Bard Welcome Corps Scholarships Awarded to Two OSUN RhEAP Students for 2025
Grace George Kharthum and Ruot Wichar Duop, originally from Sudan, secured the highly coveted scholarships from Welcome Corps on Campus, a refugee sponsorship program supported by US governmental agencies and higher education institutions, after completing the OSUN Hubs’ Realizing Higher Education Access Program (RhEAP) program.
Bard Welcome Corps Scholarships Awarded to Two OSUN RhEAP Students for 2025
Bard College’s Welcome Corps on Campus (WCC) program has accepted two students from OSUN’s Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives in Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya, to attend Bard in the 2025-26 academic year. Grace George Kharthum and Ruot Wichar Duop, originally from Sudan, secured the highly coveted scholarships from WCC, a refugee sponsorship program supported by US governmental agencies and higher education institutions, after completing the Hubs’ Realizing Higher Education Access Program (RhEAP) program. At Bard, Duop plans to study computer science and English literature, with a focus on developing data, software, and machine learning to provide innovative solutions to challenges in healthcare, education, and governance. Kharthum will pursue a degree in sociology, focusing on gender, education, and global development. “My journey from a refugee camp in Kenya to Bard College in New York is a testament to the power of education and support from dedicated individuals and organizations,” said Kharthum.
Suzanne Kite, aka Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard, was interviewed by ArtNews about her work in ensuring that Indigenous artists are involved throughout the development of AI systems.
Bard Professor Suzanne Kite Interviewed for ArtNews
Suzanne Kite, aka Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard, was interviewed by ArtNews about her work in ensuring that Indigenous artists are involved throughout the development of AI systems. “I think that what we call AI is soon going to be split into its many, very separate systems, instead of this blanket calling everything AI,” said Kite, an Oglála Lakȟóta artist who has been using machine learning in artwork since 2018. “There are so many different things happening. If there is not diversity of thought, even basic cultural thought—but real diversity of thought—then we will just end up at a dead end with things.” Kite discusses earlier models of machine learning which she used to create art, how her work at Bard focuses on developing ethical AI frameworks deeply rooted in indigenous methodologies, and her public art project Cosmologyscape, in collaboration with Alisha B Wormsley, which solicits dreams from the public that are translated into quilting patterns generated from 26 Black and Lakota symbols and which will debut as sculptures at Ashland Plaza in Brooklyn from September 22 to November 3.
Valerie Barr, Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Bard College, together with Carla E. Brodley and Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, examines in a new study how institutions of higher learning should reconsider the metrics by which they measure data to improve diversity and broadening participation in computing analysis and assessment.
Professor Valerie Barr: “Visualizing Progress in Broadening Participation in Computing: The Value of Context”
Valerie Barr, Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Bard College, together with Carla E. Brodley and Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, examines in a new study how institutions of higher learning should reconsider the metrics by which they measure data to improve diversity and broadening participation in computing analysis and assessment. “Concerns about representation in computing within the US have driven numerous activities to broaden participation,” they write. However, as Barr points out, “the standard analysis of computer science degree data does not account for the changing demographics of the undergraduate population in terms of overall numbers and relative proportion of federally designated gender, race, and ethnicity groupings.” The study argues that the consideration of students’ intersectional identities, along with using multiple data-analysis methods, would aid in more accurate assessments of the effectiveness of curricular, pedagogic, and institutional interventions for expanding representation in computing.
Thursday, November 21, 2024 Reem-Kayden Center Lobby5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Come and join us for a game night! Refreshments for all and prizes for winners. Games to play include: Quads, SET, Rubik's Cube Solving/Mosaics and more.
Join our students in presenting their summer research! Reem-Kayden Center4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Friday, October 22, 2021
Dani Schultz Merck Pharmaceuticals Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium12:10 pm – 1:10 pm EDT/GMT-4 Aspects of this session will highlight my journey from a small town in northern Wisconsin to the bustling east coast where leaning into discomfort has been critical in driving my career at Merck and the chemistry that I have pursued. Throughout my career, I have tapped into my ability to forge meaningful collaborations, internally and externally, to challenge the status quo and drive disruptive thinking – both in chemistry but also in improving STEM culture. I’ll briefly touch upon some recently completed academic-industrial research collaborations that aimed to empower early-career female professors and provide a platform to mentor and train female professors and students in pharmaceutical research. Throughout all of this, I have a passion for diversity, equity and inclusion and will share how I’ve navigated raising important, and at times difficult, topics and how to influence workplace culture. I’ve learned a lot through failed experiments along the way and I am looking forward to an active discussion with fellow changemakers!
Dani Schultz received her PhD from the University of Michigan working with Professor John Wolfe and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Professor Tehshik Yoon. Since joining Merck in 2014, Dani has been a member of Process Chemistry and Enabling Technologies in Rahway, NJ and as of 2021 became the Director of the Discovery Process Chemistry group in Kenilworth, NJ. Throughout her time at Merck, Dani has been involved in the development of synthetic routes for drug candidates spanning HIV and oncology – forging meaningful collaborations, both internally and externally, to address the synthetic challenges that occur during pharmaceutical development. Most recently, she has served as co-host to the Pharm to Table podcast that aims to elevate the people and stories behind #MerckChemistry.
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Join our graduating seniors in presenting their research! Main Commencement Tent5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Please see the abstract booklet below for full descriptions of students' research.
Hala Nelson, James Madison University Online Event3:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Today's popular AI is mostly software, algorithms, and big data processing. Mathematics powers most of these AI techniques that are rapidly integrated into every aspect of our society and are useful for a vast array of applications. AI agents only understand numbers, more specifically, blobs of zeros and ones. In this talk we will use undergraduate mathematics to make an AI agent process our natural language, recognize what she sees, and make intelligent decisions. We will work out simple examples that have wide applications in the Artificial Intelligence sphere. This is an extremely undergraduate friendly talk and you only need to have calculus and linear algebra backgrounds.