Bard and The Environmental Science Academy 1990-1999
Bard College! That was an experience of a lifetime. That was an experience doing real science. Not just sitting in a classroom. This was like hands on experience. Catching butterflies. In the creek. Writing. I think I did some of my best writing at Bard.
Tyrone Howze, LESA participant, 1990-1994
The Bard Program, also called The Environmental Science Academy was the residential summer component for Bank Street's Liberty Partnership. The premise grew out of the ideas of Thoreau, Emmerson, Rachel Carson and Wendell Berry and the need to expose urban youth to the natural world.
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It began with a conversation between Paul Connally the founder and director of The Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard, and Cliff Forrest, my Associate Head, and myself.We speculated about a summer program where we would bring urban adolescents to study science and writing at Bard, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York that we had both attended. We brought it to the Dean of the College Stuart Levine and eventually to Leon Botstein, the President of the College. Because of our close affiliation with the school, they did everything next to losing $ to enable us to do it.
We asked ourselves what could happen if we took 70 adolescents 100 miles northwest of 125th Street in New York, to the regal lands of the Hudson Valley, to Bard; called it an Academy, (what the Greeks would call "a place to study, a sanctuary"); exposed them to a rigorous and experiential opportunity to study the local habitat of the river and its estuaries and develop their capacity as writers and scientists.
And for nine years we saw the results in a climate of high expectations, diligence, and cooperation stocked with purposeful and caring adults. Some students attended for 2-3 consecutive summers and eventually became counselors to younger students.