Qualla: Alderson Broaddus University

Alderson Broaddus University: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1968, a small Baptist college on a West Virginia hilltop did something no other school in the country had done: it launched a four-year bachelor's degree program for physician assistants. The idea of training a new kind of medical professional - someone who could practice medicine under physician supervision, filling gaps in primary care - was still novel. Alderson-Broaddus College took the model and put it on a four-year academic foundation, an innovation that would shape the entire PA profession nationwide. Fifty-five years later, on August 31, 2023, the same school filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and shut its doors. The PA program had survived a century and a half of mergers, moves, and financial scares. The institution that built it did not.

Alderson Broaddus University: Two Baptist Schools Become One

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Alderson Broaddus traced its roots to two separate institutions. The older was Broaddus Institute, founded in Winchester, Virginia in 1871 by Baptist minister Edward Jefferson Willis and named for Reverend William Francis Ferguson Broaddus, a prominent Civil War-era Baptist clerg...

Alderson Broaddus University: Firsts on the Hilltop

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The new institution built a reputation through firsts. In 1945, Alderson-Broaddus established the first four-year nursing degree program in West Virginia and the first radiologic technology program in the state. In 1964, a portion of the physical assets of Storer College, a histo...

Alderson Broaddus University: Battlers and the Mountain East

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Athletics had its own history. The school's teams were called the Battlers, a reference to the 1861 Battle of Philippi Races. Men's soccer, coached by Bob Gray from 1978 to 1991, was the marquee program for decades. From 2011, President Richard Creehan pushed an ambitious expansi...

Alderson Broaddus University: The Long Decline

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The expansion strained the budget. In 2017, the Higher Learning Commission placed Alderson Broaddus on probation due to financial difficulties. The university came off probation in 2019 after performance improved, but the underlying problems persisted. By the summer of 2023, the ...

Alderson Broaddus University: Whitescarver Hall Still Standing

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The campus today is empty but largely intact. Whitescarver Hall, the oldest building on campus, dates to about 1911 - a Classical Revival structure designed by Holmboe and Lafferty, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. It is named for George M. Whitescarver ...