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Hampshire College
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Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, to be in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Together they are now known as the Five Colleges.
The College is widely known for its alternative curriculum, its focus on portfolios rather than distribution requirements, and its reliance on narrative evaluations instead of grades and GPAs.
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Encyclopedia
Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, to be in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Together they are now known as the Five Colleges.
The College is widely known for its alternative curriculum, its focus on portfolios rather than distribution requirements, and its reliance on narrative evaluations instead of grades and GPAs. It is known particularly for facilitating the study of film, theater, and the visual arts. In some fields it is among the top undergraduate institutions in graduate-school enrollment: fifty-six percent of its alumni have at least one graduate degree and it is ranked 30th among all US colleges in the percentage of its graduates who go on to attain a doctorate degree (notably 1st among history doctorates), when adjusted for institutional size. Its School of Cognitive Science was the first interdisciplinary undergraduate program in cognitive science and has few peers. Hampshire is part of the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission.
History
The college opened to students in 1970; its history dates to the immediate aftermath of World War II. The first The New College Plan was drafted in 1958 by the presidents of the then-Four Colleges; it was revised several times as planning for the College began in the 1960s. Many original ideas for non-traditional arrangements for the College's curriculum, campus, and life were discarded along the way. Many new ideas generated during the planning process were not described in the original documents.
During several years immediately after its founding in the early 1970s, Hampshire College was among the most selective undergraduate programs in the United States Its admissions selectivity declined thereafter, but the school's number of applications increased in the late 1990s, allowing for greater admissions selectivity since then. The college's rate of admissions is now comparable to that of many other small liberal arts colleges.
The school has struggled with financial difficulties since its founding: ceasing operations or merging into the University of Massachusetts Amherst were seriously considered choices at various points. In recent years the school is on more solid financial footing (though without a sizable endowment). It financial stability is often credited to the fundraising efforts of its most recent past presidents, Adele Simmons and Gregory S. Prince, Jr. The College has also distinguished itself recently with a draft for a "sustainable campus plan" and a "cultural village" through which organizations not directly affiliated with the school are located on its campus. The "cultural village" includes the National Yiddish Book Center and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.
On April 1, 2004, president Prince announced his retirement, effective at the end of 2004-05 academic year. On April 5, 2005, the Board of Trustees named Ralph Hexter, formerly a dean at University of California, Berkeley's College of Letters and Science, as the college's next president, effective August 1, 2005. President Hexter was inaugurated on October 15, 2005. The appointment made Hampshire one of a small number of colleges and universities in the United States with an openly gay president.
Some of the most important founding documents of Hampshire College are collected in the book The Making of a College (MIT Press, 1967; ISBN 0-262-66005-9). The Making of a College is (as of 2003) out of print but available in electronic form from the Hampshire College Archives
Since 2002, the school has taken several steps to expand the school and attract more academically conventional students. The most significant change was a revision of the Division I program for first year students. Before the fall of 2002, Division I traditionally consisted of four major exams, one in each of the academic departments and/or quantitative analysis. These exams took one of three forms: a "two-course option", where a student could take two sequential courses; a "one-plus-one", where a Hampshire course supplements an outside course (AP score of a four or five, or a summer college class); or a project, which usually consists of a primary or significant secondary research paper, or an art production (a short film, a sculpture, etc.), and which stems from previous coursework. Students were required to complete at least two project-based exams, while transfer students were usually waived one project requirement. In fall of 2002, the new first-year program was started in response to high numbers of second and third year students who had not completed Division I. The subsequent program mandates eight courses in the first year, at least one in each of the five schools. This reduces the required work for passing Division I significantly, as up to 10 courses could be required under the older system.
Academics and resources
Curriculum
Hampshire College describes itself as "experimenting" rather than "experimental" in order to emphasize the changing nature of its curriculum. From its inception the curriculum has generally had certain non-traditional features:
- An emphasis on project work as well as, or instead of, courses.
- Detailed written evaluations (as well as portfolio evaluations) for completed courses and projects, rather than letter or number grades.
- A curriculum centered on student interests, with students taking an active role in designing their own concentrations and projects.
- An emphasis on independent motivation and student organization, both within and without the college's formal curriculum.
- Division I, the distribution stage, requires students to complete one course in each of the five "Schools of Thought" and three other courses, either on or off campus. (Until fall 2002, Division I required student-directed independent projects; the new system, designed with the goal of quicker and smoother student progress, has caused a great deal of controversy on campus.)
- Division II requires students to complete "two full years" of course work in their selected area(s) of study (which may or may not be traditional academic fields.) Most students combine related subject matter to form an interdisciplinary concentration such as "The chemistry of oil painting." Still, some choose to concentrate in multiple areas without drawing such connections, instead simply concentrating in "Both Chemistry and Oil Painting." Some students, but perhaps the minority, complete an in depth concentration in one field only. Each student is responsible for designing their own Division II in cooperation with a committee of at least two faculty members (who must give their approval). Many students choose a faculty committee whose members represent their own interdisciplinary interests. The Division II requirements also include a community service project and a multicultural perspectives requirement.
- Division III, the advanced project, requires students to complete an in-depth project in their field of choice (which is generally related to the Division II field). Division III usually lasts one year and is completed while taking few or no courses, but two "advanced learning activities," which might be courses, internships or specific independent studies, and may or may not be related to the Division III, are required. A Division III topic can be a long written academic paper (in which case it is best considered as something between a traditional college's "bachelor's" or "honors" thesis and a Master's or other graduate thesis), but it can also be a collection of creative work (writing, painting, photography, and film are popular choices) or a hands-on engineering, invention, or social organizing project.
Schools and programs
The Hampshire College faculty are organized broadly in defined Schools; the Schools function much as Departments do at a traditional liberal arts college. The Schools' names and definitions have varied over the College's history, but there have always been between three and five of them. As of 2005, the Schools were:
- Cognitive Science (CS): includes linguistics, most psychology, some philosophy, neuroscience, and computer science.
- Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (HACU): includes film, some studio arts, literature, media studies, and most philosophy.
- Social Science (SS): includes most sociology and anthropology, economics, history, politics, and some psychology.
- Natural Science (NS): includes most traditional sciences, mathematics, and biological anthropology.
- Interdisciplinary Arts (IA): includes performing arts, some studio arts, and creative writing.
The Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies] (PAWSS) is based at Hampshire; its director is Michael Klare.
Five College Consortium
Hampshire College is the youngest of the schools in the Five-College Consortium. The other schools are Amherst College, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Students at each of the schools may take classes and borrow books, generally without paying additional fees, and incorporate all of the resources available at each of the schools, including internet access, dining halls and so forth. Among the five colleges, there are over 5,300 courses available, and over 8 million volumes between the five libraries. The Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) operates bus services between the schools and the greater Pioneer Valley area.
There are two joint departments in the consortium: Dance, and Astronomy. Several certificate programs among the schools are available to students at any of the schools:
- African Studies
- Asian/Pacific/American Studies
- Buddhist Studies
- Coastal and Marine Sciences+
- Cognitive Neuroscience+ ^
- Culture, Health, and Science
- International Relations
- Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies
- Logic
- Middle Eastern Studies+
- Native American Indian Studies
- Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES)
+ pending approval at Amherst College
^ pending approval at UMass Amherst
Prominent Campus Issues
Re-Radicalization
In the spring of 2004, a student group calling itself the Re-Radicalization of Hampshire College (Re-Rad) emerged with a manifesto called The Re-Making of a College, which critiques what they see as a betrayal of Hampshire's founding ideas in alternative education and student-centered learning. On May 3, 2004, the group staged a demonstration which packed the hall outside the President's office during an administrative meeting. Response from the community has generally been amicable and Re-Rad has made some progress.
is home to Hampshire's student radio station]]
The Re-Radicalization movement is responding in part to a new "First-Year Plan" entailing changes to the structure of the first year of study in the curriculum. Beginning in the Fall of 2002, the requirements for passing Division I were changed so that first-year students would no longer be required to complete independent projects (see Curriculum above). Though presently a major source of contention, this change is rapidly fading from memory as most of the students who entered into the old plan have graduated or are in their final year. Re-Rad submitted its own counter-proposal in both 2006 and 2007; however, these proposals were not followed, and no follow-up was attempted.
The Re-Radicalization of Hampshire College assisted the administration in launching a pilot program known as 'mentored independent study'. In it, ten third semester students were paired with Division III students with similar academic interests to complete a small study, all under the observation of, and subject to the approval of a faculty member. The program was judged successful and has been institutionalized.
While some students worry about what they see as Hampshire's headlong plunge into normality, the circumstances of Hampshire's founding tends to perennially attract students who revive the questions about education on which the institution was founded and challenge the administration to honor them. Unsurprisingly, then, Re-Rad was not the first student push of its type. Efforts like it have sprung up at Hampshire with some regularity throughout the years, with varying degrees of impact. In 1996, student Chris Kawecki spearheaded a similar push called the Radical Departure, calling for a more holistic, organic integration of education into students' lives. The most durable legacy of the Radical Departure was EPEC, a series of student-led non-credit courses. A more detailed account of movements such as these can be found in a history of Hampshire student activities, a Division III thesis written by alumus Timothy Shary, subsequently a faculty member at Clark University of worcester Massachusetts, and University of Oklahoma
Smash the State, Crush the Cage
In November of 2007, Hampshire College was host to the controversial Smash the State, Crush the Cage conference. SSCC was a three day event commencing on November 9th, 2007 that was designed to "empower and fortify the animal liberation movement." The organizing student group, Hampshire Animal Liberation Advocacy (HALA), put together a schedule that included over 15 speakers and three bands. Conference organizers arranged for free food and housing to be provided for over 100 attendees. Some of the speakers included animal liberationist and former political prisoner Peter Daniel Young, antivivisectionist physician Dr. Jerry Vlasak and ecofeminist author Dr. Pattrice Jones. Hampshire was publicly criticized by anti-animal rights bloggers like Wesley J. Smith and the Speciesist's Corner .
A week before the conference was set to take place, President Ralph Hexter abruptly demanded that HALA rescind the invitation to Jerry Vlasak, publicly repudiate the tactics of the Animal Liberation Front and provide a list of names of all conference attendees. This decision followed pressure from the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire cognitive and natural sciences deans Chris Jarvis and Neil Stillings. During a meeting with HALA organizers, Stillings infamously quipped, "I don't think college should be a platform for activism;" a phrase that incensed many Hampshire students and alumni. Following an alumni call-in and a sit-in of president Hexter's office, HALA compromised by moving Dr. Vlasak's talk off campus to Food for Thought Books but refused to turn over a list of names of conference attendees. The importance of anonymous registration at the conference was highlighted when President Hexter admitted to students during the sit-in that he had spoken with the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the conference. This revelation prompted HALA to assert that Hampshire was betraying its activist heritage by being complicit in the Green Scare. Hexter was later admonished by the ACLU of Western Massachusetts for railroading Dr. Vlasak.
The Amherst Bulletin published a story on the conference, but got many details wrong including the omission of any reference to an e-mail interview conducted by staff writer Kristen Palpini and a HALA representative, the misspelling of Dr. Vlasak's name and a reference to the "Animal Liberation Federation" (sic).
HALA was denied student group recognition by Hampshire College in the fall of 2008 but still exists as an unfunded organization.
In the media
Despite its relatively small size and short history, Hampshire has made a mark on pop culture and political activism. Its annual Halloween party, referred to by some as "Trip or Treat" for its historically widespread use of psychedelic drugs, was once profiled by Rolling Stone magazine.
Hampshire was the first college in the nation to decide to divest from apartheid South Africa, in 1979 (with the nearby University of Massachusetts Amherst second).
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In November 2001, a controversial All-Community Vote at Hampshire declared the school opposed to the recently-launched War on Terrorism, another national first which drew national media attention, including scathing reports from Rupert Murdoch's FOX News Channel and the New York Post ("Kooky College Condemns War"). Saturday Night Live had a regular sketch, "Jarrett's Room", starring Jimmy Fallon which purports to take place at Hampshire College but is grossly inaccurate, referring to non-existent buildings ("McGuinn Hall" which is actually the Sociology and Social Work building at fellow cast member Amy Poehler's alma mater, Boston College) and featuring yearbooks, tests, seniors, fraternities, 3-person dorm rooms, and a football team, none of which have ever existed at the school (although in the Fall 2005 and 2007 semesters the college experienced a higher than expected number of freshmen and temporarily had to convert some of the common spaces into 3-person dorms). The sketch further seemed to think that the college was actually in New Hampshire (a common mistake).
Alumnus Ken Burns wrote of the college: "Hampshire College is a perfect American place. If we look back at the history of our country, the things we celebrate were outside of the mainstream. Much of the world operated under a tyrannical model, but Americans said, 'We will govern ourselves.' So, too, Hampshire asked, at its founding, the difficult questions of how we might educate ourselves... When I entered Hampshire, I found it to be the most exciting place on earth." Loren Pope wrote of Hampshire in the college guide Colleges That Change Lives: "Today no college has students whose intellectual thyroids are more active or whose minds are more compassionately engaged." In 2006, the Princeton Review named Hampshire College one of the nation’s "best value" undergraduate institutions in its book "America’s Best Value Colleges".
2009 Socially responsible investment policy and Israel
In February 2009, the trustees of Hampshire College "strenuously denied" assertions by the Hampshire chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine that an investment decision made Hampsire the first American college to sell stock in companies specifically because they do business with Israel.
Students had petitioned for divestment from a list of companies that do business in Israel. Sigmund Roos, chairman of the Hampshire board of trustees, told the Boston Globe that the trustees never reviewed the group's petition.
"We never took it up," he said. "Students know that." The trustees' actual decision was to sell its shares in a fund holds in some 200 companies, including some with business practices that the college defines as not "socially responsible."
These practices include manufacturing military weapons, unsafe workplaces, and poor environmental practices.
Alumni and faculty
Notable alumni
- Eric Krasno, guitarist for Soulive and Lettuce.
- Xander Berkeley, actor
- Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker, The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, and The War.
- Justin Carven, founder of Greasecar.
- Charlie Clouser, musician, former member of Nine Inch Nails
- Leah Hager Cohen, writer
- Chuck Collins, political activist, co-founder of United For a Fair Economy
- E. V. Day, artist and sculptor
- Toby Driver, musician and artist, Kayo Dot and Maudlin of the Well
- Ed Droste, singer/songwriter from the Brooklyn-based indie group Grizzly Bear (band)
- John Falsey, Emmy Award-winning creator of St. Elsewhere, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure
- Noah Falstein, video game designer, Sinistar, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
- Victor Fresco, television writer and producer, My Name Is Earl and Andy Richter Controls the Universe
- Tooker Gomberg, municipal politician and environmentalist, 1980 graduate
- Neil Gust, musician and artist
- Benjamin Mako Hill, technologist, free software developer and free culture advocate
- Ben Herson, founder of Nomadic Wax Global Hip-Hop and Underground Music and Media Company
- Gary Hirshberg, Chairman, President, and "CE-Yo" of Stonyfield Farm
- Jeff Hobbs, noted gynecologist
- Jeffrey Hollender, Presidend and CEO of Seventh Generation Inc.
- Daniel Horowitz, noted criminal-defense attorney.
- Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
- Jeph Jacques, artist, Questionable Content
- Brown Johnson, President of Animation, Nickelodeon
- Will Killingsworth, musician, Orchid, Ampere
- Jon Krakauer, mountain climber and author, Into Thin Air and Into the Wild
- Mike Ladd, Hip Hop MC and member of the Antipop Consortium
- Aaron Lansky, founder of the National Yiddish Book Center
- Ken Leavitt-Lawrence, rap artrist a.k.a. "MC Hawking"
- lê thi diem thúy, writer and solo performance artist.
- Jeff Maguire, screenwriter, In the Line of Fire
- Eugene Mirman, comedian
- David Moscow, actor, Big
- John Reed, novelist, Snowball's Chance
- Liev Schreiber, stage and screen actor, The Manchurian Candidate (2004), director, Everything is Illuminated
- Joshua Seth, noted hypnotist and voice over actor, Akira (2001), Tetsuo, Digimon, Tai
- Jeff Sharlet, journalist, Harper's
- David Sloss, Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Global Law and Policy, Santa Clara University School of Law
- Elliott Smith, musician and artist
- Lee Smolin, theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute
- Sonya Sones, author of What My Mother Doesn't Know and other young adult novels in verse
- Barry Sonnenfeld, director, Men in Black
- Danny Tamberelli, actor, The Mighty Ducks and television series All That and The Adventures of Pete and Pete
- Naomi Wallace, playwright, One Flea Spare, Slaugher City
- Ken Ward, climate campaigner
- Jessamyn West, well-known librarian and blogger
- Christopher Young, film composer, Spider-Man 3
- Nicholas Callaway, founder of Callaway Arts & Entertainment
Fictional alumni
Notable past and present faculty
- Eqbal Ahmad, post-colonial political scholar
- Leonard Baskin, artist
- James Baldwin, writer
- Bill Brand, experimental filmmaker
- Ray Copeland, Jazz musician, trumpet
- Susan Douglas, sociologist, writer
- Mark Dresser, jazz musician, contrabass virtuoso
- Marty Ehrlich, jazz musician
- Lynne Hanley, literary critic
- Paul Jenkins, professor of poetry
- Norton Juster, architect and writer
- Michael Klare, scholar on U.S. defense policy
- Yusef Lateef, musician
- Michael Lesy, writer, author of Wisconsin Death Trip
- Jerome Liebling, filmmaker and photographer
- Eric Schocket, American studies scholar
- Andrew Salkey, writer
- Chase Twichell, poet, founder of Ausable Press
- Diane Arbus* (co-instructor of a photography class for a summer term), photographer
- David Roberts, mountaineer and author
- (fictional) In an SNL episode aired on December 14, 2002 host, Al Gore plays Dr. Ralph Wormly Curtis, a professor at Hampshire College. In the same sketch it is implied that the band Phish attends Hampshire as well.
Presidents of the college
See also
External links
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- , featuring PDF text of The Making of a College and documents from Hampshire College history
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- A tool for documenting Hampshire's academics and life and culture.
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