AMHERST COLLEGE

'Amherst College' is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. It is the third oldest college in Massachusetts. It has been coeducational since 1975.

Contents

History

Origin of name

Amherst Academy

Williams College Debate Re: Removal

The Opening Of Amherst College

Presidents of the college

Academics and resources

Tuition and financial aid

Athletics

Music at Amherst

Amherst trivia

Notable alumni

References

Bibliography

External links

History

Founded in 1821, Amherst College, among the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the country, is noted for its rich intellectual tradition, acclaimed professors, and remarkable students. Amherst College was intended to be a successor to Williams College, which was then struggling to stay open; and Amherst Academy, a secondary school which educated, among others, Emily Dickinson. Noah Webster, an attorney who had moved to the town of Amherst to escape the high cost of living in Connecticut, was recruited for the college's first board of trustees; a statue in his honor stands on the campus. (Webster is more famous for having published the first dictionary of American English with printer William Merriam of Springfield, Massachusetts.)

Origin of name

Amherst Academy and Amherst College were both named for the town of Amherst, which in turn was named for Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, commanding general of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War. Lord Amherst is now notorious for his comments, in a letter to a peer, about spreading smallpox-infected blankets among Native Americans.
Because the college takes its name from the town, it also inherits the local pronunciation ("am-erst"), in which the "h" is silent. (See Amherst.)

Amherst Academy

"Amherst Academy was the mother of Amherst College," according to William S. Tyler, who wrote two comprehensive histories of Amherst College. Funds were raised for the Academy in 1812, and the Academy went into operation in December 1814.
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 Re: 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 [near to the town of Amherst]. 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))

The 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.
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.
For two years in the mid-1830's, Amherst 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

Admission to Amherst College is among the most competitive in the country. Notable faculty members include modern literature and poetry critic William H. Pritchard, Beowulf translator Howell Chickering, Jewish and Latino studies scholar Ilan Stavans, Pulitzer Prize-winning Khruschev biographer William Taubman, African art specialist Rowland Abiodun, Natural Law expert Hadley Arkes, and law and society expert Austin Sarat. Amherst is distinguished by one of the most open curricula and rigorous academic programs in the United States. The only course requirement mandated by the registrar is a first-year seminar during the freshman year. Although the Freshman Seminars have similar structures, focusing on critical analysis and development of argument in writing and class discussion, there are usually about sixteen different topics from which to choose. The 31 other courses that must be completed in order to receive a degree from Amherst College can be elected by the individual student. Faculty advisors guide students through the process. At Amherst, personal attention is the priority. In the freshman year, each professor works with no more than five students to ensure a course of study that is both integrated across disciplines and intellectually fulfilling. Close faculty advising continues for the remainder of each student's undergraduate career. However, students must adhere to departmental course requirements to complete their major. Thirty percent of Amherst students double major. A smaller percentage triple major. Forty percent write theses during their senior year. Within five years of graduation, seventy-four percent of Amherst alumni attend graduate school. Amherst places a high priority on meaningful interaction between students and their professors. Professors are accessible and reponsive to their students, inspire engaging discussions, ask tough and probing questions, and build face-to-face learning into the campus culture. Amherst maintains a student-faculty ratio of 8:1 and offers 33 fields of study (with 850 courses) in the sciences, arts, humanities, and social sciences, plus the possibility of creating one's own interdisciplinary major.

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. 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.
Among the notable resources on the 1,000 acre campus at Amherst College are the Mead Art Museum, the Amherst Center for Russian Culture, four libraries (the main Robert Frost Library, plus libraries dedicated to science, math, and music), the Amherst College Museum of Natural History, a planetarium, an observatory, state-of-the-art science facilities, ample performance facilities, and an electronic and recording studio. Just off campus, Amherst is caretaker and owner of the Emily Dickinson Museum, 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.

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,[1] with 64% receiving some form of financial aid.[2]
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 joins Princeton and Davidson as the only colleges to completely eliminate loans from financial aid considerations.

Athletics

Amherst's athletic program is the oldest in the nation. The school's 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, which includes Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams.
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 five of the last ten years. The 2007 National Collegiate Scouting Association's Collegiate Power Ranking ranked Amherst College
second "overall", ahead of Duke, USC, Notre Dame, Stanford, 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. It was the second team National Championship for Amherst (in all sports).

★ In 2007, the Amherst Men's Basketball team won the Division III National Championship, by a score of 80-67, over Virginia Wesleyan College.

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. Some of the a capella groups are the Zumbyes, the Bluestockings, Route 9, the Sabrinas, and the DQ.

Amherst trivia

★ The first black student to attend Amherst College, Edward Jones, was in the class of 1826. He was later a missionary to Sierra Leone.

★ The Amherst Alumni Society was founded in July 1842.

★ 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 who financially support Amherst Annually: 68%.

★ The number of Amherst students who study abroad: 42%.

Notable alumni

Main articles: List of Amherst College people

Accomplished alumni include a U.S. President, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a U.S. Poet Laureate, and the legal architect of Brown v. Board of Education; Nobel laureates, MacArthur Fellowship winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, and Tony and Emmy award winners; leaders in science, politics, the Peace Corps, medicine, law, education, communications, and business; as well as acclaimed artists, astronauts, human rights activists, musicians, and writers.

References

★ 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).

★ 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 Presss, 2006).

External links

★ Amherst College

★ ''The Amherst Student''

★ The Indicator - Amherst College's Journal of Social and Political Thought

★ ''A History of Amherst College'' (1894) by William S. Tyler

★ ''Exercises at the Semi-Centennial of Amherst College''

★ Amherstiana

★ The New Athenian

★ Am'erst: Amherst College News and Discussion

★ UGResearch.org Contains Amherst undergraduate theses

★ ''Dickinson Made Band-Aid Stick''