The New Hitchcock Center is a state-of-the-art environmental education facility located on the Hampshire College campus. The center aims to foster a culture of sustainability and resilience through its innovative programs, events, and exhibits. The building itself is a model of green design, featuring solar panels, rainwater harvesting, composting toilets, and natural ventilation. The center is also one of the few in the world to achieve the Living Building Challenge certification, which requires meeting rigorous standards of energy efficiency, water conservation, and ecological impact. The New Hitchcock Center is a place where visitors can learn about the natural world and how to protect it for future generations.

The Hitchcock Center, founded in 1962, connects people with nature and encourages a deeper emotional bond with the natural world. The Center helps develop a community that understands connections among human health, ecosystems, and economies through educational programs that offer a particular focus on children, who live in a world of environmental challenges.

Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst. It was founded in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, and it continues to emphasize interdisciplinary, individualized, and self-directed learning. Hampshire College is known for its innovative curriculum, student-designed majors, narrative evaluations, and portfolio-based assessment. Hampshire College is also part of the Five College Consortium, which allows its students to take courses at four other nearby institutions: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The idea for Hampshire College originated in 1958 when the presidents of Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, appointed a committee to examine the assumptions and practices of liberal arts education. Their report, "The New College Plan”, advocated many of the features that have since been realized in the Hampshire curriculum: inviting students to self-design their program of studies; training students to be able to educate themselves through their lifetimes; emphasis on each student's curiosity and motivation; learning among and across multiple disciplines; and close mentoring relationships with teachers.