Williams College

42°42′43.70″N 73°12′10.94″W

Williams College

File:Williams College Seal.png
Motto	E liberalitate E. Williams, armigeri ("Through the Generosity of E. Williams, Esquire (or Soldier)")
Type	Private
Established	1793
Endowment	$1.63 Billion
President	Morton Owen Schapiro
Academic staff	315
Undergraduates	2,003
Postgraduates	46
Location	Williamstown , MA , USA
Campus	Rural
Athletics	Ephs
Mascot	Purple cow
Website	www.williams.edu

Williams College is a private, liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Founded in 1793, Williams is the second oldest college in Massachusetts. According to current and many past U.S. News and World Report rankings, Williams is the #1 liberal arts college in the United States. As of 2007, the school has an enrollment of 2,003 undergraduate students and 46 graduate students. Williams forms part of the historic "Little Three", along with Wesleyan University and Amherst College.

Williams was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams as a men's college, located in the Berkshires in northwestern Massachusetts, at the foot of Mount Greylock. In 1834, the first non-secret fraternity in the United States, Delta Upsilon, was founded on its campus. Fraternities were phased out beginning in 1962. The college became coeducational in 1970.

There are three academic curricular divisions (humanities, sciences, and social sciences), 24 departments, 33 majors, and two small master's degree programs in art history and development economics. There are 315 voting faculty members, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 7:1. The college also sponsors the Williams-Mystic program at Mystic Seaport; the Williams-Exeter Programme at Exeter College of Oxford University; and Williams in New York (also known as WINY or Williams@NY).

The academic year follows a 4-1-4 schedule of two four-course semesters plus a one-course "winter study" term in January. An intensive summer research schedule involves about 200 students on campus doing projects with professors.

History

Chapin Hall

Colonel Ephraim Williams was an officer in the Massachusetts militia and a member of a prominent landowning family. His will included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in the town of West Hoosac, Massachusetts, provided that the town change its name to Williamstown. Williams was killed at the Battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755.

After Shay's Rebellion, the Williamstown Free School opened with 15 students on October 26, 1791. Not long afterward, the trustees of the school petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to convert the free school to a tuition-based college. The legislature agreed and on June 22, 1793, Williams College was chartered.

In 1806, a student prayer meeting gave rise to the American Foreign Mission Movement. In August of that year, five students met in the maple grove of Sloan's Meadow to pray. A thunderstorm drove them to the shelter of a haystack, and the fervor of the ensuing meeting inspired them to take the Gospel abroad. The students went on to build the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the first American organization to send missionaries overseas. The Haystack Monument near Mission Park on the Williams Campus commemorates the meeting.

By 1815, Williams had only two buildings and 58 students, and was in serious financial trouble. In 1821, the president of the college, Zephaniah Swift Moore, who had accepted his position believing that the college would move east, abandoned Williams. He took 15 students with him, and became the first president of Amherst College. According to legend, Moore also took portions of the Williams College library. Though plausible, the transfer of books is unsubstantiated. Moore died just two years later after founding Amherst, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College.

Williams was the first American college or university to feature caps and gowns at commencement ceremonies, in order to eliminate the differences in apparel between rich and poor students.

Since its inception in 1945, Colgate University has played Williams College in the annual Purple-Maroon Bowl. Colgate, on more than ten different occasions has beaten the Ephs by precisely thirteen points. This has often been referred to as "The Curse of the Purple Cow". Colgate and Williams are staunch rivals in all athletics, most notably golf.

Academics

Reputation

Williams has produced the most Rhodes Scholars of any liberal arts college in the country, with 37.

Williams has tied for first in the "academic reputation" category each year that U.S. News & World Report has produced a survey, sharing that honor with rival Amherst College.

Williams is ranked #1 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. Rounding out the top five are Amherst College, Duke University, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Notre Dame.

Williams currently holds first place in U.S. News and World Report's most recent ranking of the top liberal arts colleges in America, maintaining a streak of five consecutive years in the top spot. Williams has been first seven times since 1989. Williams is ranked eighth in the Washington Monthly rankings, which focus on research and certain types of public service. Williams ranked fifth, after Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, in a 2004 Wall Street Journal survey of the "feeder schools" to the top fifteen business, law, and medical schools in the country.

Admissions

In 2006, Williams College received 6000 applications and admitted 1,145, an acceptance rate of 19 percent. Ninety-two percent of accepted students were in the top decile of their class. The middle 50 percent of admitted students received 660–760 on the SAT Critical Reading section, 660–760 on the SAT Math section, and 29–33 (composite) on the ACT. As of 2007, the school has an enrollment of 2,003 undergraduate students and 46 graduate students.

Oxford Style Tutorials

One of the distinctive features of a Williams education is modeled after the tutorial system widely used in the higher education system of the United Kingdom, as well as on the academic legacy set by Mark Hopkins sitting on one side of a log with a student on the other. It is particularly aimed at sophomores. In 2001, the faculty voted to expand the signature tutorial program.

In this system, classes are capped at 10 students. Pairs of students meet with the professor once a week for an hour. Each week, one of the students writes and presents a paper while the other student critiques it. The same pair reverses roles for the next week. Usually, the professor takes a more limited role than in a traditional lecture class.

Faculty

Williams has 315 voting faculty, 96% of whom possess a doctorate or the terminal degree in their field. Students fill out course surveys at the end of each semester, which play a large role in determining faculty tenure decisions. Recently, there has been controversy over popular teachers being denied tenure based on other factors, including publication rates. Williams offers Olmsted awards to four secondary teachers nominated by the graduating class.

Notable former and present faculty include:

• Raymond Chang, who has written high school and college textbooks in chemistry.
• Joan Edwards of the biology department, who has a Guinness World Record for discovering the fastest blooming plant, the bunchberry.
• Kermit Gordon of the economics department, who became Director of the United States Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) during the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
• Jay Pasachoff in the astrophysics department.
• Mark Taylor, who has studied with Jacques Derrida and teaches religion classes.

Distinguishing features

School colors and mascot

File:WilliamsCollegeSign.JPG

The college sign

Williams's school colors are purple and gold, with purple as the primary school color. A story explaining the origin of purple as a school color says that at the Williams-Harvard baseball game in 1869, spectators watching from carriages had trouble telling the teams apart because there were no uniforms. One of the onlookers bought ribbons from a nearby millinery store to pin on Williams' players, and the only color available was purple. The buyer was Jennie Jerome (later Winston Churchill's mother) whose family summered in Williamstown.

The Williams college mascot is a purple cow. The mascot's name, Ephelia, was submitted in a radio contest in October 1952 by Theodore W. Friend, a senior at Williams. The origins of the cow mascot are unknown, but one possibility is that it was inspired by the Purple Cow humor magazine, a student publication begun in 1907, which used the college color along with a cow. The title of the humor magazine was in reference to Gelett Burgess's nonsense poem:

I never saw a purple cow

I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one!

Alma mater

Williams claims the first alma mater song written by an undergraduate, "The Mountains," was written by Washington Gladden of the class of 1859.

Campus landmarks

The Old Hopkins Observatory

Old Hopkins Observatory

Williams College is the site of the Hopkins Observatory, the oldest extant astronomical observatory in the United States. Erected in 1836–1838, it now contains the Mehlin Museum of Astronomy, including Alvan Clark's first telescope (from 1852), as well as the Milham Planetarium, which uses a Zeiss Skymaster ZKP3/B optomechanical projector and an Ansible digital projector, both installed in 2005. The Hopkins Observatory's 0.6-m DFM reflecting telescope (1991) is installed elsewhere on the campus. Williams joins with Wellesley, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Colgate, Vassar, Swarthmore, and Haverford/Bryn Mawr to form the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, sponsored for over a decade by the Keck Foundation and now with its student research programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Chapin Library

The Chapin Library is a collection that supports the liberal arts curriculum of the college by allowing students close access to a number of rare books and documents of interest. The library opened on June 18, 1923, with an initial collection of 9,000 volumes contributed by alumnus Alfred Clark Chapin, Class of 1869. Over the years, Chapin Library has grown to include over 50,000 volumes (including 3,000 more given by Chapin) as well as 100,000 other artifacts such as prints, photographs, maps, and bookplates.

The most famous items in the library's collection include first printings of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, United States Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as well as George Washington's personal copy of the Federalist Papers. Other notable objects include a range of books, letters, and miscellaneous items relating to Theodore Roosevelt, who was a friend and, at one point, colleague of Chapin in the New York State Assembly.

The Chapin Library's science collection includes a first edition of Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, as well as first editions of books by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and other major figures.

Williams College Museum of Art

The Ironic Columns, Williams College Museum of Art

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), with over 12,000 works (only a fraction of which are displayed at any one time) in its permanent collection, serves as an educational resource for both undergraduates and students in the graduate art history program.

Notable works include Morning in a City by Edward Hopper, a commissioned wall painting by Sol LeWitt, and a commissioned outdoor sculpture and landscape work by Louise Bourgeois entitled Eyes.

Though often overshadowed by the neighboring and much larger Clark Art Institute and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, WCMA remains one of the premier attractions of the Berkshires. Because the museum is intended primarily for educational purposes, admission is free for all.

Student activities

Student media

Williams Record

The longest running independent newspaper at Williams is the Williams Record, a weekly broadsheet paper published on Wednesdays. The newspaper was founded in 1885, and now has a weekly circulation of 3,000 copies distributed in Williamstown, in addition to more than 600 subscribers across the country.

The newspaper does not receive financial support from the college or from the student government, allowing it considerable leeway in criticizing both on its editorial pages. To maintain its independent status, the Record relies on revenue generated by local and national ad sales, subscriptions, and voluntary contributions for use of its website.

Both Sawyer Library and the College Archives maintain more than a century's worth of publicly accessible, bound volumes of the Record. The newspaper provides access free of charge to a searchable database of articles stretching back to 1998 on its website.

The Gulielmensian

The student yearbook is called The Gulielmensian, which supposedly means "Williams Thing" in Greek. It was published irregularly in the 1990s, but has been annual for the past several years and dates back to the mid-19th century.

91.9 WCFM

WCFM is a college-owned, student-run, non-commercial radio station broadcasting from the basement of Prospect House at 91.9 mHz. Featuring 85 hours per week of original programming, the station features a wide variety of musical genres, in addition to sports and talk radio. The station is also available through a wide variety of streaming outlets, such as iTunes and Winamp. Members of the surrounding communities above the age of 18 are allowed to DJ on the station, which, as part of its mission, seeks to serve the surrounding community with news and announcements of public interest. The board of the radio station holds a concert every semester.

Williams Students Online

Williams Students Online provides internet publishing and communications tools to the rest of the college community. It includes a page entitled Willipedia which uses the Wikipedia format and focuses on student groups, buildings, people, and events that relate to the college. Originally founded in 1994, it is one of the oldest college or university student-run online services.

Other publications

Numerous smaller campus publications are also produced each year, including The Mad Cow, a humor magazine, and the Literary Review, a literary magazine.

Williams Trivia Contest

At the end of virtually every semester since 1966, WCFM has hosted an all-night, eight-hour trivia contest. Teams of students, alumni, professors, friends, and others compete to answer questions on a variety of subjects, while simultaneously identifying songs and performing designated tasks. The winning team's only prize is the obligation to create and host the following semester's contest.

The precise date of the debut contest is uncertain. Most spring contests occur in early May, but during its first decade, Williams Trivia was sometimes held in March or February. Assuming a May date, Lawrence University's 50-hour-long Great Midwest Trivia Contest, first held on April 29, 1966, would be the oldest continuous competition of its sort in the United States, but if the first Williams contest was held earlier, it would be the oldest.

While other college-based trivia contests in the United States emphasize marathon endurance and revel in the obscurity of their arcana, the aim of the Williams contest is to cram as much evocative and entertaining material into as concentrated a space as possible. Lasting just eight hours, a typical Williams Trivia contest will demand between 900 and 1,200 separate "bits" of trivial information.

Athletics

The school's athletic teams are called the Ephmen, or the Ephs (pronounced eefs), a shortening of the first name of founder Ephraim Williams. They participate in the NCAA's Division III and the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC). Williams also has two Division I sports, skiing and squash.

According to data published by the United States Department of Education, Williams (as of 2004–2005) spends more money on its athletic programs than any other Division III school, with the exception of Christopher Newport University, which spends 2% more. Williams is ranked first among Division III schools for athletic spending per student.

Williams has a traditional rivalry with Amherst College and Wesleyan University. The "Little Three," a subset of NESCAC, comprises the three schools. Williams and Amherst participate in notably intense competition, dating back more than a century.

Until 1994, Williams was not permitted, by NESCAC rules, to compete in team NCAA competition. By virtue of strong individual competitors, the Williams women's swimming and diving team won the school's first national title in 1981, and claimed the title in 1982 as well. Williams played in the 2003 and 2004 men's basketball Division III national championship games, winning the title in March 2003. Men's basketball also played in the 1997 and 1998 Final Fours. Williams was the first New England basketball team to have won a Division III championship.

Williams teams to win national titles since Williams began participating in NCAA tournaments in 1994 include men's tennis (three titles), women's crew (three), women's tennis (two), men's cross country (two), women's cross country (two), men's basketball, women's indoor track and field, and men's soccer. Other sports include women's lacrosse, women's field hockey, men's golf, men's and women's swimming and diving and men's track and field.

Williams also has had success winning the NACDA Director's Cup, presented to the institution within each NCAA division that has the greatest overall success in NCAA sanctioned-championships. Williams has won the NACDA Director's Cup 11 of the 12 years since its inception.

In 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, the college achieved #1 rankings in both academics and athletics within its peer groups (liberal arts colleges as ranked by U.S. News and World Report and NCAA Division III institutions as ranked by the Director's Cup calculations, respectively). Dual #1 rankings in any single year was an unprecedented achievement among the 1,053 NCAA member institutions.

Club sports

Williams has an active club and intramural sports program, offering 13 club sports including ultimate, rugby, horseback riding, cycling, volleyball, and water polo. Approximately 50% of Williams' students compete on at least one varsity, junior varsity, or formal club team.

Recent events

Thompson Chapel, Lasell Bell Tower

In 2003, Williams began the first of three massive construction projects. The $60 million '62 Center for Theatre and Dance was the first project to be successfully completed in the spring of 2005. The $44 million student center, called Paresky Center, opened in February of 2007.

Construction has already begun on the third project, called the Stetson-Sawyer project, with completion scheduled somewhere by the end of the decade. The entire project calls for two new academic buildings, the removal of the Sawyer Library from its current location, and the construction of a new library at the rear of a renovated Stetson Hall. College trustees initially balked at the cost of the Stetson-Sawyer project and asked to revisit the idea of renovating Sawyer in its current location.

A recent addition to the campus set the tone for style and comprehensiveness for renovations and significant additions to campus buildings in the 21st century. The $38 million Unified Science Center was erected in 2001. This building unifies the formerly separate lab spaces of the physics, chemistry, and biology departments. In addition, it houses Schow Science Library, notable for its unified science materials holdings and architecture. It features vaulted ceilings and an atrium with windows into laboratories on the second through fourth floors of the science center.

The Williams House System

After several years of planning, the college decided to group undergraduates starting with the Class of 2010 into four geographically coherent clusters, or "Neighborhoods". Since the fall of 2006, first-years have been housed in Sage Hall, Williams Hall and Mission Park, while upperclassmen inhabit former first-year dormitories East College, Lehman Hall, Fayerweather, and Morgan, as well as the current upperclass dormitories to form the four houses. A student vote on the names of the four "neighborhoods" selected "Currier", "Wood", "Spencer" and "Dodd" by a simple majority. These were the temporary working names assigned prior to voting. Incoming freshmen are randomly assigned to clusters as an entry (a group of freshmen who live together with a male and female junior advisor). Rising sophomores have the option to be randomly assigned to a different neighborhood from the rest of their entry in groups of six or fewer. This new system is an attempt to integrate all undergraduates more successfully than was previously possible, mixing students representing a variety of interests and ethnicities, and supporting each House with its own dining and recreational facilities.

Capital campaign

Williams is currently engaged in one of the largest capital campaigns ever undertaken by a liberal arts college, with a goal of raising $400 million by September 2008. The college reached $400 million at the end of June 2007, a year and a half ahead of schedule. As of June 2006, Williams endowments were valued at approximately $1.6 billion.

Alumni society

The Society of Alumni of Williams College is the oldest existing alumni society of any academic institution in the United States. The Society of Alumni was founded during the "Amherst crisis" in 1821, when Williams College President Zephaniah Swift Moore left Williams. Graduates of Williams formed the Society to ensure that Williams would not have to close, and raised enough money to ensure the future survival of the school.

Not affiliated with the Society of Alumni, but also serving the college's alumni is the Williams Club in New York City. Located at 24 East 39th Street in Manhattan, the club is open to the paying public as a hotel and restaurant, and operates as a meeting space for Williams alumni living in and visiting the city. It is also the headquarters for the Williams@NY program, accommodating Williams college students and the director of the program.

See also

• Elimination of Fraternities at Williams College
• List of Williams College people
• List of Williams College Presidents
• List of Williams College Commencement Speakers
• List of Williams College Bicentennial Medal Winners
• Williams-Mystic

External links

• The Williams College website
• Williams College Wiki
• Williams College Archives and Special Collections website
• The Williams Record (college newspaper)
• WCFM Williamstown 91.9 (college radio station)
• Williams Students Online (student-run web services)
• Williams College Museum of Art