Five Colleges, Incorporated: About Us

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Mission and History
Five Colleges, Incorporated is a nonprofit educational consortium established in 1965 to promote the broad educational and cultural objectives of its member institutions, which include four private, liberal arts colleges and the Amherst campus of the state university. The consortium is an outgrowth of a highly successful collaboration in the 1950s among Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which resulted in the founding of a fifth institution, Hampshire College, in 1970.

Five Colleges promotes and administers long-term forms of cooperation that benefit faculty, students, and staff. These include:

Shared use of educational and cultural resources and facilities, including a joint automated library system, open cross registration, and open theater auditions;
Joint departments and programs;
Inter-campus transportation.

Their proximity to one another in the Connecticut River Valley of western Massachusetts favors Five College collaboration, as does their commitment to the liberal arts and to undergraduate education. Five Colleges, Incorporated is a longstanding member of the Association for Consortial Leadership (ACL), a national organization of consortia.

The Five College Directory is a reference guide of contacts for five college programs and resources. Please view the 2007-2008 directory (PDF; requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Click here for directions and maps to Five Colleges, Incorporated and the five colleges.

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