EFTA00640929.pdf

Bard College at a Glance Leon Botstein June 2014 Bard College is a distinguished liberal arts college founded in 1860 located in the Hudson Valley in New York State. Until 1948, it was part of the Episcopal Church and from 1928-1948, owing to the intervention of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Bard trustee, it was an undergraduate college of Columbia University. Bard's independent history began only after the Second World War. Bard has an undergraduate program of 1900 undergraduates, and 300 graduate students. Its total number of degree candidates the world-over numbers over 5,000. Its undergraduate entering class of 500 is drawn from an applicant pool of over 7,000. Two-thirds of these students receive financial aid, 18% of the student body is international. The academic program is distinctive in its synthesis of general education and specialization. The student enrollment is divided between four divisions: natural sciences and mathematics, including a 3-2 engineering program with Columbia University; the arts; social studies; and languages and literature. It maintains a model Center for Civic Engagement. The faculty of Bard includes Daniel Mendelsohn, Anne Carson, Mona Simpson, Mark Danner, Ian Buruma, Judy Pfaff, Joan Tower, Dawn Upshaw, Walter Russell Mead, Luc Sante, Jeremy Denk, Felicia Keesing, Stephen Shore, An-My Le, Ann Lauterbach, and Norman Manea. Bard has the largest number of MacArthur Prize winners on its faculty of a non-research university. Bard maintains a few select target graduate programs offering the MA and PhD, including - the Center for Environmental Policy, the Center for Curatorial Studies, the Bard Graduate Center for the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture, the Avery Graduate School of the Arts, and the Levy Economics Institute. What sets Bard apart and renders it unique is its larger mission as a private institution in the public interest Bard has focused on 3 areas: the improvement of public education; international education; and the arts. 1. a) Bard College runs and maintains the leading network of Early College programs that reaches a full demographic range in terms of race and class. This network includes: Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington (the only residential early college) and the following public schools: Bard High School Manhattan, Bard High School Queens, Bard High School Newark, an early college center in New Orleans and one in the Children's Harlem Zone. These are all public schools and collaborations with public systems. Bard expects to expand this network to Baltimore, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and San Francisco, resources EFTA00640929 permitting. A new Bard High School Early College is opening in the fall of 2014 in Cleveland. Students in the public programs enter at the 9th grade and by the 12th earn a high school diploma and an AA Bard College degree, tuition free. Over 90 per cent, since 2001, finish both AA and BA degrees. b) Bard has, for 15 years, maintained the largest and most innovative prison program, offering AA and BA degrees to over 300 inmates. BPI, the Bard Prison Initiative, is a center of an expanding hub of prison education, done in collaboration with other institutions - Notre Dame, Wesleyan, and Grinnell. 2. Bard has pioneered dual degree undergraduate and graduate programs both in the liberal arts and teacher training beyond the borders of the United States. It created and maintains the largest American-Palestinian academic collaboration in a dual degree program with Al Quds University. It designed and runs the most important dual degree program in Russia, Smolny, the Faculty of the Arts and Sciences with the University of St. Petersburg. It provides the American accreditation, academic oversight, and degrees for the American University in Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Bard College operates the longest standing liberal arts program for European students at Bard College/Berlin, a university program accredited by the German government. Bard has a program for one-year residencies for students and scholars in democracies in transition, PIE, the program in international education. Bard, under contract, operates the undergraduate network of the Higher Education Support Program for the Open Society Foundation. 3. Bard College is at the forefront of the role of the arts in democratic culture. The Bard Music Festival, an internationally renowned collaboration of scholarship and performance is in its 25th year. It provides performance and scholarship in collaboration with Princeton University Press. Bard has an innovative set of graduate programs with the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the American Symphony Orchestra. These include efforts to replicate the civic impulse of El Sistema in the United States. It operates an innovative exhibition museum at the Hesse! Museum and the Bard Graduate Center. Since 2013, Bard produces SummerScape, a major festival of dance, theatre, and opera located on the banks of the Hudson River at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Ghery. Its photography program includes degree programs in collaboration with the International Center for Photography in New York City. All of this has been accomplished within the last 40 years by a private institution with a minuscule alumni body and without an endowment. Given its standard of excellence and its achievements, it is now seeking major philanthropic support to sustain its mission. The budget is $200 million, $140 million of it spent on the main Bard Campus. EFTA00640930