Hamilton College
Hamilton College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in Clinton, New York, United States. The school was founded in 1793, chartered as Hamilton College in 1812, and has been coeducational since 1978, when it merged with Kirkland College.
Hamilton is sometimes referred to as the “College on the Hill”, due to the school’s location on top of College Hill, just outside of downtown Clinton. Hamilton College is one of the “Little Ivies,” and is considered one of the nation’s most prestigious liberal arts colleges.[citation needed] The 2010 U.S. News and World Report ranked Hamilton 18th in the nation among National Liberal Arts Colleges.
Hamilton began in 1793 as the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, a K-12 school, and was chartered as Hamilton College in 1812, making it the third oldest college established in New York, after Columbia and Union. Samuel Kirkland founded the College as part of his missions work with the Oneida tribe. The college is named for Alexander Hamilton, who was a member of the first Board of Trustees of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy (though he never set foot on campus). It was in fact Baron von Steuben, acting as Hamilton’s surrogate, who laid the college’s cornerstone.
In 1978, the all-male Hamilton College merged with the all-female Kirkland College, which had been located adjacent to and founded by Hamilton; the primary public reason for the merger was Kirkland’s imminent insolvency. It took nearly 7 years to fully complete the merger; female students were given the option of receiving a Kirkland diploma instead of a Hamilton diploma until 1979. Several former Kirkland faculty members teaching at Hamilton still fondly remember being part of a very different academic community prior to the merger.[citation needed]
Since the 1970s, Hamilton has been a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (or the NESCAC) (despite technically being located outside of New England). This conference also includes Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams. Rivalries with many of these schools, Middlebury in particular, predate the establishment of the conference.
Hamilton College’s Sage Rink is America’s second oldest indoor collegiate hockey rink after Northeastern University’s Matthews Arena. It was financed by the widow of industrialist Russell Sage, whose name graces a number of Central New York college edifices, including Russell Sage College. In addition to Continental mens and women’s teams, youth hockey, high school teams, adult amateur efforts and the famous Clinton Comets, who dominated the semi-professional Eastern Hockey League in the 1960s and early 1970s, have played at the Sage Rink. It was renovated in 1993, when it received better lighting, ice-making equipment, and structural enhancements. The rink houses the college’s Men’s and Women’s varsity hockey teams, intramural ice hockey, physical education classes, and local youth hockey games.
Courses Offered
- Africana Studies
- American Studies
- Anthropology
- Art
- Art History
- Asian Studies
- Astronomy
- Biochemistry/Molecular Biology
- Biology
- Chemical Physics
- Chemistry
- Chinese
- Cinema and New Media Studies
- Classics
- Communication
- Comparative Literature
- Computer Science
- Creative Writing
- Dance and Movement Studies
- East Asian Languages and Literatures
- Economics
- Education Studies
- English and Creative Writing
- Environmental Studies
- Foreign Languages
- French
- Geoarchaeology
- Geosciences
- German Studies
- Government
- Hispanic Studies
- History
- Interdisciplinary Concentration
- Japanese
- Latin American Studies
- Mathematics
- Medieval and Renaissance Studies
- Music
- Neuroscience
- Philosophy
- Physics
- Psychology
- Public Policy
- Religious Studies
- Russian Studies
- Sociology
- Spanish
- Theatre
- Women’s Studies
- World Politics
Contact Details
Hamilton College
198 College Hill Road
Clinton, NY 13323
Official Website: http://www.hamilton.edu/
