2nd Summit on Early College

The 2nd Summit on Early College promises to be an occasion to get together to speak about our aspirations, values, and challenges in rewriting the pathways from secondary to higher education.  Ian Bickford, Provost of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and John B. Weinstein, Principal, BHSEC-Newark and Dean of the Early Colleges, hope that you will be able to participate in the Summit (in person or virtually).

The 1st Summit on Early College was held in April last year at Simon’s Rock. Discussions were begun on topics such as the landscape of the Early College Movement, setting the agenda for reclaiming leadership in the early college movement, common pedagogies and crucial distinctions across the Bard network, the early college mission in public and private contexts, lessons from the public early colleges for Bard Academy at Simon's Rock, imagining a six-year program, and the uniquely genetic relation between Early College and the liberal arts. As we wrote last year, the expansion and evolution of Bard’s early college programs signals the success and vitality of the idea that binds us: that many younger students are ready for greater engagement and deeper inquiry than conventional contexts allow.  As our momentum builds, new challenges come our way, calling on us to articulate afresh what we do and account for why we do it. These challenges are, indeed, opportunities for our campuses  to continue inventing together and channel our structural and pedagogical ties toward greater interaction and collaboration.

The two objectives of this summit have emerged from conversations over the past year. The first is to establish an ongoing network-wide discussion on a theme from last year’s summit that has grown into a leitmotif of many of our internal conversations: the nature of the triangular relation between inclusion, the liberal arts, and early college.  The second is to enable trans-network faculty and program development, collaboration, and support, with a conversation on the role of technology as well. The connecting thread between these two objectives is collaborative and capacious thinking about the various communities that faculty claim as their own and are claimed by, derive sustenance and meaning from, as well as the worlds they move in, seek to connect, and even produce, in their work as teachers and scholars.

We hope that Bard Early College network  faculty and staff who are interested in these conversations will give us a chance to host them at Simon’s Rock. Simon’s Rock will help to defray travel costs, provide lodging for visitors, and facilitate remote participation where preferred.  Nominated or interested colleagues who would like to be part of roundtable discussions (including as facilitators), and mini-workshops on any of these broad topics, can fill out a form here, or can contact aabbas@simons-rock.edu directly.