Sweet Briar College’s Mission
Sweet Briar College prepares women (and at the graduate level, men as well) to be productive, responsible members of a world community. It focuses on personal and professional achievement through a customized educational program that combines the liberal arts, preparation for careers, and individual development. The faculty and staff guide students to become active learners, to reason clearly, to speak and write persuasively, and to lead with integrity. They do so by creating an educational environment that is both intense and supportive and where learning occurs in many different venues, including the classroom, the community and the world.
Approved by the Board of Directors, May 2004
Mission of Sweet Briar College’s Education Program
In keeping with the mission of the College, Sweet Briar’s Education Program is dedicated to preparing highly qualified professionals who are lifelong learners, responsive to the rapidly changing world, and capable of assuming leadership roles. To this end, our graduates become content experts in order to design rigorous, thoughtful, and authentic curriculum aligned with state and national standards. To meet the needs of diverse learners in today’s inclusive classrooms, the Sweet Briar Education program prepares professionals who are adept at differentiating instruction. Graduates of Sweet Briar’s education program demonstrate proficiency through reflective analysis and self-assessment. Through collaboration with peers and professionals in the field, our graduates build qualities to make them teacher leaders for the 21st century. The Education Program at Sweet Briar College prepares professionals who inform and engage minds, refine curriculum and instruction, and inspire through innovation.
A Brief History of Sweet Briar College
Founded in 1901, Sweet Briar College is the legacy of Indiana Fletcher Williams. Indiana left her entire estate to found an institution in memory of her only daughter, Daisy Williams, who died at the age of 16 in 1884. At the time of Indiana’s death in 1900, her estate consisted of more than $1 million dollars, and over 8,000 acres of land, including the Sweet Briar Plantation. The first board of directors determined that the College should be free from denominational control and that it should maintain the highest academic standards. Sweet Briar would unite classical and modern ideals of education and, in the words of its founder, prepare young women “to be useful members of society.”
Sweet Briar College opened formally in September 1906 with 51 students, including 15 day students. Its A.B. degree, granted for the first time in 1910, was immediately recognized by graduate programs at leading universities. Three of Sweet Briar’s first five graduates went on to pursue advanced degrees.
By 1921, Sweet Briar held membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, the American Association of University Women, and the American Council on Education, and was approved by the Association of American Universities. Its chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the Theta of Virginia, was authorized in 1950 and remains one of fewer than 300 chapters nationwide. In 1952, Sweet Briar became a charter member of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges (VFIC).
An early leader in international study, Sweet Briar established an exchange program with the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1932. In 1948 began its renowned Junior Year in France Program, now known as JYF in Paris.
In 1978, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts opened to fellows. The center is affiliated with Sweet Briar and located at Mount San Angelo, a nearby estate belonging to the College. Today, the VCCA is one of the foremost working retreats for artists in the world, and the only one with direct ties to a college or university.
In 1995, 21 of the College’s buildings were listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic District.
Sweet Briar College celebrated its centennial in 2001 and moved vigorously into its second century, in both facilities and educational programs. In 2002, the College completed the Student Commons Courtyard, which links residence halls with student services, dining facilities, a bookshop and café and student organizations. In 2006, a new studio arts facility was opened, followed in 2009 by a 53,000-square-foot fitness and athletics facility and the Green Village, apartment-style housing for up to 60 students. In November 2014, the College dedicated a state-of-the-art 16,000-square foot addition to Mary Helen Cochran Library, along with renovations to the historical 1929 building. These new facilities exemplify Sweet Briar’s commitment to an educational environment that is integrated, intentional and rooted.
Sweet Briar’s leadership in student engagement is reflected in its mission statement, adopted in 2004. The statement refocuses the College on its first principles, while recognizing that students who will become “useful members of society” must, as liberally educated women, be well equipped to move into professional life. The College inaugurated its Master of Arts in Teaching program in 2004. In 2005, Sweet Briar became only the second women’s college in the nation to offer an ABET-accredited program in engineering.
Sweet Briar is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) to award degrees at the bachelors and masters levels. It is a member of the College Entrance Examination Board and a contributing member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
The Campus
Sweet Briar’s intellectually and socially vibrant campus is a true community, home not only to students but also many members of our faculty and staff. It is a living laboratory that provides hands-on opportunities for exploration and discovery in nearly every discipline, from the arts and humanities to the sciences and engineering.
History, arts management and environmental science students have a particularly rich setting in which to do research. The campus was a working plantation in the 18th and 19th centuries and the founding family left a vast collection of artifacts. Across campus, research sites include old-growth forests, experimental biofuel plots and weather stations where instrumentation collects data on the atmosphere. The main campus buildings lie at the center of 3,250 acres of rolling hills, woods and meadows in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The broad landscape includes two lakes, eight nature sanctuaries and protected areas as well as an extensive network of walking, horseback riding, and hiking trails.
The campus, designed in the early part of the 20th century, is dominated by the architecture of Ralph Adams Cram, whose work is also seen at MIT, Princeton, Wellesley, Rice and West Point. Twenty-one of Sweet Briar’s buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places and these historic buildings are home to impressive academic facilities. Our science laboratories contain some of the best instrumentation in the nation for liberal arts colleges.
Mary Helen Cochran Library is the cornerstone of the College’s academic community. In 2014, a restoration project on the historic 1929 building was completed; 16,000 square feet of study, classroom and collaborative spaces were added. This state-of-the-art facility is one of the finest private college libraries in Virginia. Its collection includes a broad selection of volumes plus subscriptions to physical and digital periodicals and audiovisual materials, as well as access to online academic databases and e-book and video collections through the library website. The library’s interlibrary loan and cooperative borrowing programs allow students, faculty and staff to borrow materials from other libraries across the state of Virginia and the United States.
In 2009, the College renovated its gym, creating the 53,000-square-foot Fitness and Athletics Center. Green Village, which provides furnished apartment-style living on campus for up to 60 students, was completed that same year.
The 526-seat Murchison Lane Auditorium in Babcock Fine Arts Center is host to cultural and intellectual events from student dance and theatre productions to world-renowned speakers and the Babcock Season, which brings visiting performing artists, theatre troops and music ensembles to campus.
Rotating art exhibitions are research-, studio-, and community-based and are presented in one of three galleries: Babcock, Benedict, and Pannell; the latter houses the Sweet Briar Collection.
Located in the Boxwood Alumnae House, the Sweet Briar Museum contains an excellent teaching collection of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century American decorative arts, including artifacts of the College’s founders and memorabilia from throughout the College’s history.
The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), the only artists’ retreat in the nation with direct ties to a college or university, is located adjacent to the Sweet Briar campus. Writers, visual artists, and composers working at the VCCA come to the College to teach in its interdisciplinary Bachelor of Fine Arts program, and to take part in campus life.
The Florence Elston Inn and Conference Center complex, located on campus, provides a fully equipped 10,000 square foot conference facility and an inn featuring 38 rooms.
The College is centrally located within the state of Virginia, 54 miles south of Charlottesville and 168 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., on U.S. 29.
Institutional Accreditation
Sweet Briar College is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts in Teaching. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia, 30033-4097 or call 404-679- 4501 for questions about the accreditation of Sweet Briar College.
Program Accreditation
Teacher Preparation Program
Sweet Briar’s teacher education preparation program is accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). In 2022, the teacher education program received probationary status. CAEP Standard 5 was not met because there was insufficient evidence to show a quality assurance system and not enough data to show continuous improvement. All the current programs were reviewed. The Education Department is working to meet expectations for the 2024 CAEP visit. Please see the full accreditation report.
Accredited Provider Details - Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (caepnet.org)
If you have any questions, please contact the director of Sweet Briar’s Education Department.
https://www.sbc.edu/academics/elementary-education-and-teaching/
Academic Sessions
The College operates under the semester system following a yearly schedule set by the College calendar. The semester is made up of a 3-week and a 12-week session. The student’s final semester of education coursework takes place over the full 15-week semester. Graduate courses are usually scheduled in the late afternoon and evening hours. Field experience hours during the standard school day are coordinated in collaboration with the student’s clinical educator in the local school division.
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