The Amherst College Office of Institutional Research conducted an enrolled student survey this year which asked students about their academic and social experiences at the college. Along with Amherst College, 30 peer institutions, which are all members of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, conducted similar surveys. The survey was accessible to students from mid-February to mid-March.
The Amherst College Computer Science Club held its first weekly CodeJam event on Monday, April 5 in Seeley Mudd. The purpose of CodeJam is to provide an opportunity on campus for computer science students to improve their applied computer skills through hands-on work, such as building websites and mobile apps.
CodeJam was organized by the Computer Science Club’s executive board members and CodeJam subcommittee organizers Evelyn Ting ’17, Chloe Revery ’16 and Thomas Lam ’18.
The college’s Robert Frost Library has been awarded the 2015 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. A division of the American Library Association, the Association of College & Research Libraries, gives awards each year to university, college and community college libraries that it regards to be “outstanding in furthering the education missions of their institutions.” This year, Amherst College’s library, along with those of Purdue University and Santa Fe College, was granted the award.
Professor Martha Umphrey has been appointed the inaugural director of the college’s new Humanities Center. The center is currently under construction on the second floor of Frost Library.
The decision to institute bystander training as part of first-year orientation is, I think, a good one. Amherst has, after all, acknowledged that the problem of sexual respect does indeed exist, and it has found a method of ameliorating the issue: inform students that they have the power to act as individuals to help their friends and to ensure that they respect others. The message the trainers offered was not that each of us ought to act as neurotic vigilantes, but rather that we simply should know that we all have a duty to look out for our friends.
