Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its president, Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts.[9] Amherst was established as a men's college and became coeducational in 1975.Amherst has historically had close relationships and rivalries with Williams College and Wesleyan University which form the Little Three colleges. It is also a member of the Five College Consortium.\
Founded in 1821, Amherst College developed out of the secondary school Amherst Academy. The college was originally suggested as an alternative 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.[citation needed]
In 1812, funds were raised in Amherst for a secondary school, Amherst Academy; it opened December 1814.[10] The institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after Jeffery, Lord Amherst, a veteran from the Seven Years' 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.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
Moore, then President of Williams College, 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. 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 many still nurture the legend.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
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, A History of Amherst College) One of the hallmarks of the new college was its Charity Fund, an early form of financial aid that paid the tuition of poorer students.[11] Although officially non-denominational, the initial Amherst was widely seen as a religiously conservative institution with a strong connection to Calvinism, and as a result, there was considerable debate in the Massachusetts government over whether the new college should receive an official charter from the state, and a charter was not granted until February 21, 1825.[11] As a result of the official charter being granted four years after the official founding of the college, the Amherst seal lists a date of 1825. A tradition of religious conservatism persisted at Amherst until the mid-nineteenth century; students who consumed alcohol or played cards were subject to expulsion, and there were a number of religious revivals at Amherst where mobs of righteous students would herd less religious students into the chapel and berate them for lack of piety.[11] Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, the college began a transition towards secularism, culminating in the demolishing of the college church in 1949.[12]
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. Amherst records one of the first uses of Latin honors of any American college, dating back to 1881.[13] The college was an all-male school until the late 1960s, when a few female students from nearby schools in the Five-College Consortium attended on an experimental basis. In October 1974, the faculty voted in favor of coeducation and in November 1974 the board of trustees voted to admit female students starting in the 1975-1976 school year. In 1975, nine women who were already attending classes as part of an inter-college exchange program were admitted as transfer students. In June 1976, they became the first female graduates of the college.[14]
The college established the Black Studies Department in 1969. In 1973, it launched the nation's first undergraduate neuroscience program. In 1983, it established a Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, which was later to become the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations.[15]
In 1984, on-campus fraternities were abolished. The former fraternity buildings, which were owned by the college, were converted into residence halls.[15]
The Department of Women's and Gender Studies was established in 1987 and the Department of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought in 1993.[15]
Since the inception of the U.S. News & World Report rankings, Amherst College has been ranked ten times as the first overall amongst 266 liberal arts colleges in the United States,[19] and in 2016 ranked second, behind Williams.[20]
In 2015, Forbes ranked Amherst College as the ninth best college or university in the United States.[21]
Kiplinger's Personal Finance places Amherst 11th in its 2016 ranking of best value liberal arts colleges in the United States.[22]
Amherst College ranked second overall in 2012, according to the National Collegiate Scouting Association's annual report, which ranks colleges based on student-athlete graduation rates, academic strength, and athletic prowess.[23]
Amherst ranked as having the second-highest graduation rate of any institution in the United States, second only to Harvard according to a 2009 American Enterprise Institute Study.[24]
Amherst ranked 18th in the 2015 Washington Monthly rankings,[25] which focus on key research outputs, the quality level and total dollar amount of scientific (natural and social sciences) grants won, the 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 for "Students Satisfied With Financial Aid," "School Runs Like Butter," and "Top 10 Best Value Private Schools."[26]
Amherst also participates in the University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN) developed by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). Amherst’s sustainability efforts earned it an overall grade of “A-” on the College Sustainability Report Card 2010 published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute.[27] No institution received an "A" or "A+."
Amherst has been dubbed a "most selective" liberal arts colleges in the United States;[32] the Carnegie Foundation classifies Amherst as one of the "more selective" institutions whose first-year students’ test scores places these institutions in roughly the top fifth of baccalaureate institutions.[33] For the class first enrolled in Fall 2015, Amherst received 8,568 applications and accepted 1,210 for a 14% acceptance rate.[2] Of the 477 enrolling, 53% were women.[2] In terms of class rank, 86% of enrolled freshmen were in the top 10% of their high school classes; 96% ranked in the top quarter.[2] The middle 50% range of SAT scores of enrolled freshmen was 680-780 for critical reading, 680-780 for math, and 680-770 for writing;[2] the middle 50% range of the ACT Composite score was 31-34.[2]
Amherst's comprehensive tuition, room, and board fee for the 2012–13 academic year is $55,510. Once miscellaneous expenses are factored in the total cost to attend for the 2012–13 academic year amounts to $60,809–$63,259.[34]
Despite its high cost of attendance, Amherst College meets the full demonstrated need of every admitted student.[35] Sixty percent of current students receive scholarship aid, and the average financial aid package award amounts to $41,150; the average net price of attendance is $13,809 per year. College expenditures exceed $85,000 per student each year.[36]
In July 2007, Amherst announced that grants would replace loans in all financial aid packages beginning in the 2008-09 academic year. Amherst had already been the first school to eliminate loans for low-income students, and with this announcement it joined Princeton University, Cornell University and Davidson College, then the only colleges to completely eliminate loans from need-based financial aid packages. Increased rates of admission of highly qualified lower income students has resulted in greater equality of opportunity at Amherst than is usual at elite American colleges.[37]
In the 2008-2009 academic year, Amherst College also extended its need-blind admission policy to international applicants. As of the 2010-2011 academic year, Amherst remains the only liberal arts college and one of the five higher education institutions, which include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT, in the United States with need-blind admission for both domestic and international applicants.
Amherst College offers 36 fields of study (with 850 courses)[38] in the sciences, arts, humanities, mathematics and computer sciences, social sciences, foreign languages, classics, and several interdisciplinary fields (including premedical studies[39][40]) and provides an unusually open curriculum. Students are not required to study a core curriculum or fulfill any distribution requirements and may even design their own unique interdisciplinary major.[41] Freshmen may take advanced courses, and seniors may take introductory ones.
Faculty advisors are committed to guiding students through the process of majoring, and each faculty advisor works with no more than five first-year students to ensure a course of study that has breadth and depth, is integrated across disciplines, and is intellectually fulfilling. Faculty advising continues for the remainder of each student's undergraduate education.
Thirty-five percent of Amherst students in the class of 2007 were double majors.[42] Amherst College has been the first college to have undergraduate departments in the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies; Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought; and Neuroscience[43][44] and has helped to pioneer other interdisciplinary programs, including Asian Languages and Civilizations.[citation needed]
The Amherst library is named for long-time faculty member, poet Robert Frost.
Amherst College is widely recognized for its commitment to quality teaching, with rigorous professor-student interaction, so much so that Harvard and Columbia University looked to Amherst in 2007 when they were in the throes of reviewing their teaching program.[45] The student-faculty ratio is 8:1 and 90% of classes have fewer than 30 students.[46]
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 Nikita Khrushchev biographer William Taubman, African art specialist Rowland Abiodun, Natural Law expert Hadley Arkes, Mathematician Daniel Velleman, Biblical scholar Susan Niditch, law and society expert Austin Sarat, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Lewis Spratlan, professor emeritus of the music faculty.[47]
The writings of Amherst College political science Professor Hadley Arkes about homosexuality led to a dispute in 2013 over whether a college seeking to create a diverse, respectful academic community should speak out when a faculty member disparages community members or should instead remain silent as a way to protect academic freedom. The issue arose when a group of alumni petitioned the college trustees and President Biddy Martin to “dissociate the institution” from Arkes’s “divisive and destructive” views,[48] focusing particularly on his May 2013 comparison of homosexuality to bestiality, pedophilia and necrophilia.[49] The alumni said, “Amherst College cannot credibly maintain its professed commitment to be an inclusive community as long as it chooses to remain silent while a sitting professor disparages members of its community in media of worldwide circulation and accessibility.”[48]
Martin disagreed, citing past debates over the college’s position on Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa—issues on which the college initially remained silent but eventually took a public position. In such times, she said, colleges should “avoid taking institutional positions on controversial political matters, except in extraordinary circumstances” and should simultaneously both “protect their communities from discrimination and disrespect” and “cherish a diversity of viewpoints.”[50]
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 Amherst. In addition to the 850 courses available on campus, Amherst students have an additional 5,300 classes to consider through the Consortium (without paying additional tuition) and access to 8 million library volumes.[citation needed] The Five Colleges are geographically close to one another and are linked by buses that run between the campuses.
The Five Colleges share resources and develop common academic programs. Museums10 is a consortium of local art, history and science museums. The Five College Dance Department is one of the largest in the nation.[51] The joint Astronomy department shares use of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, which contributed to work that won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics.[52]
The Five College Coastal and Marine Sciences Program offers an interdisciplinary curriculum to undergraduates in the Five Colleges.[53]
Amherst College is reducing its energy consumption through a computerized monitoring system for lighting and the use of an efficient cogeneration facility. The cogeneration facility features a gas turbine that generates electricity in addition to steam for heating the campus.[54] Amherst also operates a composting program, in which a portion of the food waste from dining halls is sent to a farmer in Vermont.[54]
Amherst claims its athletics program as the oldest in the nation,[55] pointing to its compulsory physical fitness regimen put in place in 1860 (the mandate that all students participate in sports or pursue physical education has been discontinued).[56] One-third of the student body participates in sports at the intercollegiate level, and eighty percent participate in intramural and club sports teams.[55]
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 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.[citation needed] 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 fourth in 2007 and 2008 and third in 2009.[57][citation needed] 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.
On May 3, 2009, Williams College and Amherst alumni played a game of vintage baseball at Wahconah Park according to 1859 rules to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first college baseball game played on July 2, 1859, between the two schools.[58]
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 was started and named at Amherst College in the mid-1960s by Jared Kass '69.[59][60]
Amherst's resources, faculty, and academic life allow the college to enroll students with a range of talents, interests, and commitments. Students represent all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and fifty countries. 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.[citation needed] There are more than 140 student groups at Amherst.[61] Students pursue their interests through student-led organizations funded by the student government, including a variety of cultural and religious groups, publications, fine and performing arts and political advocacy and service groups. Groups include a medieval sword-fighting club, a knitting club, and a club devoted to random acts of kindness, among others.[citation needed] Community service groups and opportunities (locally—through the Center for Community Engagement, nationally, and internationally) have been a priority at Amherst and for former President Anthony Marx, who helped start a secondary school for black students in apartheid South Africa.[62]
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