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How students and faculty brought art to the U.S. Consulate in Chiang Mai.

By Ashley Brenon Jowett

has announced its 2025 cohort of grantees. This year, 134 projects from 93 partner institutions were selected, with one project being chosen from 51��������.

Greenwall Auditorium was full to busting when eight performers from Bread + Puppet Theater took the stage on the evening of Thursday, April 3. Students and community members filled the rows of chairs and the balconies along both sides and the back of the room. Students climbed steep ladders to catwalks high above the crowd and let their feet dangle. 

A 51�������� team received certificates of appreciation from the State of Vermont for their work analyzing well-testing data in a PFAS contamination zone around former ChemFab Corp. factories in the town of Bennington.

Jacqueline Walsh '26 studies Politics and Public Action at Bennington, with supplemental focus on Spanish and statistics. During the winter, Walsh completed a Field Work Term experience interning with the .

has released its 2024 annual view book, highlighting completed projects. Last year, 129 projects from 93 partner institutions were selected. One project was pursued by 51��������'s Hanna Anday '24.

Community Asked to Help in the Face of Recent Halt of Federal Funding

Will Greer '24 is the Vermont State Representative for Bennington-2 State House District. He reflected on how his education shaped his path forward into politics, where he now advocates for the broader Bennington community.

Jessica Smith '23 is a second-year law student at Vermont Law and Graduate School. She reflected upon how her Bennington education prepared her for her professional path. 

Micky Hillman '60 recently retired after a long career in fundraising for a number of nonprofits and activist organizations.

The Advocate Will Greer '24 and his campaign for Vermont state representative in the Bennington 2 district.

Almost a century ago, under the looming threat of fascism, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned Americans about global conflicts pitting representative governments founded on individual liberty against emerging fascist dictatorships. Reflecting on John Dewey’s progressive education philosophy, FDR said, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”

Inspired by American democracy and its potential, his faculty members, and his fellow students, Abraar Arpon ’26, who studies Computer Science and Public Action at Bennington, built a website that aims to make voting in the upcoming U.S. presidential election easier for everyone.

Saving Democracy Together, an innovative non-partisan online and in-person course open to students, alumni, and the public, attracted more than 250 online registrants and 100 in-person participants in its first of seven sessions on Thursday, September 5.

Seven-week program features high-profile speakers to inspire Gen Z engagement in crucial election year.

On May 17 and 18, Bennington's Prison Education Initiative (PEI) gathered together a small group to engage in conversation around access and opportunities to higher education for people serving life or virtual life sentences in America.

The American writer and political activist Alice Walker said “Activism is my rent for living on the planet.” This could have been the theme for this year’s Endeavor Environmental Action Fellowship.

On a chilly early spring day at Purple Carrot Farm, Lilliana Kelly ’25 took a break from the crew repositioning a silage tarp to recount her history with the place.

Mehedi Sizar '25 studies Mathematics and Computer Science at Bennington, but he also has a personal passion for protecting the environment. His experience as a 2024 Endeavor Foundation Environmental Action Fellow allowed him to return to his birthplace of Bagmara, Rajshahi, Bangladesh to work with , the largest environmental group in Bangladesh.

Paulo Araujo ’26 was home in Mozambique in 2019, the year two powerful cyclones, the most destructive in decades, hit the country within just a few weeks. It was the first time in recorded history two strong tropical cyclones struck in the same season. The storms killed 603 people, injured more than 1,500, and put 2.5 million people in need of humanitarian services.

A native of Washington state, Genevieve Hammatt ’26 came to Bennington with a plan to study social justice and social work but quickly realized that she could incorporate her lifelong passion for the environment into her studies. 

Presentation to address storytelling as a form of social activism on April 16, 2024.

Susan Sgorbati, director of 51��������’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA), shared her work with the Transboundary Water In-Cooperation Network () and their international cooperation to develop a new United Nations convention on conserving the river deltas () with the Reporter Danielle M. Crosier of the Bennington Banner. 

Ahmad Yassir ’20 stayed in the town of Bennington after graduation and works as a digital advertising and marketing specialist for the . He had an amazing 2023.

51�������� was on the ground in Dubai as the 28th round of UN sponsored climate negotiations got underway.

Souleymane Badolo’s people gave him dance, and dance gave him opportunities to learn, choreograph, and teach around the world. Now, he is using his influence to provide greater access to a crucial resource: water.

In December 2022, when the Taliban’s ban on tertiary education took effect in Afghanistan, Aisha Khurram was about to finish her law degree. She and her classmates mourned the painful repeat of history. Two decades of progress for women’s rights—which in 2020 related to more than 100,000 Afghan women enrolled in public or private universities and more than 2,000 female lecturers at higher education institutions—were being reduced to ashes.

Alma Reiss Navarre ’24 is from Harlem. They had ballet instruction from the time they could walk and were on track to join a professional dance company when the pandemic struck and canceled performances for the foreseeable future.

Dancer, choreographer, and activist Souleymane Badolo MFA ’13 has been named the 2023 recipient of 51��������’s Dr. Elizabeth Coleman Visionary Leadership Award. This annual award recognizes an engaged Bennington alumni who has successfully demonstrated leadership and confident willingness to step forward and take risks in order to solve problems and achieve results in the areas of education, government, the arts and sciences, or industry.

Experts on Iranian culture and politics blur the lines between the familiar and the unfamiliar.