The Liberal Arts College|  Historical Sketch of Hendrix College |  Presidents of Hendrix College |  Statement of Purpose |  Accreditations and Memberships |  Correspondence Directory

Hendrix College is a residential, co-educational, liberal arts institution, situated in Conway, Arkansas. Related to the United Methodist Church, Hendrix is nonsectarian in its admission and educational program and provides a vision that is national and international in scope. The College provides educational opportunities consistent both with its traditions and with the demands of cultural relevance in a time of rapid change. Students are challenged to acquire the knowledge and abilities requisite for entry either into further professional studies or into professions directly.

Hendrix is committed to the idea that the educational program of each student should combine areas of common learning with individual design. The curriculum is arranged to assure students the opportunities to gain acquaintance with cultural traditions of the world; to develop undergraduate expertise in a field of concentration; to cultivate skills of communication, deliberation, and analysis; and to study broadly in a variety of areas of knowledge. Each student develops a course of study in consultation with a faculty advisor.

The Hendrix academic program is complemented by creative and performing opportunities, by varsity and intramural athletics, and by a comprehensive co-curricular program including residential life, activities both on-campus and off-campus, career development, and opportunities for personal guidance and religious expression. In both its academic and its co-curricular programs, Hendrix strives to provide students the means to pursue meaningful, enriching, and contributive personal and professional lives.

The Liberal Arts College 

Organized education emerged in antiquity in the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. Drawing on a confluence of prior cultures, itinerant teachers in Greece claimed to teach the skills and capacities necessary for a successful, contributive public life in the city-states. Schools developed around the greatest of these teachers, and the precursors of modern colleges and universities flourished throughout the Greek and Roman worlds. One of these, founded by the Greek philosopher Plato, was called "the Academy," a name we celebrate in every reference to the academic enterprise.

Though the classical tradition withered, the learning of the ancients was preserved by religious institutions and scholars. The world of Islam sustained and extended classical learning and transmitted it to the West. As European civilization grew in sophistication in the later Middle Ages, students and teachers in law, theology, medicine, and the liberal arts banded together into societies. At Bologna, later at Paris, and then at Oxford and Cambridge, these gained papal, imperial, or royal recognition as institutions of learning. Throughout Europe the foundation of education was the seven liberal arts: the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. But uniquely in the English-speaking world, these institutions developed as colleges, residential societies of relatively small size in which teaching and learning scholars combined the advantages of community life with the pursuit of knowledge.

The collegiate ideal has flourished in America. Independent institutions representing a multitude of denominations and ethnic backgrounds established the characteristic diversity of higher learning in America. As in ancient Greece, higher education in this country has provided for individual human flourishing through encouraging a command of the sciences and the humanities while preparing young adults to take an active role in the public life of a participatory society.

We now live in a global community characterized by the interrelation and confluence of many previously insular peoples and cultures. The cultivation of global citizenship—understanding the relation of one’s own nationality, ethnicity, and heritage to a world of increasing diversity—is an appropriate element of liberal arts education. The college that aims to equip its students to cope and flourish in that context undertakes a natural contemporary extension of its tradition.

Implicit in the academic enterprise from its beginning is the conviction that neither individual well-being nor the just society emerges inevitably from human nature. Nor is our nature opposed to these accomplishments. Rather, the premise of the liberal arts college is the idea that only purposeful cultivation in a community of the right sort will result in the emergence of excellence. Such a community is a matter of discernment and design; it carries forward a tradition by understanding its past, broadly conceived, by incorporating and embodying what is worthy of its embrace, and by transforming itself continually in pursuit of the best.

Historical Sketch of Hendrix College 

In 1876 the institution which was to become Hendrix College was established in Altus, Arkansas, by Isham L. Burrow, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (now the United Methodist Church). Central Institute had an enrollment of 20 pupils. Originally a primary school, the institution soon added a secondary and then a collegiate department. In 1881 the name was changed to Central Collegiate Institute.

In 1884 Central Collegiate Institute was purchased by the Methodist Church in Arkansas. Five years later the primary department was discontinued, and the institution was renamed Hendrix College in honor of Bishop Eugene R. Hendrix. It was designed as the "male college" of the Methodist Church, South, in Arkansas, but it continued to accept women students. In 1890 the Board of Trustees moved Hendrix College from Altus to Conway. In 1890 Hendrix had five faculty members and 150 students, including about 25 in the collegiate department. By 1900 Hendrix was cited by the U.S. Office of Education as having higher standards for admission and graduation than any other institution of higher learning in Arkansas. In 1908 the school was accredited as a "Class A" college by the Methodist Church, and two years later it received the first of several substantial financial gifts from the General Education Board of New York (the Rockefeller Foundation).

National academic recognition was achieved with membership in the North Central Association of Colleges in 1924, the first year Arkansas institutions were eligible for membership. International accreditation followed in 1929 with a place on the approved list of the American Association of Universities. The secondary department (Hendrix Academy) was discontinued in 1925, residential facilities for women students were increased, and the student enrollment stabilized at around 325. During the period 1929-33, Hendrix was merged with Henderson-Brown College of Arkadelphia and Galloway Woman’s College of Searcy. When Hendrix celebrated its semi-centennial in 1934, it had firmly established its role as a small, co-educational, undergraduate, residential, liberal arts, church-related institution. Constant institutional advancements led to entry into the Associated Colleges of the South and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, the establishment of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, new residential and academic buildings, and a 35% increase in the number of faculty between 1988 and 2002. Consistently recognized for excellence in undergraduate liberal arts education, Hendrix emerged in the 1990’s as a leader in undergraduate research.

From the foundation of 125 years of excellence in education, Hendrix College moves confidently into the 21st century.

Presidents of Hendrix College

The Statement of Purpose

Hendrix College, a private, undergraduate institution of the liberal arts related to the United Methodist Church, offers distinguished academic programs in a residential, coeducational setting. As a collegiate community, Hendrix is dedicated to the cultivation of whole persons through the transmission of knowledge, the refinement of intellect, the development of character, and the encouragement of a concern for worthy values. In these ways Hendrix prepares its graduates for lives of service and fulfillment in their communities and the world.

Toward the accomplishment of this purpose, the College offers curricular and co-curricular programs affording students the opportunity

• to investigate and appreciate the richly diverse cultural, intellectual, and linguistic traditions shaping the contemporary world;
• to examine critically and understand the intellectual traditions woven into the history of Western thought;
• to develop skill and effectiveness in the use of language, the analysis of information, and the communication of knowledge;
• to explore and connect the content and methods of the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences;
• to participate in depth in a specific field of study, acquiring a body of knowledge appropriate to that discipline, putting to use its methods for the discovery of new knowledge, appreciating its historical development, and grasping its implications for the broader culture.

Hendrix thereby intends to cultivate among students:

• enduring intellectual curiosity and love of knowledge;
• aesthetic sensibilities and delight in beauty;
• powers of ethical deliberation and empathy for others;
• discernment of the social, spiritual, and ecological needs of our time;
• a sense of responsibility for leadership and service in response to those needs; and
• recreational dispositions complementing a full flourishing of the human potential.

Accreditations and Memberships

Hendrix is accredited by

• the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools
  30 N. LaSalle St., Suite 2400, Chicago, IL 60602-2504
  (800) 621-7440
• the University Senate of the United Methodist Church
  P.O. Box 871, 1001 19th Ave. South, Nashville, TN 37202
  (615) 340-7399
• the National Association of Schools of Music
  11250 Roger Bacon Dr., Suite 21, Reston, VA 20190
  (703) 437-0700
• the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
  2010 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20036-1023 (202) 466-7496
• the American Chemical Society 1155 Sixteenth St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 872-4481

It is a member of

• the Associated Colleges of the South
• the College Entrance Examination Board
• the Association of American Colleges and Universities
• the American Council on Education
• the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference
• the Southern University Conference
• the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
• the National Collegiate Athletic Association
• the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
• the Institute of International Education
• the Council of Independent Colleges

Correspondence Directory