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Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1821, it is the third oldest college in Massachusetts, and has been coeducational since 1975.

Amherst is classified as a more selective institution by the Carnegie Foundation and is ranked first among liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report, tied with rival Williams College.

History

Founded in 1821, Amherst College developed out of the secondary school Amherst Academy. The college was originally suggested as a successor to Williams College, which was struggling to stay open. Although Williams remained open, Amherst was formed, and diverged from its Williams roots into an individual institution.

Amherst Academy

In 1812, funds were raised in Amherst for a secondary school, Amherst Academy. The institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, a veteran from the Seven Year's War and later commanding general of the British forces in North America. On November 18, 1817, a project was adopted at the Academy to raise funds for the free instruction of "indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to the Christian ministry." This required a substantial investment from benefactors.

During the fundraising for the project, it became clear that without larger designs, it would be impossible to raise sufficient funds. This led the committee overseeing the project to conclude that a new institution should be created. On August 18, 1818, the Amherst Academy board of trustees accepted this conclusion and began building a new college.

Williams College debate regarding removal

According to Tyler:

As early as 1815, six years before the opening of Amherst College, the question of removing Williams College to some more central part of Massachusetts was agitated among its friends and in its board of trustees. At that time Williams College had two buildings and fifty-eight students, with two professors and two tutors. The library contained fourteen hundred volumes. The funds were reduced and the income fell short of the expenditures. Many of the friends and supporters of the college were fully persuaded that it could not be sustained in its present location. The chief ground of this persuasion was the extreme difficulty of the access to it.
At the same meeting of the board of trustees at which Professor Moore was elected president of Williams College, May 2 1815, Dr. Packard of Shelburne introduced the following motion: "That a committee of six persons be appointed to take into consideration the removal of the college to some other part of the Commonwealth, to make all necessary inquiries which have a bearing on the subject, and report at the next meeting." The motion was adopted, and at the next meeting of the board in September, the committee reported that "a removal of Williams College from Williamstown is inexpedient at the present time, and under existing circumstances."
But the question of removal thus raised in the board of trustees and thus negatived only "at the present time and under existing circumstances," continued to be agitated. And at a meeting on the 10th of November, 1818, influenced more or less doubtless by the action of the Franklin County Association of Congregational Ministers, and the Convention of Congregational and Presbyterian Ministers in Amherst, the board of trustees resolved that it was expedient to remove the college on certain conditions. President Moore advocated the removal, and even expressed his purpose to resign the office of president unless it could be effected, inasmuch as when he accepted the presidency he had no idea that the college was to remain at Williamstown, but was authorized to expect that it would be removed to Hampshire County. Nine out of twelve of the trustees voted for the resolutions, which were as follows:
"Resolved, that it is expedient to remove Williams College to some more central part of the State whenever sufficient funds can be obtained to defray the necessary expenses incurred and the losses sustained by removal, and to secure the prosperity of the college, and when a fair prospect shall be presented of obtaining for the institution the united support and patronage of the friends of literature and religion in the western part of the Commonwealth, and when the General Court shall give their assent to the measure."
In November, 1819, the trustees of Williams College voted to petition the Legislature for permission to remove the college to Northampton. To this application, Mr. Webster says, "the trustees of Amherst Academy made no opposition and took no measures to defeat it." In February, 1820, the petition was laid before the Legislature. The committee from both houses, to whom it was referred, after a careful examination of the whole subject, reported that it was neither lawful nor expedient to remove the college, and the Legislature, taking the same view, rejected the petition. ... Thus the long and exciting discussion touching the removal of Williams College and the location of a college in some more central town of old Hampshire County at length came to an end, and the contending parties now directed all their energies to building up the institutions of their choice. (William S. Tyler, A History of Amherst College (1895))

Opening of Amherst College

Moore, however, still believed that Williamstown was an unsuitable location for a college, and with the advent of Amherst College, was elected its first president on May 8, 1821. Amherst was founded as a non-sectarian institution "for the classical education of indigent young men of piety and talents for the Christian ministry." (Tyler, History of Amherst College)

At its opening, Amherst had forty-seven students. Fifteen of these had followed Moore from Williams College. Those fifteen represented about one-third of the whole number at Amherst, and about one-fifth of the whole number in the three classes to which they belonged in Williams College. President Moore died on June 29, 1823, and was replaced with a Williams College trustee, Heman Humphrey.

Amherst grew quickly, and for two years in the mid-1830s it was the second largest college in the United States, second only to Yale. In 1835, Amherst attempted to create a course of study parallel to the classical liberal arts education. This parallel course focused less on Greek and Latin, instead focusing on English, French, Spanish, chemistry, economics, etc. The parallel course did not take hold, however, until the next century.

Williams alumni are fond of an apocryphal story ascribing the removal of books from the Williams College library to Amherst College, but there is no contemporaneous evidence to verify the story. In 1995, Williams president Harry C. Payne declared the story false, but the legend is still nurtured by many.

Academic hoods in the United States are traditionally lined with the official colors of the school, in theory so watchers can tell where the hood wearer earned his or her degree. Amherst's hoods are purple (Williams' official color) with a white stripe or chevron, said to signify that Amherst was born of Williams.

Presidents of the college

Zephaniah Swift Moore, 1821–1823
Heman Humphrey, 1823–1845
Edward Hitchcock, 1845–1854
William Augustus Stearns, 1854–1876
Julius Hawley Seelye, 1876–1890
Merrill Edward Gates, 1890–1899
George Harris, 1899–1912
Alexander Meiklejohn, 1912–1924
George Daniel Olds, 1924–1927
Arthur Stanley Pease, 1927–1932
Stanley King, 1932–1946
Charles W. Cole, 1946–1960
Calvin Plimpton, 1960–1971
John William Ward, 1971–1979
Julian Gibbs, 1979–1983
Peter R. Pouncey, 1984–1994
Tom Gerety, 1994–2003
Anthony Marx, 2003—

Academics and resources

Reputation

Amherst has tied for first in the "academic reputation" category among schools whose highest degree awarded is a bachelor's degree each year that U.S. News & World Report has produced a survey, sharing that honor with rival Williams College. According to current U.S. News and World Report rankings, Amherst and Williams tied for the number one spot among all liberal arts colleges. Amherst has been ranked the number one liberal arts college in the country ten times since the inception of the U.S. News rankings.

Amherst is ranked second overall according to the fifth annual report by the National Collegiate Scouting Association which ranks colleges based on student-athlete graduation rates, academic strength, and athletic prowess.

Amherst ranked ninth in a 2004 Wall Street Journal survey of the "feeder schools" to the top fifteen business, law, and medical schools in the country.

Amherst is ranked ninth in the 2007 Washington Monthly rankings, which focus on key research outputs, the quality level and total dollar amount of scientific (natural and social sciences) grants won, number of graduates going on to earn Ph.D. degrees and certain types of public service.

According to The Princeton Review, Amherst ranks in the Top 20 among all colleges and universities in the nation as the Best Overall Academic Experience for Undergraduates, The Toughest to Get Into, Professors Get High Marks, Students Happy with Financial Aid, School Runs Like Butter, and Happiest Students.

Amherst also participates in the University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN) developed by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU).

Admission

Admission to Amherst College is among the most competitive in the country. In 2008, Amherst College received about 7,700 applications and admitted 1,096 for an acceptance rate of 14.2 percent, an all-time low. For the class of 2011, the middle 50 percent of admitted students received an SAT score of 1360-1570 (Critical Reading and Math only) and about 90 percent of admitted students were in the top decile (10 percent) of their high school classes.

Academic program

Amherst offers 33 different areas of study and an unusually open curriculum. Students are not required to study a core curriculum or fulfill distribution requirements. Beyond courses for their majors and the First-Year Seminar, students are free to design their own curricula. First year students can take advanced courses and seniors can take introductory courses (such as beginning study of a foreign language).

During the first year, the only course requirement mandated by the registrar is one of the roughly twenty First-Year Seminars. Each class is limited to no more than 15 students. Although topics for the seminars vary, they share a common focus on critical analysis and development of argument in writing and speaking.

The other 31 courses (usually four per semester) that must be completed in order to graduate can be elected by the individual student. Faculty advisors guide students through the process. Each faculty advisor works with no more than five first-year students to ensure a course of study that has breadth and depth and is both integrated across disciplines and intellectually fulfilling. Faculty advising continues for the remainder of each student's undergraduate career.

However, students must adhere to departmental course requirements to complete their major, including satisfactory performance on comprehensive examinations in their major field. Thirty-five percent of Amherst students in the class of 2007 were double majors. A small number triple major and many create, with faculty advice, an interdisciplinary major. Fifty percent write theses during their senior year. Those students who choose to write a senior thesis have additional faculty advisors whose areas of expertise mirror each thesis topic. Within five years of graduation, seventy-four percent of Amherst alumni attend graduate school.

Teaching

Amherst places a high priority on meaningful interaction between students and their professors. Faculty are leading scholars and researchers in their fields, as well as effective teachers. The historic guiding principle is the Amherst dialogue between professor and student. Amherst classes are characterized by interchanges among students and faculty skilled at asking challenging and probing questions and offering alternative points of view. Professors are accessible and responsive to their students (both inside and outside the classroom) and build face-to-face, professor-to-student learning into the campus culture. To this end, professors serve as mentors and advisors, as well as teachers.

Traditionally, Amherst has made intensive writing for students a priority for all four years of study at all levels of instruction, throughout the curricula, and across disciplines. As a result, over the course of their undergraduate careers, students are expected to refine the form, logic, depth, and substance of their writing for a variety of audiences (in the sciences, arts, social sciences, and humanities). Amherst also has as priorities an emphasis on quantitative analysis across the disciplines and fostering global comprehension. The faculty always is striving to develop better and more innovative ways to teach and for students to learn, discover, and create. Professors find that their research often sheds new light on how they teach their classes.

Students are encouraged early to undertake independent or small group research or creative work, mentored by a faculty member, that results in an original scholarly work or other product. Professors also draw students into faculty research. In the sciences, students participate in sophisticated research, using state-of-art equipment and facilities. Students collaborate with professors and are listed regularly as co-authors on faculty articles. Students often present the findings of their work, whether self-directed or in collaboration with faculty, at regional or national conferences.

Amherst maintains a student-faculty ratio of 8:1 and has an average class size of fifteen students. The curriculum is remarkably diverse. Amherst offers 33 areas of study (with 850 courses) in the sciences, arts, humanities, mathematics and computer sciences, social sciences, foreign languages, classics, and several interdisciplinary fields (including premedical studies ), plus the possibility of creating one's own unique interdisciplinary major. A substantial number of faculty hold appointments in two departments, a traditional academic discipline and one of many interdisciplinary programs. Amherst pioneered the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies; Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought; and Neuroscience. The American Studies department at Amherst College is the oldest department in the United States. Amherst created the interdisciplinary study of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought. In 1973, Amherst became the first institution to offer an undergraduate major in Neuroscience. Amherst helped pioneer many other interdisciplinary programs, including Asian languages and civilization. With such academic and professorial resourses, students and their advisors can tailor a program of study to a student's specific academic interests. As evidence of students' satisfaction with the effective teaching of Amherst professors, nearly seventy percent of alumni financially support Amherst annually through the Amherst annual fund (which supports financial aid, among other things).

Notable faculty members include, among others, modern literature and poetry critic William H. Pritchard, Beowulf translator Howell Chickering, Jewish and Latino studies scholar Ilan Stavans, novelist and legal scholar Lawrence Douglas, physicist Arthur Zajonc, Pulitzer Prize-winning Khruschev biographer William Taubman, African art specialist Rowland Abiodun, Chemist David Hansen, Natural Law expert Hadley Arkes, Mathematician Daniel Velleman, and law and society expert Austin Sarat. (See Notable alumni and faculty, below.)

Students

Amherst's outstanding resources, accomplished faculty, and rigorous academic life allow the college to enroll students with an extraordinary range of talents, interests, and commitments. Students represent all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, fifty countries, a variety of tastes, sensibilities, and political ideologies, and a broad mix of socioeconomic, ethnic, national, racial, and religious backgrounds, thus ensuring a diversity of viewpoints -- essential to developing the ability to listen to and evaluate the positions of others. Students' varied experiences and backgrounds enrich discussion, debate, conjecture, broaden learning, and make life at Amherst more interesting. Ninety-seven percent of students live on campus. Ninety-seven percent of Amherst freshmen return for their sophomore year; ninety-six percent graduate, among the highest retention and graduation rates in the country.

Five College Consortium

Amherst is a member of the Five Colleges consortium, which allows its students to attend classes at four other Pioneer Valley institutions. These include Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts. In addition to the 850 courses available on campus, Amherst students have an additional 6,000 classes to consider through the Consortium (without paying additional tuition) and access to 8 million library volumes. The Five Colleges are geographically close to one another and are linked by buses which run between the campuses. The Five Colleges share resources and develop common programs, including the Museums10 program. The Consortium has two joint academic departments, Astronomy and Dance. The Dance department is one of the largest in the nation. The Astronomy department is internationally renowned. (See Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory) The Pioneer Valley schools' proximity to Amherst adds to its rich extracurricular and social life.

Five College Coastal & Marine Sciences Program

Among other common programs developed by the Consortium, Amherst students can take classes in The Five College Coastal & Marine Sciences Program. The program offers an interdisciplinary curriculum to undergraduate students in the Five Colleges. Through active affiliations with some of the nation's premier centers for marine study, students engage in hands-on research to compliment course work. Faculty from the natural and social sciences teach courses in the program. The disciplines represented include biology, botany, chemistry, ecology, geology, physics, wildlife management, and zoology in the sciences, and economics, government, and public policy in the social sciences. Many students in the program go on to advanced study or professional work in various areas of marine science.

Resources

Among the resources on the campus at Amherst College are more than 100 academic and residential buildings, athletic fields and facilities, a wildlife sanctuary, a forest for the study of ecology, and trails and areas for walking and cycling. Notable resources include the Mead Art Museum (with over 16,000 works); the Amherst Center for Russian Culture; four libraries (the main Robert Frost Library -- having one million plus volumes, nearly 400,000 media materials, extensive Archives and Special Collections, and a media center and language lab, as well as separate libraries dedicated to science, math, and music); the Amherst College Museum of Natural History (including the Hitchcock Ichnological Cabinet); the Basset Planetarium; the Wilder Observatory; state-of-the-art science facilities (including the Merrill Science Center and the McGuire Life Sciences Building); the Quantitative Skills Center; the Writing Center; the Career Center; well-equipped art studios; ample rehearsal and performance facilities for music, theater, and dance (including the Amherst College Arms Music Center, the Kirby Memorial Theater, and the Holden Experimental Theater); the Center for Creative Writing; the Center for Community Engagement; and a student run radio station (WAMH 89.3 FM). Nearly every academic building and all residential buildings have been renovated or constructed in the past three years.

Internet access is available in all student residences (one connection for each student in every room), and wireless access is available almost everywhere on campus. There are thirty-seven residence buildings, nine theme houses, and two language houses (supporting four languages). Just off campus, Amherst is caretaker and owner of the Emily Dickinson Museum in downtown Amherst, in addition to about half of the poet's manuscripts. Amherst maintains a relationship with Doshisha University in Japan, which was founded by Amherst alumnus Joseph Hardy Neesima. In accordance with the will of Amherst alumnus Henry Clay Folger, Amherst College is charged with the governance of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.; Amherst maintains a close relationship with the Folger.

Student groups

Students can pursue nearly any interest through more than one hundred autonomous, student-led organizations funded by the student government, including a variety of student groups, cultural and religious groups, publications, fine and performing arts and political advocacy and service groups. In that there is approximately one group for every 16 students at Amherst, leadership opportunities abound. Numerous forms of community service exist at Amherst, and community service (locally - through the Center for Community Engagement, nationally, and internationally) is a priority at Amherst and for President Anthony Marx (who helped start a secondary school for black students in apartheid South Africa).

Study abroad and off-campus

Forty-two percent of Amherst students, usually juniors, study abroad and can select from more than 260 study-abroad programs in countries including Argentina, Egypt, England, France, India, New Zealand, Spain, and Senegal, as well as Japan where Amherst maintains a special relationship with Doshisha University, founded in 1875 by an Amherst alumnus.

Off-campus, Amherst students have the opportunity to study at a number of institutions, from the National Theater Institute in Connecticut to Amherst's own Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The Twelve College Exchange program, of which Amherst is a member, has special exchange arrangements with Bowdoin, Connecticut, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Trinity, Vassar, Wellesley, Wheaton and Williams Colleges and Wesleyan University for programs not available in the Five College area.

Folger Shakespeare Library

Amherst's relationship with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. offers various opportunities for students and faculty to study and learn and engage in cultural and arts programs. The Folger, a primary repository of rare materials from the modern period (1500-1750), holds the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, as well as collections of other rare Renaissance books and manuscripts. The Folger is an internationally recognized research library and center for scholarship and learning. The Folger is also an innovator in the preservation of rare materials and an award winning producer of cultural and arts programs, including theater, early music concerts (performed by the Folger Consort), poetry, exhibits, lectures, and family programs. Each year, more than 200,000 visitors attend events and exhibitions at the Folger. Millions visit its website (www.folger.edu), which includes event listings, virtual exhibitions, access to an on-line catalog of the collection, and teaching plans for educators. The Folger produces its own scholarly journal, "Shakespeare Quarterly," and the Library continues to publish the Folger Library Shakespeare editions, which outsell all other editions of the bard's plays.

Fellowships and internships

The Amherst Tom Gerety Fellowships for Action and the Winternship program allow more than 100 students to receive funding from the college each year to do public service work around the country and the world. Students also can select internships beginning as early as the first year, opting from among 15,000 opportunities nationwide through the Liberal Arts Center Network, as well as the "Amherst 100" internships that are sponsored by alumni.

In the spring 2008, the College's Center for Community Engagement launched the Active Citizen Summer Program. This opportunity allows rising freshmen, sophomores, and juniors to participate in a summer internship with a local, national, or international not-for-profit organization while receiving housing, food, and transportation funding, as well as a modest salary paid by the Center for Community Engagement.

Amherst students and alumni have also received external scholarships including Fulbright scholarships, Goldwater scholarships, Rhodes scholarships and Watson fellowships.

Tuition and financial aid

Amherst's total tuition, fees, room, and board for the '06-07 academic year was $43,360. About half (49%) of students receive scholarship aid,

with 64% receiving some form of financial aid.

In July 2007, Amherst announced that scholarships will replace loans (both from the college and federal loans) in all financial aid packages beginning in the 2008-09 school year. Amherst had already been the first school to eliminate loans for low-income students, and with this announcement it joined Princeton University and Davidson College as the only colleges to completely eliminate loans from financial aid packages.

Athletics

Varsity athletics

Although Amherst has always been a rigorous liberal arts college, Amherst's athletic program (founded in 1860) is the oldest in the nation. One-third of the student body participates in sports at the intercollegiate level, and eighty percent participate in intramural and club sports teams. The school's twenty-seven intercollegiate sports teams are known as the Lord Jeffs; women's teams are sometimes referred to as "Lady Jeffs", though the official title covers all teams.

The school participates in the NCAA's Division III, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which includes Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams College.

Amherst is also one of the "Little Three," along with Williams and Wesleyan. This rivalry, over one hundred years old, can be considered the oldest athletic conference in the nation. A Little Three champion is informally recognized by most teams based on the head-to-head records of the three schools, but three-way competitions are held in some of the sports.

Amherst has placed in the top ten of the NACDA Director's Cup in the NCAA Division III in seven of the last ten years, including second in 2007 and 2008 . The 2007 "National Collegiate Scouting Association's Collegiate Power Ranking" ranked Amherst College second "overall", ahead of Duke, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Notre Dame, Stanford, Northwestern, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and MIT.

The first intercollegiate baseball game was played between Williams and Amherst on July 1, 1859. Amherst won, 73-32.
The first Harvard College loss on Soldiers Field was in 1903. They lost 6-0 to Amherst.
The last tie in an NCAA football game was on November 11, 1995, when Amherst and Williams tied 0-0 on Weston Field in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
In 1999, the Amherst Women's Tennis team won the Division III National Championship, by a score of 5-2, over arch-rival Williams College. It was Amherst's first team National Championship.
In 2003, the Amherst Women's Lacrosse team won the Division III National Championship, by a score of 11-9, over NESCAC rival Middlebury College.
In 2007, the Amherst Men's Basketball team won the Division III National Championship, by a score of 80-67, over Virginia Wesleyan College.
In 2007, the Amherst Women's Cross Country team won the Division III Cross Country National Championship.

Club and intramural athletics

Amherst fields several club athletic teams, including Rugby union, Water Polo, Ultimate, Equestrian, Mountain Biking, Crew, Fencing, Sailing and Skiing. Intramural sports include soccer, tennis, golf, basketball, volleyball and softball.

The sport of Ultimate Frisbee was started at Amherst College in the late 1960s by Jared Kass '69.

Music at Amherst

Nicknamed "the singing college," Amherst has many a capella and singing groups, some of them affiliated with the college music department, including the Concert Choir, the Madrigal Singers, the Women's Chorus, and the Glee Club, which is the oldest singing group on the campus. The a capella groups include the Zumbyes, the Bluestockings, Route 9, the Sabrinas, the DQ, and Terras Irradient (the co-ed Christian a capella group). Amherst's symphony orchestra with more than 70 members and no hired professional musicians is the only one of its size among national liberal arts colleges. A variety of other instrumental groups also rehearse and perform regularly and include: Javanese gamelan, chamber music, South Indian, and jazz. The Amherst College Arms Music Center has 25 listening and practice rooms (thirteen of which are equipped with pianos), an electronic and recording music studio, separate rehearsal space for instrumental and vocal groups, classrooms, a library, and a 500-seat recital hall that serves during the year as a performance venue for students and visiting artists.

Miscellaneous facts

Amherst records one of the first uses of Latin honors of any American college, dating back to 1881. Contemporaneous writings stated that the system was new.
An asteroid, 516 Amherstia, is named after Amherst College. The name was given by its discoverer, Raymond Smith Dugan in honor of his alma mater.

Alumni

Although a small college, Amherst has many accomplished alumni, including Nobel, Crafoord Prize and Lasker Award laureates, MacArthur Fellowship and Pulitzer Prize winners, National Medal of Science and National Book Award recipients, and Academy, Tony, and Emmy Award winners; a U.S. President, Chief Justice of the United States, three Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives, a U.S. Poet Laureate, legal architect of Brown v Board of Education, and inventor of the blood bank; leaders in science, religion, politics, the Peace Corps, medicine, law, education, communications, and business; as well as acclaimed actors, architects, artists, astronauts, engineers, human rights activists, inventors, musicians, philanthropists, and writers.

There are approximately 20,000 living alumni, of which 70 percent of make a gift to Amherst each year— the highest alumni participation rate of any college in the country.

References

A Look at Amherst College's Admission Process Online Newshour (For video, select "Watch this segment in streaming video")
Colleges Face Challenges of the Class Divide: NPR
Interview on Charlie Rose Show PBS (After 21 minutes)

Bibliography

W. S. Tyler, History of Amherst College during its first half century, 1821-1871 (C. W. Bryan, 1873).
Exercises at the Semi-Centennial of Amherst College'' (1871).
William S. Tyler, A History of Amherst College (1894).
Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (Doubleday, 2006).
Nancy Pick and Frank Ward, Curious Footprints: Professor Hitchcock's Dinosaur Tracks & Other Natural History Treasures at Amherst College (Amherst College Press, 2006).
Passages Of Time, Narratives in the History of Amherst College, edited and with several selections by Douglas C. Wilson, son of William E. Wilson (Amherst College Press, 2007).