Alderson Broaddus University (AB) was a private Baptist university in Philippi, West Virginia. It was founded in 1871 and suspended its operations on August 31, 2023.
It was historically affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. It was formed in 1932 as Alderson-Broaddus College by the union of two Baptist institutions: Alderson Junior College (founded 1901) and Broaddus College (founded 1871). The school adopted its final name in 2013.
Prior to the university's closing, its academics were organized into five academic divisions: the College of Health, Science, Technology, and Math; the College of Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences; the College of Business; the College of Medical Science; and the College of Adult and Distance Education.
Alderson Broaddus was the first college in West Virginia to offer a four-year degree in nursing and the first in the country to offer a four-year physician assistant degree.
History
Alderson Broaddus University derived its name from the merging of two Baptist institutions in 1932. The older of the two, Broaddus Institute, was founded in Winchester, Virginia, in 1871 by Edward Jefferson Willis, a Baptist minister who named the new school after Rev. William Francis Ferguson Broaddus, a prominent Baptist minister at the time of the American Civil War. In response to economic hard times, Broaddus Institute was moved across the Allegheny Mountains to Clarksburg, West Virginia, in 1876. The college was moved again to the small town of Philippi in 1909. In 1917 it became Broaddus College and Academy.
The other institution, Alderson Academy, was founded in Alderson, West Virginia, in 1901 by Emma C. Alderson, a committed Baptist laywoman. Designed as a home school, it provided academic work in classics, sciences and normal studies. Originally supported by the Greenbrier Baptist Church, control was assumed by the West Virginia Baptist Association in 1910.
As the years passed, Broaddus became a junior college, then a senior college—first granting baccalaureate degrees in 1926—and Alderson Academy also added junior college status. Financial hardship in the late 1920s led to a decision to merge the two colleges, which shared common missions and outlooks as Baptist and liberal arts institutions; the merged institution, Alderson Broaddus College, opened its doors in 1932. Since its founding, Alderson Broaddus had been committed to a strong liberal arts education that seeks to imbue students with an appreciation of literature and the arts, Christian faith, music, and the sciences. In more recent times, the college was focused on developing programs in the natural and applied sciences as well. In 1945, Alderson Broaddus developed the first four-year nursing and the first radiologic technology programs in West Virginia.
A portion of the physical assets of Storer College, a Black Baptist college founded in 1865 in Harpers Ferry, were transferred to Alderson Broaddus in 1964 and used to fund the “Storer Scholarship” given annually to an African-American students..
In 1968, the college pioneered the nation's first four-year physician assistant (PA) program, an innovation that had significant influence on the development of the PA profession nationwide. From this program emerged in 1991 the college's first graduate degree offering, the Physician Assistant Master's program.
In 2011, the college chose Richard Creehan as president. Creehan embarked on a plan to expand the college and the institution increased enrollment by over 600 students, expanded the athletic department, and added many new academic programs. In 2013, the college's Board of Governors renamed the institution Alderson Broaddus University. That same year, the institution matriculated the largest incoming freshman class in school history.
In June 2017, the Higher Learning Commission put the University on probation because it determined that the institution was at risk due to financial difficulties. In 2019, it was no longer on probation, due to improved financial performance.