For more than a century and a half, Alderson Broaddus University has stood watch over the Tygart Valley — preparing physicians, nurses, teachers, scientists, ministers, and changemakers who carry their hilltop conviction into the world.
Whether you have arrived here from down the holler or from across the ocean, you are walking onto a hilltop where teachers know your name, where the line between classroom and laboratory is delightfully thin, and where the question is never simply What will I do for a living? but What life is worth living?
An Alderson Broaddus education is not a transaction. It is a covenant — between a young person and the long history of teachers, ministers, and healers who have stood on this hilltop before them.
From our pioneering Physician Assistant program — the first of its kind in the United States when it was founded in 1968 — to our nationally accredited School of Nursing, our equestrian center on the ridge, our Battler athletics teams, and our beloved Wilcox Chapel where we still gather every Tuesday morning, AB is a place where the practical and the eternal meet.
We are not the largest university in West Virginia. We have never tried to be. But for 155 years, we have been one of its most faithful — and we are just getting started.
The nation's first four-year Physician Assistant program (1968) and the first nursing & radiologic technology programs in West Virginia (1945) all began on this hill.
With a 14:1 student-to-faculty ratio, AB students don't just take classes from professors — they research, publish, and worship alongside them.
Our hilltop campus overlooks Philippi's historic covered bridge and the site of the first land battle of the Civil War. Place shapes purpose here.
Reporting from Burbick Hall, the Pickett Library, the Equestrian Center, the simulation hospital, and the long brick walkways in between.
A senior research team co-authored a peer-reviewed paper on macroinvertebrate diversity in West Virginia headwaters — work that began as a sophomore-year field methods project and ended in the Journal of Freshwater Ecology.
Read the StoryThe Pickett Family Foundation will fund 28 full-tuition awards beginning Fall 2026 for first-generation BSN students.
Sophomore guard Tia Reynolds named tournament MVP as the Battlers earn an automatic NCAA II bid.
Thirty-two students will perform in Vienna, Prague, and Warsaw this June — the choir's first international tour since 2019.
Three-year award supports a study of biodiversity in Appalachian cave ecosystems threatened by climate change.
In 1945, Alderson Broaddus launched the first four-year baccalaureate nursing and the first radiologic technology programs in West Virginia. In 1968, our faculty boldly created the nation's first four-year Physician Assistant program — at a moment when the role of the "PA" barely existed.
Today, the AB School of Health Sciences is a regional powerhouse for primary-care preparation: a 27-month residential MPAS program, a CCNE-accredited BSN, an FNP-track Master of Science in Nursing, an MPH grounded in Appalachian rural health, a CAATE-accredited Master of Athletic Training, and undergraduate tracks in Public Health, Medical Lab Science, and Exercise Science.
From classroom to clinic, lab to library, ridge to riding ring — AB's programs are designed to prepare graduates for purposeful, in-demand careers anchored in rigorous liberal learning.
One of the oldest accredited PA programs in the United States.
B.S.N.CCNE-accredited four-year program with simulation labs and 60+ clinical sites.
Master'sCAATE-accredited entry-level pathway to the AT profession.
B.S.Hands-on undergraduate research from your first semester.
B.S.Hunt seat & stock seat training on a 120-acre working farm.
M.B.A.Online, evening, and accelerated tracks for working professionals.
B.A.Rooted in our American Baptist heritage; open to all.
B.S.Federal & state internships, mock court, and ride-alongs.
M.Ed.WV Principal Certification eligible; cohort model.
B.A.Newspaper, podcasting, public relations, broadcast journalism.
B.S.Field research in the Tygart watershed and Allegheny highlands.
B.S.Operations, marketing, and athletic administration.
On a 120-acre ridge a quarter mile up from Burbick Hall, the AB Equestrian Center has trained generations of riders for IHSA national competition, large-animal veterinary careers, therapeutic riding, and barn management. With 22 stalls, a covered all-weather arena, and a regulation cross-country course, AB's program is one of only a handful of fully integrated equestrian degrees in Appalachia.
For senior Annika Holst — a hunt seat captain bound for veterinary school in Ireland — "the barn became as much my classroom as Burbick Hall ever was."
Inside Equestrian StudiesFrom the first move-in day in August to the bonfire of Homecoming, the spring service trips of March, and the senior walk in May — life at AB unfolds in seasons.
