Division of Social Studies News by Date
May 2014
April 2014
Until recently Bard alumnus Dan Cline ‘08 was teaching English language classes to young people in Haisyn, Ukraine, working on community projects, and even ending up in the local press for his efforts. That changed over the winter as political unrest in the country grew into a revolution. In late February, the Peace Corps deemed Ukraine unsafe and evacuated more than 200 volunteers from the country. Now Cline has gone home to New Jersey, hoping to eventually return to Ukraine to finish his service. In the meantime, he’s giving presentations at local schools and doing what he can to support his Ukrainian colleagues remotely.
The revolution seemed far away to Cline when he was in Haisyn. The small city in central Ukraine is 175 miles from the capital, Kiev, the site of much of the nation’s turmoil. There were no protests in Haisyn, only polite discussion in the teachers’ lounge at the school where he worked. While his site was quiet and safe, that wasn’t necessarily the case for his fellow Peace Corps volunteers in other parts of the country. “I very much want to go back and continue my work,” Cline says, “but I understand how and why the decision was made to evacuate.”
Bard College alumnus Dan Cline '08 |
Cline had been teaching English to students in the equivalent of the fourth through eleventh grades at The Haisyn School–Gymnasium Complex. His major at Bard was an interdivisional combination of literature, history, and Russian/Eurasian studies, which prepared him perfectly for his Peace Corps service. “I enjoy teaching English,” he says. “That has to do with my love of the language, which is thanks in no small part to the wonderful English department at Bard College.”
One of the Peace Corps’s goals in the region is to bring new and interactive teaching methods into the classroom. “There’s a large focus on memorization,” he says, “so we try to get away from the textbook as much as possible with role-playing activities and visual aids.” All the classes are taught in teams with one Ukrainian instructor and one Peace Corps volunteer. Cline praises his colleagues as experienced teachers who are open to new ideas. The classroom resources are another matter: Many of the students don’t have dictionaries, and the teachers’ desk editions are worn and out of date. Dan has been raising money through family and friends to better equip the classes.
Cline poses in his classroom in Haisyn with his students and fellow teacher. |
In addition to teaching, Cline’s Peace Corps service requires a capstone project—a community service initiative to be left in the hands of local staff upon his departure. Cline’s project, for which he received a USAID grant, is an outdoor athletic complex at the school where he teaches. Plans include a playground, workout equipment, and stone chess tables. Programming would be offered at the school and around the complex to promote healthy lifestyles for people of all ages. A Young Volunteers Club—a national, state-supported phenomenon in Ukraine—would be responsible for raising additional funds to build the structure, as well as maintaining the programming series in the long term. He was in the midst of executing this project when he was recalled to the United States, and his carefully crafted plans for the site are now on hold.
Cline wrapped up other projects as well as he could, hoping to return but planning for the worst. He had intended to direct two camps for children this summer, one for HIV-positive youth and another that teaches boys about gender and discrimination. Since being evacuated, he has been training new Ukrainian camp staff via Skype so they can take over from the Peace Corps volunteers. He was also preparing exams for Ukraine’s National Olympiad, an advanced English language competition for high school students. He and a colleague were able to finish writing the exams after returning to the United States and to send them back to the country’s Ministry of Education in time for the event in March.
Cline speaks Russian and Ukrainian, and has a strong background in the region’s history and culture. “When I came to Bard, Visiting Professor Jonathan Brent had offered Soviet History, which I jumped on. I was completely enthralled with the subject. It was just amazing the professors that I met. Professor Gennady Shkliarevsky and Professor Jennifer Day worked with me a lot, and they were true mentors.” Seeing Professor Day’s level of language proficiency as a non-native speaker inspired Cline. He decided to study Russian, and enrolled in Bard’s study abroad program at Smolny College in St. Petersburg, beginning with a summer language intensive and returning for further study the following year.
Cline hosted a Thanksgiving celebration for his students in 2013. |
“I had a wonderful time traveling and learning. My Russian improved by leaps and bounds, and that made it vastly easier to pick up Ukrainian later. I had an unfair advantage. As a lot of my Peace Corps friends like to tell me, ‘Showing up speaking Russian is not really fair for the rest of us.’ I definitely have Bard to thank for putting me in a place in which my language skills were so advanced that I feel comfortable giving speeches.” That is what Cline did last fall at Rayon Rada, the parliamentary body in Haisyn that administers the surrounding county. He attended a ceremony with his director during which he was asked to make an impromptu speech. He was later interviewed by one of the mayor’s assistants and that interview was broadcast over the radio in Haisyn.
Now back home, the safety of his friends, coworkers, and students in Haisyn is always on his mind. He’s looking for a job in the United States, but he continues his service by educating Americans about Ukrainian history and culture. In March, Dan spoke at New Jersey City University and to several classes at the Hudson School in Hoboken, his former school. He also hopes to present at his high school and at Bard.
In mid-April, the Peace Corps officially ended the terms of service for all volunteers who had been in Ukraine, though there is a possibility that Cline could be reinstated at the same location within a year. He finds it difficult to imagine not returning to Haisyn. “I hope that I can resume my service. It was wonderful to be in Ukraine. I met amazing volunteers who were full of energy and ideas, and I met so many fantastic Ukrainians. I also learned a lot about my own abilities. A lot of firsts happened in Ukraine.”
March 2014
C2C stands for Campus to Congress, to Corporation, to City Hall, and to Capitol Hill, emphasizing the importance of sustainable leadership in all of these areas. For C2C, environmental, social, and economic work are intertwined in a larger vision of sustainability. A program of Bard’s Center for Environmental Policy (CEP), it trains and connects undergraduates and recent graduates aspiring to leadership positions in sustainable politics and business. C2C holds several workshops a year at colleges around the country. The one at Bard—this year’s was the third in Annandale—being on home field, tends to draw the biggest crowd, and opening night was no exception. There were 17 students from Bard, one student each from Bard College at Simon's Rock and Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) Manhattan, as well as students from 26 other colleges and recent graduates from six organizations. The farthest traveled student came from the College of Idaho.
Amy Canavan, The New School |
Participants spent the weekend doing the kind of intensive skill building that is the hallmark of a C2C workshop. “With C2C Fellows we ask the students, ‘What do they need to make a difference in their 20s? How can they change the world in their 20s?’” says Eban Goodstein, director of Bard CEP and the Bard MBA in Sustainability Program. “They tell us, ‘We have a vision; we need to know how to network; and we need to know how to raise money and ask for things.’ What we do on the C2C weekend is really give them those opportunities and start to build that skill set.”
New School student Amy Canavan made the trip from New York City for her second C2C workshop, serving as a public speaking mentor for new Fellows. Canavan is in her fourth year of a five-year, dual-degree B.A./B.F.A. program in environmental studies and fashion design. She attended a workshop last October at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. “It’s really easy to get bogged down by the issues. This weekend is all about solutions, and that’s my favorite part of the program. I came back from the program last year so inspired and renewed.” At Bentley, as with every C2C workshop, industry professionals spoke on a panel. “It was inspiring to hear people in real jobs, making real money, in real time doing things that are going to change and benefit the planet.” She’s remained in touch with people she met at the Bentley event and she’s now writing her thesis on a project she presented to that group.
Bard College first-year Carl Amritt |
Fellows practice in several areas over the course of the weekend. They hone their elevator pitches, discuss effective fundraising, and meet leaders in their fields. The weekend begins and ends with the Ideas Marketplace. On Friday night, everyone has one intense minute to propose a project to the group. Participants then vote on the best proposals, and a few winners each give a five-minute presentation as part of Sunday’s closing events. Proposals on Friday night ranged from building a compost bioreactor at Bard to teaching environmental literacy to elementary and middle school students. In the end, among the six chosen for final presentations were BHSEC Manhattan’s Ginger Simms and three Bard students: Logan Hollarsmith ‘14, Mildred Kissai ‘15, and Dana Miranda ‘14.
Bard first-year Carl Amritt made a pitch for green bonds, a financial instrument similar to war bonds that the Department of Treasury and Energy would issue to promote green capital. Like the other participants, he spent a lot of time over the weekend addressing an audience. Amritt appreciated the emphasis on storytelling and networking. “One of the most important things that I took away from the workshop was the phrase that “your net worth is your network”. What Dr. Goodstein had meant by this was that our value as professionals out in the world is dependent on the network of individuals that you know. It is through this network that you make those connections to fuel your career. It was this very network that I entered by attending this weekend conference and becoming a C2C Fellow.”
As Bard senior J. p. Lawrence prepares to graduate in May, he will not be entering the work force for the first time—far from it. The anthropology and writing joint major, Bard Free Press editor-in-chief, and cross-country runner has been a member of the U.S. Army National Guard since 2008. His specialty in the military is photojournalism, and he has served in Kuwait, Qatar, Germany, and Australia, earning several military journalism awards for his work, as well as an Army Commendation Medal. Lawrence was on the ground reporting for the U.S. Army during the drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq in 2009, and in New York City after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. He has been recognized for his work at Bard, as well, winning the Hannah Arendt Center Award for Excellence in Political Thinking as a sophomore.
Last summer, Lawrence interned with ABC news, in which he worked the overnight shift for the early morning news programs World News Now and America This Morning. “Their tag line is, ‘World News Now—informing insomniacs for more than two decades’!” Lawrence says. “I was able to pitch stories, and find footage and see my work on air.” One of the pieces Lawrence pitched was a segment called “Yoga Babies,” about mothers who do yoga with their infants. “It was great! I got to write, I got to help on the anchor track. I got to help with editing. It all came together.”
Lawrence was accepted to Bard and deferred for two years so he could join the National Guard. He continues to spend one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer on duty. “It’s really interesting because I leave Bard every weekend to hang out with people from a very different socioeconomic context. … I hang out with officers who are lawyers, who work in the district attorney's office, and I hang out with people who are mechanics, plumbers and things like that.” His service offers a fresh perspective on his time at Bard, and has given him a wide range of experience working with different kinds of people all over the world.
For his senior project, Lawrence is following the staff at several of the area’s college newspapers to see how each team works. “My idea is that the different context of each college produces a different lens and affects the way news is processed.” His project will combine anthropology and writing. “I want to be able to write something that really pushes the boundaries of what I can do,” he says.
Lawrence reenlisted with the National Guard this winter and is now a sergeant. He is exploring graduate schools and has made it to the second round of screening for the Fulbright Program. With a Bard education under his belt and a resume of outstanding experiences and awards, he’s ready for the next chapter.
Visit Lawrence’s website to read some of his work and view his photography.
Bard students work with members of the Red Hook High School Debate Team. |
President Leon Botstein addresses the tournament attendees. |