Decades of consistently low enrollment by students at the College in the Williams-Mystic study away program — the College’s coastal and ocean studies program in Mystic, Conn. — have prompted senior staff to consider not renewing its partnership agreement with the Mystic Seaport Museum. The decision, if implemented, would end the College’s financial support for the Williams-Mystic Program and effectively close it to future participants. Williams-Mystic will continue to operate in the fall 2024 and the spring 2025 semesters as scheduled regardless of the decision, Executive Director of Williams-Mystic Tom Van Winkle wrote in an email to the Record.
In an email to the Record, Provost Eiko Siniawer said that conversations are still ongoing and that the College has not made a final decision.
Last Sunday, Van Winkle emailed a 1,900-person mailing list, alerting stakeholders of Williams-Mystic — current and former Williams-Mystic students, faculty, and staff — to these conversations. Van Winkle and alums of Williams-Mystic have expressed concern over the future of the program and what Van Winkle described as an “about face and short timeline” of these conversations in his email to stakeholders.
Siniawer wrote to the Record that a “consistently low” number of students from the College who attended the Mystic program each semester, despite efforts to increase interest in the program. “Since the contract with the Mystic Seaport Museum is coming up for renewal next year, this seemed the appropriate time to pose again the question about the future of the program,” she wrote. The College has financially supported the program since July 1, 2015.
While Siniawer declined to disclose precise enrollment data, she stated that over the last decade, roughly 10 students from the College have attended Mystic each year and about two-thirds of the program’s participants are not Williams students — although the College invests five faculty members, five staff members, and “substantial” financial resources. Roughly 20 percent of all Mystic alums have attended Williams, Van Winkle wrote in his Sunday email.
“There’s no question that Williams-Mystic is a unique interdisciplinary, experiential program about the sea, with a curriculum that addresses pressing issues from climate change to environmental justice,” Siniawer wrote to the Record. “The challenge is that the program, funded by the College, has long struggled to draw Williams students to participate despite various efforts encouraging Williams students to attend, including additional support for recruitment strategies and materials.”
In his Sunday email, Van Winkle wrote that he was notified for the first time on April 17 by President Maud S. Mandel that the College was seriously considering not renewing its partnership with the Mystic Seaport Museum. He wrote in his email to Williams-Mystic stakeholders that a “representative from the Williams-Mystic team” met with Mandel and Siniawer, who affirmed Williams-Mystic’s educational value and praised its efforts to strengthen its financial foundation over its history but told the representative the College is “thinking seriously about the perennial challenge of sustaining a resource-intensive program that serves relatively few Williams students.”
Van Winkle said he believes that if the College decides not to renew its agreement, the program would be effectively closed prematurely. “This message came as a shock to me because, until last Wednesday, there had been no indication that the program was on the potential chopping block,” Van Winkle wrote in his Sunday email. “No communication, no invitation to problem solve, no dire concerns raised.”
In his Sunday email, Van Winkle urged recipients to contact College senior staff to voice their concerns and encourage them to extend the agreement with the Museum for three years, which he wrote follows the normal schedule of renewal. Since then, alums have expressed an outpouring of support. As of publication, 214 people have signed a petition urging the College to extend its decision timeline and consider renewing its agreement with the Mystic Seaport Museum.
In an interview with the Record, Sam Sidders ’25, who attended the program in fall 2022, said that, while the program is not geared towards all students at the College, the experience of off-shore field seminar trips to Alaska and Southern Louisiana “completely changed” her worldview. “See[ing] the evidence of climate change, and postulat[ing] about what it’s going to look like in the next 20 years was completely jarring and world-changing,” she wrote.
Chris Simmons ’13 wrote in a letter to Mandel, which he shared with the Record, that his experience at Williams-Mystic was vital to his sense of belonging as “a low-income, first-generation Black student from an inner-city” at the College. “[Williams-Mystic] was the first time I felt like I mattered as a Williams student,” he wrote. “Between the interfacing with students from all over the country and through different walks of life, learning from dozens of instructors, and providing a safe place for students to escape the isolation of the purple bubble, WM [Williams-Mystic] is an experience that only Williams College could provide.”
“If the worst-case scenario occurs and our agreement is not renewed past the coming academic year, we will call upon the College to close this program with dignity and honor,” Williams-Mystic staff and faculty wrote in a frequently asked questions page for stakeholders that Van Winkle shared with the Record. “However, we know that there is a better path that is achievable, and we will pursue it with all of our energy and enthusiasm.”
“Conversations are ongoing and no decision has been made about the renewal of the College’s contract with the Mystic Seaport Museum to continue the program,” Siniawer emphasized in her email to the Record.
