Schow Library and Williams College Science Center

Schow Atrium serves as the entrance to the second largest library on campus, Schow Science Library, and joins together the formerly separate Physics, Chemistry and Biology buildings. At Schow, students have access to journal subscriptions and books on astronomy, physics, biology, chemistry, computer science, math, geosciences and psychology. About 40% of our student body majors in a STEM discipline, but Schow is a popular study space regardless of one's academic areas of interest. It contains eight study rooms as well as private study carrels.

This building is also home to:
•Eco Café: a popular grab-and-go breakfast option for students.
•A 24-inch reflector telescope on top of the Physics building that has been there since 1985, and is one of the best in New England.
•The Math Science Resource Center (open weekday nights from 8 p.m. to midnight). •Student tutors are available for intro and mid-level science classes.
•Department common rooms for physics, chemistry and biology students to work collaboratively on classwork.

Over half of Williams students are majoring in a STEM field, and STEM fields make up several of the most popular majors and classes on campus.

Our science students have a variety of robust research opportunities. Every summer, nearly 200 students participate in scientific research on campus as fully-funded research fellows. Williams is also home to SMALL, one of the country’s largest undergraduate math research programs (SMALL is an acronym from the names of the founding faculty: Silva, Morgan, Adams, Lenhart, and Levine). You can hear more details about research opportunities at Williams in one of our virtual or in-person information sessions.

In 2016, Williams began a $200 million science center renovation and expansion project, which will include new lab space, classrooms and offices, as well as four labs dedicated to flexible, interdisciplinary research. Completed last year, Wachenheim and Hopper, the two newest additions to our Science Center, have state-of-the-art facilities that prepare students to solve the most urgent and complex global problems. Building on Williams’ outsized excellence in STEM, the new buildings include shared equipment spaces that are rare at liberal arts colleges, including a microscopy suite with optical, confocal and electron microscopes, as well as a large machine shop and makerspace where skilled professionals and students work side by side. Two GIS-capable computer labs and paleontology and mineralogy collections are just a few other highlights of the new Science Center.

The project provides a net increase of about 75K sq. ft. from the current space and creates state-of-the-art research and teaching spaces in two new buildings for the sciences. Shared spaces in the science center have expanded and include four new flexible, interdisciplinary labs.