The Senior Project
For all Bard College students, the Senior Project is an original, individual, focused project growing out of the student’s cumulative academic experiences.
Students have great flexibility in choosing the form of their project. For example, a project might be a research paper, a close textual analysis, an analysis of published research findings, or a contribution to theory.
“The title of my Senior Project is the Diasporic Dispersion of Imperial Legacies. . . . For a year I committed my entire breathing [and] waking hours to my Senior Project, I just wanted to do the best that I could.”
—Sebastian Yoon ’17
Listen to three Bard alumni talk about BPI, Senior Projects, and the film College Behind Bars
How the Senior Project Works
Preparation for the Senior Project begins the semester before senior year. That semester, students take an advanced seminar in the area of their major: Literature and the Humanities, Mathematics, or Social Studies. While specific to each disciplinary area, these seminars are all designed to prepare students to identify a Senior Project topic and to hone skills that will be critical for successful completion of that project. The Social Studies Major Seminar, for example, focuses on close reading, interpretation, analysis, and evaluation of texts; the art of research; and the composition, organization, and revision of writing within and across academic disciplines. Much of the seminar is dedicated to independent reading related to students’ senior project topics. In students’ senior or final year of the bachelor’s degree program, one course each semester is devoted to completing the Senior Project. Over the course of that year, each student meets regularly with their senior project adviser, who also leads a panel review by three professors at the midway point and after the project is submitted.
From “Justice in America, Episode 30”
In this podcast, Josie Duffy Rice travels to Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York, to interview Rodney Spivey-Jones ’17 and Max Kenner. Listen to the conversation about Senior Projects and much more.