Massachusetts (1964–2025) Simon's Rock was officially founded in 1964 and was located on a 275-acre (1.1-km²) campus in
Great Barrington, a small town (pop. 7,500) in the
Berkshires region of
Massachusetts until summer 2025. The name "Simon's Rock" comes from a large rock, a
glacial erratic, in the woods on the campus, a short walk from the main part of the campus. At the time that Simon's Rock earned its name, in the early 1920s, the woods that now surround it were part of the vast area of land called Great Pine Farm. The rock was a favorite spot for people who lived nearby, especially children. One neighborhood child, a little girl named Simon, claimed the rock as her own. The college's founder,
Elizabeth Blodgett Hall, had formerly been headmistress at
Concord Academy, a private girls' school. She concluded from her experience, and that of her colleagues, that for many students the latter two years of high school are wasted on repetitious and overly constrained work. Many young students, she thought, are ready to pursue college-level academic work some time before the usual system asks it of them. When envisioning the college in the early 1960s, Elizabeth Blodgett Hall deliberately named it nothing more than "Simon's Rock." Her reasoning for this was that even she did not know if it would be a high school, a college, or something else. From 1964 to 1970, the buildings of the campus were built on Great Pine Farm, a farm that was owned by Hall's family. These buildings were the college center, the library, the classroom buildings, three dormitories (now dormitories primarily for first-year students: Crosby, Dolliver, and Kendrick) and the dining hall. Some of the farm's buildings, such as Hall's own home, were incorporated into the college campus as well. Hall was the president of the college at its founding. In 1966, the first class, all
women, were admitted to Simon's Rock. These women, along with some of the other early classes, went through a four-year program that resulted in the
associate's degree, at which point students desiring a further degree would have to transfer to another school. This differs from the current system, in which students receive an associate degree typically after two years, and a
bachelor's degree after four years of study. The year 1970 saw both the first commencement ceremonies at Simon's Rock as well as the first
coeducational entering class. Hall retired as Simon's Rock's president in 1972 after students organized a vote of no confidence, handing the post off to Baird W. Whitlock, whose presidency ended in 1977. Though only serving for five years, Whitlock was very influential to Simon's Rock's development. He oversaw a complete change in the associate's program, which was condensed into two years, eliminating the high school components. He also oversaw the beginning of the bachelor's degree program, which was accredited in 1974 by the
New England Association of Schools and Colleges, and awarded the first BA degrees in 1976. Samuel McGill was Simon's Rock's president from 1977 to 1979.
Acquisition by Bard College Also in 1979,
Bard College, based about 50 miles away in New York, took over Simon's Rock, which was having difficulty expanding enrollment due to what the school perceived as a failure to grow acceptance of its experimental model and the prospect of funding drying up from the Blodgett family's foundation.
Leon Botstein, the president of Bard, oversaw the acquisition and became president of both institutions, a position he continues to hold as of 2025. In 1981, with the help of various donors, Simon's Rock purchased the Upper Campus, a former
seminary three-quarters of a mile uphill from the original Simon's Rock campus. This added a gymnasium, chapel and various forms of housing to Simon's Rock's assets. In 1989, an arts and humanities building was built directly across Alford Road, near the college's other arts buildings. In the same year, the student union was established in the lower level of the dining hall. On December 14, 1992,
a mass shooting occurred at Simon's Rock College. At around 10:30 pm, Wayne Lo, a student at the school, shot and killed one student and one professor, and wounded three students and a security guard. His
SKS rifle soon jammed and Lo later surrendered to authorities without further incident. The people killed in the shooting were 18-year-old Galen Gibson and 37-year-old Ñacuñán Saez. In 1993, the then-unused chapel from upper campus was relocated to the main part of campus and renovated, becoming the college's music building. That same year, a number of the campus's arts and dormitory buildings were also renovated. Since then, many buildings have been built or renovated. These include the Fisher Science and Academic Center (completed 1998), the Kilpatrick Athletic Center (completed 1999), the Daniel Arts Center (completed 2005), an apartment-like dormitory for upperclassmen (Pibly House, completed 2000), the Livingston Hall Student Union (completed 2006), and others. In 2000, Simon's Rock became the first college in the United States to officially recognize
International Workers' Day. In 2001, Simon's Rock was instrumental in the founding of
Bard High School Early College (BHSEC) in Manhattan. There are now seven Bard Early College programs located in New York, Newark, Cleveland, Baltimore, and New Orleans. On April 11, 2006, part of Carriage House, a residence in upper campus, burned in an electrical fire in the early morning. No one was hurt in the incident, but some student possessions were partially or entirely destroyed. The remnants of the building were burnt down by the Great Barrington Fire Department in a January 2009 in a training exercise. In 2015, Simon's Rock founded
Bard Academy at Simon's Rock, a two-year high school program leading into the Lower College program.On November 19, 2024, Provost John B. Weinstein announced that Simon's Rock would be relocated to Bard's newly purchased Massena Campus in
Barrytown, New York at the site of the former site of the
Unification Theological Seminary beginning in Fall 2025. In an announcement on the website of Simon's Rock, Weinstein cited declining enrollment revenue and a "competitive market" of early-college offerings as reasoning for the relocation.
New York (2025–present) Since summer 2025, the campus of Simon's Rock is the former site of the
Unification Theological Seminary in
Barrytown, dubbed the
Massena Campus. ==Academics==