The Al Quds Bard
Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship Program
AQB College for Liberal Arts and Sciences
Abu Dis, Palestine
The Program
Living and working in the West Bank, AQB Fellows serve as full-time writing tutors for the Al Quds Bard undergraduate and MAT programs, while pursuing independent research under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Structured as a multi-faceted fellowship year, the fellowship provides an opportunity for recent Bard graduates to gain hands-on teaching and administrative experience, support for their scholarly interests, as well as in-depth exposure to the language, culture and politics of one of the most politically complex and culturally rich regions in the world.
Who Can Apply?
AQB Fellowships are competitive and open to recent graduates of any of Bard’s major program of study. Experience teaching ESL or tutoring writing is an advantage, but not required. Similarly, knowledge of the region, or of Arabic, is an advantage, but not required. The principal qualities we seek in AQB Fellows include maturity and social awareness; openness to other cultures; self-motivation, initiative, and the ability to work both in dependently and as a team; an interest in institution building; the emotional and professional capacity to live and work in a zone of conflict.
Language Tutoring& Assistant Teaching
The Fellow’s primary responsibility is to provide our undergraduate and MAT students with writing and English language support. This support includes roughly thirty hours a week tutoring writing in the AQB Writing Center, as well as running one section of our “intensive writing lab” or a similar section in the MAT program. Fellows help to design and conduct workshops for students and faculty. In addition, Fellows serve as Teaching Assistants for one core course, either First Year or Sophomore Seminar. In this last capacity, Fellows serve as a vital link between students and faculty, providing students with less formal, “peer” instruction and support. While Fellows are encouraged to audit one or more courses in their general field of interest, this is not required. Courses in colloquial Arabic are open to Fellows–and strongly recommended–but not required. Fellows are expected to be in the Writing Center the better part of four days a week, a fifth work day is reserved for research on their individual projects.
Research Project
In addition to their primary work at the Writing Center, Fellows are strongly encouraged to pursue a research project of their own design during their fellowship year. While informal, the research component of the fellowship is meant to encourage recent graduates to remain active in scholarly work during a transition period between college and entering graduate school, or the job market. Fellows participate in a research seminar, in which they present their ideas and research to their peers and are encouraged to present their work at the College.
Compensation
The AQB Fellowship provides for shared housing in Ramallah, a monthly stipend of US $1000, one round-trip plane ticket, basic international medical coverage and visa costs. Fellowships are eligible for renewal for an additional year subject to approval of the AQB project.
Apply All applications must be submitted on-line. To apply, please visit: https://bard.studioabroad.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=39369&Type=R
April 1, 2012 is the deadline for the submission of completed applications with supporting documentation. Incomplete applications, or applications submitted after April 1, will not receive consideration.
