STUDENT HIGHLIGHTS
Sophia Jackson ’25 has been selected as a 2021 Frederick Douglass Global Fellow. On St. Patrick’s Day at the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris and Ireland’s prime minister, Micheál Martin, joined Nettie Washington Douglass, the great-great-granddaughter of Frederick Douglass, and representatives from the Council on International Educational Exchange, which sponsors the fellowship, to recognize the 10 winners (from a pool of more than 500 applicants) chosen to attend a fully funded four-week summer study-abroad program focused on leadership, intercultural communication, and social justice. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs is cosponsor in Dublin, where the 27-year-old abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the Irish reformer Daniel O’Connell met in 1845.
The Music Mentorship Initiative (MMI), launched last fall by instrumentalists Aleksandar Vitanov ’25 (trumpet) and Sophia Jackson ’25 (cello) with the support of the Trustee Leader Scholar Program, offers tutoring and free private lessons to music students who otherwise cannot afford them, while allowing mentors—current Bard College Conservatory students who have completed a pedagogical training seminar—to gain teaching experience. MMI now has 33 Bard student mentors and 10 mentees from Red Hook, New York, who receive free private lessons from members of the Conservatory. The goal for this year is to disseminate the MMI model to music schools around the United States while continuing with local outreach.
Human Rights and Global Public Health major Verónica Martínez-Cruz ’24, a Bard Baccalaureate (BardBac) student, received a New York State Senate Commendation Award for her work to bridge language barriers and ensure full and equal participation of Hispanic residents in all aspects of civic, economic, and cultural life in the Hudson Valley. State Senator Michelle Hinchey (D-Saugerties) presented Martínez-Cruz with her commendation. BardBac, a full-scholarship pathway for adults to complete bachelor’s degrees from Bard College, was launched in 2020 in response to the mass unemployment precipitated by COVID-19.
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