Williams College in the context of "Private college"

A college (Latin: collegium) may be a tertiary educational institution (sometimes awarding degrees), part of a collegiate university, an institution offering vocational education, a further education institution, or a secondary school.

In most of the world, a college may be a high school or secondary school, a college of further education, a training institution that awards trade qualifications, a higher-education provider that does not have university status (often without its own degree-awarding powers), or a constituent part of a university. In the United States, a college may offer undergraduate programs – either as an independent institution or as the undergraduate program of a university – or it may be a residential college of a university or a community college, referring to (primarily public) higher education institutions that aim to provide affordable and accessible education, usually limited to two-year associate degrees. The word "college" is generally also used as a synonym for a university in the US, and as used in phrases such as "college students" and "going to college" it is understood to mean any degree granting institution, whether denominated a school, an institute, a college, or a university.

Amherst College (/ˈæmərst/ AM-ərst) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts. The institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after Jeffery, Lord Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of British forces of North America during the French and Indian War. Originally established as a men's college, Amherst became coeducational in 1975.

Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution; 1,914 full-time students were enrolled in fall 2024. Admissions are highly selective. Students choose courses from 42 major programs in an open curriculum and are not required to study a core curriculum or fulfill any distribution requirements; students may also design their own interdisciplinary major.

Williamstown is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. Located in Berkshire County, the town is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts metropolitan statistical area. The population was 7,513 at the 2020 census. A college town, it is home to Williams College, the Clark Art Institute and the Tony-awarded Williamstown Theatre Festival.

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, commonly referred to as the Clark, is an art museum and research institution located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. Its collection consists of European and American paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and decorative arts from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century. The Clark, along with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), forms a trio of art museums in the Berkshires. The institute also serves as a center for research and higher learning. It is home to various research and academic programs, which include the Fellowship Program and the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, as well as one of the most distinguished research libraries in the country, with more than 295,000 volumes in over 72 languages. The Clark is visited by 200,000 people a year, and offers many educational programs for visitors of all ages throughout the year.

James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his death in September that year after being shot in July. A preacher, lawyer, and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before running for the presidency, he had been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio General Assembly—a position he declined when he became president-elect.

Garfield was born into poverty in a log cabin and grew up in northeast Ohio. After graduating from Williams College in 1856, he studied law and became an attorney. He was a preacher in the Restoration Movement and president of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, affiliated with the Disciples. Garfield was elected as a Republican member of the Ohio State Senate in 1859, serving until 1861. He opposed Confederate secession, was a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. He was elected to Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio's 19th district. Throughout his congressional service, he firmly supported the gold standard and gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He initially agreed with Radical Republican views on Reconstruction but later favored a Moderate Republican–aligned approach to civil rights enforcement for freedmen. Garfield's aptitude for mathematics extended to his own proof of the Pythagorean theorem, published in 1876, and his advocacy of using statistics to inform government policy.

The Classical Association of New England (CANE) is a professional organization for scholars and teachers of classical antiquity in New England. CANE was founded in 1906 by a group of "concerned collegiate Hellenists" led by George Edwin Howes of Williams College. Howes became the first Secretary-Treasurer of CANE and served in that capacity until 1920. Charles D. Adams of Dartmouth College was the first president.

Zephaniah Swift Moore (November 20, 1770 – June 29, 1823) was an American Congregational clergyman and educator. He taught at Dartmouth College during the early 1810s and had a house built in Hanover, New Hampshire, that now serves as Dartmouth's Blunt Alumni Center. He served as the President of Williams College between 1815 and 1821 and the first President of Amherst College between 1821 and 1823. He is most famous for leaving Williams in order to found Amherst, taking some of the faculty and 15 students with him. The rumor that Williams College library books were also taken to Amherst College was declared false in 1995 by Williams College President Harry C. Payne.

Moore died two years after Amherst was founded, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College. Moore's departure from Williams College established the foundation for the intense Williams–Amherst rivalry that persists to the present. To this day, he is regarded with a measure of derision on the Williams campus.

Ephraim Williams Jr. (March 7, 1715 [O.S. February 24, 1714] – September 8, 1755) was an American landowner and militia officer from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was killed in the French and Indian War. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, he was the benefactor of Williams College, located in northwestern Massachusetts. The school's athletic programs, the Ephs, are named after Williams.