Newsmakers

Opus 40, the 6 1/2 acre outdoor sculpture created by Bard alumnus and faculty member Harvey Fite, has been named to the prestigious 2014 list of endangered landscapes by The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Bard College's newest athletic facility, Honey Field, was dedicated in a ceremony on Saturday afternoon. The ceremony was followed by an intrasquad baseball scrimmage.

The Environmental Consortium of Colleges & Universities has awarded its Great Work Award in honor of Thomas Berry this year to Erik Kiviat ’76, executive director and cofounder of Hudsonia, a not-for-profit institute for research, education, and technical assistance in the environmental sciences based at the Bard College Field Station on the Hudson River. A certified wetland scientist, Kiviat has more than 45 years’ experience with natural history and environmental issues—especially those related to rare native species as well as invasive nonnative species—in the Northeast, and across North America, Europe, and Africa.

Bard Prison Initiative founder and director Max Kenner '01—who "champions the transformative power of a college degree for inmates nationwide"—is honored with the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award.

Max Kenner kicked off his acceptance speech by sharing the story of how the Bard Debate Union at Eastern Correctional Facility beat the University of Vermont this fall.

Max Kenner, Bard alumnus and executive director of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), has won the 2014 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Education. The awards recognize 10 of the year’s most amazing achievements and the innovators behind them. On October 16, Smithsonian magazine, the flagship publication of Smithsonian Media, announced winners of the third annual American Ingenuity Awards, saluting 10 groundbreaking individuals across nine categories including technology, performing and visual arts, natural and physical sciences, education, historical scholarship, social progress, and youth achievement. Max Kenner conceived of and created the BPI as a student volunteer organization when he was an undergraduate at Bard College in 1999. Over the last decade, Kenner has led the expansion of BPI from a pilot program with 15 students to a nationally recognized education initiative enrolling nearly 300 students across six campuses in correctional facilities throughout New York State.

One-third of food is lost or wasted, writes Bard alumna Elizabeth Royte, but producers and consumers can take steps to change that.

Bard alumna and La Voz editor Mariel Fiori '05 has been named an Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year by Gateway to Entrepreneurial Tomorrows, Inc. (GET). GET promotes economic development in the Hudson Valley by supporting women, minorities, youth, and veterans in starting their own businesses. Every year the organization recognizes outstanding regional businesspeople with the Hudson Valley Entrepreneurial Awards. Mariel Fiori, who cofounded the Spanish-language magazine La Voz as a Bard student and has edited the publication for a decade, will be recognized for her contributions as a community leader. Fiori and five other awardees will be honored at GET's 10th anniversary celebration on Thursday, October 23, as part of the Hudson Valley Entrepreneurial Conference and Expo in Wappinger Falls.

What makes herpes viruses so difficult to kill? Biophysicist Z. Hong Zhou may have found the answer in a layer of microscopic chain mail, writes Bard biology alumna Diana Crow '13.

Stunning photography by Laura Steele and Pete Mauney '93 MFA '00 appears in issue 10.