Faculty & Staff

Myra Armstead

Faculty in History, Vice President for Academic Inclusive Excellence and Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies, Bard College, Ph.D., University of Chicago

Neil Bhatia

Neil Bhatia uses He/Him pronouns. He barely graduated high school from UWCSEA in Singapore in 2020. He now studies Computer Science and Written Arts at Bard College and interns for Bard Early College Hudson Valley. Outside of this, his interests include Muay Thai, Rock Climbing, Racing, and Piano.

You can contact him at [email protected], but unfortunately, he rarely has anything interesting to say.

Jon Bowermaster

Jon Bowermaster is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, author, adventurer, radio host, six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council, and executive producer at Oceans 8 Films. The Oceans 8 project took Bowermaster and his teams around the world by sea kayak over 10 years (1999–2008) and documented their stories from locales such as the Aleutian Islands, French Polynesia, and Gabon, as well as their findings about how the ocean and its various coastlines are faring in today’s world. His first assignment for National Geographic magazine was documenting a 3,741-mile journey across Antarctica by dogsled.

Bowermaster is a board member of Mark Ruffalo’s Water Defense and the Celine Cousteau Outdoor Film Fellowship, chairman of the advisory council for Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, and member of the leadership council of Riverkeeper. His books include Wildebeest in a Rainstorm; Oceans: The Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do to Turn the Tide; Descending the Dragon: My Journey Down the Coast of Vietnam; Birthplace of the Winds; and Aleutian Adventure. Recent films and film series include Ghost Fleet; Hudson River Stories: Hudson River at Risk and Hope on the Hudson; Dear President Obama and Dear Governor Brown; After the Spill; Antarctica 3D, on the Edge; and SoLa, Louisiana Water Stories.

His films for the National Geographic Channel include Descending the Dragon and a sea kayaking series that includes The Dangerous Archipelago, Into the Altiplano, The Lost Coast of Gabon, and Around Tasmania. His films have won numerous awards at festivals around the world, including Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, New York Wild Film Festival, Accolade Global Film Competition, IndieFest, Doc LA, Blue Ocean Film Festival, Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, and others. He is the recipient of grants from, in addition to the National Geographic Society, the Park Foundation, Scenic Hudson, 11th Hour Project, NoVo Foundation, World Harmony Foundation, and Code Blue Foundation, among others.

Rachel Ephraim

M.F.A., Columbia University

Rachel Ephraim received her M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University and a B.S. in Film and Television from Boston University where she studied screenwriting. While in grad school, Rachel worked as a reader in the fiction department of The New Yorker and as the managing editor at The Park Slope Reader. Her work has been published in The Washington Square Review, The Barcelona Review, and the Apple Valley Review. Before teaching at Bard, Rachel taught for Writopia Lab, a non-profit that fosters joy, literacy, and critical thinking in teens from all background through creative writing.

Tate Klacsmann

M.F.A., Northern Vermont University

Tate Klacsmann is a council member for the Society of American Graphic Artists. His art work is included in the permanent collections of the Albany Institute of History and Art, The Smith College Museum of Art, and flat files of Zea Mays Printmaking.  He completed an MFA at Northern Vermont University, a Masters of Art History at University of Glasgow, and BA at Yale University. He has been teaching art and art history for more than ten years at schools including: Northern Vermont University, Augusta University, SUNY Columbia Greene, and Bard Early College – Hudson Valley and has been a visiting artist or lecturer at the Hotchkiss School, Springfield College, and New River Community College. 

Nesrin Ersoy McMeekin

M.A., Bilkent University

Nesrin Ersoy McMeekin has an MA, 2007, in International Relations, Russian Studies Center from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.  She specializes in early Turkish Republican era-specifically in its relations with the Soviet Union, and Turkish Emigration from Bulgaria during the 20^th century.  Her first book Turkey’s Relations with the Bolsheviks (1919-1922) was published by VDM Publishing House Ltd., in 2009.  Her article on “Bulgarian Policies Towards its Turkish Minority and the Big Emigration of 1989” (‘Bulgaristan’ın Türklere Yönelik Politikası ve 1989 Büyük Göçü”) was published in 2013, by Uluslararası Stratejik Araştırmalar Kurumu (USAK) in Ankara, Turkey.

Nesrin is a Visiting Instructor of Humanities at Bard College, teaching the First-Year Seminar since Fall 2014; at BEC Hudson since Fall 2017; and BEC Duchess since Fall 2020.

Jeff Roda

Jeff has written scripts for many movie studios and TV networks including DreamWorks, Paramount, Universal, HBO, CBS, and Warner Bros, and has been named to the Hollywood Screenwriting Black List three times. He did the production rewrite on the Universal Pictures comedy Pitch Perfect, and was also a producer on the Sony Pictures feature Love Liza, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival. His directorial debut, 18 TO PARTY, premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival in October 2019. He has written articles about film for The Atlantic Wire and taught screenwriting at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

Monica Sanborn

Monica Sanborn is a Canadian-born artist and teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. Her studies include the University of Windsor’s BFA Acting program, the Atlantic Acting Conservatory & most recently UCLA for Screenwriting. She has co- taught neutral mask at both NYU Tisch and the Atlantic Acting School.

Monica’s artistic practice includes performance, writing, video, technology, music, and film-making.  She is a company member with Theater Mitu and is currently learning how to weld.

Matthew Park

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in African History, Michigan State University, B.A. History and Secondary Education, The College of New Jersey.

Dr. Matthew Park (Bard Sequence Director) oversees the Bard Sequence program in collaboration with partner schools and districts.  He previously taught courses in African history, literature, and film at BHSEC Newark from 2012-2021 and served as the Program Chair of Second Year Seminar for Bard Early College.

Michael Tibbetts

BS, Southeastern Massachusetts University; PhD, Wesleyan University. Teaching assistant, Peterson Fellowship, Wesleyan University. Adjunct lecturer, postdoctoral fellow, University of Michigan. Recipient, National Science Foundation grant (2008), to study transmission of anaplasmosis from ticks to people. Member of Sigma Xi, Genetics Society of America, American Society of Microbiology. Professional interests: cellular events that lead to appropriate spatial organization of subcellular material. Faculty, The Master of Arts in Teaching Program. At Bard since 1992.

Dumaine Williams

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology, Stony Brook University, B.A. Biology, Bard College.

Dr. Dumaine Williams (Vice President and Dean of the Early College) oversees academic programming across the Bard Early College campuses and promotes the Sequence’s academic quality and integration with the broader Bard network. Dr. Williams was previously the founding principal of Bard High School Early College Newark and Bard High School Early College Cleveland.

Mike Wood