Office Hours
Office Hours offers students individualized study in a variety of forms guided by one of our expert faculty members.
Ranging from individual sessions (in-person or online) to a full 12 week course, you will meet 1-on-1 with your faculty mentor as you read your way through a syllabus customized around your personal or professional areas of interest. Whether you want to read the works of Marcel Proust, learn the history of the Modern Middle East, understand Hegel, or explore contemporary technology and society, Office Hours provides structure and space for intellectual inquiry and development. For students who are interested Office Hours can also involve a writing component in which students produce an essay related to their subject of study.
Praxis
Praxis is a unique, flexible program that provides workshops, materials, classes, and hands-on training for non-profits, labor, political, and other public interest organizations.
Praxis offers an opportunity to convene conversations, access new research and analytic frameworks, build political education programs, and discuss the critical topics and structural forces that inform organizing and public interest work.
BISR Network
BISR Network is a string of Brooklyn Institute education centers located across the Midwest created to increase access to critical community-based education and scholarship.
BISR Network regional centers engage in wide-ranging discussions on subjects ranging from classical philosophy and literature to contemporary ideas and scholarship on pressing social issues. With the support of individual, foundation, and other donations, BISR Network is able to work in rural, suburban, and smaller urban spaces, particularly in areas whose social fabric has been stretched by economic instability, demographic change, and racial tension. BISR Network helps local scholars and organizations build on our years of public pedagogy experience to foster community-based education that is both rigorous and widely accessible.
Educator Access
Educator Access connects public K-12 and community college teachers to the Brooklyn Institute’s wide array of courses in the liberal arts and sciences.
Made possible by a generous grant from the Teagle Foundation, Educator Access is a scholarship program that enables NYC- and Philadelphia-area public K-12 and community college teachers to take BISR courses, from economics to critical theory to philosophy to mathematics to a study of contemporary Black art and aesthetics, at the highly reduced rate of $150. In addition, all New York State Educator Access enrollees will receive New York State Continuing Teacher and Leader Education (CTLE) credit (12 credit hours). Application and enrollment is open for all Fall 2022 courses.
To apply, please fill out the short form below.
BISR Certificate for Critical Study
An intensive year-long program, the BISR Certificate for Critical Study offers students a unique opportunity to delve deeply into a topic of their curiosity; to focus, develop, and expand a project that is already in the works; or to hone and enrich an individual, social, or professional practice with rigorous theoretical foundations. BISR Certificate students participate in a personalized course of study, within the broad framework of our disciplinary tracks, and with the close, personal attention of a BISR faculty tutor.
Young Scholars Program
Brooklyn Institute’s Young Scholars Program offers rising high school juniors and seniors and recent graduates a chance to engage in rigorous study and discussion with a group of their peers. Students will be taught by BISR’s core faculty specialists, all of whom have extensive teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The program helps students build confidence in a seminar learning environment while developing their skills in textual analysis, argument formation, and public presentation. Through its carefully tailored curriculum, BISR YSP exposes students to everything from classics in the Western canon to contemporary questions, studies, and theories at the cutting edge—from the foundations of moral philosophy to queer theory, with a wealth of topics and texts in between.
The 2022 program dates are Monday, July 11th – Friday, August 5th. Each day of the week is dedicated to a distinct subject (e.g. philosophy on Mondays, sociology on Tuesdays, and so on). Seminars convene Monday through Friday each week from 1 pm to 4 pm. All courses take place in-person at the BISR office in historic DUMBO, Brooklyn.