News and Events

The Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce 40 Under 40 Shaker Awards were presented on April 28, recognizing the next generation of leaders in the region.

BPI students are growing their own food as part of the public health curriculum and donating the excess to charity. 

Brooklyn, New York — Chelsea Mozen MBA '15 joined the inaugural class of Bard’s MBA in Sustainability program in the fall of 2012 because she wanted to help rewire the world with clean energy. This month, one year after graduation, Chelsea joined Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson and other team members at the company headquarters to announce a bold, near-term commitment by the Internet retailer to achieve carbon neutrality. The company pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2020 and grow a thriving, carbon neutral marketplace in the months, years, and decades to come.
 
At the heart of Etsy’s climate strategy is a revolutionary approach to solar development that Mozen began to design while interning with the company as a Bard MBA student. In her capstone MBA project at Bard, Mozen developed an idea for solarizing Etsy sellers as a way to offset the pollution coming from transporting goods to customers, which Etsy estimates accounts for 95 percent of its climate footprint.
 
After her internship, Etsy hired Chelsea into a new position as senior energy and carbon specialist. Over the last two years, working as part of a team at Etsy and with external partners, including the solar firm Geostellar, Chelsea helped shepherd her capstone vision into reality. In the new pilot program, Etsy will utilize verified emissions reductions from the solar installations to work toward the goal of net zero emissions. Etsy sellers will receive discounts for the solar systems in exchange for the offsets, which will be priced at the social cost of carbon.
 
Mozen credits the capstone process at Bard as giving her the time to puzzle through the many obstacles leading to today’s announcement. "Etsy’s mission is an ambitious one: to reimagine commerce in ways that build a more fulfilling and lasting world," said Mozen. "Being a part of a supportive and creative academic community while developing the initial structure for the Etsy Solar pilot program was not only essential to its success, but also brought us closer to achieving our mission."
 
Mozen continues to dream big. In her volunteer time, she has been working on a multiyear project to bring community-owned wind power to rural communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. "What I love about Etsy Solar is that it’s really about shared value creation for our community," said Mozen. "By working together we can drive responsible solutions to our collective impact."

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The Bard MBA in Sustainability is one of a select few graduate programs globally that fully integrates sustainability into a core business curriculum. At Bard, students work in collaborative teams learning how to build businesses and not-for-profit organizations that combine economic, environmental, and social objectives into an integrated bottom line that creates both healthier businesses and a more sustainable world. Graduates of the Bard MBA are transforming existing companies, starting their own, and pioneering a new paradigm of doing business that meets human needs, protects and restores the Earth's systems, and treats all stakeholders with justice and respect.
 

Chelsea Mozen MBA '15 joined the inaugural class of Bard’s MBA in Sustainability program in the fall of 2012 because she wanted to help rewire the world with clean energy. This month, one year after graduation, Chelsea joined Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson and other team members at the company headquarters to announce a bold, near-term commitment by the Internet retailer to achieve carbon neutrality. The company pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2020 and grow a thriving, carbon neutral marketplace in the months, years, and decades to come.

The Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation has awarded a $5 million dollar leadership grant to the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies to support a scientific study, being done in partnership with Bard College, that seeks to reduce Lyme disease in neighborhoods. Research will be carried out in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York State Department of Health, and Dutchess County Department of Behavioral and Community Health. If successful, the project will revolutionize Lyme disease prevention.

Bard College professor Brooke Jude has led a research team that includes students in the Bard biology program, at Al Quds Bard College in the West Bank, and at several Hudson Valley schools. This investigation of bacterial species in the local watershed was recently published in a citizen science–themed issue of the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. Researchers worked to determine the prevalence of violacein-producing bacteria, which potentially limit outbreaks of an invasive fungus that leads to a decline in the amphibian population. The secondary school students gathered water samples, after which the college students—Yegor Dukashin and Kelsey O’Brien from Bard, and Raneem Jo’Beh from Al Quds—worked to identify the samples. Local students participated from Red Hook High School, Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, and F.D. Roosevelt High School in Staatsburg.

As part of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s Power Dialog, thousands of high school and college students will meet with state officials to discuss the U.S. pledge to cut emissions 30 percent by 2030.

Join the conversation on social media. Follow @ThePowerDialog on Twitter and the Bard Center for Environmental Policy on Facebook. Use the hashtag #PowerDialog2016 to see news from Power Dialog meetings across the country.

During the week of April 4, as part of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s (Bard CEP) Power Dialog initiative, thousands of college and high school students will meet with officials in 20 states to explore policies that could help meet the United States’s pledge—made at the Paris climate summit last December and as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan announced last August—to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
 
“The United States is the world’s biggest global warming polluter behind China, and we are the biggest per capita climate polluters,” says Bard CEP graduate student Rebecca Chillrud, a lead organizer for the Power Dialog. “Last December in Paris, for the first time, the United States and China both pledged to cut global warming pollution. In turn, the U.S. commitment to reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2030 will depend in significant measure on what happens in state capitals around the country.”
 
For the past nine months, Chillrud, fellow Bard CEP student Meredith Lavalley and bard environmental and urban studies undergraduates Maggie Berke ’17 and Xaver Kandler ’18, have been working with students across the country to catalyze a nationwide conversation about state-level action on climate change. Power Dialogs are scheduled for 20 states, from Alabama to Washington, during the first week of April. Students from over one hundred colleges and universities will meet with top state officials in charge of cutting global warming pollution. Kandler has been helping to organize the New York event, scheduled for Tuesday, April 5, at SUNY Albany. More than 250 students will meet with top officials including Richard Kauffman, chair of energy and finance for the governor, and Jared Snyder, deputy commissioner, Office of Air Resources, Climate Change and Energy.
 
“We will bring the voice of students and those who will be most affected by climate change in the coming decades,” says Kandler.
 
“The world is so interconnected now that a small group of students can really make a difference on a national scale,” said Bard CEP Director Eban Goodstein, in praise of the students’ work. “Our team helped catalyze serious climate conversations in Alabama and Arizona, Vermont and Virginia, involving more than one hundred colleges and universities and thousands of students. Great work.”
 

For the past nine months, four Bard students have been working with students across the country to catalyze a nationwide conversation about state-level action on climate change. Now, during the week of April 4, thousands of high school and college students will meet with state officials to discuss the U.S. pledge to cut emissions 30 percent by 2030.