History & Mission

Mission Statement

Hollins University is dedicated to academic excellence, creativity, belonging, and preparing students for lives of purpose. Hollins provides an outstanding and academically rigorous undergraduate liberal arts education for women and entrepreneurial and innovative graduate programs for all in a gender-inclusive environment. We lift our eyes, Levavi Oculos, to create a just future as we build on our past.

History

Hollins University is a private university located on a beautiful 475-acre campus in Roanoke, Virginia. Since 1842, people have come to Hollins to be inspired. To celebrate. To be transformed. Located 10 minutes from downtown Roanoke, Classic Revival architecture joins the natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains to create one of the Valley`s most unique gathering places.

Among Hollins’ distinguished alumnae/i are Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and other timeless children’s classics; Ann Compton, former White House correspondent for ABC News and member of the Journalism Hall of Fame; Charlotte Fox, the first American woman to climb three of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks, including Mount Everest; the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale, the first woman to serve as Chaplain of the Day to the U.S. House of Representatives; Ellen Malcolm, founder of EMILY’s List; Sally Mann, named America’s Best Photographer by TIME magazine in 2001; and national amateur golfing champion Carol Semple Thompson. Hollins has also produced four Pulitzer Prize winners: historian Mary Wells Knight Ashworth, and creative writing program graduates Annie Dillard, Henry Taylor, and Natasha Trethewey, a former U.S. Poet Laureate.

Hollins was initially established in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary, a coeducational college. Charles Lewis Cocke, who devoted his life to “the higher education of women in the South” during an era when many women were denied the opportunity to earn a college degree, was named principal and business manager in 1846. Six years later, the male department was eliminated and the school became an institution for women. Cocke went on to earn designation as the school’s founder because the institution would not have survived without his leadership during financial crises, disease epidemics, the Civil War, and other challenges over the course of 55 years.

Numerous others played an important role in Hollins’ institutional history. The school was founded during a time in America when slavery regrettably existed, especially in the South. Men and women worked at Hollins before and during the Civil War as enslaved people. Hollins remains grateful to members of what was known at the time as the Oldfields Community, who, along with its founder, helped Hollins become the institution it is today.