Northfield Mount Hermon

Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH) is a ninth-twelfth grade private college preparatory high school (secondary school) located in western Massachusetts, U.S.A. Its Northfield campus is located in Northfield, Massachusetts, and its Mount Hermon campus is located in nearby Gill, Massachusetts.

The school was originally founded by internationally famed Protestant Christian evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody (DLM) as two separate institutions: The Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in 1879 and Mount Hermon School for Boys in 1881. DLM envisioned both these schools as parts of his dream to provide the best possible education for less privileged people. Indeed, even, in their infancy, DLM?s schools matriculated students whose parents were slaves, Native-Americans, and from outside the US -- something that was unimaginable in many elite private schools at that time.

In DLM's view, Christian religious education was an essential part of the objective of his schools. However, under subsequent administrations, the schools became more theologically liberal and ultimately became nonsectarian and ceased evangelization of students. (This change put them at odds with other Moody institutions such as the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.) Religious life continued to be an important part of the schools, but religious services ceased to be compulsory and students were no longer instructed in Christian doctrine.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many U.S. private secondary schools that had previously offered single-sex education either became coeducational unilaterally or merged with other schools to become coeducational. In what was then a controversial decision, the Northfield Seminary and the Mount Hermon School merged to become a single coeducational institution in 1971, probably in a mutual term between both campuses, rather than a hostile takeover that Phillips Academy, Andover did to Abbott Academy. The name of the new school was Northfield Mount Hermon School, and it retained both the original Northfield campus and the original Mount Hermon campus, making both campuses co-ed but segregating students by sex at the dormitory level. The school operated on two campuses from 1971 and provided bus service to transport students back and forth, a distance of approximately five miles across the Connecticut River.

Despite the loss of his theological perspective, DLM?s vision of an education for the less privileged remains at the heart of NMH?s education even at the present time: the school is known to give a generous amount of financial aid to the students, even though its endowment is not that large. The percentage of international students at NMH is also far above the average of many elite private schools, at 25 percent compared to perhaps 10 percent at other institutions. In many cases, international students make a connection with the school through family members who attended NMH or, in some cases, were evangelized by Moody or his affiliated denominations and religious missions in the 19th century.

The students at NMH are sometimes described as more culturally or politically liberal than students at other New England private college preparatory schools. NMH has no dress code and is sometimes viewed as informal, tolerant, and progressive.

In 2004, the Trustees of Northfield Mount Hermon School, facing serious financial problems, controversially decided to close the Northfield campus in 2005 and to consolidate the school with a smaller coeducational student body on the Mount Hermon campus. Before this consolidation, the school had about 1100 students enrolled per year; afterward, some anticipate that enrollment will fall to around 600.

Famous alumni of NMH include well-known literary theorist and critic Edward Said, controversial radio pioneer Lee de Forest, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, actress Laura Linney and actress Uma Thurman. In 1980, a history of NMH entitled So Much to Learn was written by Burnham Carter on the occasion of the school's 100th anniversary. Dwight Lyman Moody's birthplace and burial place are both located on the Northfield campus.