|
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this period, beginning in 1962.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://wso.williams.edu/wiki/index.php/Elimination_of_fraternities )〕 Williams has three academic curricular divisions (humanities, sciences and social sciences), 24 departments, 36 majors, and two master's degree programs in art history and development economics. There are 334 voting faculty members, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 7:1. , the school has an enrollment of 2,052 undergraduate students and 54 graduate students.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=The College Board )〕 The academic year follows a 4–1–4 schedule of two four-course semesters plus a one-course "winter study" term in January. A summer research schedule involves about 200 students on campus completing projects with professors. Williams College currently occupies 1st place in ''U.S. News & World Report''s 2014 ranking of the 266 liberal arts colleges in the United States.〔(National Liberal Arts College Rankings | Top Liberal Arts Colleges | US News Best Colleges ). Colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-02.〕 ''Forbes'' magazine ranked Williams the best undergraduate institution in the United States in its 2014 publication of America's Top Colleges.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 work=Forbes )〕 ==History== Colonel Ephraim Williams was an officer in the Massachusetts militia and a member of a prominent landowning family. His will included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in the town of West Hoosac, Massachusetts, provided that the town change its name to Williamstown. Williams was killed at the Battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755. After Shays' Rebellion, the Williamstown Free School opened with 15 students on October 26, 1791. The first president was Ebenezer Fitch. Not long after its founding, the trustees of the school 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 to the college on account of his race. Prince, who had already 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.〔 More recent scholarship, however, has highlighted how there are no records within the college itself to confirm that this event occurred, and that 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 that 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 behind at Williams and were allowed to keep the land, which was at the time relatively worthless. According to legend, Moore also took portions of the Williams College library. Though plausible, the transfer of books is unsubstantiated. 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, designed the gowns he and his classmates wore to graduation in 1887.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher =Williams College ) 〕 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.〔Walters, Helen. "The Story of Caps and Gowns," p. 9. Chicago: E. R. Moore, 1939.〕 One reason gowns were adopted in the late nineteenth century was to eliminate the differences in apparel between rich and poor students.〔Leonard, Gardner Cotrell. "The Cap and Gown in America; Reprinted from the University Magazine of 1893; To Which is Added: An Illustrated Sketch of the Intercollegiate System of Academic Costume," p. 9. Albany, New York: Cotrell & Leonard, 1896.〕 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Williams College」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|