by President Adam Falk

falk report 2010F

The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance is possibly the most dramatic recent addition—a beacon of light, wood and glass. Like no other building on campus, it serves as a crossroads for the intersection of communities both of and surrounding the college. During term and in the summer, the cultural and intellectual richness that Williams fosters is laid open to ourselves and our neighbors. The Center’s architecture exposes to visitors the layers of activity involved in the creation of complicated art forms—from scene shops, props facilities and experimental theaters to polished MainStage productions. The building’s larger purpose is to invite students and others not just to see theater and dance as finished forms, but to participate both virtually and actually in their creation.

The newest additions to campus, Hollander and Schapiro Halls, serve similarly as academic crossroads. Much more than simple faculty office and classroom buildings, Hollander and Schapiro are rich with spaces that invite students and faculty to linger and to converse. Faculty offices are designed to accommodate the College’s signature two-student tutorials. Dedicated study lounges and artfully placed study nooks attract students and keep them close to the faculty and to each other. Vistas of the Berkshires inspire and beckon through windows in every direction, so that as modern as the buildings are, you feel intimately connected to these ancient mountains.

Finally, the Schow Science Library is the campus’s finest example of new architecture married harmoniously with the old. Embracing the Thompson science buildings, it is the beating academic heart of the south side of the campus. Students are there at all hours, working in parallel and in collaboration. In the words of College Librarian Dave Pilachowski, students like to “study alone, together”—at group tables—as well as study together, alone—in the separate group study rooms, constantly in use. Serving all of the sciences and math, Schow is a key locus of interdisciplinary study and research, fostering dialogue between students and faculty, and among students themselves. Even in this Internet age, students are drawn to the library as a home for books, which have never been more important both symbolically and practically. Notwithstanding the iPad and the Kindle, book circulation in our libraries is up nine percent over last year.

These recent buildings, each of them already indispensable, teach us key lessons about our next major project, the Stetson-Sawyer library complex. A decade in the making, it exemplifies the best of our recent past: the multivalence of the ’62 Center, the architectural vocabulary of Hollander and Schapiro Halls, and the integration of old and new (as well as the detailed attention to student needs) of Schow. When completed, Stetson-Sawyer will be the academic heart of the northern part of campus, focused on Divisions I and II, that Schow has become for Division III. It’s truly a project of the 21st century, responsive to the deepest values of Williams by nurturing the human interaction that is at the heart of the education we will long aspire to offer.

IMAGE CREDIT: Photo by Justin Knight