2025 Seniors-to-Seniors Tea

by Susan Phillips

Introduction

The 2025 Stuart Levine Seniors-to Seniors Scholarship Presentations

A modest crowd of Bard LLI members, Bard faculty, and students gathered in the early evening on May 9th in the Reem-Kayden Auditorium to hear presentations from the six seniors who received a scholarship to help with expenses to support their senior projects. All graduating seniors must complete a project, which can range widely in focus and content. The projects of our six scholarship recipients offered a taste of the rich diversity of student learning going on at the college. The scholarship is named for Dean Stuart Stritzler-Levine, who was crucial in supporting the beginnings of Bard LLI 25 years ago, and who remained a steadfast supporter of LLi until his death in 2020.

Current Dean of Students David Shein briefly greeted those attending and introduced the first student to speak.

Andrew Altrock

Andrew, a pianist and German studies student, used his scholarship funds to travel to Berlin, where he studied the writings of Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg. He wanted to answer the question, “Where do music and language find each other?” He sought to explore how language and music, while very different from each other, share the same goal of being expressive. How do music and text inspire each other? Andrew went to the Arnold Schoenberg Center and also attended performances by the (best in the world!) Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Cecilia Giancola

Cecilia’s project is titled “‘An Engagement of Extraordinary Nature: Baroda, the Bankers’ Army, and the British Bahendari: 1800–1833.” She is a historical studies student and winner of a 2025 Fulbright Award. Cecilia looked at the princely state of Baroda and colonial India’s financial institutions in connection with British rule of the day, along with the influence over laws, territories, and trade relationships.

Mabel Kim

Mabel utilized her interest in studio arts to create the art exhibition “Soft Shadow.” She drew from her personal history to explore “the nostalgia of childhood, and childhood experiences,” including trauma and difficult childhood memories. She hopes the project will help her understand how art and its healing potential can influence herself and connect with others.

Mya Muchineuta

Mya utilized her studio arts experience to create many large paintings for her senior project titled ”Paper Dolls.” Mya’s project aims to “explore the relationship between intelligence and knowledge through the perspective of children.”

Julia Pelletier

Julia focused on her studies in art history and visual culture to create “Divine Beings: Friars, Angels, and Gender Expression at the Convent of San Marco.” She traveled to the Convent in San Marco, Italy, to study their paintings of angels, the monastic environment in which they were painted, and the friars who painted them. She also considered the influence of the architectural history of the convent on the artwork as well as what she has learned about sociological gender theory.

Alua Samat

Alua, whose studies at Bard included psychology and economics, traveled to Kazakhstan to research her senior project titled “Body Image Navigation In Kazakh Women of the Nazarbayev Generation.” Alua focused on women born between1990 and 2006, a time she identifies as one of cultural pluralism, economic transition, and varying levels of demand on women’s body images.

Q and A and Wrap-Up

The panel of all six students came back up front to answer several questions from the audience, as well as to thank the Bard LLI community profusely for the financial support. While scholarship funds can be used in a wide variety of ways to support the costs of completing a senior project, it became interestingly apparent that, for this group of 2025 graduates, much of the money went to pay for travel. Before we headed out for snacks and tea, past LLI president Nanci Kryzak stood up and exclaimed enthusiastically what we were all thinking: how proud we felt to help out these six graduating Bard seniors, even a little, with their amazingly interesting, sophisticated, and thoughtful work.