| Overall Rating | Silver - expired |
|---|---|
| Overall Score | 50.60 |
| Liaison | Laurie Husted |
| Submission Date | June 14, 2011 |
| Executive Letter | Download |
Bard College
PAE-6: Diversity and Equity Coordination
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
2.00 / 2.00 |
Taun
Toay Associate Vice President Vice President |
Does the institution have a diversity and equity committee?:
The charter or mission statement of the committee or a brief description of the committee's purview and activities :
The Difference and Media Project is an interdisciplinary, extra-departmental space for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Inspired by the interdisciplinary, problem-focused nature of the MIT Media Lab, which MIT describes as an “atelier” environment, the Difference and Media Project creates a multi-media laboratory space for “difference.” Difference, broadly speaking, includes race, sexuality, religion, national origin, class, or other ability, but is not restricted to those categories. Difference, of course, is not necessarily an idea that can be captured within these categories, which can only be preliminary and provisional. Media includes written texts, live performance, plays, digital artworks, conversation, art installations, or site-specific interactions with the landscape. The laboratory format allows for rigorous play, spontaneous interactions, and creative analysis.
The Project features collaborative learning, tutorials, workshops, seminars, and conferences. Bard College community members are welcomed into the space to develop projects. It is designed to be a welcoming and open space. While this space will be intended primarily as a space for and about “difference,” a non-exclusionary word that implies a certain relationship to the dominant culture (but with obvious room for fluidity), the intent is inclusive. A focus on difference is balanced with a strategic investment in inter-connectedness, both in terms of building relationships to the world outside Bard–which can produce connections to graduate schools, jobs, and internships—and also within Bard.
In the Spring of 2011, the Difference and Media Project collected information about the diversity of Bard College, including the ratios of students of color, their grades, their advisors, their majors, and their class standings. We use this information as a grounding and weathervane to help us chart the direction of our organization and its effectiveness.
We are currently engaged in a multimedia/web project intended to raise questions about diversity at Bard among the student population, and bring forward hidden and nascent aspects of our reliance on social media and the invisibility of identity online.
Members of the committee, including affiliations :
Ivy Roberts, Office Assistant/Lab Manager
Mariel Santana, Assistant to the Director
Shannon Gray, Web Content Manager
Katherine Biggs-Wrona, Lab Assistant
Elizabeth Pyle, Multimedia Producer
Janet Wyles, Driver
The website URL where information about the diversity and equity committee is available:
Does the institution have a diversity and equity office?:
A brief description of the diversity office:
The Difference and Media Project is located on campus in Annandale House, which also houses residence life offices.
The number of people employed in the diversity office:
The website URL where information about the diversity and equity office is available:
Does the institution have a diversity and equity coordinator?:
Diversity coordinator’s name:
Diversity coordinator's position title:
A brief description of the diversity coordinator's position:
Annie Seaton designed and taught a year-long class on Race and the Pastoral as part of the Difference and Media Project. This interdisciplinary exploration of space, place, and aesthetics has included many visitors, two (and counting) conferences, and a book in progress. Annie graduated from Wellesley, where she first experienced the bittersweet qualities of the pastoral, and did her PhD at Harvard with Barbara Johnson. Annie’s creation of the Difference and Media project emerged from her directorship of the Multicultural Affairs Office at Bard. Annie was a Mellon Fellow at Stanford, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Aesthetics, Politics, and Difference at Brown University. Annie works on race and psychoanalysis, the pastoral, the Enlightenment, and the liberal arts college as historical, aesthetic, and political structure.
The website URL where information about the diversity and equity coordinator is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.