News and Events

Upcoming Events

2/27

Friday

Online Event

Take the "Know Your Campus Waste Challenge"

Race 2 Zero Waste

Wednesday, February 18, 2026 – Friday, February 27, 2026
Online Event
Keep practicing your zero waste techniques, and help us go for the Gold by taking our first three Campus Waste Challenges. Weekly drawing for a zero waste utensil kit. The residence hall with the most entrants will get Taste Budd's Treats! Use the QR code bellow.

In the real world, help us repeat our GOLD medal from 2025 when we were the national champions for food scrap diversion (for small colleges). Just slide on over to the Kline Dish Return with your food scraps so we can make food scraps into Golden Compost. First topics: Recycling and Campus Composting.

Contact: Laurie Husted
Phone: 845-464-8025
E-mail: [email protected]

Website: https://sites.google.com/bard.edu/bardofficeofsustainability/home
2/27

Friday

12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Kline Commons

Share your thoughts: Bard and Red Hook in 2036

For the Town's Comprehensive Planning Process

Friday, February 27, 2026
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Kline Commons
A comprehensive plan answers the question, ‘What do we want our town to look and feel like now and in the future?’.
Come tell us:
What is currently working for you?
What needs to be improved?
What's something new that would be beneficial?
Share your ideas at today's pop up table or by filling out the online survey form. Help positively impact the future of Bard and Red Hook for future Bardians.

Contact: Laurie B Husted
Phone: 845-464-8025
E-mail: [email protected]

Website: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RedHookVision

Sustainability News

Bard College Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities Celebrates Launch of Saw Kill Watershed Community Database

The database is designed to expand in real time as the community surrounding the watershed continues to unearth historical information about the Saw Kill.

Bard College Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities Celebrates Launch of Saw Kill Watershed Community Database

Community members and Bard staff and students taking Saw Kill water samples at the Annandale Bridge, 2016. Photo by Laurie Husted

On Tuesday, February 24, at 7 pm the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities at Bard College is presenting the first ever Saw Kill Watershed Community Database, a publicly accessible data tool housing datasets developed by community members, researchers, and Bard faculty and students since the late 1800s. Funded in part by the Hudson River Foundation, Bard Community Sciences Lab, and Hudson River Estuary Program of the DEC, the database is designed to expand in real time as the community surrounding the watershed continues to unearth historical information about the Saw Kill, and conducts community sciences in the watershed with efforts such as ongoing sampling.

The database will be launched at a celebration held at the Elmendorph Inn at 7562 N. Broadway, Red Hook, NY, at 7 pm on Tuesday, February 24. The event is free and open to the public, with refreshments provided.

“This project is like a love letter from Bard to the community we have been part of and served for over 100 years,” said Elias Dueker, associate professor of Environmental and Urban Studies at Bard. “Students, faculty, and staff are working side by side with community leaders to make the database as comprehensive as possible. We have found information in people’s closets, basements, paper files, art, photos, and stories. I don’t think there is anything like this project across the country, but I hope we can inspire other communities to rediscover how much they already know and study about their watersheds—just how much information is waiting there to help them step up to environmental challenges that seem at emergency-level today.”

The project—a collaboration between the Center for Experimental Humanities, Bard Biology and Environmental Studies, and community groups including the Saw Kill Watershed Community, Riverkeeper, and Hudson River Watershed Alliance—represents over 50 years of Bard's commitment in nurturing community efforts to provide meaningful stewardship of the Saw Kill Watershed, which provides drinking water and recreation for both Bard and the surrounding region. By compiling all available information and ongoing environmental research about the watershed in one accessible repository, the project is intended to serve as a versatile resource: as a teaching tool for local schools, for new residents wanting to learn about their surroundings, for community members who may have concerns about what they are observing in the watershed, and to provide meaningful data required to inform policy decisions that would affect the Saw Kill and its communities. For more information, please visit: cesh.bard.edu/csl/saw-kill-monitoring-program

Post Date: 02-24-2026