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
Program: The College
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
Field Notes on Pandemic Teaching
This reflection by Delia Mellis '86 Director of Program and Faculty Development originally appeared in Places Journal has been reproduced below and can found in its entirety here. A Bard Prison Initiative student studying at the computer lab at Coxsackie Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in… Read More
Course Continuity
Last week BPI delivered 22 boxes of course material and supplies to the six prisons where we operate. Fortunately, students already had all of their course books for the semester. These new boxes included hundreds of individualized packets for students enrolled in 60 courses… Read More
Sticking Together
Dear Friends, At BPI, our team takes pride in describing this work with language like proximity, community, and human touch. Yesterday, however, we made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend BPI operations within the prisons. The demand to ‘isolate’ contradicts every impulse. However, there is now an imperative to… Read More
BPI Alumni Announce New IWT College Behind Bars Workshop for Teachers at UFT Film Event
BPI alumni Dyjuan Tatro and Giovannie Hernandez joined a United Federation of Teachers screening of College Behind Bars as part of UFT's Black History Month Film Series on February 27th and proudly announced to the audience of teachers that Bard College will be offering… Read More