to a student’s TLS work. Although not an academic program, TLS enables students to bring theory to practice, and to utilize their studies in the liberal arts to develop real-life solutions to society’s most difficult problems. TLS work creates a clear stepping stone to a career path in a field related to the student's project. The TLS elements of project ownership, College support for taking risks, and encouragement to think and act boldly can serve as replicable and sustainable models for national and international institutions.
- Astor Home for Children Bard Volunteers
The Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck, New York is a home and school for emotionally disturbed, often abused, and otherwise disadvantaged children. The Bard TLS Astor Home project allows Bard students to become mentors and positive role models for children at the Astor Home. Bard students engage the Astor students in a variety of activities—knitting, ping pong, cooking, arts and crafts, reading, writing poetry, and playing chess, to name a few.
MORE >>
- Astor Home for Children Theater Group
The Astor Home Theater Group offers the opportunity for children at the Astor Home to experience the joys of theater. Once a week, Bard students teach a theater class with the goal of putting on a play at the end of each year.
MORE >>
- Bard Math Circle
The Bard Math Circle is a group of Bard students and faculty devoted to promoting an interest in mathematics in elementary, middle, and high school students. Regular Math Circle sessions take place in Kingston and Tivoli.
MORE >>
- Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) Volunteers
BPI is a major College initiative that offers degree-bearing programs in New York State prisons. The program began as a student project, and TLS continues to support BPI in several ways: by assisting professors, working one-on-one with inmates on GED test preparation, and tutoring in other subjects. The Beacon Correctional Facility, a minimum-security women’s prison, offers a creative writing workshop that is led by several Bard students and covers poetry, memoir, and fiction.
MORE >>
- Community Expressive Arts Project
The Community Expressive Arts Project (CEAP) strives to help participants find a personal, creative, and empowering expressive voice through art. The program employs visual arts, movement, theater, music, poetry, and play. CEAP students work locally with emotionally at-risk youth, children with autism, nursing home residents, and boys in a minimum-security juvenile detention center.
MORE >>
- Debate in Schools
Members of the Bard College Debate Team work closely with Red Hook Middle School students on debate principles. The middle school students are working toward the creation of a competitive debate team.
- Germantown College Mentors
The Germantown College Mentoring Program is a comprehensive project aimed to help juniors and seniors at Germantown High School through the college application process. By encouraging students to think ambitiously, we hope to support their aspirations for higher education.
MORE >>
- Germantown Tutoring Program
The high dropout rate in the Germantown Central School District motivated Bard students to design this program. Tutoring in a variety of subjects, Bard students work closely with teachers in third-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classrooms. For Bard students interested in teaching, the program allows them to observe and engage in elementary school classrooms on a weekly basis.
MORE >>
- Grace Smith House
The Grace Smith House is a residential facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, that serves women and children who have suffered domestic abuse. Bard students volunteer at the Grace Smith House, counseling women and providing emotional support.
MORE >>
- Hudson Basketball Clinic
The Hudson Basketball Clinic brings members of the men’s and women’s basketball teams from Bard College to the after-school program at Hudson Middle School. Bard students help with homework, provide tutoring, and run a weekly basketball clinic. The program culminates in a two-week summer basketball intensive held at the College.
MORE >>
- Hudson Project: Students for Students
Through structured discussions about diversity, acceptance, and leadership development, students are empowered to implement programs at Hudson High School that directly confront intolerance at the school and in the local community.
MORE >>
- Hudson Valley Tutoring Project
The Hudson Valley Tutoring Project was created for students in the Hudson, New York school system. This weekly program offers one-on-one tutorials for elementary, middle, and high school students.
MORE >>
- La Voz
La Voz is an award-winning, Spanish-language magazine distributed monthly throughout New York’s Dutchess, Ulster, Orange and Columbia Counties. The publication elevates the discourse and news coverage available to the Spanish-speaking population of the Hudson Valley.
MORE >>
- Life, Learning, and Language: A Young Rhinebeck Youth Program
The Life, Learning, and Language program provides a local support network for immigrant children and their families. Tutors from Bard work individually with elementary school students, offering homework support while acting as mentors and models of high academic goals. The program provides local family advocates and translation services to help maintain steady contact between families and the school district.
MORE >>
- Merry Time Museum Project
The Merry Time Museum Project works closely with Kingston High School ESL students and the Hudson River Maritime Museum to develop a bilingual guide for self-guided museum tours.
- Migrant Labor Project (MLP)
MLP is a student-based organization that works to improve the conditions of migrant laborers and their families in New York State, particularly in the Hudson Valley. MLP focuses on community and campus education, direct engagement, research, and advocacy work.
MORE >>
- Red Hook English as a Second Language Center
The Red Hook ESL Center provides free drop-in English classes for residents of Red Hook and its surrounding communities. Organized and staffed by Bard students and local community volunteers, the center serves a diverse and emerging population in the Hudson Valley.
MORE >>
- The Upbeats: Bard Music Mentoring Program
The Upbeats are dedicated to bringing the joy of music to local children. The program provides lessons to children for whom private instruction would be otherwise unaffordable. Participants are given individual lessons and the opportunity to participate in music theory workshops.
MORE >>
- Wappingers Poetry Project
Bard students work closely with Wappingers Middle School students on the writing and delivery of spoken word performance. Bard students with acting backgrounds teach workshops to faculty members, and work one-on-one with students to refine poetry reading and performance skills.
- Young Naturalists Initiative
Bard students gather youth from the area for environmental education experiences, including nature walks, visits to environmental research centers, gardening, exploring the Hudson River, and more. Bard students are responsible for every aspect of this program.
