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Bard College Broadens Summer Engagement in China

Despite China’s status as a major world leader, few American students are returning to study abroad in China. Last semester, only about 700 US students were in China, compared to more than 11,000 prior to the pandemic. In opposition to this trend, Bard is expanding its engagement in China. 

Malia Du Mont ’95, Bard’s Vice President for Strategy and Policy and the first person to earn a BA in Chinese from Bard, stated, “The US and China will play a major role in determining the future of the planet we share, so it is our responsibility as educators to create opportunities for young people from both countries to learn from each other. In the context of challenging political relations and the rise of artificial intelligence, we must strengthen our commitment to the humanities and nurture many forms of communication, including through music and the arts.”

Underscoring the College’s commitment, President Leon Botstein returned to China in June to spend two weeks in the cities of Xiamen and Ningbo, where he conducted concerts and met with high school and university students and administrators. President Botstein also attended a concert in Ningbo conducted by Oscar-winning composer and Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Tan Dun.

In July, Bard College Conservatory of Music Director Frank Corliss taught for a week at the Shandong University of the Arts (SUA) in Jinan, concluding with a performance by the students and Corliss with members of the faculty and the director of SUA. The director of SUA, GQ Wang, is eager for continued visits by Bard Conservatory faculty and a trip by Graduate Vocal Arts Program Associate Director Kayo Iwama is planned for the coming academic year.

Following the week in Jinan, Frank Corliss traveled to Changsha where he joined Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun and four percussion students of the Conservatory (Maddy Dethof, Jonathan Collazo BM/BA ’19, APS ’24, Estaban Ganem MM ’24; Arnav Shirodkar BM/BA ’24) for concerts with Tan Dun and the Changsha Symphony Orchestra. Tan Dun led the students and Frank Corliss in two of his pieces for voice, piano, and percussion ensemble, and in his recent arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for two pianos and percussion. The students, with the Changsha Symphony, also gave the premiere of a piece by Tan Dun “Noa Concerto” for four percussionists and orchestra. The students played on specially made replicas of ancient bronze bells recently discovered in Changsha. The week of concerts also included a performance featuring the Bard String Quartet: Bard Director of Asian Recruitment and Institutional Relations Shawn Moore BM/BA ’11, Fangxi Liu BM/BA ’16, Lin Wang BM/BA ’12, and Zhang Hui APS ’17.  There was also a panel discussion at the Changsha Symphony on Education and Music with Tan Dun, Frank Corliss, and Changsha Symphony President Wang Zhi.
 At a time when language instruction is being cut in many American high schools and institutions of higher education, Chinese language is offered throughout the Bard Early College network. This summer, student cohorts from both Bard High School Early College Baltimore (Bard Baltimore) and Bard High School Early College DC (Bard DC) traveled separately to China. From July 21 to August 5, Bard Baltimore students visited Baltimore's sister city of Xiamen, Maryland’s sister province of Anhui, and China’s capital Beijing as part of the Baltimore-Xiamen Sister City Committee 2024 Youth Ambassadors Program. Their two-week study tour included living and interacting with Chinese peers from local schools in Xiamen, cultural immersion experiences, and meetings with local leaders. They had the opportunity to visit cultural sites including Gulangyu Island (a UNESCO World Heritage site), Lingling Zoo (a local zoo where they saw two twin brother pandas), and Xiamen’s first mangrove-themed ecological coastal wetland park Xiatanwei. Their trip also included travel to the famous Yellow Mountains of Anhui Province and China’s capital Beijing, where they visited the Great Wall, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, as well as the US Embassy to attend a panel discussion on the career path of a diplomat.
Bard DC Chinese language students had the opportunity to visit China this summer too. They spent two weeks at Yunnan Normal University in the city of Kunming, taking language classes and enjoying local food, tea, traditional dance, and other cultural experiences such as a visit to the hot springs. Interacting with local Chinese students was a key part of the program for both the Bard Baltimore and Bard DC student groups.

As part of the Chinese language program at the Bard College main campus, Bard undergraduate students from Annandale also went to China this summer, for an eight-week intensive at Qingdao University, which has hosted Bard’s summer immersion courses for over a decade. In addition to taking language classes, participants studied Kung Fu and painting, lived with a host family for one week, and conducted cultural tours in Beijing, Tai’an, and Qingdao.

Post Date: 08-13-2024

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Bard Students Win Honors for Chinese Calligraphy Works in National Expo

Under the guidance of Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese Huiwen Li, five Bard College students, Timothy Weigand ’25, Lydia Lu ’26, Margo Ganton ’25, Jiyu Kwon ’26, and Yimeng Zhao ’26, were selected as finalists to exhibit their works of Chinese calligraphy in the National Chinese Expo of Student Works. This annual event, organized by the American Academy of International Culture and Education (AAICE), aims to promote cultural understanding between the peoples of China and the United States and to help students become cultural ambassadors. The theme of this year’s expo was “The Joy of Chinese Language and Culture Learning.” The Bard College team was honored with a trophy, and professor Huiwen Li received a certificate of appreciation for their participation in the final exhibition.

Post Date: 02-29-2024

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Five Bard Language Students Accepted to the National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society

Five Bard Chinese language students have been accepted to the National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society in 2024. Aliya Lindroth ’26, Clemente Esponilla ’26, Noa Doucette ’24, Sushila Sahay ’25, and Timothy Weigand ’25 were recommended for entry by Huiwen Li, visiting assistant professor of Chinese at Bard College and a member of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA (CLTA-USA). The National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society was founded to recognize the outstanding academic achievement of college students in learning Chinese as a second language, and aims to encourage continuous learning in the language, literature, and culture. It is sponsored by CLTA-USA, an organization founded in 1962 and dedicated to the study of Chinese language, culture, and pedagogy, which supports the establishment and maintenance of quality Chinese programs, K-16 articulation, teacher education and professional development, and is committed to providing leadership, scholarship, and service to its members and beyond.

Post Date: 02-02-2024

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Bard College Alumnus Liam Gomez ’22 Among the First Peace Corps Volunteers to Return to Service Overseas

Bard College alumnus Liam Gomez ’22 is among the first Peace Corps volunteers to return to overseas service since the agency’s unprecedented global evacuation in March 2020. The Peace Corps suspended global operations and evacuated nearly 7,000 volunteers from more than 60 countries at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gomez, from Red Hook, New York, graduated in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. He will serve as an education volunteer in the nation of Georgia. He first became interested in the Peace Corps while he was studying abroad in Russia on a Bard language intensive program. He enjoys both speaking and writing in the Russian language, a language he acquired at Bard.

“The Peace Corps was always an option thrown around to employ my language skills post-graduation. I also always love a change of scenery and the challenges that will come from this experience, although daunting, excite me more than anything else,” said Gomez. “I see the Peace Corps as a perfect opportunity for both personal growth and helping others.”

In a recently published article about Gomez, the Red Hook Daily Catch writes "he formally applied to the corps in July 2021 at the height of the pandemic, specifically asking to be sent to Ukraine or Georgia, with the hope of improving his Russian language skills. Georgia attracted him for other reasons, too, notably the food and family culture. Known for khachapuri, a flat cake with cheese, meat, or steamed fish, Georgian cuisine is also famous for various sweet pastries. ‘Their country sounded very alluring,’ Gomez said. ‘The food, how closely and tightly knit the families are, Georgian cheese, it all sounded great.’"

The Peace Corps volunteer cohorts are made up of both first-time volunteers and volunteers who were evacuated in early 2020. Upon finishing a three-month training, volunteers will collaborate with their host communities on locally prioritized projects in one of Peace Corps’ six sectors—agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health or youth in development—and all will engage in COVID-19 response and recovery work.

Currently, the agency is recruiting volunteers to serve in 56 countries around the world at the request of host country governments, to connect through the Peace Corps grassroots approach across communities and cultures. Volunteers have already returned to a total of 47 countries around the world. The Peace Corps continues to monitor COVID-19 trends in all of its host countries and will send volunteers to serve as conditions permit. Americans interested in transformative service and lifelong connections should apply to Peace Corps service at www.peacecorps.gov/apply. Apply before April 1 to make a global connection by fall 2023.
 

Post Date: 01-27-2023

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Interview: New York Times South Asia Correspondent Emily Schmall ’05 Talks About Sri Lanka’s Uprising

Emily Schmall ’05, who reports on Sri Lanka for the New York Times, discusses the country’s recent protests and presidential resignation with her colleague German Lopez for the Times’ Morning Newsletter. Schmall talks about the conditions leading up to the civil uprising in Colombo, how it began, and how unexpectedly nonviolent and orderly the protestors and activists were. “After about 24 hours, a gleefulness overtook the place, and some people swam in the president’s pool. They had done it: They had forced this extremely powerful president–who was accused of war crimes, who was feared–to leave his own home and even the country. But they did it peacefully, without taking up arms,” said Schmall.

Post Date: 07-26-2022

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Five Bard College Students Win Fulbright Awards

Five Bard College students have won Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects, graduate study, and English teaching assistantships. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. The program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Mercer Greenwald ’22, a German Studies major from Williamstown, MA, has won a Fulbright Research and Teaching Assistantship Award in Austria for the 2022–23 academic year. As a Combined Research and Teaching Fulbright Scholar, Greenwald will spend the year immersed in the cultural life of the city of Vienna, where she will teach English and write an independent research project on the topic of “concomitant being” in the work of Austrian writer and thinker Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920–1977). Greenwald will begin doctoral study in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in the fall of 2023.

Maya Frieden ’22 (they/them), an art history and visual culture major, has won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to support graduate study in the Netherlands for the 2022–23 academic year. Frieden will spend the year in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures. “I have often questioned the sustainability of the current pace at which the design industry is progressing. Embedded within every designed element--from object design to urban design--are intentions that can be sensed, even subtly, by those encountering them, and they frequently symbolize and materialize exclusionary or prohibitive ideologies,” says Frieden. “The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures, understands the significance of historical, sociological and environmental research within the field of design, training students with the skills to interpret, discuss and interact with the discipline, so that we will be equipped to contribute in quickening the pace. By studying in this Master’s program, I will develop additional strategies for noticing the presence or absence of sensitivity within design, while also improving my capabilities for communicating such analyses, and working with those in positions that influence how our world is designed.”

Paola Luchsinger ’20, a Spanish major from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, has won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Greece for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend the year in Athens teaching English elementary through secondary students at Athens College–Hellenic American Educational Foundation. “As an English Teaching Assistant in Greece, I hope to gain an idea of Greek perceptions of American culture while also representing a positive image of the United States. I have chosen Greece as my destination because a year in Greece will give me the opportunity to become fluent in Greek through immersion and improve my knowledge of modern Greek society,” says Luchsinger.

Lance Sum ’21 (BHSEC Manhattan ’19), an anthropology major from Brooklyn, NY, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Taiwan for the 2022–23 academic year. He intended to teach English and participate in intensive outdoor adventures, explore large influential cultural institutions in the major cities of Taiwan, host peer review writing and poetry sessions, and educate his Taiwanese community members about his experience in growing up in New York City. “I think Taiwan could offer me a more magnified perspective of a community who has preserved their own culture through much political and colonial pressure, an experience that would help me develop my cultural understanding for others,” says Sum.

Jordan Donohue ’22, a historical studies major, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Brazil for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend in the year teaching English and deepening her knowledge around music and farming. Continuing her past work with Indigenous groups internationally, she plans to engage with and learn from the Indigenous populations of Brazil. Additionally, Jordan has studied Portuguese for seven years and will utilize her time as a Fulbright scholar to advance her fluency and prepare for further academic research on the language and culture of Brazil.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. Fulbright creates connections in a complex and changing world. In partnership with more than 140 countries worldwide, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers unparalleled opportunities in all academic disciplines to passionate and accomplished graduating college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals from all backgrounds. Program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad. us.fulbrightonline.org.

Post Date: 04-19-2022