Southern Virginia University (SVU) is a private liberal arts college in Buena Vista, Virginia. The college, though not officially affiliated with a particular faith, embraces the values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It was founded in 1867 as a school for girls and is now a private four-year coeducational institution. The Carnegie Classification categorizes it as a very small baccalaureate-only college with an arts & sciences focus. History The school was founded as a for-profit institution in 1867 during Virginia's post-Civil War era when Alice Scott Chandler established the Home School for Girls in Bowling Green, Virginia, later renamed the Bowling Green Female Seminary. In 1883, Edgar H. Rowe purchased the school and operated it with Mrs. Chandler as principal. Dr. Rowe moved the school to Buena Vista in 1900, and changed its name to Southern Seminary. It was located in the splendid Buena Vista Hotel, which had been built 10 years earlier to accommodate the large numbers of land speculators investigating the town's iron ore deposits. The iron boom was short-lived, however, and Rowe purchased the hotel. The original hotel still serves as Main Hall, the university's principal building, and holds a place of distinction on the National Register of Historic Places, on which it is listed as the Southern Seminary Main Building. In 1919, Robert Lee Durham, former dean of Martha Washington College (which merged with Emory & Henry College), bought a half-interest in Southern Seminary and became the resident head of the school. An educator, lawyer, engineer, author and inventor, Durham strengthened the school's academic program. In 1922, Durham's daughter, Margaret, married H. Russell Robey, who purchased Rowe's remaining interest in the school and became its business manager and treasurer. Durham and Robey added college-level courses to the school's curriculum, and the first class of the new junior college program graduated in 1925. The period of greatest physical growth of the school, by then called Southern Seminary and Junior College, occurred during the presidency of Margaret Durham Robey, who succeeded her father upon his retirement in 1942. Facilities for art, early childhood education and home economics were added. In 1959, the Robeys turned over the ownership of the college to a board of trustees and the institution changed from proprietary to nonprofit status. In 1961, the school ceased offering high school courses, and the name of the institution was changed to