Who We Are
In addition to the MAT faculty, you will develop a strong bond with your partner school mentor teachers as well as your Bard MAT field supervisor.
Bard MAT Faculty and Staff 2021 - 2023
Molly Albrecht, Education Faculty
(B.A. History, Fordham at Marymount; MAT, SUNY New Paltz.; Certification in Social Justice in Educational Leadership, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) is a faculty member in education and a NYS school administrator. In the MAT at Bard, she teaches a course, Problems of Practice, serving as a forum for refining challenges of lesson planning, instruction, assessment, and classroom management. Molly also serves as the Managing Editor for Voices in the Classroom, the Bard MAT blog where she highlights both MAT alumni/ae and educators exploring their Why in teaching and what sustains their passion as educators. Molly’s interests are equity, creating culturally responsive classrooms and restorative justice practices. She has recently started a non-profit retreat center in the capital region dedicated to providing workshops in restoration and resilience for urban educators.
Email: [email protected]
Jaime Osterman Alves, Associate Professor of Literature, Bard Master of Arts in Teaching Program, and Faculty Associate, Institute for Writing & Thinking
Jaime Alves is Associate Professor of Literature in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard College. She also teaches a variety of courses in the undergraduate college, and develops programming to support new- and mentor teachers in secondary schools, through international partnerships with OSUN network faculty, and locally throughout the Hudson Valley. Areas of particular research interest include nineteenth-century literary representations of schoolgirls and female education; domesticity and gender studies; science, medicine and disability studies; newspapers/periodicals and archival research; museums as purveyors of knowledge and sites of informal learning. Among other publications, Jaime's scholarship has been featured in Legacy and American Culture, Canons, and the Case of Elizabeth Stoddard; she is the author of Fictions of Female Education in the Nineteenth Century (Routledge 2009; paperback 2013).
E-Mail: [email protected]
Timand Bates, Associate Dean of Students (undergraduate); Education Faculty MAT
B.A., Bard College, M.A. Teaching of English, Carrol and Milton Petrie Scholar, Teachers College, Columbia University. Timand taught "Methods for Teaching Reading" at California State University, East Bay from 2004-2006. In 2007, Timand founded a tutoring service, which designed and implemented specific, measurable, 1-on-1 learning interventions, to improve basic literacy skills for students, as contracted by Bay Area school districts and by private families. From 2008-2014, Timand taught ELA and Filmmaking at The Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria, an all-girls public school in Queens, NY. Timand's film students collaborated on a cross-boundary partnership with Tribeca Film Institute and students incarcerated on Riker’s Island. Final films showcased as the main event in the Tribeca Youth Film Festival 2014. At The Young Women's Leadership School, Timand served also as Chair of the English Department from 2012-2014. Timand has presented his work on student assessment at the NYC Writing Project Conference and at the National Conference for Teachers of English. Timand is currently Associate Dean of Students for Bard's undergraduate program. Timand also teaches for the Bard Prison Initiative and the Institute of Education at American University of Central Asia. Timand's interests are progressive practices in student assessment, innovative curriculum design, and inquiry-based learning.
Elizabeth Charest, Program Assistant, Bard MAT and Al-Quds Bard College
Elizabeth is the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program assistant, working with the MAT faculty to provide general administrative support to the program. In addition, Elizabeth is the Al-Quds Bard program assistant working with the program associate and manager in the day-to-day implementation of all joint programs. Prior to joining the Bard community, Elizabeth obtained her B.A in English from St John's University. Elizabeth is passionate about connecting people through the arts and education where individuals feel seen, heard and inspired to create. When not in the office, Elizabeth loves to express her creativity through painting and writing.
[email protected]
Derek Lance Furr, Dean of Teacher Education; Bard MAT Program Director; Literature Faculty
B.A., Wake Forest University; M.Ed., University of Virginia; M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia) is Dean of Teacher Education and a literature professor in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard College. He also teaches for the Bard Prison Initiative and the Institute for Writing and Thinking. He is the author of three books--Recorded Poetry and Poetic Reception from Edna Millay to the Circle of Robert Lowell (Palgrave 2010), Suite For Three Voices (Fomite 2012), and Semitones (2015)--and has recent work in Jacket2, Twentieth Century Literature, and Raritan. Before coming to Bard, he was an English Language Arts teacher and reading specialist in the Charlottesville City Schools.
Phone: 845-758-7136E-mail: [email protected]
Lauren Collet-Gildard, Education
B.A., SUNY New Paltz; MAT, Bard College; Ph.D. candidate, University at Albany. Lauren is a social studies educator and doctoral candidate in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice at the University at Albany. Her interests include critical pedagogy and social justice in education, and her current research focuses on media literacy and discussions of controversial issues in secondary classrooms.
Peter Hatala, MAT ’10, History
M.A.T., Bard College; M.A.(completed all Ph.D. coursework and qualifying exams) University at Albany; B.A., University of Massachusetts. Peter is Director of Curriculum at the Emma Willard School in Troy, NY and teaches European history, African history, and American Studies. He previously taught and trained teachers at Tech Valley High School in Albany, NY, and served as a Learning Specialist at Berkshire School in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He has presented his work on historical thinking and project based learning at the National Council for the Social Studies annual conference and the New Tech Network annual conference. Primary teaching interests include: historical thinking at the secondary level; inquiry and project based learning; writing and thinking methods of the Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking; and technology as a tool for inquiry rather than content delivery.
[email protected]
Brooke Jude, Associate Professor of Biology, Bard College
Erica Kaufman, Director, Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College
B.A., Douglass College, Rutgers University, M.F.A, New School University, dissertation in Composition and Rhetoric at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Kaufman is the Director of the Institute for Writing & Thinking and Assistant Professor of Education. She has taught in the English Department at Baruch College, worked with the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute, and served as a Curriculum Specialist for the Holocaust Educators Network. She has been a visiting writer and visiting professor at Naropa University and Parsons the New School for Design. Her publications include the full-length poetry collections INSTANT CLASSIC (Roof Books 2013) and censory impulse (Factory School 2009). Kaufman is the co-editor of Adrienne Rich: Teaching at CUNY, 1968-1974 (Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, 2014) and of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards (Venn Diagram, 2009). Prose and critical work can be found in: Jacket2, Open Space/SFMOMA and in The Color of Vowels: New York School Collaborations (ed. Mark Silverberg, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). Additional critical work is forthcoming in the MLA Guide to Teaching Gertrude Stein (eds. L. Esdale and D. Mix) and Reading Experimental Writing (ed. Georgina Colby). Kaufman also co-coordinates the Teacher Resource Center for the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry MOOC in collaboration with the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. Current research interests include: Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines; the interstices between contemporary poetics and Composition & Rhetoric; multiliteracies; feminism and the epic poem; and intergenerational Holocaust Studies.
E-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: 845.758.7383
Deborah Kravchuk, STEM Education
B.S. Physical Oceanography and Dynamic Meteorology, SUNY Maritime College, MAED Teacher Leadership and Curriculum, Ashford University, and EdD Teaching and Curriculum, Northcentral University. Deborah is the co-founder of Girls Rock STEM, an educational program for underrepresented female middle school students in the STEM Fields. She was named to the inaugural class of Master Teachers by the State of New York, is the recipient of the 2009 Science Teachers Association of New York (STANYS-SE) Earth Science Teacher of the Year, a 2015 finalist for New York State Teacher-of-the-Year, a Regeneron STEM Teaching Fellow, National Geographic Certified Educator and has received multiple research grants from the National Science Foundation, the College Board, the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences, the National Urban Alliance, and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. She has been an adjunct member of the MAT Faculty since 2015 as well as being an adjunct in the MAT Program at Marist College. Deborah is currently under consideration for membership to the SUNY Maritime College Council.
Email: [email protected]
Mary C. Krembs, Director, Citizen Science; Mathematics Faculty
B.A., Marist College; M.S., Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Research interests: computational geometry, mathematics and music, and software development methodology.
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 845-758-7454
Learn about the Citizen Science Program
Cecilia Maple ’01, Director of MAT Admission and Student Affairs; Teacher Certification Consultant, Bard High School Early College Network
Cecilia is a Bard College alum (2001) and founding member of the Bard MAT Program (2003). Before joining the Bard MAT, Cecilia ran an outdoor education program for young people. Cecilia is currently completing a master’s degree in higher education administration and student affairs at Pace University with a focus on the recruitment and retention of students of color and teachers of color in teacher education programs and the teaching profession. Cecilia is an animal lover and activist and lives with an ever-growing family of rescued critters (from dogs to newts and everything in between).
[email protected]
[email protected]
bard.edu/bhsec
845-758-7145 (phone)
845-758-7149 (fax)
Michael Sadowski, Associate Dean of the College; Associate Professor, Bard MAT
B.S. Northwestern University; Ed.M. Ed.D., Harvard University
Michael Sadowski, Interim Dean of Graduate Studies, also serves as Director of Inclusive Pedagogy and Curriculum in the Dean’s Office and an Associate Professor in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program. He teaches courses in youth identity development in the MAT program and LGBTQ+ Issues in U.S. Education in the Human Rights program. In addition to Bard, Michael has been an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he completed his doctorate, and was a visiting professor in 2016-17 at Stanford University.
Michael has published extensively on the issues affecting LGBTQ+ students, immigrant students, and adolescents more broadly. His 2016 book Safe Is Not Enough was featured by NPR and was cited by GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings as "the most important book written on LGBTQ issues in education in my lifetime." His other books include In a Queer Voice: Journeys of Resilience from Adolescence to Adulthood (Temple University Press, 2013), based on a seven-year longitudinal interview study, Portraits of Promise: Voices of Successful Immigrant Students (Harvard Education Press, 2013), and the edited volume Adolescents at School (Harvard Education Press, 2020), now in its third edition and used in teacher education programs around the country and abroad.
He also is the editor of the Youth Development and Education book series for Harvard Education Press and was editor of the Harvard Education Letter, for which he won a National Press Club Award. Michael is also a creative nonfiction writer. His memoir, Men I've Never Been, was shortlisted pre-publication for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for Nonfiction and will be released in Spring 2021 as part of the Living Out series by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Gautam Sethi, Faculty, Bard Center for Environmental Policy
E-mail: [email protected]
View Biography
Cassandra Taylor, Faculty Associate, Teacher Opportunity Corps II
B.S.E., University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; M.S.E. in both Secondary English Education and Secondary Special Education, SUNY New Paltz. Cassandra Taylor is a English Language Arts teacher with over twenty-five years of experience in the classroom. She has helped pioneer African American Literature and History courses in both her hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and in Kingston, New York, and has been a guest lecture on many social justice issues ranging from Black feminism, African Traditional Religions, poetry and literature from the prison system, and the importance of trauma-based care in residential facilities for youth. Cassandra is also the Curriculum Coordinator for The Underground Center - a nonprofit based in Saugerties, New York that teaches sustainable agriculture and natural building skills to those most marginalized by current sustainability movements.
Mike Tibbetts, Professor of Biology, Bard College
Robert Tynes, Director of Research; Site Director at Eastern State, Bard Prison Initiative
Wendy Urban-Mead, Associate Professor of History, Bard MAT
B.A., Carleton College; M.A., University at Albany; Ph.D., Columbia University. She is the author of The Gender of Piety: Faith, Family, and Colonial Rule in Matabeleland Zimbabwe (Ohio University Press, 2015). Areas of interest include African history, with emphasis on southern Africa; European imperialism; history of Christianity in Africa; religion and gender; the history of the First World War in global context. Taught secondary school social studies for five years in Red Hook and Arlington, New York, school districts. Member, American Historical Association, World History Association, The Africa Network, American Society of Church History, African Studies Association, Britain Zimbabwe Society. Awards: German Academic Exchange Service Grant (1984-85), Richard Hofstadter Fellowship (1995-2000), Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Research Grant (1999). Past editor of Social Sciences & Missions (Brill, 2007-2017). Articles in Journal of Religion in Africa, Mennonite Quarterly Review, Women's History Review, and chapters in Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812-1960 (Duke, 2010), Gendering Ethnicity in African Women's Lives, ed. Jan Bender Shetler (University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), and African Christian Biography, ed. Dana Robert (Cluster Publications, 2018.)
E-Mail: [email protected]
Dumaine Williams, Vice President and Dean of the Early Colleges; Adjunct Faculty, Bard MAT
Dr. Dumaine Williams (Vice President and Dean of the Early College) oversees academic programming across the Bard Early College campuses and promotes the Sequence’s academic quality and integration with the broader Bard network. Dr. Williams was previously the founding principal of Bard High School Early College Newark and Bard High School Early College Cleveland. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology from Stony Brook University; an M.A. in Educational Leadership from Montclair State University; and a B.A. in Biology from Bard College.
[email protected]