Third-year HAST student Vala Schriefer won the DAAD Prize 2021

Bard College Berlin is delighted to announce this year’s recipient of the DAAD Prize. Vala Schriefer, third-year BA student in the Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought program has been awarded the prestigious prize in 2021.

The DAAD Prize is conferred annually to an outstanding international student who not only has an excellent academic record, but also through their civic and campus involvement demonstrates engagement and responsibility towards their community. Students were first nominated by faculty and then a selection committee involving the Civic Engagement Office as well as the members of the university’s leadership was tasked with selecting a winner among an already outstanding group of nominees.

In choosing Vala, the committee especially praised Vala’s many public outreach activities on campus as well as her unique ability to “think and write across disciplines and methodological divides” that bring together the BCB community. 

Vala is an avid creator in a range of different media - analog painting and drawing, video work and podcasts, and poetry and fiction. 

She has been writing for the BCB blog Die Berliner since her first year at the College and is now a co-editor of the blog, reaching the BCB community every week by carefully curating blog articles on academics, campus life, current events, and happenings in Berlin. She also organizes the blog’s poetry month and creative writing events, as well as a campus film series. About the decision to move the film series online in the early phase of the pandemic, Vala said she wanted to “create a modicum of community in the oppressing distance of those early lockdown days.”

This fall she initiated an oil painting nature workshop for current students and recent alumni that combined observational drawing and color-mixing theory.

During the summer, Vala is a tutor for the Language and Thinking Program at BCB. For her, this is a way to give back, where she endeavors to “recreate the experience I had with my own L&T tutor way back when, who took my ideas and my writing seriously, an invaluable boon to my confidence entering the academic environment at BCB.”

The socially distanced award ceremony was held on December 9 and Managing Director Dr. Florian Becker awarded the certificate. 

Congratulations to Vala on behalf of the entire BCB community.

Post Date: 12-13-2021