News for Mormons

From The Provo Daily Herald:

Southern Virginia University communications director Burke Olsen said that there are three common misperceptions about the institution that employs him, a tiny liberal arts college located in Buena Vista, Va., just a stone’s throw from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the famously picturesque Shenandoah Valley.

Of course, not everybody knows enough about SVU in the first place to misperceive it. Although there’s been a school of some kind on its premises for more than 125 years, the name Southern Virginia University has only been in place since 2001, and the school’s present curriculum and values, as well as its management by trustees who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only began in 1996.Speaking of the trustees, however, that’s the first misperception. Olsen said that many people think SVU is “owned by a bunch of LDS businessmen on the East Coast.”

What actually occurred is that the school’s former board of trustees voted to resign their posts in 1996 after then-Southern Virginia College’s financial troubles and steadily declining enrollment had resulted in lost accreditation. The outgoing trustees also voted to have themselves replaced by a group of Latter-day Saints who had very recently expressed interest in taking over the management of the school. The new trustees assumed responsibility for the college’s debts, but also took charge of its assets.

“No documents were signed, and no money changed hands,” Olsen said. SVC merely “continued as an institution, as a private college.”

The lost accreditation is another source of confusion. Olsen said that it’s a commonly held belief that SVU has no accreditation. The school is nationally accredited by the American Academy of Liberal Education, however, and is in the process of restoring its regional accreditation.

(Typically, national accrediting bodies provide specialized accreditation to schools that teach a specific trade or, as is the case with Southern Virginia, follow a specific educational model. Regional accreditation certifies that schools meet the general standards for private and public universities and is administered by six accrediting bodies, each responsible for a geographic region of the United States. Southern Virginia’s regional accreditation will ultimately be determined by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.)

The most common misperception about SVU, however, is that the school wants to be a sort of eastern clone of LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo. As to that, well, it sort of depends who you ask.

As a liberal arts college — meaning that its students receive a grounding in the philosophy and history of Western Civilization that provides a framework for their study of other academic disciplines — SVU has a different educational model than BYU, Olsen said. And the intention of school administrators is to eventually cap enrollment at 1,000 students (there are presently 700, up from an initial enrollment, in 1996, of 76), to keep class sizes small and maintain a high level of interaction between instructors and students.

(Full-time enrollment at BYU at the start of the 2006-07 school year was 26,910 students.)

Even Olsen admits, on the other hand, that the school, which is not formally affiliated with the LDS Church, has “a culture and an environment” that deliberately reflects the LDS standards that prevail at BYU.

Wally Barrus, a former longtime professor of photography at BYU, said that the atmosphere at SVU would feel familiar to anyone accustomed to BYU. Barrus, 77, said that he felt right at home when he recently spent time at SVU to help establish its photography program.
Attractive environment for students

The culture at SVU is no accident. The school’s students follow an honor code that Barrus said is essentially identical to the one that’s a longstanding parameter of student life at BYU. And Olsen said that the school is proud of its LDS values and reputation.

“Our surveys show that the No. 1 reason that students come here is for the LDS environment,” Olsen said. And, although the student population is geographically diverse, with students from 49 different states and 60 countries having passed through since 1996, the statistical profile of SVU supports its surveys — 96 percent of SVU students are Latter-day Saints.

The school’s mission statement is built around the concept of training students to be “leader-servants,” a term coined by Spencer W. Kimball, a former president of the LDS Church. And the mission statement includes the LDS Church as one of the post-educational realms in which it hopes that graduates will be prepared to both lead and serve.  (cont.)

Entire article here

From Religion News Service:

Students and families gather outside Main Hall on the campus of Southern Virginia University for graduation May 3. The small school is 97 percent Mormon and located in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Buena Vista, Va. Religion News Service photo courtesy Southern Virginia University.

BUENA VISTA, Va. — Greg Larsen seems like your typical young Mormon: he was born and raised in Utah, served a two-year mission in San Antonio and is married — at 23 — to the woman he met as an undergrad at a Mormon university.

But the campus where he and his wife, Alyssa, met wasn’t Brigham Young University in Utah. His newly minted degree comes from Southern Virginia University, a fledgling outpost of Mormonism in the heart of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

The 12-year-old university is 97 percent Mormon in an area better known for Baptists and Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, about 40 miles to the south.

Students like Larsen say the school’s Mormon culture — even as it officially remains separate from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — was a big draw.

“Especially being away from home, you feel a sense of comfort being around people with the same goals in life and you never felt alone,” Larsen said after he received his degree on the picturesque hilltop campus in this town of just 6,300 people.

SVU began as a girl’s finishing school in 1867 and became a junior college before a group of Mormons rescued it from financial peril 12 years ago. Since then, it has grown from 76 students to 700, and in early May graduated 129 students.

SVU President Rodney K. Smith told graduates in black caps and gowns that the ceremony marked the end of “the 12th year of our existence as a liberal arts college in an LDS environment.”

In some ways, an independent religious school is not unusual; Catholics and evangelicals have been running them for years. But SVU is unique for its location — Buena Vista sits at the northern tip of the Bible Belt and 2,000 miles east of the center of the Mormon universe in Utah — and its independence from a church that prides itself on tightly centralized organization.

Even its name gives no hint of its overwhelmingly Mormon identity.

Comparisons between SVU and the much larger Brigham Young University come easily. Some SVU students transferred from Brigham Young, or chose between the two schools. Mormon officials wish the school success even as it remains separate from the church’s official Church Educational System, which governs BYU.

“It’s very much an independent institution but sponsored by members of the church rather than the church itself,” said Elder Rolf Kerr, commissioner of church education at Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City.

The Virginia campus has gained accreditation from the American Academy for Liberal Education and hopes to graduate 1,000 students within five years. Those goals, however, can sometimes be complicated by the unique tenets of the faith most of the students follow.  (cont.)

Entire article here