Bard College - Academics

Academics

Bard is a college of the liberal arts and sciences. In the undergraduate college, Bard offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees. There are 23 academic departments that offer over 40 major programs, as well as 12 interdisciplinary concentrations. The college was the first in the nation to offer a human rights major. In the 2011-2012 academic year, the college held 1,345 classes.

In the three weeks preceding their first semester, first-year students attend the Language and Thinking (L&T) program, an intensive, writing-centered introduction to the liberal arts. The interdisciplinary program, established in 1981, aims to "cultivate habits of thoughtful reading and discussion, clear articulation, accurate self-critique, and productive collaboration." The program covers philosophy, history, science, poetry, fiction, and religion. In 2011, the core readings included works by Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, Frans de Waal, Stephen Jay Gould, Clifford Geertz, M. NourbeSe Philip, and Sophocles. During their winter intercession, first-year students must also participate in the Citizen Science program, a three-week program that began in 2011. The Citizen Science program introduces students to science and the ideas of the scientific method. The program is designed to promote science literacy and utilizes the theme of infectious disease: the importance of infectious disease in a community, and the impact that infectious disease outbreaks and subsequent management can have on our global society. The curriculum ranges from conducting laboratory experiments and analyzing a scientific problem, to modeling potential solutions to that problem. The program merges three distinct, yet thematically interwoven, rotations, each designed to address a large question: How can we reduce the global burden of infectious disease?

All first-year student take the "First-Year Seminar," a year-long, reading and writing core curricular course. "FYSem," as it is commonly known among students and faculty, begins in the fall semester of the freshman year. The first semester spans thinkers from Confucius to Galileo, while the second semester spans John Locke to Virginia Woolf. There are nearly thirty sections of the course each semester, taught by a wide variety of professors, including President Botstein and other members of the administration. The course covers works by Plato, Virgil, Saint Augustine, Dante, William Shakespeare, Galileo Galilei, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mary Shelley, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, W. E. B. DuBois, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, Chinua Achebe, and Primo Levi.

Another mandatory process of the college is moderation. Moderation typically takes place in the fourth or fifth semester, as a way of choosing a major. Conditions vary from department to department and most require the completion of a certain set or a certain number of courses. To moderate, the student presents whatever work is required to a moderation board of three professors, and is subsequently interviewed, examined, and critiqued.

The capstone of the Bard undergraduate experience is the Senior Project. As with moderation, this project takes different forms in different departments. Many students write a paper of around eighty pages, which is then, as with work for moderation, critiqued by a board of three professors. Arts students must organize a series of concerts, recitals, or shows, or produce substantial creative work; math and science students, as well as some social science students, undertake research projects.