Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was killed in the French and Indian War in 1755.
Williams's main campus is located in Williamstown, in the Berkshires in rural northwestern Massachusetts, and contains more than 100 academic, athletic, and residential buildings. There are 360 voting faculty members, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 6:1. As of 2022, the college had an enrollment of 2,021 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students.
Following a liberal arts curriculum, Williams College provides undergraduate instruction in 25 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs including 36 majors in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and natural sciences. Williams offers an almost entirely undergraduate instruction, though there are two graduate programs in development economics and art history. The college maintains affiliations with the nearby Clark Art Institute and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) along with a close relationship with Exeter College, Oxford. The college competes as the Ephs in the NCAA Division III as a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference.
History
Colonel Ephraim Williams was an officer in the Massachusetts militia and a member of a prominent landowning family. Williams was killed at the Battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755. His will included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in the town of West Hoosac, Massachusetts, provided the town change its name to Williamstown.
Members of the Williams family first attempted to found Queens College in Hatfield, Massachusetts, in 1762. The charter was revoked within a year when Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard succumbed to pressure from Harvard College, which opposed the creation of a second institution of higher learning in the colonial-era Province of Massachusetts Bay.
In 1765, the west township was incorporated as Williamstown. Five years later, the town's proprietors brought the executors of Williams' estate before the General Court to dispute the delay in establishment of the free school, and in 1795, the Massachusetts legislature finally granted the school its charter.
The Williamstown Free School opened with 15 students on October 26, 1791. The first president was Ebenezer Fitch. Not long after its founding, the school's trustees 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. It was the second college to be founded in Massachusetts.At its founding, the college maintained a policy of racial segregation, refusing admission to black applicants. This policy was challenged by Lucy Terry Prince, who is credited as the first black American poet, when her son Festus was refused admission on account of his race. Prince, who had established a reputation as a raconteur and rhetorician, delivered a three-hour speech before the college's board of trustees, quoting abundantly from scripture, but was unable to secure her son's admission. Later scholarship questions whether these events occurred as Festus Prince may have been refused entry for an insufficient mastery of Latin, Greek, and French, all of which were necessary for successful completion of the entrance exam at the time, and which would most likely not have been available in the local schools of Guilford, Vermont, where Festus was raised.
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 historic "Haystack Prayer Meeting".
By 1815, Williams had only two buildings and 58 students and was in financial trouble, so the board voted to move the college to Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1821, the president of the college, Zephaniah Swift Moore, who had accepted his position believing the college would move east, decided to proceed with the move. He took 15 students with him, and re-founded the college under the name of Amherst College. Some students and professors decided to stay at Williams and were allowed to keep the land, which was at the time relatively worthless. Moore died just two years later after founding Amherst, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College.
Edward Dorr Griffin was appointed President of Williams and is widely credited with saving Williams during his 15-year tenure. A Williams student, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, of Albany, New York, whose family owned the city's Cotrell & Leonard department store, designed the gowns he and his classmates wore to graduation in 1887. Seven years later he advised the Inter-Collegiate Commission on Academic Costume, which met at Columbia University, and established the current system of U.S. academic dress. One reason gowns were adopted in the late 19th century was to eliminate the differences in apparel between rich and poor students. Gardner Cotrell Leonard went on to edit the book The Songs of Williams, a collection of songs sung at the college. During World War II, Williams College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
Following a liberal arts curriculum, Williams College provides undergraduate instruction in 25 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs including 36 majors in the humanities, arts, social sciences, and natural sciences. Williams offers an almost entirely undergraduate instruction, though there are two graduate programs in development economics and art history. The college maintains affiliations with the nearby Clark Art Institute and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), and has a close relationship with Exeter College, Oxford University, where the school runs a year-long study abroad program for juniors. The college competes as the Ephs in the NCAA Division III as a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference. Their athletic program has been highly successful, winning 22 of 29 College Directors' Cups for NCAA Division III.
Williams is a highly selective school with an acceptance rate of 8% for the Class of 2025. It has ranked first in U.S. News & World Report's rankings of National Liberal Arts Colleges every year since 2004. In April 2022, Williams transitioned to an all grants system for financial aid, one of the few institutions of higher learning in the United States to do so.
Coeducation
Though Williams College officially began the process of coeducation in the late 1960s, women integrated the college as early as the 1930s. Beatrice Irene Wasserscheid (née Acly) was the first woman to be awarded a Williams degree after successfully petitioning the trustees to pursue a master of arts degree in American literature. She received her master's degree in June 1931. That same decade, in 1935, Emily Cleland became the first woman to teach at Williams when she finished teaching her late husband's geology course after he died in an accident. The first tenured woman faculty member at the college, Doris DeKeyselingk, oversaw the Russian department beginning in 1958.
During his time as president of Williams College, John E. Sawyer officially initiated the process of coeducation among the undergraduates. After overseeing the abolition of fraternities in 1962 after a student petition, Sawyer created a faculty-trustee committee, the Committee on Coordinate Education and Related Questions, in 1967 to explore options for coeducation and co-ordinate education. In response to the Committee on Coordinate Education's final report, the trustees voted in June 1969 to regularly admit women undergraduate students in fall 1971. The college welcomed 137 women as first-year students in fall 1971. They were joined by 90 transfer and exchange students from women's colleges who, during their junior and senior year, participated in the Ten College Exchange Program which Sawyer helped to establish in the mid-to-late 1960s. The graduating class of 1975 was the first fully co-educational class to graduate from Williams.
The college's admission of women undergraduate students coincided with the diversification of faculty and staff. An affirmative action program, launched in 1972 by President John Chandler, reinforced equal opportunity employment. In addition to facilitating the hiring and retention of African-American staff and faculty, the program prioritized hiring women. As a result of the efforts of the dean of faculty and the provost in collaboration with "Committee W", a women-led group dedicated to fulfilling the program's mission, the number of women faculty steadily rose. From the inception of Williams's affirmative action program in 1972 to its revision in 1975, the proportion of women full-time faculty increased from 4.5% to 11.7%. By 1975, 34% of the first-term assistant professors were women.
Throughout the 1970s, Williams College experienced an increase of women in high administrative and advisory positions as well. In February 1970, the college hired its first female dean, Nancy McIntire. In October 1971, at age 29, Gail Walker Haslett was elected as a three-year term trustee on the Williams College Board of Trustees. She was the first woman to ever serve on the board. In 1976, Pamela G. Carlton '76 became the first woman alumni trustee and Janet Brown '73, the first woman graduate of Williams to serve on the executive committee of the Society of Alumni.
As of 2021, 45.6% of full-time faculty and 51.6% of the undergraduate class are women-identifying at Williams. In July 2018, Maud Mandel began her tenure as the 18th and current president of Williams College. She is the first woman to assume this role.
Construction and expansion
In the last decade, construction has changed the look of the college. The addition of the $38 million Unified Science Center to the campus in 2001 set a tone of style and comprehensiveness for renovations and additions to campus buildings in the 21st century. 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.
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 2007.
Construction had already begun on the third project, called the Stetson-Sawyer project, when it was delayed due to the 2008 financial crisis. College trustees initially balked at the Stetson-Sawyer project's cost, and revisited the idea of renovating Sawyer in its current location, an idea which proved not to be cost effective. The entire project includes construction of two new academic buildings, the removal of Sawyer Library from its current location, and the construction of a new library at the rear of a renovated Stetson Hall (which served as the college library prior to Sawyer's construction). The academic buildings, temporarily named North Academic Building and South Academic Building, were completed in fall 2008. In the spring of 2009, South Academic Building was renamed Schapiro Hall in honor of former president Morton O. Schapiro. In spring 2010 the North Academic Building was renamed Hollander Hall. Construction of the new Sawyer Library was completed in 2014, after which the old Sawyer Library was razed.
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 the former first-year dormitories East College, Lehman Hall, Fayerweather, and Morgan, joined the remaining residential buildings as upperclass housing. During the spring 2009 semester, a committee formed to evaluate the neighborhood system, and released a report the following fall. From 2003 through 2008, Williams conducted a capital campaign with the goal of raising $400 million by September 2008. The college reached $400 million at the end of June 2007. By the close of the campaign, Williams had raised $500.2 million.
As of the 2008–09 school year, the college eliminated student loans from all financial aid packages in favor of grants. The college was the fourth institution in the United States to do so, following Princeton University, Amherst College, and Davidson College. However, in February 2010, the college announced it would re-introduce loans to its financial aid packages beginning with the Class of 2015 due to the college's changed financial situation. In January 2007 the board voted unanimously to reduce college CO2 emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, or roughly 50% below 2006 levels. To meet those goals, the college set up the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives and has undertaken an energy audit and efficiency timeline. Williams received an 'A−' on the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, following 'B+' grades on both the 2008 and 2009 report cards. In December 2008, President Morton O. Schapiro announced his departure from the college to become president of Northwestern University.
On September 28, 2009, the presidential search committee announced the appointment of Adam Falk as the 17th president of Williams College. Falk, dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, began his term on April 1, 2010. Dean of the Faculty William G. Wagner took the position of interim president beginning in June 2009, and continued in that capacity until President-elect Falk took office. In 2014, Williams College brought their endowment above the 2 billion dollar mark. On March 11, 2018, former dean of the college at Brown University Maud Mandel was selected to be the 18th president of Williams College. Mandel assumed the role on July 1, 2018.
Campus
Williams is located on a 450-acre (180-hectare) campus in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires in rural northwestern Massachusetts. The campus contains more than 100 academic, athletic, and residential buildings.
The early planners of Williams College eschewed the traditional collegiate quadrangle organization, choosing to freely site buildings among the hills. Later construction, including East and West Colleges and Griffin Hall, tended to cluster around Main Street in Williamstown. The first campus quadrangle was formed with East College, South College, and the Hopkins Observatory.
The Olmsted Brothers design firm played a large part in shaping the campus design and architecture. In 1902, the firm was commissioned to renovate a large part of campus, including the President's House, the cemetery, and South College; as well as incorporating the George A. Cluett estate into the campus acreage. Although these campus renovations were completed in 1912, the Olmsted Brothers would advise the gradual transformation of campus design for six decades. The present-day grounds layout reflects much of the design intent of the Olmsted Brothers.
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. Hopkins Hall serves as the administration building on campus, housing the offices of the president, Dean of the Faculty, registrar, and provost, among others. There is a Newman Center on campus.
The Chapin Library 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 library is currently located on the fourth floor of the recently reopened Sawyer Library.
The Chapin Library's Americana collection includes original printings of all four founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Additionally it houses George Washington's copy of The Federalist and the British reply to the Declaration of Independence.
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.
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. A new 76,800 sf building is scheduled to open in 2027 and be constructed using mass timber. Renderings by SO – IL show a nebulous, low-lying structure with an aluminum shingle roof that ebbs-and-flows across the pastoral landscape, mimicking the nearby Berkshire Mountains.
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. Because the museum is intended primarily for educational purposes, admission is free for all students.
Located in front of the West College dormitory, the Hopkins gate serves as a memorial to brothers Mark and Albert Hopkins. Both made lasting contributions to the Williams College community. Mark was appointed as president of the college in 1836, while Albert was elected a professor in 1829.
Organization and administration
The board of trustees of Williams College has 25 members and is the governing authority of the college. The president of the college serves on the board ex officio. There are five alumni trustees, each of whom serves for a five-year term. There are five term trustees, each elected by the board for five-year terms. The remaining 14 members are regular trustees, also elected by the board but serving up to 15 years, although not beyond their seventieth birthday. The current chair of the board of trustees is Liz Robinson.
The board appoints as senior executive officer of the college a president who is also a member of and the presiding officer of the faculty. Nine senior administrators report to the president, including the dean of the faculty, provost, and dean of the college. Adam F. Falk is the 17th president of Williams, and took office on April 1, 2010.
College Council (CC) was the student government of Williams College until 2020, when the student body voted to replace it with the Three Pillars plan: student-faculty committees, Williams Student Union (WSU), and Facilitators for Allocating Student Taxes (FAST). The WSU consists of 12 members (three representatives per class year) who are elected by their classes and serve semester terms. FAST members are responsible for managing the student activity tax and are in charge of distributing funds to registered student organizations (RSOs).
To manage its endowment, the college started the Williams College Investment Office in 2006. In 2020, the endowment-per-student ratio reached $1.40 million unadjusted for inflation, while in 1990, it was $151,000. Adjusting for inflation, the endowment-per-student ratio had still increased to almost $600,000. In 2021, Williams' endowment-per-student ratio was one of nine colleges or universities to exceed $2 million along with Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Harvard,
Amherst, Pomona, and Swarthmore.
Presidents
The Office of the President is located in Hopkins Hall, named after Mark Hopkins, Williams's fourth president, and the president of the college lives in the Samuel Sloan House, erected in 1801. Before moving into the Samuel Sloan House, the president originally lived in a nearby house where Hopkins Hall now stands. The house has been renovated multiple times since originally being built, including over $500,000 in renovations in 2000 and 2001.
Since its creation in 1793, Williams College has had 17 full-time presidents and two interim presidents. The 18th president and current president is Maud Mandel, who began her tenure on July 1, 2018.
The following persons served as president of Williams College:
Table notes:
Academics
Williams is a small, four-year liberal arts college accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education. There are three academic curricular divisions (humanities, sciences, and social sciences), 26 departments, 37 majors, and two small master's degree programs in art history and development economics. Students may also concentrate in 12 additional academic areas that are not offered as majors (e.g., cognitive science). The academic year follows a 4–1–4 schedule of two four-course semesters plus a one-course "winter study" term in January. During the winter study term, students study one of various courses outside of typical curriculum for 3 weeks. Students typically take this course on a pass/fail basis. Past course offerings have included: Ski Patrol, Learn to Play Chess, Accounting, Inside Jury Deliberations, and Creating a Life: Shaping Your Life After Williams, among many others. Williams students often take the winter study term to study abroad or work on intensive research projects.
Williams' most popular undergraduate majors, based on the average of 2022-2025 graduates, were:
Economics (114)
Mathematics (62)
Psychology (62)
Computer Science (59)
Biology (52)
English (51)
History (50)
Political Science (47)
Art (38)