Chapter 2: Planning in Earnest

[The $6 million pledge by Harold F. Johnson in 1965 would make The New College Plan a reality. Planning by new Hampshire College faculty and administrators, as well as interested members of the Five College community, began immediately.]

Report of the Educational Advisory Committee to the President of Hampshire College.

April 13, 1966. Click here to download a pdf of the entire report.

The "Image" of Hampshire College (as we have come to see it)

Hampshire College is founded on the principle that the best learning is that in which the student progressively acquires the ability to teach himself. Its faculty, its curriculum, its methods of instruction and its social atmosphere derive their meaning and purpose from its functions as an institution where education is of the first importance and where the students are committed to the examined life.

Hampshire College recruits for its faculty men and women of proven academic competence, whose research keeps them creatively abreast of their fields, but a new breed who find one of the major rewards of their research and competence in the student-teacher relationship. This faculty is small enough so that each member may know and exchange ideas with his colleagues in other disciplines. It is as much the function of the professor at Hampshire College to work with his colleagues as it is to work with his students. Hampshire College is markedly different from a university.

The curriculum at Hampshire College is divisionally organized. There are no "departments." There are no survey courses. The number of courses taught is small by any comparative standard. Most of these courses cut across "departmental" boundaries. The examinations by which in the end the student demonstrates his competence are divisional examinations. Hampshire College thus liberates itself from the pressures of the information explosion by providing a balanced and a metaphoric curriculum which meets the demands of liberalization without the waste of proliferation. From the beginning and as the student advances there is constantly increased emphasis upon the independent project without slighting the ingredients common to all students liberally educated. Hampshire College differs markedly from the traditional college.

The teaching at Hampshire College has the freshman seminar as its foundation. The emphasis is not on facts and figures, but on disciplines and methods. The freshman seminar is a personal and an intellectual experience which gives the student a measure for his later courses and makes him demand more from them. Many of the later courses will also be seminars. Those that are not will frequently have lectures but these will always be followed immediately, as far as possible, by student-discussion groups.

Independent studies form a large and a culminating part of the student's experience in progressive self-education. For this and for all his other work, the student has the advantage of a library specifically equipped, staffed and organized to serve his needs. The latest developments in communication systems are also available to him. The student first realizes that he does not know, then in the company of educated men and women and in association with his fellows similarly engaged, he learns the value and the joy of gaining his own wisdom.

The atmosphere at Hampshire College, stimulated by everything from architecture to recreation, is appropriate for lively, inquisitive and intelligent persons who, for this short period of their lives, desire most of all to learn together. Gone are the traditional sideshows of the college world, such as the secret society, the over-emphasis upon the big game and the excessively prolonged social weekend. As much as possible the gap between life on campus and life off campus has been closed.

The student is accepted when he is ready to learn: he may leave with his diploma whenever his examiners judge that he has in fact fulfilled the requirements for graduation. In an important sense he will never really leave Hampshire College. For the rest of his life he may look upon himself not so much as an alumnus but as a student whom the College would welcome back for shorter or longer stays whenever both he and the College feel that this might be helpful in the continuation of his learning.

Above all, Hampshire College is a laboratory for educational experimentation at the college level. This means both experimentation in what to teach and in how to teach, but especially in the methods by which a student best learns to teach himself. Under such a system selected students may gain additional advantages for themselves by serving as assistants to faculty members (and perhaps thus convince themselves that they do or that they do not want to pursue a teaching career).

Talented visitors, both academic and non-academic, especially in the performing arts, help to bring the world to the College by being in residence for shorter or longer periods. The educational potentials of radio, television, the cinema, etc., are constantly exploited to the same end. But the College also goes out to the world in some measure. The value to the individual undergraduate of a part or the whole of a year away from the College, followed by his return to his studies on the campus, may well prove to be enormous. The time involved might be spent in business, in some form of social service, in travel, or in further study elsewhere. The main requirements for this kind of venture are student initiative and faculty approval.

The students, faculty, administration and trustees of Hampshire College are mutually committed, both informally and through standing committees and indeed by the whole organization of the College, to the willingness to change in order that the College will never be enslaved to its past, but will always be in the process of shaping a better future out of the best thinking and experience of the present. (p. 6-9)

A Divisional Organization

The departmental system is nurtured by the graduate school without regard to whether or not it is appropriate at the college level. The major respect in which an undergraduate college differs from a graduate school is that it seeks to liberate rather than train in a specialty. In a day of specialists it cannot neglect the specialty, but it must fit specialization into a broad background. Its faculty must differ from the faculties of graduate schools by being composed of individuals who are at least as skillful as educators as they are as specialists, who are as much concerned with their disciplines as they are with the specialized areas of knowledge...The major problem in planning a divisional organization is the choice of divisions...The New College Plan proposed three divisions: humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. In this three-fold set-up, however, there is no appropriate place for such semantical and syntactical studies as language, logic, mathematics and epistemology. We therefore suggest four divisions, as follows:

The Humanities. This division would concern itself with man as revealed in his art, his literature, his music, his history, his religion, and his philosophy. What are his values, his aspirations, his inspirations?
The Natural Sciences. This group would involve primarily a study of the inorganic and organic environment of man and a study of man himself as an organism. It would deal with such concepts as natural law and scientific method.
The Social Sciences. This group would bring together the studies of man and society: historical, economic, sociological, psychological and philosophical. It would examine the manners in which societies operate, the concept of social law, and methodology in the social sciences.
The Languages (including mathematics and logic). The central focus here would be communication. This would involve a study of language in its three uses: the analytic development of calculi and their syntaxes, the synthetical development of empirical statements and their semantical functions, and the creative employment of language in literature. The history of language would also necessarily be involved. The foreign language program would be the responsibility of this division.

Philosopically, these four divisions seem sounder than the earlier three. (p. 10-12)

A Proposal for the Teaching of Elementary Foreign Language Without a Language Requirement

The committee has been impressed by the amount of time that is usually wasted in elementary foreign language study in our colleges under compulsion and the astounding failure of such requirements to produce significant results. We propose for Hampshire the abolition of the requirements on the one hand and, on the other, every possible emphasis upon the value of languages for a liberally educated student and upon their value for most of the courses taught at Hampshire College...If instruction in elementary language becomes necessary on the Hampshire campus, it should be held to a minimum in amount and should be in the hands of instructors engaged solely for this purpose, using the most modern audio-visual facilities, and under the guidance of a skilled language-coordinator. (p. 38-39)

An "Interim" Plan

It is proposed that an interim of flexible design be scheduled in a three- or four-week period between the fall and spring semesters.

A change of pace between semesters is desirable. The lack of formal course examinations allows the scheduling of a more creative period. This would be an excellent time to allow students to plan and choose, and to encourage them to give free rein to their individual interests. Such a period could play a major role in developing motivations, encouraging self-education and in providing a time for both students and faculty to pre-test ideas.

Half the faculty should be engaged in the interim. Hence, each faculty member would be free in alternate years. In advance of each interim, projects (about five in each division) organized and directed by faculty members, should be planned and suggestions for individual student projects offered...Some projects might involve considerable travel...
The program suggested here is in contradiction to the "common intellectual enterprise" suggested in the New College Plan. Such a highly structured program is another form of the required course. (p. 44-45)

The Library

The library should be geared to the type of instruction indicated in this report, both in content and in the procedures for its use both by students and by members of the faculty. The architectural features of the library need the most careful study in order that the physical arrangements will facilitate its use by scholars to the maximum degree possible. The location of the library on the campus and its relationship to other College buildings is also a matter of major importance. The library, in addition to being a collection of books, should also serve as a depository for films, audio-visual tapes, slides, etc., all properly housed and cataloged. (p. 45-46)

The Hampshire College Conference

June 13-15, 1966. A Report by Peter Schrag. Click here to download a pdf of the entire report.

On June 13, 14 and 15, 1966 the Officers of Hampshire College assembled a small group of educators, artists, and intellectuals at the Amherst College alumni House to discuss plans for the educational program of Hampshire College. (p.1)

The Quandary of Freedom

A commission to launch a new college, defined only as a coeducational liberal arts institution devoted to high quality instruction at the lowest possible cost, appears to be--and in fact is--a magnificent opportunity to begin without the overwhelming encumbrances, the overhead of tradition and vested interests, and the mortgage to time, alumni and ancient practice that affect all existing institutions. And Hampshire College, planned for 800 to 1200 students in the Connecticut Valley, begins not only with that freedom, but also with the promise of academic support--and therefore with at least some reflected prestige--from the four neighboring institutions, Amherst, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. It begins, furthermore, with a generous pledge of $6 million, with an attractive rural site of 450 acres, located roughly equidistant from the supporting colleges--and this in close proximity to a lively academic and cultural community--and with two proposals, the New College Plan of 1958 and the Hampshire College Advisory Committee Report of 1966, each of which provides ideas as starting points for discussion and planning.

Hampshire, however, is not necessarily committed to implementing either of the two proposals, or even to using any part of them. In fact, the college may choose whatever course its staff and trustees wish to follow. It is, literally, a new creature, free to choose or adapt from any existing educational ideas, or to invent new ones of its own. And since it is committed not merely to being experimental, but to experimenting, it has assumed what may be its greatest, and certainly it most basic responsibility: to be fresh, to be daring, and to develop as a continuing source of new ideas for itself and other institutions...(p. 2-3)

The Matter of Social Relevance

What kind of human being does Hampshire wish to produce? In one way or another, that question, asked early in the conference, continued to underlie the discussions. And despite disagreements about particular applications, there was also an assumed, though not always explicitly defined answer. In essence Hampshire must produce a human being who can come to terms with his culture without being its creature, who can be, as we were often told, "a man of his age," hopefully in the same sense that Newton or Beethoven were men of their respective ages. This means that he has a mastery--or better, has a sense of mastery--over the culture and society in which he will live--and that means well into the 21st century. We were almost unanimous in our concern about--and disdain for--the despair of alienation, the human being who assumes a posture of hopeless distance as a surrogate for genuine understanding, who has denied himself both the optimism that a genuinely rich life demands and the understanding and information necessary to relevant criticism and creativity...(p. 3-4)

As a consequence there was, throughout the conference, a continuing sense that the College must, in every respect possible, make itself part of the world--an open institution whose students and faculty are personally acquainted not only with the academic languages currently in vogue to describe the universe, but with the activities, and the major day-to-day problems that compose the contemporary world. No college, said Jerome Bruner almost at the outset, can be self-sufficient any more; each must be composed of people who hold some sort of dual citizenship. We thus came to the concept of teachers and students as performers, a concept that includes not only the familiar idea of the scholar-teacher, but also the relatively novel notion of the professor as composer or performing artist or--perhaps even--practicing politician; and of the student as a social activist and human entrepreneur. Such a notion would, for example, lead to the encouragement of students to gain experience in community action programs, in the Peace Corps or Vista, in business or political organizations. It might also lead to a reversal of the way the culture is studied, beginning, not, for example, with great literature, used, as someone said, to beat the contemporary society over the head (for its shallowness or its failure to produce Homeric heroes), but rather with the culture as it exists. Underlying such ideas was a general, though hardly unanimous, feeling that Hampshire College must offer programs and opportunities rooted not necessarily in traditional disciplinary organization, but in the central ideas, movements and problems that reflect the experiences of contemporary society and on which various methodologies can be exercised. (p. 4-5)

The Tent—And What Should Be Under It

The basic intellectual theme had to do with what was defined as developing "connectedness"--that is to focus the intellectual enterprise on the ability to generalize and synthesize, to put things together. Clearly such connections--between ideas, between pieces of data, between data and ideas, or perhaps even between feelings and information and ideas--cannot be made exclusively by teachers and books. Ultimately the student must be in a position to make these connections for himself. He may learn by watching a teacher make them, or even merely present them; that is, by being a spectator to good thought. But presumably he will learn more--as in almost every other situation--by making connections for himself. No one suggested a course in "connectedness." What was proposed, and generally accepted, was a style of approach operative within whatever courses and programs were established.

But perhaps the central feature of the tent proposed was, as already suggested in the previous section, a hospitality to contemporary life. It will be hard to forget Sister Jacqueline's statement that many contemporary academic institutions, in their implicit, if not specific, hostility to the existing culture, may become the cloisters of the modern world. We heard Ulysses Kay describe the idea of a staff musicologist as "absolutely deadly," heard him suggest a music staff composed of composers and directors and performers; heard Arthur Penn's description of the possibilities of writing a "novel" with a motion picture camera, and heard Charles Eames speak of the great creators of other ages as men who were creatures of their time. Benjamin DeMott suggested a program rooted in a study of mass culture, with advertising, films and pop music, each examined to achieve an understanding of what gives it appeal, to what purposes it is used, and how it is used. There was discussion of--and sympathy for--the use of machines, whether TV cameras or computers, in the functions of the college, not for the purpose of training technicians, but simply to give students a sense of the possibilities of the devices so often condemned by the critics of the society. A person fascinated with the technology of a gadget, suggested Jerome Bruner, can turn that device into a toy and then, conceivable, into an art form. (p. 6-7)

Program

There were more differences among us regarding program and structure than on general emphasis. A great deal of discussion took place regarding the degree of freedom of choice that students should be allowed. How much should undergraduates be involved in the development of academic programs and policy, not only regarding their own academic careers, but for the college as a whole? Clearly students should participate in their own education; the question is, should that participation come only at a personal intellectual level, or also at a policy level. We were confronted, furthermore, with a far more serious problem, and that was the question how to structure the institution in such a way that its program and attitudes would not harden into a new orthodoxy, a new "experiment" that would remain unchanged for as long as the institution shall live. Hampshire, we felt, should be a "deciduous college"--perhaps not even conceived as anything permanent and certainly not erected, as are so many others, as a monument, safe against the changes of time.

Whether conceived as permanent or not, Hampshire was inevitably pictured as organic rather than mechanistic, fluid rather than fixed, and we all assumed--despite differences on detail--a great deal of student choice within the program...Concern about producing a new kind of rigidity led to agreement that there should be no academic departments or even divisions that could eventually grow into vested interests; to a proposal for perpetual "institutional psychoanalysis," that is devices producing a constant flow of objective information whereby the college can evaluate itself; to a suggestion that tenure be tempered with turnover, and to a strong plea for a hortatory view of administration--an administration that provided an academic overview and direction, and did not leave all academic direction to faculty committees...(p. 8-9)

There was, perhaps, one general apprehension, though never articulated, and that was a fear of institutionalizing anything too definitely or permanently...There were similar apprehensions about defining the age or type of student who should be recruited, except perhaps to say, as did Charles Eames, that Hampshire should seek students who were "nuts about something," that is people with the ability to commit themselves fully to an enterprise...(p. 9-10)

Summary

Much was never discussed at all. Hampshire's task is, among other things, to offer high quality education at the lowest possible cost, and to utilize, where possible, the resources of the four cooperating colleges. Neither of these considerations received very much attention except for Professor Barber's assertion that the 20-1 student faculty ratio contemplated in The New College Plan was probably unrealistic. There was little consideration given to the problem of assessment and evaluation--to the matter of deciding just when, and on what basis a Hampshire student would qualify for a degree...At the same time there was, despite the diversity of views, a remarkable unanimity against almost all forms of academic dogma, a willingness to risk being incomplete for the sake of being consequential--to trade on a faculty and student sense of urgency--and a desire, almost without exception, to take a chance on students, to trust their ability to make connections, and to run the college to facilitate that process. Perhaps the most powerful impulse was the confidence in the perfectibility of education and in the ability of students to respond to it. (p. 10-11)

[The Making of a College was and is the blueprint for the entire enterprise. Click here to access PDF files of the entire work.]

The Making of a College

by Franklin Patterson, September 1966.

I present the following Report to the trustees of Hampshire College as the main outline of policies and plans that I wish to recommend at this time...

In my previous professional work, I had thought about schools and colleges from many points of view, but I had never faced head-on the whole question of what a college in this era should be and do. Suddenly, at the beginning of the summer of 1966, I found myself deeply involved in such a confrontation.

The experience was exhilarating and consuming. It was also more than a little humbling, as I began to realize the full reach of the question and the extent to which it had been treated in discourse and research. This realization grew as I became more familiar with the careful planning that had gone into the conception and revision of the New College Plan from 1958 onward. It increased as I talked with faculty and administrators from Hampshire College's sponsoring institutions Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts. It was compounded by consultation with other scholars, artists, scientists, foundation officers, government officials, and architects. And everything that I read in the literature of higher education confirmed that the question of undergraduate liberal education was, to put it mildly, an open one. Out of all this, in two short but enormously full months, came the Report's discussion and its framework of basic policy recommendations.

The preparation of the Report would not have been possible without the unstinting and constantly thoughtful assistance of my colleague, Charles R. Longsworth, Vice-President of Hampshire College. His counsel and ideas are reflected throughout the Report's recommendations. (p.v-vi)

As the summer began, I found that the question of making a college, in the case of Hampshire, must be asked in three different, principal ways. One needed to ask again, even though eight years earlier The New College Plan had given an answer: what should Hampshire College be as an undergraduate institution? One needed to ask further: what should the Connecticut River Valley complex of Massachusetts institutions be, and what role should Hampshire College play within the complex? And because the new college would inevitably affect and be affected by its non-academic environment, one needed to ask: how should Hampshire College participate in the changing community life around it?

The Report seeks to answer the basic question as it is asked in these three ways. It recommends that undergraduate liberal education at Hampshire College be even more thoroughly restructured, in terms of ends as well as means, than The New College Plan of 1958 suggested. It recommends that, as Hampshire College is established, the four sponsoring institutions and Hampshire take a giant step forward in interinstitutional cooperation, so the Valley complex may become one of the great coordinated centers of higher education in America. And it recommends that Hampshire College play an active part as a corporate citizen in contributing to the quality of life in the developing community of the Valley.

Taken together, these recommendations of the Report present a model for a total enterprise in higher education. They are designed not only to enlarge and strengthen higher education in the Valley, but to provide a major demonstration which would contribute to educational development in the New England region and the nation as a whole.

A bold demonstration of this order is sorely needed. Undergraduate liberal education in the United States faces social, curricular, and financial pressures that will not be denied. The fiscal base and academic viability of the private liberal arts college are everywhere precarious. Except for a few institutions whose endowments and achievements still insulate them, the independent colleges and many of the university undergraduate colleges are as much in curricular disarray as they are in chronically difficult financial shape. Strong, coherent interinstitutional collaboration--perhaps the main hope for adequate quality, balance, and fiscal efficiency in higher education for the era just beginning--lags far behind what is needed in the last third of the 20th century. And colleges and universities are only beginning to participate effectively as corporate citizens in modern community life.

The major demonstration recommended by this Report is directed at these needs. The design for Hampshire College calls for a redefinition of the purposes, structure, and operations of liberal education, to bring it in line with the needs of a new era. The College will explore ways the private liberal arts institution may regain a full relevance in American culture generally and higher education in particular, and do so within its own economic means. The design recommended for greatly increased interinstitutional cooperation in the Valley complex is capable of being adapted and used to advantage elsewhere. And the vigorous demonstration of a civic role for institutions of higher education could encourage similar initiative by colleges and universities in any community. I am convinced that Hampshire's pursuit of answers about its own proper role as a college, about the nature of cooperation among Valley institutions, and about institutional responsibility in an urban society may be of service to higher education as a whole.

The establishment of Hampshire College, and the demonstration I have touched upon, means that a host of practical problems must be met and solved. The range of these problems, in their size and complexity and number, is very great. Meeting and solving them will test the full resources of initiative and imagination that a new Board, a new faculty, and new administrative leadership can bring to bear. More than this, establishing Hampshire College and such a joint demonstration will test the meaning of interinstitutional cooperation in the Valley. There is always the possibility de Tocqueville wrote of, that men may "refuse to move altogether for fear of being moved too far," that they may not make, "when it is necessary, a strong and sudden effort to a higher purpose." The establishment of Hampshire and the strengthening of the Valley complex will require many hands and much time. Most of all, it will require in the beginning "a strong and sudden effort" by men and women who are convinced that such a venture is worth the boldness and energy it costs. (p.vii-ix)

What emerges is as accurate an approximation of Hampshire College as its present leadership can manage. I regard the word approximation as essential to emphasize, since the Report is not a precise blueprint, but one in a series of successive approximations of what Hampshire will be and do. Other approximations will follow, as the faculty and staff of the College grow, and as experience further informs its planning. The College cannot be given a static definition, since it will embody, as well as speak for, change.

Hampshire College, as the trustees intend, will be built on a campus of 450 acres of land in South Amherst, Massachusetts. The Report recommends that Hampshire be a coeducational undergraduate institution of approximately 1440 students and 90 faculty. It will be residential, but, as the 1958 New College Plan suggested, it will have neither fraternities nor sororities. It will have ample provision for intramural sports and recreation, but it is not likely to enter into intercollegiate athletics. Its academic program will be distinctive in its ends as well as in its means. And it will demonstrate that, through innovation, it is possible for a new private undergraduate college to achieve high quality without a continuing subsidy of its operations. (p.x)

The vision of liberal education taken by Hampshire College is one of hospitality to the possibilities of contemporary life: the task of the College is to help its students learn to live their adult lives fully and well in a society of intense change, immense opportunity, and great hazards. As the third chapter suggests, the College should: give students, for whatever use they themselves can make of it, the best knowledge new and old that we have about ways man may know himself and his world. This means that the College must help them acquire the tools with which it looks as though men in the future may be most likely to be able to build lives and a society they consider worthy. The most continually experimental thing about Hampshire College will be its constant effort, in collaboration with its students, to discern what these tools are and how best they may come to fit one's hand.

The College is committed to a view of liberal education as a vehicle for the realization of self in society. To this end, it will try to help each student gain a greater grasp of the range and nature of the human condition, past, present, and possible future. It will aim at assisting each student toward a greater sense of himself in a society whose meaningfulness and quality depend in significant degree on him. It will seek to strengthen his command of the uses of intellect to educate and renew himself throughout life. And it will try to enhance his feeling for the joy and tragedy that are inherent in life and art, when both are actively embraced. The total college program through which Hampshire will pursue these ends emphasizes intellectual inquiry, artistic experience, engagement with the non-academic world, and a college culture that will support these things. (p.xii)

As its main constituency, the College community will seek students of diverse backgrounds who are as able as those attending the other major institutions of the Valley. Hampshire will be an innovative, "experimenting" place, giving its students an approach to liberal education that emphasizes understanding self and society through fields in which inquiry and expression are the central concern of study. The College's intention is to equip students as well as possible to handle their own education and their own realization as people. Such preparation cannot usefully be given in wholly abstract terms. From the beginning, therefore, students at Hampshire will have a good deal of experience with self-direction in their studies and campus life. They will face, in consequence, the responsibilities that go with increasing degrees of freedom for a mature person. While Hampshire will be innovative, innovation will not be an end in itself, and its students will not be those who are simply attracted by "experimentation" for its own sake. Hampshire's students will have to be abler to handle responsibility, abler to learn discipline of self in study and campus life, than most students at most colleges are expected to be. At their best, they will be like the best of American students today--neither privately disaffiliated "achievers," technocratic conformists, nor deviants. I hope they will be questioning themselves and the society they find themselves in. I hope they will look for honesty in the values of society, be contemptuous of fraud when they are sure that is what it is, be willing to go down hard roads that make genuine sense, and be unafraid to laugh.

Hampshire will build a faculty devoted as much to teaching in the terms the College stands for, as to scholarship and art. The Hampshire faculty will have, as its largest group, very able young men and women who are still relatively close to college age themselves. The second largest group will be senior faculty members, men and women of professor's rank, with mastery of their fields and a right to the title of master teacher. The third and smallest group will be faculty in mid-career, similarly in touch with the frontiers of their fields and with teaching, their fullest years yet ahead of them. Faculty salaries, tenure, and similar matters will be governed by standards comparable to those at other undergraduate institutions of high quality. Within the College's general framework of purposes and its accent on the centrality of method in disciplines of inquiry and expression, faculty will have unusual freedom to teach in terms of their own principal intellectual or artistic interests.

The organization, government, and administration of the College will be committed, as will the campus design, to building an academic community where intellectual and artistic discourse is as easy and natural outside the classroom as it is inside. The College will be guided by the basic policy decisions of its trustees and the leadership of the president, who serves at their pleasure. But the internal governance of the College will be shaped by all of the community's constituencies. The major governing bodies of the community will be few, but students will have representation on each of them. Faculty will have at least as much voice in shaping the academic affairs of the College as they have at Hampshire's sister institutions. Over-administration, as well as over-committeefication, will be avoided like the plagues they are. Presidential leadership will not be equivocal, but will articulate alternatives, project goals, and mobilize the energies a vigorous institution requires.

The community of the College, not only in residential terms but in many academic and administrative ways as well, will be decentralized. The design of the College will feature a series of residential-academic clusters, each of about 360 men and women students, grouped loosely around a central College and library complex. These clusters will be known as Houses. Each will have its unique identity in architecture and in the qualities given to it by students and faculty. Each House cluster will combine student residential units with related academic facilities, including individual office-studies for at least sixteen faculty members from the four Schools. The House in each case will have a Master, a senior faculty member provided with a commodious residence, who will give approximately half of his time to administrative responsibility for the House. Each House will have, as well, a full-time Proctor or executive associate of the Master, also with a separate residence. Provision is made in each House cluster for the separate residence of two younger faculty members and their families.

Master planning of the whole campus is currently being done by Hideo Sasaki, a noted landscape architect, and his colleagues in the firm of Sasaki, Dawson, and DeMay. The design and development of the House clusters and the central College complex are in the hands of Hugh Stubbins, one of America's most distinguished architects. In addition, the trustees and the College administration are advised on general architectural questions by Pietro Belluschi, former Dean of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I trust that we may create a campus that will not be a walled tower but an open city, that will allow for individuality, for unity, for urban intensity and rural serenity, for a sense of connection and a sense of detachment. Among other things, we want to create a campus which will respect the great natural beauty of the land as the setting of its human community. (p.xvii-xx)

The financial projections for Hampshire College, and for a rapid strengthening of the cooperative institutional environment in which the College will be set, are presented in the ninth chapter. From these it is apparent that given support to meet its capital requirements and initial operating deficits, Hampshire College could thereafter manage on its own. In doing so, it would demonstrate the proposition put forward by the 1958 New College Plan: that a private institution of academic excellence can be organized to function on its tuition income. It is also apparent from the projections what would be required to demonstrate the advantages of active, serious collaboration among an important group of public and private institutions.

These projections together make clear the dimensions of "the strong and sudden effort" which I recommend as the proper course for Hampshire College and the institutions which have helped bring her into being. The delivery of the College into the world is not an event discrete from the needs and purposes of the Valley community of institutions. As the conception of the New College in 1958 was an expression of the linked interests of institutions, the birth of Hampshire College is a time to strengthen the family of which it is a part.(p.xxii)