Bard Faculty

Biology Professor Bruce Robertson Creates Model for Studying Evolutionary Traps

Bruce Robertson's research is changing his field, providing a framework for understanding how human environments can lead animals into danger.

Bruce Robertson (far left) finishes up an experiment on evolutionary traps with
a team of students during the Bard Summer Research Institute in June 2013.

Recent News and Notes

• Biologist Bruce Robertson's Research Shows There's More to Biofuel Production Than Yield
  
  

  01-13-2014: Biology faculty member Bruce Robertson has coauthored a paper showing that perennial grasses can effectively be used as biomass crops while preserving species and ecosystem services. While corn leads biomass crops by yield, that high production comes at a high price for the environment. This research is part of Professor Robertson's ongoing collaboration with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at Michigan State University.
  
  Read the article in PNAS.
  
  Learn more about the story from the National Science Foundation.
  
• Biology Professor Bruce Robertson Creates Model for Studying Evolutionary Traps
  
  

  12-09-2013: Bruce Robertson's research is changing his field, providing a framework for understanding how human environments can lead animals into danger. One of his recent papers—"Ecological novelty and the emergence of evolutionary traps"—is currently among the most widely read publications in earth and planetary sciences. Bard College students have been "critically helpful" to Professor Robertson's research, assisting him in conducting experiments in the Bard labs and fieldwork in the surrounding Hudson Valley ecosystem.
  http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=88
  
• Interview: Bard President Leon Botstein on the New Bard Entrance Examination
  

  11-17-2013: President Botstein talks about Bard's fresh look at college admissions, the evolving job market, and the future of higher education in this Huffington Post interview. "Learning, like love, death and eating, are fundamental human activities," says President Botstein. "It's at the core of human existence and its character has a resilience of continuity that is part of what makes up human nature."
  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/leon-botstein_b_4289107.html
  

  Photo by Steve J. Sherman
• Renowned Writer Neil Gaiman to Join Bard College Faculty as Professor in the Arts
  
  

  10-30-2013: Bard College announces the appointment of Neil Gaiman as Professor in the Arts. Gaiman, who joins the College in the spring semester of 2014 as a member of the Theater and Performance faculty, will teach courses across the Division of the Arts and the Division of Languages and Literature. His first course will be an advanced writing workshop exploring the history of the fantastic, approaches to fantasy fiction, and the meaning of fantasy today, taught through the Written Arts Program and the Experimental Humanities concentration.
  
  
  Professor in the Arts Neil Gaiman discusses how he began to teach writing at Bard in the spring of 2013.
  http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2487
  

  Photo by Kimberly Butler
• Bard Faculty Member Judy Pfaff Wins International Sculpture Center's 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award
  

  10-28-2013: Acclaimed sculptor and Bard faculty member Judy Pfaff will receive the International Sculpture Center's 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award. Praised in Sculpture, the magazine of the International Sculpture Center, she is an "artist’s artist, deeply admired, respected, even imitated, by colleagues, youthful peers, and art world insiders." Professor Pfaff shares this honor with sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard, and will receive the award at a gala in New York City in the spring of 2014.
  http://www.sculpture.org/pfaff-uvr/bio-pfaff.shtml
  

  Photo courtesy of Elena Zang Gallery
• President Botstein Conducts Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Tokyo
  
  

  10-15-2013: On Saturday, October 12, Bard president Leon Botstein conducted the Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Tokyo's Metropolitan Art Space as part of the group's 2013 tour of Asia. As guest conductor for the Sinfónica for the third time in less than a year, President Botstein led a very well-received program of Verdi, Mozart, and Shostakovich. President Botstein is the first foreign conductor ever to be invited to conduct the Sinfónica on a tour. The 200 young musicians are part of Venezuela's El Sistema, a youth music education program that incorporates community building and social change. Bard College has formed Take a Stand with the Longy School of Music of Bard College and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in order to support El Sistema for teachers and students in the United States.
  

  Image Courtesy of Fundacion Musical Simon Bolivar
• Bard Biologist Felicia Keesing on What's to Blame for Lyme Disease Prevalence
  
  

  10-15-2013: Deer are often blamed for the spread of Lyme disease, but researchers now point to the increase in white-footed mice and the decline of their natural predator, the red fox. “It is an animal weed,” says Dr. Keesing of the white-footed mice. “Anything that causes a surge in the population of these mice is something to watch.” (Scientific American)
  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=researchers-seek-scapegoat-for-lyme-diseases-startling-prevalence