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President Coleman delivered the closing speech at the  in February, anchoring a lineup that included Al Gore, Bill Gates, Oliver Sacks, and Herbie Hancock.

MFA faculty member Amy Hempel has been selected to receive the 22nd annual PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of short fiction. Given in honor of the late Bernard Malamud, who himself taught at Bennington from 1961 to 1984, the award includes participation in the 2009-10 PEN/Faulkner reading series at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a prize of $2,500.

Faculty member Mary Lum received high praise in recent issues of Art in America and Artforum for her solo exhibition , which was on display at Frederieke Taylor gallery in New York earlier this year.

Faculty member Mansour Farhang was on NPR's The World this week to discuss the political implications of journalist Roxana Saberi's imprisonment in Iran. An American-Iranian, Saberi was convicted of spying for the United States and sentenced to eight years in Iranian prison.

Faculty member Ann Pibal was one of 25 painters and sculptors to receive a $25,000 grant from the .