Williams College history

In a letter dated July, 1821, after the legislature found it neither “lawful nor expedient” to grant a petition by Moore and a majority of the trustees to relocate the college, Moore announced his resignation, effective after the fall commencement of the same year.

The monument, proclaiming, “The Field is the World,” was funded by a donation from the Honorable Harvey Rice (Williams 1824).

David Dudley Field, Jr. (Class of 1825) gives a ‘literary picnic’ for Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville on Monument Mountain in Great Barrington, MA.

Four members of the Class of 1827 are fined $5 for playing cards. (Faculty Meeting Minutes)

John R. Hickok (non-graduate of the Class of 1831) is fined 50 cents for attending a dancing school. (Faculty Meeting Minutes)

During the summer of 1838, Nathaniel Hawthorne spent several weeks in the Williamstown area.

James A. Garfield, Class of 1856 and 20th President of the United States, is shot by a disgruntled office seeker in a Washington, D.C., railroad station.

Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Class of 1862 and founder of Hampton Institute, is born on the island of Maui.

Two thirds of the occupants of the dorm, built in 1882, are away for Thanksgiving recess.

Land was purchased in Williams Bay, and in 1886 the training camp, which would become George Williams College, was founded.

A Williams student, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, of Albany, NY, whose family owned that city's Cotrell & Leonard department store, designed the gowns he and his classmates wore to graduation in 1887.

The training camp grew fast, and in 1890 it moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago and became an institution of higher learning for students entering human service professions such as parks and recreation, education, and social work.

Aurora University traces its origins to the 1893 founding of Mendota College in Illinois and the Western Secretarial Institute in Wisconsin, the two organizations that matured into Aurora College and George Williams College, respectively.

Mendota College was established initially as a seminary to prepare graduates for ministry, but it soon adopted a broader mission, moving in 1912 to a new campus in the nearby community of Aurora.

James S. Alexander, Jr. (Class of 1917) is one of the first Americans to hear of the signing of the Armistice.

Honorary degrees are awarded to: Charles F. Boyton (1928), Samuel E. Morison, James R. Miller, Charles D. Makepeace, and Edwin C. Kendall.

The route had temporary surfacing until 1929 when the winter storms and thaws settled the roadbed.

That same decade, in 1935, Emily Cleland became the first woman to teach at Williams when she finished teaching her late husband's Geology course after he died in an accident.

Costing $1350, the machine was paid for by $450 in student contributions, $650 from a sinking fund, and $250 from faculty contributions. (North Adams Transcript, Tuesday, April 15, 1941.)

Williams College’s first Parents’ Weekend was designated by the Undergraduate Council for May 5-6, 1951.

The first tenured woman faculty member at the college, Doris DeKeyselingk, oversaw the Russian department beginning in 1958.

Charles now serves as Project Director, working in concert with Bob Stegeman (Class of 1960). They have conducted over 400 interviews and continue to seek alumni, faculty, staff, and townspeople who are willing to record their memories of people and events in the College's history.

Fraternities were also phased out during this period, beginning in 1962.

After overseeing the abolishment of fraternities, President Sawyer composed a faculty-trustee committee, the Committee on Coordinate Education and Related Questions, in 1967 to explore options for coeducation and co-ordinate education.

The Williams College Oral History Project includes oral histories that address the 1969 occupation of one of the college's administration buildings by a group of African American students.

In February 1970, the college hired its first female dean, Nancy McIntire.

Board of Trustees approve “to admit women on a regular coeducation basis beginning in the fall of 1971.”

An affirmative action program, launched in 1972 by President John Chandler, reinforced equal opportunity employment.

The graduating class of 1975 was the first fully co-educational class to graduate from Williams.

In 1976, Pamela G. Carlton '76 became the first woman alumni trustee and Janet Brown ‘73, the first woman graduate of Williams to serve on the Executive Committee of the Society of Alumni.

These changes culminated in the 1985 decision to rechristen the institution Aurora University.

1987, Alexandra Reid – Development Director, International Justice Network

In 1992, Aurora University and George Williams affiliated.

The addition of the $38 million Unified Science Center to the campus in 2001 set a tone of style and comprehensiveness for renovations and additions to campus buildings in the 21st century.

He then became a member (2003–06) of the state Senate, where he was assistant senate majority leader during his last year in office.

The $60 million '62 Center for Theatre and Dance was the first project to be successfully completed in the spring of 2005.

In 2006 Murphy successfully ran for the United States House of Representatives, and he took office the following year.

The college reached $400 million at the end of June 2007.

In December 2008, President Morton O. Schapiro announced his departure from the college to become president of Northwestern University.

Dean of the Faculty William Wagner took the position of interim president beginning in June 2009, and continued in that capacity until President-elect Falk took office.

Falk, dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, began his term on April 1, 2010.

Class of 2012 celebrates Family Days this weekend.

Construction of the new Sawyer Library was completed in 2014, after which the old Sawyer Library was razed.

In July 2018, Maud Mandel began her tenure as the 18th and current President of Williams College.