Overall Rating Gold - expired
Overall Score 66.70
Liaison David Gibson
Submission Date March 30, 2018
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.1

Hampshire College
IC-1: Institutional Boundary

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete N/A Edmund Melia
Director of Institutional Research
Dean of Faculty Office
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Institution type: Associate (i.e., short-cycle), Baccalaureate, Doctoral/Research, or Master's:
Baccalaureate

Institutional control (Public, Private for-profit, or Private non-profit):
Private non-profit

A brief description of the institution’s main campus and other aspects of the institutional boundary used to complete this report:

Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was conceived in 1958 as a departure in higher education by the presidents of four other institutions: Amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Hampshire is among the most innovative colleges in the country. It requires students to pursue their passions by designing their own programs of study and recruit a faculty committee to guide them on a rigorous path of discovery. The environment fosters intellectual engagement, exploration, and a willingness to experiment. Hampshire gives students narrative evaluations rather than letter grades. The model has been described as “graduate school for undergraduates.” Critical thinking is the hallmark of Hampshire’s pedagogy. Since the College opened, in 1970, Hampshire’s success can be measured in the mainstreaming of many of its experimental ideas in education and in its roster of alumni achievement: Academy Award winners, Emmy Award winners, best-selling authors, scientists, historians, Peabody winners, MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” awardees, and more PhD candidates than any other school of its size. More than a quarter of Hampshire graduates have started their own venture or organization, which landed Hampshire on Forbes’s short list of most entrepreneurial colleges. Hampshire is part of the Five College Consortium, through which students at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst share classes, library systems, resources, facilities, and a regional transportation system.

The campus consists of 820 acres that include the campus proper, all student residences, active farmland, and wooded areas.


Which of the following features are present on campus and which are included within the institutional boundary?:
Present? Included?
Agricultural school No No
Medical school No No
Other professional school with labs and clinics (e.g. dental, nursing, pharmacy, public health, veterinary) No No
Satellite campus No No
Farm larger than 5 acres or 2 hectares Yes Yes
Agricultural experiment station larger than 5 acres or 2 hectares No No
Hospital No No

The rationale for excluding any features that are present from the institutional boundary:
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Additional documentation to support the submission :
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

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