Williams College Launches $650 Million Comprehensive Fundraising Campaign

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — In a campus-wide celebration uniting students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents, Williams College on Saturday night officially kicked off a multiyear campaign aimed at raising $650 million and engaging the entire Williams community in building the future of the college.

"Teach It Forward: The Campaign for Williams" is believed to be the most ambitious campaign in the college’s 222-year history and the most ambitious campaign in the history of liberal arts colleges. Following a three-year quiet phase of planning and fundraising, the college has secured $374 million in commitments toward its overall goal, and fully 66 percent of alumni have already engaged in some aspect of the campaign, whether through philanthropic support, volunteerism, or participation in campus or regional alumni events.

Williams launches the Teach It Forward campaign amid a continuing national conversation about the value of higher education and the liberal arts in particular, as well as widespread concern about the affordability and accessibility of a college education. The campaign is a comprehensive effort to build significant support for the core aspects of a Williams education, chief among them the financial aid program that provides opportunity to students and allows the college to create an educational community relevant for the 21st century.

“Our aspiration at Williams is to reflect the communities of this global society in the broadest sense possible,” said President Adam Falk. “When we bring students from every walk of life to Williams, we make Williams a better place for every single student here. And then in sending them out as graduates, we multiply our own impact on the world.”

Williams will seek $150 million in endowment support for financial aid in the campaign — to ensure affordability for low- and middle-income students, as well for international students, and therein sustain the socioeconomic diversity of the student body. Financial aid is the campaign’s single largest fundraising priority.

Williams will also seek deep investment in faculty support, undergraduate science education, and the student experience, and it aims to engage the alumni and parent communities broadly in strengthening their already legendary annual support of the college (approximately 60 percent of alumni contribute to the college’s Alumni Fund every year, and together with the parents fund and other annual giving, those gifts contribute $22 million to the operating budget).

“We tend to think primarily of two kinds of institutions of higher learning: large research universities and small liberal arts colleges. In this campaign, we will secure Williams’ distinctive place in higher education as combining the best of both these worlds,” Falk said. “At Williams, we provide the opportunities and the rigor of a research university, in a liberal arts context and on a scale that allows for not only small classes, but also close collaboration with faculty and the mentorship and support of an entire community.”

In addition to building the college’s financial aid endowment, in the Teach It Forward campaign Williams aspires to:

* Raise $150 million to support faculty and recruit and retain the next generation of teachers and scholars, as the college enters a decade of unprecedented turnover during which more than a third of its faculty is expected to retire.

* Provide for the next century of science at Williams and further distinguish Williams in undergraduate science education by raising $100 million in support for a new science center and related investments in science.



* Invest in the experiences outside the classroom and beyond campus that support students’ intellectual, social, and physical development and provide the context and perspectives necessary for students to become informed, engaged global citizens. Williams seeks $150 million for these initiatives and opportunities.

* Inspire alumni and parents to give annually at unprecedented levels — $100 million and 75 percent participation over the length of the campaign — as well as to engage in volunteerism, career networking, and other forms of involvement with the college through the campaign’s engagement initiative, Purple With Purpose.

“This set of campaign priorities speaks to what we continue to value about a Williams education: bringing together the most talented students and faculty in a challenging yet supportive environment, so that we may equip our students with the tools they’ll need to lead in the generations to come,” said Michael R. Eisenson ’77, chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees. “We have great expectations for our students, and so it follows that we have ambitious goals in this campaign.”

Gregory M. Avis ’80, the campaign’s chairman, said he hopes to engage fellow alumni and parents in building the college’s future.

“My work in this campaign and the philanthropic commitments that my wife Anne and I are making to it represent a deep desire to support this community that we love and to inspire others to work together to continue to move Williams forward,” he said.

Such support from alumni is long-standing in Williams’ history. It was alumni who saved the college in 1821 — when declining enrollment and a push to move the college out of Williamstown threatened its very existence — and in so doing, they established the world’s first society of alumni.

Today, Leila Jere ’91, president of the Society of Alumni, said the support and engagement of alumni and parents is as essential as ever to Williams.

“The strength of the college really relies on alumni who stay engaged and who give to the college in many ways,” she said. “Now is the time for all of us to ‘teach it forward,’ to demonstrate to future alumni the powerful impact of alumni support on the college and, in turn, of Williams on the wider world.”

For more information about the campaign, visit http://teachitforward.williams.edu.

 


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WCMA: 'Cracking the Code on Numerology'

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) opens a new exhibition, "Cracking the Cosmic Code: Numerology in Medieval Art."
 
The exhibit opened on March 22.
 
According to a press release: 
 
The idea that numbers emanate sacred significance, and connect the past with the future, is prehistoric and global. Rooted in the Babylonian science of astrology, medieval Christian numerology taught that God created a well-ordered universe. Deciphering the universe's numerical patterns would reveal the Creator's grand plan for humanity, including individual fates. 
 
This unquestioned concept deeply pervaded European cultures through centuries. Theologians and lay people alike fervently interpreted the Bible literally and figuratively via number theory, because as King Solomon told God, "Thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight" (Wisdom 11:22). 
 
"Cracking the Cosmic Code" explores medieval relationships among numbers, events, and works of art. The medieval and Renaissance art on display in this exhibition from the 5th to 17th centuries—including a 15th-century birth platter by Lippo d'Andrea from Florence; a 14th-century panel fragment with courtly scenes from Palace Curiel de los Ajos, Valladolid, Spain; and a 12th-century wall capital from the Monastery at Moutiers-Saint-Jean—reveal numerical patterns as they relate to architecture, literature, gender, and timekeeping. 
 
"There was no realm of thought that was not influenced by the all-consuming belief that all things were celestially ordered, from human life to stones, herbs, and metals," said WCMA Assistant Curator Elizabeth Sandoval, who curated the exhibition. "As Vincent Foster Hopper expounds, numbers were 'fundamental realities, alive with memories and eloquent with meaning.' These artworks tease out numerical patterns and their multiple possible meanings, in relation to gender, literature, and the celestial sphere. 
 
"The exhibition looks back while moving forward: It relies on the collection's strengths in Western medieval Christianity, but points to the future with goals of acquiring works from the global Middle Ages. It also nods to the history of the gallery as a medieval period room at this pivotal time in WCMA's history before the momentous move to a new building," Sandoval said.
 
Cracking the Cosmic Code runs through Dec. 22.
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