Ferrum College is a private college in Ferrum, Virginia. The college was established in 1913 as the "Ferrum Training School" (also referred to as the "Ferrum Institute" by its board of trustees) for primary and secondary education to serve the mountain communities of rural Southwest Virginia.
The school was known as "Ferrum Junior College" between 1940 and 1976. It was founded by the United Methodist Church and gradually developed from primary to post-secondary education. Today, Ferrum enrolls around 800 undergraduate and graduate students and offers over 54 undergraduate majors and four graduate programs. Ferrum College's campus is in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Rocky Mount, Virginia, in Franklin County.
Its athletic teams, known as the Panthers, compete in Division II of the NCAA in the Conference Carolinas. Ferrum has 11 men's teams and 14 women's teams. The football team is commonly referred to as the "Black Hats".
The Ferrum College campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.
History
Founding
Charitable members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Virginia established the school—Ferrum Training School—in Ferrum, Virginia in 1913 to provide educational opportunities to underprivileged youth in the state's Blue Ridge Mountains region. The Virginia Conference Woman's Home Missionary Society (VCWHMS) under President Mrs. Lee Britt wished to serve and educate the rural population of southwestern Virginia. Already in 1909, President Britt informed Benjamin Beckham, presiding elder of the Danville district, that the VCWHMS had gathered $1,200 toward constructing a school somewhere in the district. In 1911, the village of Ferrum was selected as the location of the train depot on the Norfolk and Western Railway between Roanoke and Winston-Salem. In 1912, Beckham offered to help raise $25,000, and in 1913, the society formed a board of trustees and purchased 80 acres of land for the campus from local farmer George Goode, with another 50 acres donated by citizens of the village, allowing the board to officially establish Ferrum Training School.
Construction began in earnest in 1914 and Beckham moved his family to the site, opening the first section of John Wesley Hall to begin the first term of instruction in the fall of 1914. The small school grew with the support of the railway, which constructed a cinder road from the Ferrum Depot to Ferrum Training School. The board of trustees purchased an additional 96 acres in 1916, and Ferrum graduated their first diploma-earning student in 1917: Berta Thompson (1897–1975), who went on to become a public-school teacher.
After steady growth in its first decade, despite numerous crises involving sickness, financial difficulties, and luring faculty to rural Virginia, in 1926 Ferrum's trustees voted to recast the institution as a junior college. In 1928, the village of Ferrum opened a public elementary school. Between 1926 and 1935, Ferrum Training School transitioned into secondary education with the occasional postsecondary course in religious training. After 1935, Ferrum Training School under President James A. Chapman began seeking accreditation, the name of the institution in 1940 becoming "Ferrum Training School – Ferrum Junior College".
From crisis to growth
thumb|170px|Norfolk and Western magazine ad with system map, 1948: Ferrum lies between Roanoke and Martinsville.
By 1940, half of the enrolled students were college level; the elementary division closed before the end of World War II. With the closing of the original training school's primary school, some thought that the mountain mission school had served its purpose. In a 1948 editorial for the Richmond Christian Advocate, its editor, George Reamey, recommended the school be closed. The resignation of the fourth president, Derby in 1948, came in part from similar concerns about the viability of the school in postwar Virginia. However, this crisis inspired a wide outpouring of support from alumni and a decision to make stronger appeals and more competitive salaries to entice faculty and staff to the college's rural location. At the same time, the school's name was shortened to just "Ferrum Junior College".
President Derby's successor was fittingly one of the many alumni who championed a future for Ferrum Training School, Nathaniel Davis of the class of 1924. Under his leadership, the school continued its transition into a junior college and instituted an annual hike for the students in the surrounding mountains. By the 1950s, the junior college transformation was complete, with the high school division closing in 1955.
Ferrum Junior College
With the arrival of the new President C. Ralph Arthur in 1954, a new era on campus began. President Arthur pressed the Methodist Church for stronger financial support, oversaw the removal of undercredentialed and ill-trained faculty, and the hiring of professional collegiate-level educators to be enticed by school-provided housing that President Arthur convinced the board of trustees to build. President Arthur was a tireless fundraiser from local businesses, government officials at every level, and throughout the branches of the Methodist Church. The changes at the school led to unprecedented growth in the student population; from only 238 students in 1958 to 646 in 1962. By the 50th Anniversary celebrated in the 1963–1964 academic year, the school had 799 students and 50 full-time faculty. Another shift was the rise in collegiate athletics, exemplified by the long career of Hank Norton, who began coaching in 1960 and continued his association with the college for over three decades.
As early as 1963, the Methodist Church Annual Conference had recommended that its schools in Virginia consider enrollment of all students without regard to race. In 1967, Ferrum welcomed its first four African-American students: Alice Baker and Fred Dunnings of Rocky Mount, Jerry Venable from Staunton, and Allen White from Philadelphia.
Founded by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Ferrum College saw changes at the board of trustees level with the merging of various Methodist branches in 1939 (healing the split in 1844 over the differences between north and south on the criminality of slavery) and again in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church.
In 1970, Arthur succumbed after a long battle with cancer. His funeral was held in the newly opened Vaughn Chapel; classes were suspended, but with all students on campus to pay their respects to the man who had utterly transformed the campus from a mountain primary school to a prestigious junior college. Arthur was interred in a vault beneath the chapel bell tower.
Ferrum College
{| class="wikitable" style="margin-right:16pt;margin-top:2pt;float:right;"
|-
|+Presidents of Ferrum
|-
!President
!From
!To
|-
|Benjamin M. Beckham
| style="text-align:center;"| 1913
| style="text-align:center;"| 1934
|-
|John A. Carter
| style="text-align:center;"| 1934
| style="text-align:center;"| 1935
|-
|James A. Chapman
| style="text-align:center;"| 1935
| style="text-align:center;"| 1943
|-
|Luther J. Derby
| style="text-align:center;"| 1943
| style="text-align:center;"| 1948
|-
|Nathaniel H. Davis '24
| style="text-align:center;"| 1948
| style="text-align:center;"| 1952
|-
|Stanley E. Emrich
| style="text-align:center;"| 1952
| style="text-align:center;"| 1954
|-
|C. Ralph Arthur
| style="text-align:center;"| 1954
| style="text-align:center;"| 1970
|-
|Joseph T. Hart
| style="text-align:center;"| 1971
| style="text-align:center;"| 1986
|-
|Jerry M. Boone
| style="text-align:center;"| 1987
| style="text-align:center;"| 2002
|-
|Jennifer L. Braaten
| style="text-align:center;"| 2002
| style="text-align:center;"| 2016
|-
|Joseph "Jody" Carson Spooner
| style="text-align:center;"| 2016
| style="text-align:center;"| 2017
|-
|David L. Johns
| style="text-align:center;"| 2018
| style="text-align:center;"| 2022
|-
|Mirta M. Martin
| style="text-align:center;"| 2022
| style="text-align:center;"| present
|}
With the passing of Arthur, the ambitions of the board of trustees turned them to Joseph Hart for the eighth president. A historian and political scientist by training, Hart began his tenure by explaining to the board of trustees that Ferrum would continue to grow in academics, but also as a cornerstone of the local community, likely a change brought about by Arthur's insistence that the faculty live within the bounds of the town.