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
a member of the historic Little Three
colleges, which includes Wesleyan University
and Williams
College.
Amherst is consistently ranked amongst the top liberal arts
colleges by
U.S.
News and World
Report, and is classified as a most selective institution
by the
Carnegie
Foundation.
History

Amherst College Main Quad
in 1821, Amherst College developed out of the secondary school
Amherst Academy. The college was originally suggested as an
alternate 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, 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.
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 relocation debate
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,
A
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.
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.
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

Johnson Chapel
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. Amherst has been ranked
first overall amongst U.S. liberal arts colleges ten times since
the inception of the
U.S. News rankings, and is
currently ranked second, behind Williams.
In 2008,
Forbes ranked Amherst as the seventh best college or university in
the United States in terms of satisfaction with professors and
public service, after Princeton
, CalTech
, Harvard
, Swarthmore
, Williams, and the
US Military
Academy
.
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 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.
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 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, 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.
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 “B+”
on the College Sustainability Report Card 2009 published by the
Sustainable Endowments Institute. Only 15 schools earned a higher
grade.
Admission
In 2008, Amherst College received 7,745 applications and admitted
1,096 for an overall acceptance rate of 14.2 percent, an all-time
low. For the class of 2012, the middle 50 percent of admitted
students received an SAT score of 1340-1560 (Critical Reading and
Math only), an ACT composite score of 30-35, and about 89 percent
of admitted students were in the top decile (10 percent) of their
high school classes.
Academic program
Amherst is known for its commitment to quality teaching, with
rigorous professor-student interaction.
It has been said that
Harvard
looked to
Amherst when reviewing its teaching program in 2007.
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.
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
[9566] [9567] [9568]), 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
College was the first college to have undergraduate departments in
the interdisciplinary fields of
American Studies; Law, Jurisprudence and
Social Thought; and
Neuroscience.
Amherst helped pioneer other interdisciplinary programs, including
Asian Languages and Civilizations.
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,
Biblical scholar Susan Niditch, law and society expert
Austin Sarat, and
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer
Lewis Spratlan, professor emeritus of the
music faculty. (See
List
of Amherst College people.)
Students
Amherst's resources, faculty, and rigorous 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.

The Kirby Memorial Theater
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 5,300 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 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 world's largest collection of dinosaur tracks);
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.
Sustainability
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. Amherst also operates a composting program, in
which a portion of the food waste from dining halls is sent to a
farmer in Vermont.
Student groups
Students can pursue their interests 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. There is approximately one
group for every 16 students at Amherst. 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 Amherst alumnus Joseph Hardy Neesima.
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 comprehensive tuition, room, and board fee for the
2009-10 academic year is $48,400. More than half (54%) of students
receive scholarship aid, and the average financial aid package
amounts to $37,564.
In July 2007, Amherst announced that grants would replace loans in
all "need-based" 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
and Davidson
College as the only colleges to completely eliminate loans from
need-based financial aid packages.
Athletics
Varsity athletics
Amherst claims its athletics program as the oldest in the nation,
pointing to its compulsory physical fitness regimen put in place in
1860. 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
fourth in 2007 and 2008 and third in 2009 . The 2007 "National
Collegiate Scouting Association's Collegiate Power Ranking" ranked
Amherst Collegesecond "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.
- In
2009, the Amherst Women's Ice Hockey Team team won the Division III
National Championship, by a score of 4-3 in OT over Elmira
College
.
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.
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 cappella 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
cappella groups include the
Zumbyes, the
Bluestockings, Route 9, the Sabrinas, the DQ, and Terras Irradient
(the co-ed Christian a cappella 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.
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,
Grammy Award
and
Emmy Award winners; a
U.S. President,
the current
Sovereign Prince
of Monaco, a
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
make a gift to Amherst each year— the highest alumni participation
rate of any college in the country.
See also
References
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).
External links