BERRY'S ENDURING PURPOSE
Every five years, consistent with best practices in higher education and as part of the reaccreditation cycle of self-study, the college Board of Trustees reviews and affirms Berry’s mission statement. As the board initiated this process in October 2023, it recognized the need to update the language – last amended in 2003 – to make it more aspirational and less descriptive in tone. The intent was not to change the statement’s defining elements but to enhance the focus on Berry’s enduring purpose, preferably incorporating a brief memorable phrase highlighting the college’s distinctiveness and anchored in its rich history.
PREPARING TOMORROW'S HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS
Anyone who has weathered an extended stay in a hospital understands the essential role of physicians, who preside over your diagnostic and treatment plan. A key moment each day, often early in the morning, is when doctors make rounds, provide updates and answer questions.
CONVICTION AND CHARACTER
Imagine yourself, a recent Berry graduate with an appealing first job as a user consultant for a successful software company. As you learn your craft, you become increasingly aware that the sales division regularly oversells its products, promising capabilities not yet available. This discrepancy is apparent as you strive to meet the expectations of your customers. What should you do when company culture tolerates (and compensates) behaviors that make you personally uncomfortable? Don’t most companies embellish the potential of products and features still in development? Isn’t that part of staying competitive? But how do you then respond to the frustration of your customers?
10 YEARS AFTER
Berry joined the Southern Athletic Association as a founding member in the fall of 2012. It was a pivotal moment for the college as it marked the promise of better days ahead after a bruising and contested decision in 2009 to move from the NAIA to the NCAA. Part of that promise was how the change would benefit Berry’s institutional reputation and aspirations.
MAKING THE MOST OF SUMMER
Summer break may evoke images of beach days and barbeque evenings, but for an ever-growing number of Berry students, the summer months are an integral and intensive part of their overall educational experience. What are they doing, and how are they doing it?
A LEGACY OF LIVES
In the 1930s, when the U.S. economy was in tatters, some businessmen asked Martha Berry about the health of the Berry Schools’ investments. Without hesitation, she replied that the investments were doing exceptionally well. After all, her schools were invested 100% in young people as they were the future of our nation’s communities and towns. Her beguiling response emphasized Berry’s mission and unwavering focus on students even if the business of education was dismal.
A CULTURE OF BELONGING
On April 27, hundreds of Berry students spread across Valhalla’s Williams Field to celebrate the last day of classes with a grand fireworks display. Frisbees flew, groups chatted and music filled the air in advance of the show. It was a fitting tribute to a challenging year when all manner of forces seemed to conspire against our ability to be together normally. The sense of community was palpable.
AND THEN SOME...
Berry was forged in the fires of adversity. When Martha Berry deeded over her land inheritance to build a residential school for boys from destitute families, her likelihood of success was near zero. Seven years later, when her trustees sensibly voted down her request to add a school for girls to her struggling endeavor, she proceeded anyway.
THE BUFFETING AND KNOCKS
For the last 25 years, our nation has been riding a wave of disruptive innovation. Three of the world’s wealthiest companies – Amazon, Google and Facebook – were founded, reshaping our culture. We have come to accept the value of disruption and its inevitability.
IN MEMORY OF GEORGE FLOYD
It is a raw and disturbing image: the knee of a white police officer pressing against the neck of a black man lying face down on the pavement. The image records a bitter truth: the officer and his colleagues ignoring George Floyd as he pleads over and over that he cannot breathe, until he loses consciousness.
THE MIRACLE IN THE MOUNTAINS
It has been 77 years since Martha Berry was buried next to the college chapel, and yet her presence on campus remains strong. How is it that her ideas and actions continue to inspire when few other founders of peer colleges have such a lasting visibility?
LEARN IT WELL; KEEP IT ALWAYS
Telling Berry's story authentically and creatively has been a priority since the earliest efforts of our founder to spread the word about her schools. In order to keep this message fresh and relevant, college leaders recently sought input from alumni, current and prospective students, and others as we reflected carefully on what is most true about the Berry experience and how we can share these truths effectively.
THE VALUE OF BERRY
A healthy community has an identity with its own culture and character. Berry's identity has always included an emphasis on the personal and vocational success of students. That priority was stamped on Berry from the outset.
BY YOUR WORD OF MOUTH
Students find their way to Berry in all sorts of interesting ways,” President Briggs notes at the outset of his summer 2018 essay exploring the important role alumni and friends play in directing students to Berry. Later he declares, “I can’t emphasize it enough: A personal suggestion about a college is more effective and credible than any message sent to a mass of people,” sharing several stories illustrating that important point.
TEACHER-MENTOR-SCHOLAR
When Professor Peter Lawler died unexpectedly on May 23, the nation lost a perceptive observer of the American soul. Highly regarded as a political philosopher, he was a prolific author and provocative thought leader. Within days of his death, a dozen heartfelt essays were published commemorating his life’s work.
BE BERRY PROUD
Just five years after Berry was founded, the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50 percent from its peak of the year before in what became known as the Panic of 1907. The national economic turmoil that ensued hindered donations to Berry and left the school almost penniless. Although destitute themselves, Berry students stepped forward in this moment of crisis
LIBERATING THE MIND
A liberal arts education is one that frees or liberates us from what we take for granted. It is part of human nature to take things for granted. Often, it seems, we do not truly realize what we take for granted until it is gone.
HACK BERRY: JUST IMAGINE
Imagine an academic major that encourages playful curiosity. Imagine faculty who assign good grades for spectacular failures. Imagine a program focused on solving problems and helping others to be more and do more. At Berry, that academic program is called creative technologies, and it is the first undergraduate degree of its kind in the nation.
THE ARTS AT BERRY
A number of years ago, one of my advisees came to see me in tears. Anna wanted to major in art, but her father was adamantly opposed, insisting she be practical. Eventually, Anna crafted a compromise with a major in art and a minor in business. She also arranged an internship in the design studio of a London-based magazine. The good news is that Anna quickly found work after graduation as a designer for a book publishing company.
FEEDING THE SOIL
Berry is rooted deeply in the soil of Northwest Georgia, its enduring values and defining characteristics shaped by the needs and particulars of this place. Aspects of Berry's educational approach could be transplanted successfully in other contexts, but this relationship to place - what the winemaker would call its terroir - is central to Berry's distinctiveness.
BEST OF BREED
Berry's Animal Science Program is on a roll. From the May 2014 graduating class alone, 16 students are now enrolled in 10 different schools of veterinary medicine. And that is no fluke - 65 Berry graduates have been admitted to veterinary school since May 2010, an average of 16 per year. This is an enviable record both in terms of overall numbers and percentage of success.
PATHS THROUGH BERRY
The paths Berry students follow to LifeReady are necessarily personal, yet they unfold within the context of relationships that shape them. When Kelsey Zablan (14C) received her diploma in May, she was already working one day a week for Turner Broadcasting System in preparation for her current full-time position as product coordinator at HLN (formerly Headline News).
LOOKING FORWARD
Suppose someone offered you $1 million to accept the following challenge: Work with 10 talented high school graduates and prepare them to live meaningful, healthy, productive and enjoyable lives. Would you accept the challenge?
STEWARDSHIP OF PLACE
Residential colleges need natural gathering places. Much of what is learned in college occurs in interactions among people with different backgrounds, interests and experiences. Learning of this sort is spontaneous and spirited; it happens in the hallways where students live and in the dining halls where they eat. Gathering spots provide a context in which emerging friendships can thrive.
AN UNEXPECTED OPPORTUNITY, A ROBUST TEST
Mireille Kibibi arrived at Berry as part of a program that emerged unexpectedly. In July 2009, we embarked on what I have come to view as a robust test of Berry’s core vision. We did not set out to conduct such a test, but one opportunity led to another, and we found ourselves having accepted the challenge of this test nonetheless.
THE PURPOSE OF BERRY
When Martha Berry first established her residential school, she emphasized a model that “teaches by doing” with students undertaking all manner of work necessary to sustain the institution, from growing crops, tending livestock and preparing food to constructing the buildings in which they lived, worked and studied.
A HIGH CALLING
When Dr. Gordon Carper, one of Berry's legendary faculty members, passed away September a year ago, four former students returned to speak at his memorial service in the Berry College Chapel. All four have been active in leadership at Berry.
STRENGTHENING COMMUNITIES OF TOMORROW
Despite our political differences and the heat of this presidential-election season, many Americans will agree that our nation’s health care system is gravely ill. Although we may be satisfied with the care we receive personally from our local doctors and medical community, we also know that the system itself needs to change.
THE RIGHT TEAM
Some may be surprised to learn that football has a long history even at Berry, in the intramural and club form. Records indicate that a student-formed team existed as early as 1906, and two campus literary societies enjoyed an annual Mountain Day tackle football game for a number of years.
THE VALUE OF OWNERSHIP
Last spring, several visitors to campus talked to a group of students about their experiences in Berry’s student work program. One of the students was explaining how much she enjoyed her work when she exclaimed enthusiastically, “I own my job!”
LONG LIVE BERRY'S TREES
On April 27, a light rain had just started falling on an otherwise typical Wednesday morning. At 8:32, the wind gusted a bit, and then suddenly, without warning, branches began to snap and fly.
COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY: WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Sometimes the question is posed in terms of whether Berry is qualified to be a university. These inquiries reflect honest confusion about what it means to be a university or a college. The simple truth is that institutions today are more or less free to choose their own label. The choice is one that relates to core identity
PLAN4WARD
My youngest daughter is off to college this fall, her departure coinciding with the arrival of Berry's class of 2014, a talented and promising group of students.
THE HEART OF BERRY
At a recent breakfast in Washington, D.C., I heard a U.S. senator speak pointedly about the difference between competence and character. He noted how a lack of persona integrity can undermine the finest accomplishments of a razor-sharp mind and tenacious work ethic, as has been illustrated vividly in the lives of several prominent public figures.
BERRY BEAUTIFUL
Berry is uncommonly beautiful – a place of pastoral and expansive beauty that long has captured the imagination of those who have visited or lived here. More akin to a park than a manicured
garden, the Berry campus is breathtaking in part because it appears so natural with its open fields and wooded slopes, vast pine forests and pristine mountain reservoir.
EXPERIENCING WORK FIRSTHAND
Berry College stands apart from other colleges and universities today in large part because of our century-long commitment to meaningful work as an integral component in our students' educational experience. Because of our work experience program, Berry students have the opportunity to gain important life lessons about personal and social responsibility determination, and resourcefulness.
A GOOD MOVE: NCAA DIVISION II BEST SERVES BERRY'S MISSION
Berry’s reputation is surely growing. Our steadfast focus on the comprehensive development of our students has placed Berry in the company of some of the finest liberal arts colleges in the nation. Our recent acceptance by the Annapolis Group, an organization of America’s top 125 independent liberal arts colleges, affirms our increasing presence.
THE MANY AND THE ONE
In the 100 years since the founding of the Berry Alumni Association, tens of thousands of students have graduated from Berry – but not all from the same Berry.
RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES, AND OBLIGATIONS
Commencement ceremonies are formal and unchanging by design. Nevertheless, last year I instituted a small but significant amendment in the declaration by which Berry’s academic degrees are conferred. I added a word: obligations.
MORE THAN A SOUND BITE: HOW BEST TO TELL THE BERRY STORY
It happened several times last week. It happens most every week. A prospective faculty member from Texas interviews on campus and comments again and again on the exceptional nature of the campus. A well-respected higher education analyst who has visited hundreds of colleges and universities remarks that he has never seen anything the likes of Berry.
PURPOSE AND PASSION: THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF DR. STEPHEN R BRIGGS
Distinguished trustees and guests, esteemed members of the Berry community, dear family and friends: As we celebrate another milestone in Berry College’s remarkable journey, it is fitting that we gather here in the college chapel. This place is full of history.
A GOOD FIT
I have spent the better part of my professional life striving to understand what it means for a college to provide students with an exemplary educational experience. Educators have the opportunity to change the way a student thinks about him or herself. We can open new doors. We can challenge and inspire students to pursue a path with purpose and significance.