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Min Kyung Shinn ’14 is the 2012 recipient of the Katherine Lynn Mester Memorial Scholarship at Bard. Mester was a professional actress, Pilates teacher, and the wife of Joseph Luzzi, Bard College associate professor of Italian studies. The scholarship is awarded to students who exhibit Katherine Mester’s spirit of generosity, kindness, and genuine love of learning.

Millions around the world consider basic water and sewerage systems a far-off luxury. Fortunately, people such as Christophe Chung ’06, a water supply and sanitation consultant at the World Bank, are helping to bring the life-sustaining liquid to some of the world’s most water-scarce places, North Africa and the Middle East.

In the Bardian

Few of us truly appreciate how our most essential element—water—makes its way from the source, through plumbing, and out a tap. In fact, millions around the world consider basic water and sewerage systems a far-off luxury. Fortunately, people such as Christophe Chung ’06, a water supply and sanitation consultant at the World Bank, are helping to bring the life-sustaining liquid to some of the world’s most water-scarce places, North Africa and the Middle East.

The World Bank lends money for capital projects, provides infrastructure-planning expertise, and collaborates with public agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and private firms to initiate projects in many developing countries. Chung is an urban water specialist working on teams that aim to upgrade and expand water infrastructure in Beirut, improve basic service delivery in slum areas of Cairo, and help implement pollution control programs in Lebanon and Egypt. He also works on a capacity-building project based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, which trains public officials to better manage water resources. “I do believe the work is needed, especially now with so many transitions in the region,” says Chung. “But while I’ve developed a real love for infrastructure and utility management, I’ve come to realize that talking about it
may not be the best pick-up line to use.”

Bringing water and sewerage systems to poor urban and rural communities is critical to economic progress and social stability. Chung points out that contaminated water is the leading cause of cholera, dysentery, and typhoid—diseases that contribute to high infant and child mortality rates in some African nations. Illness decreases worker productivity, prevents children from attending school, and increases medical expenses for families already living on meager incomes. In addition, no industrial or agricultural product can be made or grown, packaged, and distributed without ample, sanitary water. Put simply, clean water saves lives.

Chung helps with the planning and preparation necessary for getting these complex projects off the ground. Says Chung, “The World Bank requires that all proposed projects go through an extensive review to ensure that the project is beneficial, realistic, and self-sustaining by the time the bank’s involvement is complete. We also make sure that social and environmental safeguards are taken into account so that the project doesn’t have an adverse impact on people and the environment. We consult with local governments and stakeholders, NGOs, community leaders, and universities to ensure that those affected by and benefiting from the project are taken into account in our project design and implementation. Also, at a very macro level, we have to evaluate the country’s existing capacity, finances and budgeting, and its ability to maintain or operate the system after it’s built.”

Chung’s interest in addressing the challenges faced by residents of the Middle East began while he was a political studies major at Bard. However, it was an art history course about war and architecture that took his political thinking in a different direction. He says, “I was initially concerned with the broader question of how peace could be brought about through political system reform, but then I came to believe that stability is also contingent upon basic considerations, like how people of different ethnicities and religions interact with each other in their day-to-day lives. That led me to examine the role of public space in postwar stability and redevelopment, which drew me to explore the political dimensions of urban planning and architecture.”

When he was a senior, Chung won a Watson Fellowship, which provides college graduates with a $25,000 stipend for international travel and independent study. Fellows are chosen from among the nation’s leading colleges and universities. Recipients stay abroad for 12 months and delve deeply into a particular issue or project. Chung traveled to rural communities in Peru, Bolivia, Vietnam, and India, where he studied terrace farms—multileveled fields built into mountains and hills and supported by various types of retaining walls.

Terraced fields reduce erosion and water runoff, making them more water efficient. Chung became particularly interested in how traditional farming techniques can be used to adapt to climate change and water scarcity. He also documented how rural residents maintain their agricultural livelihoods in the face of political difficulties, globalized food markets, and the constant pull of the city. “Rural farmers continually wrestle with the idea of leaving the farming life and moving to the city. This tension got me interested in urban migration and growth.”

Returning to the United States, Chung worked as a program assistant in New York City for the UN Development Programme’s Equator Initiative and enrolled in the master’s program in urban planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2009. “Going from Bard to MIT seemed to fit,” he says. “What I appreciated at both places were the small classes, discussion-based learning, and emphasis on innovation and critical thinking.” In his master’s program, Chung became deeply interested in studying water and sanitation infrastructure. He spent the summer of 2010 in Ethiopia working for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees; he conducted water-quality assessments in four refugee camps, where many children suffered from water-borne diseases. The very existence of the camps—their size and the relative spontaneity with which they appear—is exactly the type of social problem that urban planners hope to deter. Wrote Chung in his blog from Ethiopia: “The fact that a settlement of thousands—a virtual city—can form in the middle of nowhere, and a small office of individuals is made responsible for all aspects of the refugees’ lives, is challenging, to say the least.”

Chung has been working at the World Bank for more than a year, and he plans on staying put. “I like Washington, D.C.,” he says. “After traveling so much, I’m happy to be settled. I’ve even started buying stuff for myself. Like furniture.”

Read the fall 2012 issue of the Bardian:

What place do the humanities have in a global economy increasingly focused on educating a work force for business, finance, and technology? Bard leaders weighed in with the New Indian Express. "Without humanities, social sciences and arts," says Bard IILE Director Susan Gillespie, "we won’t have just and liveable societies or even prosperous economies." Arendt Center director Roger Berkowitz adds that teaching the humanities is about "transmitting a tradition of meaning and substance, texts and ideas that can inspire young people to care more for the common world they share than for their parochial or personal interests."

On Saturday, October 13, the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and Bard Office of Sustainability will host a Green Car Expo and panel discussion, “An Addiction to Cars: Air Quality and Policy Challenges in the U.S. Transportation Sector.” The Expo includes opportunities to test drive the Chevy Volt, as well as learn more about student-led initiatives that focus on alternative ways to travel, including the Bard Bike Co-op, Bard Pedicab, Bard BikeShare, EcoReps, and others.

Math major and volleyball player Fiona Do Thi was born in Vietnam and raised in Poland. In this Senior Close-Up, she shares how family support and Bard scholarships made her dream of studying in the U.S. a reality.

Bard College mathematics professors Japheth Wood and Lauren Rose, the Bard Math Circle, and the Bard College Mathematics Program are proud to host the American Mathematics Contest 8 (AMC8) for middle school students in the Mid Hudson Valley. The contest will be held in the Reem-Kayden Center at Bard on Tuesday, November 13, at 4:30 p.m.

Why do women pursue science majors and careers less than men? Kristin Lane, assistant professor of psychology at Bard, will use a recently funded $169,000 Academic Research Enhancement (AREA) Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to try to answer this question.

This fall, listen in real time to climate and clean energy specialists talk about the latest science, policy, law, and economics of climate change. These half-hour talks give students the opportunity to hear top scientists, analysts, and political leaders discuss climate and clean energy solutions.

The Simons Foundation has awarded Greg D. Landweber, associate professor of mathematics at Bard, a Collaboration Grant for Mathematicians. This grant offers Professor Landwber $35,000 over a five-year period to be used in support of collaboration, travel and research expenses for his project, Supersymmetry and K-Theory. The grant also includes funds to enhance the research atmosphere of the Mathematics Program at Bard.

This summer we have 38 eighth-graders on campus at Bard participating in an intensive math program. These New York City students are spending three weeks doing seven hours of math per day! Bard math professor Japheth Wood says, "I'm amazed to see the students" educational trajectories after SPMPS. Some have gone on to some very selective NYC public high schools, and all of them are going to breathe life into their high school's math program."

Bard math professor Lauren Rose has received an award from the American Institute of Mathematics to attend a week-long program in Washington, D.C. entitled, "How to Run a Math Teachers' Circle Workshop." Professor Rose's team comprises middle school and college educators who will use the D.C. workshop to work to improve mathematics education in U.S. middle schools. They plan to host bimonthly Math Teachers' Circles in the Hudson Valley that bring together middle school math teachers and professional mathematicians.

You can also listen to an interview with Michael Specter on this topic on the Takeaway at NPR.

Michael Tibbetts is a professor of biology at Bard, as well as a faculty member in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program.

He is a molecular biologist who uses zebrafish as a model to investigate questions related to hearing. Dr. Tibbetts earned his B.S. from Southeastern Massachusetts University and his Ph.D. from Wesleyan University. He is a recipient of the Peterson Fellowship from Wesleyan and a National Science Foundation grant (2008, to study transmission of anaplasmosis from ticks to people). Tibbetts is a member of Sigma Xi, the Genetics Society of America, and the American Society of Microbiology. His professional interests include the neuroscience of hearing, cancer chemotherapeutics, bioethics, genetics, and human origins. He has been on the Bard faculty since 1992.

Professor Jain will receive $35,000 supporting his research on new ways to fight bacterial infections. Bard students Coral Liu, Sheneil Black, and Weiqing Wang work with Jain on this project.

What would it take to make faster computers and more efficient solar panels? Jesse Kohl '07 is looking for answers at the crossroads of nanotechnology and clean energy.

The college has been awarded $800,000 from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for science education, building on the success of the Citizen Science Program.

Bard Math Circle's last event of the year took place last weekend, and found Bard math students and local schoolchildren drawing tessellations with sidewalk chalk at the Kingston Library.

On Tuesday, April 10, the Bard College Citizen Science Lecture Series will present the lecture “Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Investments in Reducing Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases Burden.” While diarrhea-related deaths have decreased globally, diarrheal diseases remain the second-leading cause of childhood deaths. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s investments are aimed toward saving and improving millions of lives thorough the development and delivery of low-cost interventions that prevent and treat diarrheal and enteric diseases.

Think of it as a sort of CSI: Human Rights. The Human Rights Project at Bard has addressed the role of forensic evidence in war crimes cases through a series of workshops and conferences. In this essay, HRP director Thomas Keenan examines the investigative process in the case of Nazi Josef Mengele. Slate.com called the piece one of the five "best stories ever written about war criminals on the lam."

Bard first-years in the Citizen Science program are developing their scientific literacy by studying infectious disease in a monthlong intensive. If you're in the area, join us for the Citizen Science lecture series, which is free and open to the public!

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.

Felicia Keesing is the lead author of a new study on biodiversity and human disease, which was published in Nature in December 2010. This important study has received international attention and press at over 70 venues and blogs.

President Leon Botstein appears on the Colbert Report to show how Bard's Citizen Science program addresses science illiteracy in the United States.

Bard High School Early College II (BHSEC II), a public school partnership between Bard College and the New York City Department of Education, has received a Science and Math Improvement Grant from the Toshiba America Foundation. The $13,440 grant was awarded for an innovative research project, "Urban Effects on Lightning Activity in Queens, New York."