On the onset of the pandemic, BPI developed a newsletter that was sent to incarcerated students weekly to retain communication between students and the college. The newsletter contained news and updates from across BPI’s 7 in-prison campuses; the Bard Microcolleges in Holyoke, Brooklyn, and… Read More
BPI Blog
Tag: Alumni
BPI 2022 Public Health Fellowship Symposium
The sixth cohort of the Public Health Fellowship was the largest thus far. During the sixth annual Public Health Symposium, the Fellows engaged in panel discussions about their projects, each of which spans a diverse array of scholarly, programmatic, and policy-based examples of work… Read More
BPI Upstate Reentry Resident Shawn Young ’19 Talks Care, Concern, and Community on Radio Kingston’s Good Work Hour
For formerly incarcerated individuals returning to their communities, “clean, safe, and stable” housing is crucial, says Shawn Young ’19, upstate reentry resident for the Bard Prison Initiative. Speaking to his experience as a Bard alumnus through the Bard Prison Initiative, Young told the Good… Read More
BPI 2022 Education Fellowship Symposium
BPI’s fellowships provide an opportunity for alumni and other formerly incarcerated people to deepen their expertise in areas of career advancement. These 10-month-long programs connect formerly incarcerated professionals to careers where their unique combination of education and lived experience makes them vital members of… Read More
Celebrating the Introduction of BPI Reentry in the Albany Region
Last Friday was the introduction of BPI reentry to Albany and the Greater Capital Region. It was also an opportunity for me to share with many of you the vision of Freedom Is A Must. Thank you to those who were able to attend and… Read More
TAP Fellow Opinion: In Pursuit of Educational Equity & Justice
I have never felt utter despair and failure more than when I began my incarceration. That was the most difficult, seemingly hopeless point of my life—rock bottom, so to speak. I ultimately served a decade in prison. My life took yet another unexpected turn from… Read More
Alumni Voices: #TurnOnTheTAPNY
Following the 1994 federal Pell ban, New York banned incarcerated people from accessing the state's Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) in 1995. As a result, the number of college-in-prison programs in New York fell from over 70 to 4. In her January 5, 2022 State of… Read More
Become a BPI TAP Advocacy Fellow!
BPI TAP Advocacy Fellowship Overview The Bard Prison Initiative seeks four Fellows for a three-month BPI TAP Advocacy Fellowship. The Fellowship will run from Jan 3, 2022 through April 1, 2022, and offer four BPI alumni or other formerly incarcerated alumni of other college-in-prison programs the… Read More
BPI in Conversation – 50 Years Later: Attica and Its Legacy
Friday, November 19th at 2:30 Please join the BPI community of alumni, students, and staff for a virtual lecture and conversation about Attica 50 years later with Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and… Read More