Making History
As the first college founded in the newly independent United States, Washington College has a uniquely proud place in our country's history. Its founders intended it to be the first truly American institution of higher learning, educating future generations not just as scholars but as citizens.
George Washington, the institution's namesake, trustee, and founding patron, has stood as a role model for our students since 1782, when our College's first president pledged that "the youth of many future generations" would learn to honor his memory—a promise we have kept to this day. Our founders believed that knowledge of the past was fundamental to the continuing success of America's democratic experiment. And they upheld traditions of leadership and public service that continue unbroken.
At Washington College, history is a living tradition. The past is vividly present here on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake—called "America's last great colonial landscape"—where the roads and waterways have seen the passage of Revolutionary patriots and Civil War soldiers, Native American hunters and fugitive slaves. Nowhere is it more so than in Chestertown, a community whose beauty, rich history, and sense of place have drawn national acclaim.
But history is being made here in other ways, too. Barely an hour from the Washington, D.C. Beltway, Washington College draws policymakers, media figures, and opinion leaders from the nation's capital—not to mention the numerous Presidents and First Ladies who have visited campus. You will find distinguished former senators teaching seminars, well-known journalists lunching with students in the dining hall, and undergraduates heading frequently into Washington on internships, fellowships, and field trips.
The College's strong programs in history, political science, archaeology, and American studies have been enhanced in recent years by its C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, which explores the nation's past and present in innovative and exciting ways. The Starr Center is home to the George Washington Book Prize, a $50,000 award—one of the largest nonfiction prizes in existence—that honors each year's best book on the nation's founding era. Through teaching, publications, special events, residential fellowships, and student scholarships, the Starr Center is helping fulfill the vision that Washington and other farsighted founders had for this college more than two centuries ago.