Alderson-Broaddus College

For more than 144 years, Alderson Broaddus University has been providing a quality education for its students. Overlooking the picturesque Tygart River Valley in Philippi, West Virginia, Alderson Broaddus University students learn and grow in a faith-based learning community. Deeply rooted in the liberal arts, Alderson Broaddus University is a health-related and professional educational institution. Alderson Broaddus University is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches, USA, and the West Virginia Baptist Convention. Two institutions were united in 1932 to form Alderson-Broaddus College. Each of the institutions passed on a rich Christian heritage. The older of the two, Broaddus University, was founded in Winchester, Virginia in 1871 by Edward Jefferson Willis, a Baptist minister who named the new college after Rev. William Francis Ferguson Broaddus, a prominent Baptist minister at the time of the Civil War. In response to economic hard times, Broaddus University was moved across the Alleghenies to Clarksburg, West Virginia, in 1876. The college was moved again to the small town of Philippi, West Virginia in 1901. The other institution, Alderson Academy and Junior College, was founded in Alderson, West Virginia in 1901 by Emma Alderson, a committed Baptist laywoman. As the years passed, Broaddus became a junior college, then a senior college, and Alderson Academy added junior college status. Financial hardship in the late 1920’s led to the decision to merge the two colleges, both of which shared a common identity as Baptist and liberal arts institutions. Alderson-Broaddus College derived its hyphenated name from the joining of these two institutions.