This spring, an anonymous donor gifted $25 million to Williams College. President Maud Mandel says that the money is set to be allocated to three projects at the private Massachusetts college: the construction of a new art museum, athletics and wellbeing programs and facilities, and a financial aid initiative. Williams unveiled the design for the revamped museum earlier this spring, and a groundbreaking for the building is expected this fall ahead of a 2027 opening. Mandel spoke with WAMC.
MANDEL: The [Williams College Museum of Art] here, which has been in the college history for nearly 100 years, is a primary teaching resource for the college, and we use it to teach across all disciplines. It also houses 15,000 works from the college collection, and it is- I think of it as an interdisciplinary space for the teaching of the arts. So, 30 academic departments use the collections in as many as 130 different courses, and that means students studying computer science and chemistry, environmental studies, theater, and of course, art history and history, studio art, etc., draw from the collection. So, I often say about this project that it’s a stake in the ground for Williams in the humanities, and reminding how us all how central the humanities is to everything that we teach and learn at a liberal arts college.
WAMC: Another $10 million from the gift will go toward athletics and wellbeing at Williams. It comes after the school shut down a fieldhouse recently- Can you break down where that money is going to go and how it's going to influence the infrastructure on the Williams campus?
Speaking first at a high level to the first part of your question, we are seeking and have been seeking since I got here to move strategically towards supporting athletics and wellbeing on the Williams campus. Again, for over 100 years, Williams has had a physical education requirement for all of our students. We have amazingly talented varsity athletics teams, intramural and club sports, recreation, we have a wonderful outing club with over 800 students who are members in it, and this is all because we really believe that students who will think better if they are taking good care of themselves and engaging in a wide range of co-curricular activities that strengthen their wellbeing, broadly speaking. Our facilities are here to support that work, and this lovely generous investment is helping us in a much bigger project to refresh those facilities. And here, you made reference to the fieldhouse, which we pulled down this year- This was actually, part of the college's strategic plan was to move forward with a new fieldhouse, but when we discovered some structural problems with the building, we just started to move faster than we had planned to do. So, we're currently in the process of building a new multipurpose recreation center, which is slated to open in 2025, near the site of our current outdoor tennis courts, and that will serve as an interim fieldhouse while we spend a longer time figuring out the wider athletics and wellbeing program and facility structure that we’ll want to build, and then ultimately the multipurpose recreation center will be available for indoor tennis and other kinds of recreational activities.
The last chunk of this $25 million gift, that last $5 million, is going into the college’s All-Grant financial aid program, a relatively nascent undertaking for Williams. Can you break down what exactly the program is and how this money is going to contribute to it?
Williams has a long history of supporting access and affordability and seeking to meet all demonstrated need of our incoming students in their financial challenges in terms of navigating higher education. This All-Grant initiative which we announced two years ago removes packaged loans from all financial aid packages. It also removes the summer earnings requirement that students on financial aid used to have to contribute to their education and work study as well. And the goal here in eliminating all these is to eliminate economic barriers to a Williams education, making sure that all of our students have similar kinds of access to program and choices while they're on the campus. So currently, about 50% of our students receive financial aid, and the $77.5 million financial aid budget already extends beyond tuition- Room and board, health insurance, it covers unexpected medical bills, textbooks, etc. The All-Grant adds another nearly $7 million annually to that budget and we're seeking to increase the endowment therefore to support those costs.
