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Welcome to Sweet Briar College, a liberal arts and sciences college in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.
Students enjoy three thousand, two hundred and fifty acres of land — the fourth-largest liberal arts campus in the country. Sweet Briar is a community of supportive faculty, staff, alumnae and friends where students form meaningful connections that last a lifetime.
It is a place where innovation is celebrated and project-based learning is the norm. It offers a private college education that is affordable, relevant for today's global society, and delivers excellent outcomes.
Before we get started, let me explain the many ways you can explore our beautiful, safe campus.
-You can click on the forward-facing arrow to start walking around.
-You can jump to the next stop by clicking on the "Next" button.
-Now, if you already know where you want to go, you can select any location by using the list OR by clicking directly on the map.
-Lastly, remember that you can explore any particular location in more detail by clicking the 360, Photos, or Video icons.
Admissions House trail
Admissions House
Tour stop audio transcript
After you enter campus and pass The Florence Elston Inn & Conference Center on your right, you'll make your way to Admissions House. Built in the early 1920s it became the home to Admissions around 1987.
Whether there is a college search in your future or you're ready to apply now, the Admissions team is ready to help you explore Sweet Briar College. You can schedule a campus tour led by a student guide or simply pick up more information about the College.
Mary Helen Cochran Library trail
Mary Helen Cochran Library
Tour stop audio transcript
The stately Georgian Revival Mary Helen Cochran Library is one of 21 buildings at Sweet Briar on the National Register of Historic Places.
Construction was completed in 1929, a few days before the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression.
So from the beginning, our library has served as an escape for students…a place to think and learn.
The original building is a large central block with wings on both sides. An exquisite ceiling is inlaid with garland and swag and two paneled reading rooms feature fireplaces.
In 2014, an addition on the west side moved the library away from a cramped books-based space to one of light and openness. While retaining history, the library is now a modern space for 21st-century learning.
Library Interior trail
Tour stop audio transcript
Another listing on the National Register of Historic Places is Sweet Briar House. Originally a six-room farmhouse in the early 1800s, the house was renovated in 1851 in the Italian Villa style. The owner was Elijah Fletcher, whose daughter Indiana inherited the home.
It is Indiana who directed in her will that Sweet Briar become a women's college in 1901.
The house has been occupied since then. College presidents have lived here, and at times it's doubled as post office and infirmary.
The interior of the house has been recently rehabilitated and the graceful gardens, originally planted by Indiana's father, have been restored. This work was done with careful attention to their historic character.
Sweet Briar House is the residence of our current president. As a student, you'll attend events here, especially during Senior Week!
Sweet Briar House
Tour stop audio transcript
Another listing on the National Register of Historic Places is Sweet Briar House. Originally a six-room farmhouse in the early 1800s, the house was renovated in 1851 in the Italian Villa style. The owner was Elijah Fletcher, whose daughter Indiana inherited the home.
It is Indiana who directed in her will that Sweet Briar become a women's college in 1901.
The house has been occupied since then. College presidents have lived here, and at times it's doubled as post office and infirmary.
The interior of the house has been recently rehabilitated and the graceful gardens, originally planted by Indiana's father, have been restored. This work was done with careful attention to their historic character.
Sweet Briar House is the residence of our current president. As a student, you'll attend events here, especially during Senior Week!
Tour stop audio transcript
With an average class size of eight students, students lead research, ask questions and work one on one with professors to design individual projects. Our core curriculum focused on women's leadership and interdisciplinary majors help students advance their personal and professional goals.
Many excellent students become part of the Honors Program and work with faculty and peers to delve deep into meaningful problems in today's society that they want to study more intensely.
Our modern curriculum marries STEM programs with liberal arts so all graduates are equipped with critical thinking and writing skills for graduate school or the workplace.
Tour stop audio transcript
With an average class size of eight students, students lead research, ask questions and work one on one with professors to design individual projects. Our core curriculum focused on women's leadership and interdisciplinary majors help students advance their personal and professional goals.
Many excellent students become part of the Honors Program and work with faculty and peers to delve deep into meaningful problems in today's society that they want to study more intensely.
Our modern curriculum marries STEM programs with liberal arts so all graduates are equipped with critical thinking and writing skills for graduate school or the workplace.
Tour stop audio transcript
With an average class size of eight students, students lead research, ask questions and work one on one with professors to design individual projects. Our core curriculum focused on women's leadership and interdisciplinary majors help students advance their personal and professional goals.
Many excellent students become part of the Honors Program and work with faculty and peers to delve deep into meaningful problems in today's society that they want to study more intensely.
Our modern curriculum marries STEM programs with liberal arts so all graduates are equipped with critical thinking and writing skills for graduate school or the workplace.
Tour stop audio transcript
With an average class size of eight students, students lead research, ask questions and work one on one with professors to design individual projects. Our core curriculum focused on women's leadership and interdisciplinary majors help students advance their personal and professional goals.
Many excellent students become part of the Honors Program and work with faculty and peers to delve deep into meaningful problems in today's society that they want to study more intensely.
Our modern curriculum marries STEM programs with liberal arts so all graduates are equipped with critical thinking and writing skills for graduate school or the workplace.
Academic Buildings/Quad
Tour stop audio transcript
With an average class size of eight students, students lead research, ask questions and work one on one with professors to design individual projects. Our core curriculum focused on women's leadership and interdisciplinary majors help students advance their personal and professional goals.
Many excellent students become part of the Honors Program and work with faculty and peers to delve deep into meaningful problems in today's society that they want to study more intensely.
Our modern curriculum marries STEM programs with liberal arts so all graduates are equipped with critical thinking and writing skills for graduate school or the workplace.
Path to Pannell Gallery trail
Pannell Gallery
Tour stop audio transcript
The Pannell Art Gallery houses Sweet Briar's nearly four thousand art objects in its permanent collection. These include paintings, prints and drawings, sculptures and manuscripts.
One of the four original Georgian Revival campus buildings dating from 1906, Pannell is another building on the National Register of Historic Places.
Because the regular study of original works of art is an integral part of a liberal arts curriculum, a variety of classes are often held here. For example, an environmental science class comes in each semester so students can see American art depicting landscapes we would barely recognize.
Memorial Chapel
Tour stop audio transcript
The Sweet Briar Memorial Chapel was built in 1964, but occupies the spot envisioned by the original architect — the heart of the quad.
Since then it has become so loved by students that many graduates hold their weddings here. It's easy to see why. With a cathedral-style setting, the chapel seats 300.
A beautiful pipe organ and grand piano make this the perfect setting for the many concerts held at Sweet Briar.
Since 1953, students have clamored to join Sweet Briar's famous a capella group, the Sweet Tones. These pews are filled every time they perform.
Sweet Briar is non-denominational. The Office of Spiritual and Community Life provides conversation and counseling to students while supporting the spiritual practices of students from all faiths and traditions.
Residence Hall
Tour stop audio transcript
At Sweet Briar, both living and learning happen in residence halls. Students live in one of eight different residence halls, all of different architecture and styles. Under the president's Living with Art initiative, students can now select a piece of fine art from the College's gallery to hang in their rooms!
Rooms are singles, doubles or even triples if desired. All halls have kitchens and parlors — the parlors are a piece of history. In Sweet Briar's early days, when gentlemen came to call on students, they met in the parlor under the watchful eyes of a chaperone.
Today, parlors are lounges for socializing, studying or hosting living-learning conversations.
Other traditions from the past live on. In fact, as a Sweet Briar student, you'll become part of more than a century of traditions…including Lantern Bearing, Step Singing and Scream Night. Festivals, dances and parties are open to students from nearby schools.
Babcock Fine Arts Center
Tour stop audio transcript
The Babcock Fine Arts Center is home to our music, dance and theater programs. The Murchison Lane Auditorium seats 500 for students' dance concerts and plays.
Students benefit from six piano practice rooms. A digital music studio features state-of-the-art professional equipment for music creation.
Sweet Briar's Skiffle USA is a branch of Skiffle Steel orchestra from Trinidad. We are the only college in America to have this kind of cultural and musical partnership.
Sweet Briar's dance program is known for its practical approach to contemporary dance and choreography. Dancers graduate prepared to assume roles in studios and companies.
Guion Science Center
Tour stop audio transcript
Sweet Briar is committed to increasing the number of women leaders in STEM. On average, more than one-third of our graduates major in a STEM field.
Guion is home to our STEM programs, the fields where students engage in practical, theoretical analysis to advance understanding of the world.
Driven by a rich tradition of preparing women for work in the sciences, Sweet Briar's interdisciplinary approach to learning sets our graduates apart in the workplace.
Our ABET-accredited engineering program is one of only two in the country at an all-women's college. Our all-female student classrooms are a supportive environment, small yet challenging, so students can achieve their best work. They design and build things that address critical global problems.
Lower Lake / Boathouse trail
Lower Lake/Boathouse
Tour stop audio transcript
This is the Lower Lake, one of Sweet Briar's two lakes. Here students swim, canoe, kayak, fish — and learn.
Like many other spots on campus, the lake is part of our living laboratory. Studio art and creative writing students work beside the lake while biology and environmental science students work in the lake. For example, students and faculty study the effect on lake ecosystems of an invasive plant, hydrilla.
Students in the popular Outdoor Program frequently visit the lake — gliding across the water on stand-up paddleboards. The Outdoor Program offers students opportunities to build leadership skills while enjoying nature and having fun. Students hike, rock climb, camp, ski, and even go caving.
Students and alumnae love the boathouse for parties, dances and picnics.
Slave Cemetery trail
Slave Cemetery
Tour stop audio transcript
Sweet Briar's original success as a plantation depended on the work of hundreds of enslaved people. When Indiana Fletcher inherited Sweet Briar from her father in 1858, several dozen African and Native American families labored and lived on the antebellum farm. Some of them are likely buried here – in Sweet Briar's slave cemetery, one of two cemeteries on campus.
Like so many other places on campus, this burial ground is the site for research by faculty and students. Working side by side, history, archeology, and anthropology students identified the cemetery and determined that over 60 people were buried here under hand carved fieldstones.
That research continues.
In 2003, the College rededicated this land in honor of those who labored to build a thriving Sweet Briar plantation; in 2008, members of one of the descendant communities, the Fletcher's, returned to campus to hold their family reunion and honor the memory of the people buried in the plantation burial ground.
Train Station trail
Train Station and Caboose
Tour stop audio transcript
In the early 1900s, students arrived at Sweet Briar by train. They walked through this station and caught a wagon to campus.
Decades ago, the station was moved from the train tracks to campus. Today, the station and caboose belong to the environmental science program. The station holds a classroom and lab, and the caboose is a study place.
Environmental science draws students who are passionate about the natural world and who enjoy problem-solving.
At Sweet Briar, "doing science" is the best way to learn science. Small classes foster hands-on field and lab investigations starting in the first semester. Across campus, endless opportunities abound for fascinating field work.
Butterfly Garden
Tour stop audio transcript
This butterfly garden is important to Sweet Briar biologists, both students and faculty…and to the monarchs that stop here in the fall to fill up on sugar-rich nectar to fuel their long journey to Mexico.
Students do a daily count of the butterflies to monitor population size and investigate research questions.
Even those not studying butterflies love to come here for the view of the mountains and to sit or walk. The best time to see monarchs is on sunny afternoons from mid-September to early October.
June through October, the garden hosts a wide range of other butterflies, including swallowtails, fritillaries, skippers and buckeyes.
Outing Cabin trail
Outing Cabin
Tour stop audio transcript
This is a special, unusual spot on any college campus. Here, we treasure our own cabin in the woods!
Built in the 1930s by students in order to have a peaceful getaway from campus, it has served that purpose ever since. Just like 90 years ago, students hike up the hill to spend time with friends…or alone, to write, think, watch wildlife — or to simply be.
All you have to do is reserve it and it's yours to use for a night, weekend or week.
The cabin is part of the campus living laboratory as well. Environmental science and biology students use it, and creative writing retreats happen here as well.
Path to Riding Center trail
Riding Center
Tour stop audio transcript
The Harriet Howell Rogers Riding Center is a beloved spot on campus.
With 130 acres, this is home to our renowned hunter-jumper program. The center ranks among the best on any college campus. Students board their horses or ride one of the 45 owned by the College.
Our indoor arena is one of the largest on an American college campus. We have three spacious outdoor rings and teaching and schooling fields with natural obstacles. Riders use a covered lunging area.
Students ride our 18 miles of trails and through seemingly endless fields.
Sweet Briar riders win championships, but riders of all levels are valued. From novice to advanced, students learn theory of horse care and riding that stays with them for life!
For students interested in pursuing equine management or teaching and schooling careers, Sweet Briar offers an Equine Studies Certificate.
Art Barn trail
Art Barn
Tour stop audio transcript
We take the arts very seriously at Sweet Briar.
Here, students paint and draw, sculpt, pot and make prints in this forty-nine hundred square foot Art Barn. The building holds 2-D studios and a darkroom and photography studio. The adjacent space houses sculpture, ceramics and a wood shop.
Away from the center of campus, this was once a working dairy farm. It's been converted to a complex of studio spaces that facilitate creativity with original wood, high ceilings and natural light. The Art Barn so inspires students that many come here in the early morning or late night to work.
Across from the main campus is the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts — one of the country's largest artist colonies. Artists in residence spend time with Sweet Briar students, give talks and present their work so the entire Sweet Briar community benefits from our co-location.
Green Village trail
Green Village
Tour stop audio transcript
Green Village is what we call our apartments for upper-class students. These modern, sustainable units were built in response to student requests for on-campus housing different from the residence halls.
With unbeatable views from the porch and patio, each apartment has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, laundry and sitting area. No apartment is complete without an outdoor space, and all these have either a porch or patio.
There are 15 apartments. Green Village can house up to 60 students.
Trail / Sanctuary trail
Trail/Sanctuary
Tour stop audio transcript
This is one stretch of our 18 miles of trails that wind through and around campus. Students walk, run and ride these trails to find balance in mind and spirit.
This trail runs through the Constitution Oaks Nature Sanctuary, one of Sweet Briar's old-growth forest sanctuaries…where trees as old as 250 years are protected from logging and development. When old trees die, they are left to replenish the soil and provide habitat.
Starting in the 1930s, the College began setting land aside for protection and today more than 400 acres are preserved.
Sweet Briar even has biographies of individual trees!
Biology and environmental science students conduct research here — while dance and creative writing students find inspiration for their own work.
