Sweet Briar College, an all-women’s school located in the Virginia foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is poised to begin yet another chapter of its existence for the 2018-’19 academic year. The school, which nearly closed in 2015, plans to restructure its curriculum around three “centers of excellence” and reduce its cost of attendance by a third.
Although alumnae succeeded in saving the school, Sweet Briar is still grappling with the consequences of the abrupt near-closure. Many faculty left, although some later returned, and student enrollments dropped from 561 in 2014-15 to 245 the following academic year. Since then, the school has been in rebuilding mode, led by interim president Phillip Stone until the selection of a new permanent president, Dr. Meredith Woo, this past spring.
Current board chair and Sweet Briar alumna, Teresa Pike Tomlinson, said that college leaders have been laying the groundwork for the new plan ever since board leadership switched over in the wake of the attempted closure. “We had the opportunity in these two years to get the foundations set,” Tomlinson, who is also the mayor of Columbus, Georgia, said. Since then, the school has made updates in key areas, such as its enrollment management systems. Prepared to hit the ground running, Sweet Briar is now readying itself for a new future.
“What’s so exciting about today is this is the key to the next chapter for Sweet Briar – the revising of our liberal arts curriculum for today’s world,” Tomlinson said. “We love that it’s bold.”
Sweet Briar will “double down” on the liberal arts model, according to Woo, while reframing the way in which it delivers that education. “As commendable as the mission and goal of the liberal arts may be, the way it is taught and the context it provides may not be very relevant for the 21st century,” Woo said.
The current plan to develop three centers of excellence focused on Engineering, Science and Technology in Society; Environmental and Human Sustainability; and Creativity, Design and the Arts was developed over the summer with input from faculty and staff. Faculty will fill in the details this fall, deciding which majors to keep and which to integrate into interdisciplinary departments or majors, according to Dr. Linda Fink, professor of ecology and a member of two working groups tasked with developing the current plan this summer.
