Destination:
The Five College Area / Pioneer Valley
of Western Massachusetts

Amherst College

Amherst College, founded in 1821, is widely acknowledged as the nation's premier liberal arts college. The prestigious college's 1,000-acre campus borders downtown Amherst and enrolls about 1,600 students

Amherst College is home to several museums and exhibits that annually attract scholars and tourists alike. They include the Amherst Center for Russian Culture, the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, poet Emily Dickinson's homestead, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Pratt Museum (a repository for fossils, minerals, and dinosaur tracks) and the renowned Mead Art Museum, which hosts traveling exhibitions in addition to housing a most impressive permanent collection.

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Hampshire College

Also in Amherst, the co-educational Hampshire College was created in 1965 as an alternative to traditional liberal arts schools. Here, students are provided the freedom to shape their own course of learning, which, has in turn, led to some of the most influential ideas in higher education. Hampshire's multi-disciplinary liberal arts curricula allow students to work with faculty in designing their own programs of study. That alone has earned Hampshire College a unique niche amongst America's colleges. Hampshire College's membership in the Five Colleges consortium gives it added distinction. The Hampshire College Art Gallery and the campus outdoor sculpture collection are open to students, townspeople, and visitors alike, with free admission.