BPI’s community reading event brings together students, faculty, and staff in and out of prison. At the start of each new year, BPI hosts its annual community reading event, BPI Reads. Through this event, BPI students, faculty, and staff reflect and engage in conversation around… Read More
Program: The College
Community Updates: Gardening Across BPI’s Campuses
The gardens at Fishkill, Taconic, and Woodbourne are all put to bed for the winter. We had a challenging season, with little water and a lot of heat, but students at all three facilities worked in solidarity with the plants they were growing, all… Read More
BPI Debate Union
Since 2014, almost 100 students have been members of the BPI Debate Union, building a successful record against debaters from internationally respected programs including teams such as Harvard, Cambridge, and Morehouse. Read More
Looking Back: JSTOR’s origins in prison
Recently ITHAKA S+R has made a major push to expand access to JSTOR inside prisons not just for incarcerated college students but to increase access to academic journals for all incarcerated people. This development comes more than a decade after BPI pioneered the idea… Read More
Community Updates: Gardening Across BPI’s Campuses
This is a summer to remember: several strings of days in the 90s and drought hitting the Hudson Valley, “severe” in many places. This, only a year after the wettest summer in the past four years. And this, during a summer full of dire… Read More
BPI Adds a New Location at Albion Correctional Facility: Hiring New Faculty!
BPI’s newest campus at Albion Correctional Facility, a medium-security women's prison, is now open! This spring, BPI extended a warm welcome to the inaugural cohort, who began their Bardian careers this spring, immersing themselves in the traditional Language and Thinking workshop and utilizing the… Read More
Five Years Since Harvard Win
This month marks the five year anniversary of the BPI Debate Union's win against Harvard in September 2015. While the team had been racking up wins since well before the Harvard match, the meet up with Harvard brought international attention to their efforts and… Read More
BPI Gardens in September
Since the spring when faculty first stopped going into the prisons in person, BPI students have received a weekly newsletter from the college informing them of important news, academic updates, writing prompts and math problems, messages from the community, and instructions on how to… Read More
BPI’s Work Continues Despite COVID-19
In March, BPI shifted our in-person work in the prisons to a distance model and in June students successfully completed the spring semester of more than 85 courses across six prisons. Although we were unable to hold commencement ceremonies in June, every student who… Read More
Faculty Opinion: Digital Literacy in a Fake News Pandemic– Notes from a Microcollege Class
This reflection on teaching in the pandemic by Bard Microcollege Holyoke Program Director Ann Ward is part of the Community Voices op-ed series. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, BPI alumni, staff, and faculty and Bard Microcollege students will be posting reflections about their work, studies, and… Read More