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Bard Office of Sustainability

News and Events

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Upcoming Events

  • 11/15
    Saturday
    1:00 pm – 5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
    Barringer House; Global Classroom
    Citizens' Climate Lobby Fall Conference Virtual Watch Party and Potluck

    Citizens' Climate Lobby Fall Conference Virtual Watch Party and Potluck

    Sharper Than Ever: CCL's Next Chapter 

    Saturday, November 15, 2025
    1:00 pm – 5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
    Barringer House; Global Classroom
    Grounded in our values and guided by a new strategy, CCL is pushing climate action forward.
    What to expect:
    Equip yourself to be an effective climate advocate in the current political landscape.
    Learn the policy details of permitting reform, a critical component of America’s clean energy future.
    Reconnect with CCL’s values and unique culture, so you’re ready to carry our new strategy forward.

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

Sustainability News

A group of students sitting at tables on a wooden patio.

Bard Earns Two Awards in Sustainability

The College earned a STARS Gold rating and the MBA in sustainability was ranked the best green MBA by the Princeton Review.

Bard Earns Two Awards in Sustainability

A group of students sitting at tables on a wooden patio.
Bard College has recently been recognized for its commitment to sustainability by two organizations. This July, the College earned a Gold rating from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS). This nationwide group ranks colleges based on all aspects of sustainability on their campuses, from academic buildings to dining and events planning. Bard’s report included its participation in the Race 2 Zero Waste food scrap conservation program, where it placed first in the food organics Small College category.

Bard’s MBA in sustainability was also ranked the best green MBA by the Princeton Review for the fifth year in a row. The list is based on student ratings of how well their MBA “prepares them to address environmental, sustainability, and responsibility issues in their careers.” Bard’s MBA is based in New York City and utilizes a hybrid curriculum to prepare students for critical social and environmental challenges. “At a time when clean energy and climate change action, organizational justice, reducing plastics and toxic pollution, and enhancing the planet’s biodiversity are all under political attack, Bard remains the leading MBA focused on embedding sustainability as simply good business,” said MBA Director Dr. Eban Goodstein.
Bard Ranked Best Green MBA for 2025

Post Date: 08-13-2025
A woman speaks in front of a tree surrounded by lush greenery

Burpee Trial Garden Project at Montgomery Place Featured in the Daily Catch

The summer garden students will continue their work through August tending the plots, recording observations on iPads, and sharing their findings in real time with Burpee’s plant breeders. 

Burpee Trial Garden Project at Montgomery Place Featured in the Daily Catch

A woman speaks in front of a tree surrounded by lush greenery
Bard student Violet DiBiasio ’27. Photo by Emily Sachar, Courtesy of the Daily Catch
The Burpee Trial Garden, a seed test garden and horticultural research site at Bard’s Montgomery Place campus, has been featured in the Daily Catch. The garden, in its first season, is currently being tended to by three Bard students, Violet DiBiasio ’27, Max Frackman ’27, and Mikhal Terentiev ’26, who are undertaking horticultural research and hands-on scientific investigations with real-world applications in the Hudson Valley and beyond. “This project is helping Bard restore and revive the historic formal gardens at Montgomery Place, and help gardeners in the process,” Amy Parrella, Bard Arboretum director, told the Daily Catch. “Gardening has been proven to alleviate stress and have therapeutic and healing results. And this opportunity will help students to cultivate their passion for plants and inspire their commitment to nurture their environment.” Trial gardens measure how well a specific cultivar or variety will perform in a specific area or growing condition, and the garden at Bard is supported by a $1 million grant that is being paid over four years from the Burpee Foundation. The summer garden students will continue their work through August tending the plots, recording observations on iPads, and sharing their findings in real time with Burpee’s plant breeders. 

Further Reading:

https://www.bard.edu/news/bard-college-receives-1-million-grant-from-burpee-foundation-to-support-creation-of-trial-garden-at-montgomery-place-campus-2024-06-18
 
Read the Full Article in the Daily Catch

Post Date: 08-05-2025
Students stand in the lush green surroundings outside a gray modern building

Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies Receives 2025 Frankenthaler Climate Initiative Grant

The grant, in the amount of $75,680, will support CCS Bard’s Envelope & Air-sealing Upgrades Project, a series of energy efficient upgrades at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art.

Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies Receives 2025 Frankenthaler Climate Initiative Grant

Students stand in the lush green surroundings outside a gray modern building
The Hessel Museum of Art. 
Bard College is pleased to announce that the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) has been announced as a recipient of a 2025 Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI) grant. The initiative is a program of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, established and managed in partnership with RMI, the leading global expert in clean energy, and Environment and Culture Partners, a nonprofit driving the US cultural sector’s sustainability efforts. The grant, in the amount of $75,680, will support CCS Bard’s Envelope & Air-sealing Upgrades Project, a series of energy efficient upgrades at Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art.  

These upgrades to building infrastructure will both increase overall energy-efficiency and reduce fuel oil consumption. Building upon the success of the Museum’s former 2022-23 Frankenthaler-supported Technical Assistance project—which included a suite of air infiltration and envelope diagnostic testing across the facility—Bard operations and museum staff have utilized that information to identify a new scope of air-sealing measures. The new project aims to reduce air-infiltration rates by 15% through a host of measures, thereby reducing the energy required for space heating and cooling, humidification and dehumidification, and fresh air ventilation for occupants.

“The FCI grant will enable CCS Bard and the Hessel Museum of Art to take climate action by allowing us to make our building more energy efficient, lowering our carbon footprint," said Tom Eccles, executive director of CCS Bard. “Not only will this contribute to Bard College’s campus-wide sustainability initiatives and goal to achieve climate neutrality by 2035, but it will also be deeply meaningful to our students and the broader community of artists, curators, scholars, and educators who care passionately about these issues and address them in their work.”

The Frankenthaler Climate Initiative is the first nationwide program to support energy efficiency and clean energy use for the visual arts and the largest private national grantmaking program of its kind for cultural institutions. Launched in 2021, the initiative funds energy efficiency programs and clean energy projects at visual art organizations, including art museums, art schools, non-collecting arts institutions, and nonprofit art events.  

“The Foundation is proud to continue supporting visionary projects that are reshaping the way arts institutions operate,” said Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. “FCI’s fifth cycle highlights a new level of strategic thinking among applicants—one that seamlessly integrates creative practice with environmental responsibility. By extending this initiative, we reaffirm our belief that the arts can play a meaningful role in shaping our shared future.”

Further Reading

Post Date: 07-08-2025

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October 2015

10-23-2015
Bard College Farm Celebrates Fourth Harvest Season as Centerpiece of Campus-Wide Sustainable Food Movement
Students who stop for a bite at Manor House Cafe on the Bard College campus look out the windows to a field where an ever-increasing amount of the produce being served on campus—greens, tomatoes, peppers, beets, squash, cranberries, and other fruits and vegetables—is being sustainably grown by their peers. Creating a connection between students, farm, and food is one of the central missions of the Bard College Farm, a 1.25-acre sustainable urban farm where Bard students organically grow fruit and vegetables to sell to Chartwells, the campus dining service. So far, during the 2015 growing season, Chartwells has purchased 16,000 pounds of fresh produce from the farm.

Guiding all of the Bard’s sustainable food initiatives is Bard EATS (Eating Awareness Transforms Society), a collaborative partnership among Bard students, dining services, faculty, and staff committed to increasing food purchasing transparency, reducing waste, decreasing the College’s carbon footprint, promoting food access, and supporting local farms and sustainable products. Their work has been so effective that Bard met its pledge to purchase 20 percent “real food” (local/community based, fair, ecologically sound, or humane as defined by the Real Food Challenge) five years ahead of schedule.

“Having local and sustainable menu options, as well as our own farm on campus, has positive cultural, economic, and environmental effects for Bard as well as for our greater community,” says Katrina Light, food sustainability advocate for Chartwells at Bard. “Students were instrumental in getting the school to sign on to the Real Food Challenge, the administration was supportive, and Chartwells was eager to make it happen. We are currently in the process of drafting a five-year food and agriculture Plan.”

Many of these efforts will be on display this weekend in celebration of National Food Day, with Bard EATS hosting a farmers market, featuring local vendors and farms, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Kline Commons and sponsoring an online real-food drive to benefit Caring Hands Soup Kitchen in Kingston. For more information, call 503-821-9750, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.facebook.com/EATBard. To support the food drive, please visit amplify.ampyourgood.com/user/campaigns/1911.

Since Bard College Farm was founded in 2012, more than 80 students have worked to produce more than 60,000 pounds of food, from basics like peppers, greens, and squash to specialty crops like honey, hops, maple syrup, cranberries, and shitake mushrooms, the latter grown in an abandoned pool converted into a mushroom-log farm. The farm also serves as an agricultural classroom and lab for Bard students and faculty and hosts tours for local school and community groups. From June through October, students, faculty, staff, and visitors to campus can purchase the farm’s produce at a weekly farmers market outside the campus center. While some of the crops, such as hops and cranberries, are sold off campus to help raise money to sustain the farm, nearly all of the rest is sold directly to Chartwells. John-Paul Sliva, founder and coordinator of Bard College Farm, says the farm’s cranberries are now on sale at Montgomery Place Orchards Farm Market, while hops grown at the farm were used by Crossroads Brewing Company in Athens, New York, to make an Octoberfest beer.

“The farm offers students a great opportunity to connect directly with their food,” says Sliva. “Our vegetables receive the highest ranking possible when judged under the Real Food Challenge criteria. You can taste the freshness and quality because of the way we farm and our location to the eaters. That is why the demand is overwhelming!”

Light says that one way Bard EATS has met its real food mission is by supporting Hudson Valley farms and business, which include, Bread Alone, Hudson Valley Fresh, Winter Sun Farms, Purdy & Sons, Feather Ridge, Wild Hive, and Red Barn Produce among many others. She stresses that Bard Dining continues to seek out local and sustainable products and providers, and, this fall, began purchasing fair trade tea, and gluten-free bagels and bread from the Gluten Free Bakery in Chatham, NY.

Having worked on a dairy co-op farm during high school in Vermont, sophomore Katherine Bonnie came to Bard with a strong interest in sustainable food efforts on campus.

“Working on the farm, getting my hands in the dirt, and taking time and space to comprehend the work that it takes to produce and harvest real food has been inspiring and has added to my perspective on the importance of local and sustainable food nutritionally, but also mentally as we think about the bigger picture,” said Bonnie, who interns with Light at Bard EATS, adding that she is looking forward to finding more ways to improve the campus’s relationship with food and food systems. “We are asking questions like, how do we continue to raise that percentage of ‘real food’ purchases? How can we work to eliminate waste and raise money and awareness to decrease throw-away materials and increase reusable plates and cups in the dining hall?”

Junior Amelia Leeya Goldstein, a sociology major from Massachusetts, is chair of the Bard EATS Committee, a new branch of student government that works with faculty and staff on food sustainability issues.

“The best thing about the farm is the model it sets for greater change,” said Goldstein. “The farm is a crucial part of our education as Bardians, as it helps us really hone in on the way our economy, our environment, and our society are linked.”

Chas Cerulli, Chartwells senior director of dining services at Bard, says that while there had been an interest in getting more food and products from local farms for years, the local-food movement took off on campus with the creation of the Bard College Farm.

“Partnering with the Bard College Farm to grow produce for the dining hall was a win-win for all,” says Cerulli. “This effort has really opened the door to the importance of locally sourced food, not only from the Bard College Farm, but from many other farms in the area that now provide food to the Bard dining population. We are committed to raising the bar in terms of what our community expects when they walk in for a meal. Not just with where the food comes from, but what oil it is cooked in and what happens with leftovers. Everyone eats—these are issues for everyone.”

For more information on Bard College Farm, please visit www.bardfarm.org or www.facebook.com/BardCollegeFarm. For more information about Bard EATS, visit, call 503-821-9750, e-mail [email protected] or visit https://www.facebook.com/EATBard.
 
Photo: Farm Market at Bard College. Photo by Sarah Walock '19
Meta: Subject(s): Bard Farm,Environmental/Sustainability,Student,Wellness | Institutes(s): Montgomery Place Campus |
10-23-2015
Bard Students Walk Across Hudson River for "Walkway to Paris" Climate Action Ahead of UN Conference<br />
Local activists walked across the Hudson River on Friday, October 23, to urge delegates to the UN conference in Paris to commit to carbon reductions. More than 30 Bard College students and staff members joined peers from Vassar, Marist, and SUNY New Paltz, as well as representatives from more than a dozen local organizations on the Walkway Over the Hudson between Highland and Poughkeepsie, New York. The Paris 2015 conference—also called COP 21—will take place November 30 to December 11. Delegates aim to create a new international agreement on climate with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.
Read More

Meta: Type(s): Event | Subject(s): Environmental/Sustainability,Student | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs |
10-22-2015
J. p. Lawrence '14 interviews Bard biologist Felicia Keesing and other experts about the potential increase in the number of rodents and ticks brought about by a local abundance of acorns.
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Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Alumni/ae,Division of Science, Math, and Computing,Environmental/Sustainability | Institutes(s): Bard Undergraduate Programs |
Results 1-3 of 3
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