Faculty News

The entire Bennington community mourns the death of faculty member Steven Bach, who passed away on March 25, 2009, after a brief illness. An acclaimed writer and filmmaker, Steven began teaching at Bennington in 1999.  

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, biology faculty member Elizabeth Sherman will lecture on Why Darwin Matters at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont on Friday, March 27, at 7 pm. This event is free and open to the public.

Because of our confidence in Bennington's capacity to weather the economic crisis without extraordinary measures, we had thought that a statement might raise more concerns than it would allay. However, given the prevalence of statements from other colleges and universities-in some cases announcing the need for freezes, across-the-board cuts, a slow down or cessation of building projects either singly or in some combination-the absence of a communication from Bennington was becoming an issue in and of itself.

Bennington President Elizabeth Coleman was a guest on Vermont Public Radio's Vermont Edition on February 12 to discuss plans for the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, a building that will embody Bennington's new curricular initiative. Construction on the project is expected to begin this spring. 

Former Bennington College president Frederick Burkhardt founded The Darwin Correspondence Project in 1974, with the aid of Sydney Smith, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge (U.K.). They originally set out to locate, research, and publish summaries of all letters written by Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century (1809-1882).