![]() ![]() 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. 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. Depiction of West College, which composed the entire college in its early years.Īt its founding, the college maintained a policy of racial segregation, refusing admission to black applicants. ![]() It was the second college to be founded in Massachusetts. The legislature agreed and on June 22, 1793, Williams College was chartered. Not long after its founding, the school's trustees petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to convert the free school to a tuition-based college. Īfter Shays' Rebellion, the Williamstown Free School opened with 15 students on October 26, 1791. 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. In 1765, the west township was incorporated as Williamstown. Members of the Williams family first attempted to found Queens College in Hatfield, Massachusetts in 1762, but the charter was revoked within a year when Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard succumbed to pressure from Harvard College, which opposed the creation of a second institution of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 Massachusetts colony. 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. Williams was killed at the Battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755. History Ĭolonel Ephraim Williams was an officer in the Massachusetts militia and a member of a prominent landowning family. Other notable alumni include 40 Rhodes Scholars and 17 Marshall Scholarship recipients. Cabinet secretaries, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a President of the United States, 3 prime ministers, CEOs and founders of Fortune 500 companies, multiple Emmy, Oscar, and Grammy award winners, and professional athletes. Securities and Exchange Commission, a chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, 14 billionaires, 71 members of the United States Congress, 22 U.S. Prominent alumni include 9 Pulitzer Prize winners, a Nobel Prize Laureate, a Fields medalist, 3 chairmen of the U.S. The athletic program has been highly successful, as Williams College has won 22 of the last 24 College Directors' Cups for NCAA Division III. The college competes in the NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference as the Ephs. 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. Williams offers an almost entirely undergraduate instruction, though there are two graduate programs in development economics and art history. įollowing 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. As of 2022, the school has an enrollment of 2,021 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students. There are 360 voting faculty members, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 6:1. 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. It became officially coeducational in the 1960s. It positioned itself as a "Western counterpart" to Yale and Harvard. 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.Īlthough the bequest from the estate of Ephraim Williams intended to establish a "free school", the exact meaning of which is ambiguous, the college quickly outgrew its initial ambitions. Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
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