Bard College at Simon’s Rock Provost Weinstein: Embracing … – theberkshireedge.com
Great Barrington — John Weinstein became provost and vice president of Bard College at Simon’s Rock in July 2020, right near the height of the COVID pandemic. “I think that was considered an awkward time for a new job,” Weinstein told The Berkshire Edge. “But it was crucial to keep the college going during the pandemic.”
Towards the end of this semester, Weinstein reflected on getting the college through the pandemic, along with this year’s successes and its plans for the future with The Berkshire Edge. Unlike other colleges during the pandemic, Bard College at Simon’s Rock has held in-person classes since August 2020. However, the campus itself was not open to the general public or the families of students. “We have a kind of pride of having gotten through that together during the first year [of the pandemic],” Weinstein said. “We all did very well. Other schools were struggling to stay open or having breakouts of COVID cases, but we had very few cases that whole year. For us, there was a kind of triumph having to get through the pandemic, especially when people didn’t know if schools were able to do that.”
Starting with this fall semester, the college has started to have in-person activities again, which Weinstein said is important. “We had our social justice symposium and a lot of other big events,” Weinstein said to The Berkshire Edge. “But there have been many things that we used to take for granted as just regular parts of school life, like getting to meet a student and their parents together on campus. To us, that was very special. It’s been great to have that everyday thing once again.”
Before he became provost, Weinstein was a faculty member at Bard College at Simon’s Rock teaching Chinese and Asian Studies, along with theater classes.
Weinstein said that since he has become provost, he has adhered to Simon’s Rock founder Elizabeth Blodgett Hall’s idea of having the college meet a student’s educational needs, including the needs that have not been met in a broader manner. “College students need great engagement, and [Hall] felt that a student being bored is a negative situation,” he said. “This is one of the many reasons why we needed to stay open through the pandemic. Some students have felt that there’s no other place that’s going to serve them in the way our college serves them. How could we not be there for them?”
Going through a new normal where other colleges across America went out of business during the pandemic, Weinstein said that a critical challenge for the college is to find ways to continue to innovate through its programs. “We need to keep moving forward,” he said. “I think we need to remember those moments of innovation that caused the college to come into being in the first place. If our founder had been content with education staying the way it was, this college would never have come to be. But it’s challenging because, while we have a history of doing things differently and doing new things, it doesn’t always make it easy to do that.”
Weinstein said that embracing change is key to the college’s survival. “There are some things that are much different now than when I first started here,” he said. “For example, when I first started here there used to be very few options for high school students to take college-level courses. Because of the work the college has done to expand this program to the public sector, this program is now huge for us. I believe that across America, the amount of high school students who are taking at least one college course has gone up substantially.”
Weinstein said that embracing change also means serving diverse student populations. “One of the areas we’ve leaned into is the work we’ve been doing with the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) students to make sure that this is a campus that is well represented,” he said. “I think there are ways to serve that student group even more efficiently.”
To that end, the college has created the Bard Queer Leadership program. “I appreciate that we’re leaning into a part of our community that’s significant to us, and also showing how a program can be strongly queer serving, and certainly serve all students,” Weinstein said. “And also to name it the Bard Queer Leadership program, because right now there are all these ‘don’t say gay’ and ‘don’t say trans’ legislation [in various states], and it’s important to be a school that says ‘gay’ and says ‘trans.’ We want to be a school that says you’re not just welcome here, we want you here. We’re going to help design a program with you that’s suited to your needs. As a 51-year-old gay man who’s lived through many different eras of career visibility in this country, it’s really important to have those beacons and models at schools for students to let them know there’s a school that’s just for them.”
Another program Weinstein said the college is developing is its Center for Food and Resilience. “For nine years we’ve had our ThinkFOOD conferences at the college,” he said. “We have created a community garden that has evolved into a small farm on campus. It will be part of the Center of Food and Resilience. We have several community connections who have helped with the students’ work in growing food that we are serving at our dining hall.”
As for the college’s ongoing programs, Weinstein said that the college will continue to further develop its science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs. “Over time, we’ve made a lot of growth in these programs and various science areas,” he said. “When I first came, we used to have less of a proportion of science-focused students. It’s grown through the partnerships we have in the medical and engineering fields. These programs have been a key draw for our students from other countries. I think having an international population is important.”
Going forward, Weinstein said that he will work towards continuing to grow the programs at the college and working towards further community recognition.“I hope that 10 years from now we will have vibrant programs on campus that are all well known to the community,” he said. “I want it where we don’t run into anyone in town where you mention Simon’s Rock and they say ‘Oh, what’s that?’ I really would love for the community to be connected to us.”