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Bard's Citizen Science educational programs for area schoolchildren taught by Bard's first-year students and Citizen Science faculty will expand to include five school districts, with more than 1,500 local children participating.

Bard CEP first-year graduate students attended NYSERDA‘s Environmental Monitoring, Evaluation, and Protection in New York: “Linking Science and Policy” conference in Albany yesterday. The conference provided students with an opportunity to make connections with professionals in the environmental field and pursue internship opportunities for next year.

President Botstein cautions that our "Our democratic culture has ceded to a populist fear of that which is difficult to understand," and writes that the scientific and educational communities have an obligation to take a stand for the validity of science and combat growing science illiteracy in the United States.

Congratulations to Bard chemistry prof. Craig Anderson, who has received the prestigious Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award for 2011, providing a research grant of $60,000!

"We yearn to control and master the future, and one corollary of that is our deep wish to cede control over our lives to the hyper-rationality, objectivity, and reliability of machines," writes Arendt Center director Roger Berkowitz.

Ethan Bloch is a professor of mathematics at Bard. Dr. Bloch was born in Norwalk, Conn., in 1956, and spent part of his childhood in Connecticut and part in Savyon, Israel. After graduating from high school in Tel Aviv he returned to the U.S., going to Reed College, where he majored in mathematics and developed a firm belief in the value of a liberal arts education.

After graduating from Reed in 1978, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1983, focusing on geometric topology, and in particular on simplexwise linear maps. After Cornell he spent three years at the University of Utah as an instructor of mathematics, subsequently coming to Bard College in 1986, where he has been ever since. Dr. Bloch writes, "I have found Bard to be a wonderfully appropriate environment for my interest in teaching mathematics in a liberal arts setting that encourages spirited inquiry, and maintains a nice balance between individuality and flexibility on the one hand, and a traditional curriculum on the other." His publications include A First Course in Geometric Topology and Differential Geometry (1996), Proofs and Fundamentals: A First Course in Abstract Mathematics (2000, 2010), The Real Numbers and Real Analysis (2011), and numerous scholarly articles. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation grant (1985–87) and is a member of the American Mathematical Society. Dr. Bloch is married and has two children, who, he says "quite easily fill all my non-Bard time."

The article "Implicit Science Stereotypes Mediate the Relationship between Gender and Academic Participation," coauthored by Bard psychology professor Kristin Lane with Bard undergraduates Jin Goh and Erin Driver-Linn has been published by Sex Roles as an "Online First" and can be read on the journal's website in the July 2011 issue.

Most parents assume they would need high-yield explosives to get their kid out the door and into a library to do math for two hours on a Saturday afternoon, but Bard math professor Japheth Wood has been offering an alternative to dangerous household pyrotechnics right at the Kingston Library — the Bard Math Circle.

Bard's Citizen Science Program strives for greater science literacy for students.

“Activities are focused on middle school children, but everyone is welcome,” said Japheth Wood, professor of mathematics at Bard College, noting that math teachers at all levels have come by on the second Saturday of the month to participate in the two hours of fun.

Bard's innovative January Citizen Science intensive gives first-year students science fundamentals, regardless of major.