Motto: E liberalitate E. Williams, armigeri ( Through the Generosity of E. Williams, Esquire (or Soldier) )
Established: 1793
Type: Private
Endowment: $1.89 Billion[1]
President: Morton Owen Schapiro
Faculty: 315
Undergraduates: 1,997
Postgraduates: 49
Location: Williamstown, MA, USA
Campus: Rural
Athletics: Ephs
Mascot: Purple cow
Website:
学校概况
威廉斯姆学院Williams College是美国陆军的埃菲拉姆上校于1793 年建立,为私立的文科学院,每年有大约2000名学生进入该校读本科课程, 有三个学术课程分类:人文学科,社会研究,自然科学。24个系别,33个专业和特别项目。该校有著名的威廉姆斯年度贵宾演讲,1996年曾经邀请过前美国总统布什,98年是著名小提琴家马友友,2006年的演讲人是著名水下摄影师Chuck Davis.
威廉姆斯学院Williams College始终致力于追求学术的卓越性这一中心使命,将学生与教职员工紧密地联系起来,并且充分利用校友以及学生家长提供的一切有利资源。学院从国内外选拔最具才智的学生,使其在课堂内外为教育事业做出学术和个人卓越品质的贡献。学院的教师团队由一组学识渊博,极具智慧的老师,学者和艺术家构成。他们全身心地投入到教育学生,拓展人类知识领域,和通过独具一格的研究,思考以及艺术表达而增加人类对宇宙的认识的事业中来。正如忠心耿耿的学生父母和校友对学院的支持和贡献一样,具有奉献精神的教员将教与学的过程推上了最高层面。
学院通过培育学生的学术品质和公民道德以及性格特征,致力于为学生提供最好的文科教育。学术品质包括广泛深入探索知识的能力,具备批判性思维, 利用经验推断事物,清晰表达观点以及创造性联系知识的能力。公民道德包括全身心投入到广泛的公共以及社区事务中,并能够有效地行事。从本质上说,学院为学生提供的最广博最持久最实用的知识就是开放,创造力,灵活性,以及文科的教育能力。为此,学院的课程设置为学生提供广泛的学习机会,确保教职员工密切关注学生,鼓励学生自主学习。
威廉姆斯学院实行百分百的 非按需供给 招生政策。简言之,这个政策是说在录取过程中不考虑学生的家庭收入和是否能支付得起高昂的学费。因为威廉姆斯学院坚信应该广纳来自不同背景的贤才,对于经济困难的学生给予财政援助。此项政策使得学院从国内外吸纳学生时,仅以学识渊博与否作为选拔的条件。此外,对于那些需要财政援助的学生,学院鼎立支持,并确保助学贷款利率相对偏低。
校园生活
Williams College位于马萨诸塞州西北部三座山脉的交汇处,占地几千英亩;离波士顿145英里,165纽约英里;临近美国东北部的原始乡间,是徒步旅行者的天堂,是历代艺术家,作家和思想家获得灵感的源泉。每年吸引一百多万游客。威廉姆斯城被称为美国最好的大学城。其文化资源和自然资源
---从山脉到博物馆再到传统节日,这一切对于游客来说都具有巨大的魔力。威廉姆斯有印象主义艺术和郁郁葱葱的森林,被誉为美国最具文化氛围的乡村小镇。
Williams College拥有一所全国著名的艺术馆, 威廉姆斯大学艺术博物馆,馆藏艺术品价值超过20亿美元。学院内的Sawyer 图书馆是以威廉姆斯学院的第11届总统John Edward Sawyer的名字命名的。主要收藏文科,人文学科和社会科学的著作。收藏品中还包括此图书馆系统的公文,录象材料和录音等。此图书馆藏书700,000多册,能同时容纳约750名学生在内看书。而Schow科学图书馆主要收藏天文学,物理学,生物学,化学,计算机科学,数学,地球科学以及心理学方面的书籍和刊物。学院还有一个拥有15万份音像图书资料的图书馆,Chapin Library。
英文补充
Student activities and traditions
Student media
The longest running independent newspaper at Williams is the Williams Record, a weekly broadsheet paper published on Wednesdays. The newspaper was founded in 1885, and now has a weekly circulation of 3,000 copies distributed in Williamstown, in addition to more than 600 subscribers across the country. The newspaper does not receive financial support from the college or from the student government and relies on revenue generated by local and national ad sales, subscriptions, and voluntary contributions for use of its website. Both Sawyer Library and the College Archives maintain more than a century s worth of publicly accessible, bound volumes of the Record. The newspaper provides access free of charge to a searchable database of articles stretching back to 1998 on its website.
The student yearbook is called The Gulielmensian, which means Williams Thing in Greek.It was published irregularly in the 1990s, but has been annual for the past several years and dates back to the mid-19th century.
Numerous smaller campus publications are also produced each year, including The Mad Cow, a humor magazine, and the Literary Review, a literary magazine.
91.9 WCFM
WCFM is a college-owned, student-run, non-commercial radio station broadcasting from the basement of Prospect House at 91.9 MHz.Featuring 85 hours per week of original programming, the station features a wide variety of musical genres, in addition to sports and talk radio.The station may also be heard on the Internet via Shoutcast.com. Members of the surrounding communities above the age of 18 are allowed to DJ on the station, which, as part of its mission, seeks to serve the surrounding community with news and announcements of public interest.The board of the radio station holds a concert every semester.
Williams Trivia Contest
At the end of every semester but one since 1966, WCFM has hosted an all-night, eight-hour trivia contest. Teams of students, alumni, professors, friends, and others compete to answer questions on a variety of subjects, while simultaneously identifying songs and performing designated tasks. The winning team s only prize is the obligation to create and host the following semester s contest.
The precise date of the debut contest is uncertain. Most spring contests occur in early May, but during its first decade, Williams Trivia was sometimes held in March or February. Assuming a May date, Lawrence University s 50-hour-long Great Midwest Trivia Contest, first held on April 29, 1966, would be the oldest continuous competition of its sort in the United States, but if the first Williams contest was held earlier, it would be the oldest. The distinction is appropriately trivial.
While other college-based trivia contests in the United States emphasize marathon endurance and revel in the obscurity of their arcana, the aim of the Williams contest is to cram as much evocative and entertaining material into as concentrated a space as possible. Lasting just eight hours, a typical Williams Trivia contest will demand between 900 and 1,200 separate bits of trivial information, delivering twice as much content as its competitors in a fraction of the time. No discernible rivalry exists between any of the various contests. The contest has occasionally received outside media coverage, including in the Sunday New York Times. Further history and details are available at an archival website.
Student music
Music ensembles at Williams include Berkshire Symphony, Symphonic Winds, Student Symphony, Brass Ensemble, Clarinet Choir, Concert and Chamber Choirs, Handbell Choir, Gospel Choir, Jazz Ensemble, Kusika and the Zambezi Marimba Band, Percussion Ensemble, and Marching Band. Both music majors and non-majors are welcome to participate in all groups.
The Berkshire Symphony is conducted by Ronald Feldman, a former Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist. Half of the orchestra consists of students, while the principal players and many section players are area professionals.
Williams Symphonic Winds, led by Steven Dennis Bodner, is a leading proponent of new music on campus. In recent years, the group has evolved to include strings and premieres and performs works by prominent contemporary composers, including members of the faculty.
Student Symphony is an entirely student-run, student-conducted group. Student Symphony rehearses weekly and performs several times per year.
Under the direction of Bradley Wells, the Concert and Chamber Choirs perform a wide range of repertoire at a variety of concerts. A choral highlight is always the Festival of Lessons and Carols held just prior to the holidays in the Thompson Memorial Chapel.
The Williams Jazz program includes academic courses, ensembles (both traditional big band, by audition, and several small ensembles), and applied lessons on primary jazz instruments.
In the Shona language of Zimbabwe, Kusika means to create. Founded in 1989 at Williams College, Kusika performs traditional African music, dance, and storytelling from Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Senegal. The Zambezi marimba band, founded in 1992, plays marimba music from Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The Williams Percussion Ensemble, led by Matthew Gold, explores the masterworks of twentieth century percussion music, experimental music, music of many of the world s traditions, and the most up-to-date works by contemporary composers for percussion instruments.
The Marching Band, named The Moocho Macho Moocow Military Marching Band , serves as a cheering section at the football games, as well as an entertainment show for halftime.
Williams also hosts seven student-organized a cappella singing groups. There are two all-female groups, the Accidentals and Ephoria. The two all-male groups are Octet and the Springstreeters, and the two co-ed pop groups are Ephlats and Good Question. The seventh group, the Elizabethans, are a mixed-voice Renaissance ensemble.
The Williams Gospel Choir has served the college since 1986. Their performances are usually at the end of the semester, right bore finals start, and serve to provide a spiritual and emotional courage to students during this difficult time of the semester.
School colors and mascot
Williams s school colors are purple and gold, with purple as the primary school color.A story explaining the origin of purple as a school color says that at the Williams-Harvard baseball game in 1869, spectators watching from carriages had trouble telling the teams apart because there were no uniforms. One of the onlookers bought ribbons from a nearby millinery store to pin on Williams players, and the only color available was purple. The buyer was Jennie Jerome (later Winston Churchill s mother) whose family summered in Williamstown.
The Williams college mascot is a purple cow.The mascot s name, Ephelia, was submitted in a radio contest in October 1952 by Theodore W. Friend, a senior at Williams.The origins of the cow mascot are unknown, but one possibility is that it was inspired by the Purple Cow humor magazine, a student publication begun in 1907, which used the college color along with a cow.The title of the humor magazine was in rerence to Gelett Burgess s nonsense poem:
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I d rather see than be one!
Alma mater
Williams claims the first alma mater song written by an undergraduate, The Mountains, was written by Washington Gladden of the class of 1859.