Alice Lloyd College

The mission of Alice Lloyd College is to educate mountain people for positions of leadership by:

• Making an Alice Lloyd College education available to qualified mountain students regardless of their financial situation.
• Offering a high quality academic program, emphasizing the liberal arts.
• Promoting the work ethic through a self-help Student Work Program in which all full-time students participate.
• Providing an atmosphere in which Christian values are maintained, encouraging high personal standards, and the development of character.
• Serving the community and region through appropriate outreach programs which utilize mountain people helping mountain people.
• Assisting deserving students in obtaining advanced study beyond their program at Alice Lloyd.
• Producing leaders for Appalachia who possess high moral and ethical values, an attitude of self-reliance, and a sense of service to others.

Alice Lloyd College is one of the most distinctive liberal arts institutions in the Appalachian region. Alice Lloyd awards tuition guarantees for residents of 108 Central Appalachian counties, regardless of income, who are eligible for admission. The College provides high quality educational opportunities primarily for students with outstanding leadership potential for effective service to the surrounding mountain region regardless of the student’s ability to pay.

ALC’s relatively small size affords the opportunity for faculty and students to know one another, to forge strong bonds between departments and academic programs, and to create an intimate and engaging learning community that few other schools can equal.We hope you’ll join us and find out why Alice Lloyd College is right for you.

Choosing a college is one of the most significant decisions you will ever make. The choices you make today will profoundly affect the decisions you make tomorrow. The things you learn, the way you live and how you lead will also be affected by your decision. That’s a lot of pressure! That’s why Alice Lloyd wants to help you do what is right for your needs … for the rest of your life.

Alice Lloyd College is a small, private, liberal arts college that stresses academic excellence. ALC equips students with a general knowledge of the arts and sciences and, more importantly, a working knowledge of how to make a lasting impact on their community. Alice Lloyd College is unique. The number of graduates who find their place in medicine, business, and law far surpasses those who graduate from most schools of a similar size. Even more impressively, 83% of our graduates who apply to graduate or professional school are accepted. The faculty and staff at Alice Lloyd work hard to create an atmosphere that allows students to look within themselves and find that “special something” that will make a difference.

Faculty members have included graduates of highly regarded institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brigham Young, Penn State, Wake Forest, Ohio State University, the University of Virginia, and the University of North Carolina.Today, the possibilities for self-fulfillment are limitless. There is no way to predict what wonderful things might happen with each new sunrise. Getting started on your future is both intimidating and exhilarating, but discovering ways in which to broaden and brighten tomorrow is why we are here today.

At Alice Lloyd you never know what a day might bring! You could discover new ways to analyze T-Cells in Microbiology or perhaps spend the day teaching Appalachian middle school children how to conjugate verbs. You could then go meet successful people like representatives from the Forcht Group of Kentucky, after they speak in the Estelle Campbell Center for the Arts on the ALC campus. You might want to relax in the indoor pool, or make a new friend at the Student Center, or spend your time with old friends hiking on one of the many wooded trails at ALC. You can learn new job skills in the Alice Lloyd Student Work Program or assist a professor in creating new teaching methods for the future.

From the early days of Caney School, now Alice Lloyd College, The Purpose Road Philosophy was taught by Alice Lloyd and June Buchanan. It was originally created by George Herbert Palmer, a professor at Harvard University. Our founders’ burning desire was that each student would catch a vision of his or her purpose which would eventually manifest itself in world service.

Today, the ideals of The Purpose Road Philosophy permeate the educational process at Alice Lloyd College. All students work either on campus or in community outreach positions off-campus. Good character is emphasized and supported. Even our main street is named Purpose Road; side streets, which include names such as Conscience, Duty, Courage, and Consecration, serve to remind us of the importance of ethical living. A life of service to God and humanity is the desired result of one’s “walk” upon the Purpose Road.

Alice Lloyd College is named for its founder, Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd, who came to the Eastern Kentucky Mountains from her native home in Boston. Early in her career, she was a writer for local newspapers and periodicals. In 1902, Miss Geddes was publisher and editor of The Cambridge Press, the first publication in America with an all-female staff.

Eastern Kentucky was sorely lacking in educational opportunities when Alice Lloyd arrived at Ivis, Kentucky, in 1916.She saw the need for regional uplift and felt that through education, the Appalachian people could have a brighter future.Armed with an invitation from a local resident, she came to Pippa Passes to teach the children. Mrs. Lloyd knew that she was among some of the brightest and best students that could be found anywhere. To ensure that no student would be turned away because of financial difficulty, she instituted a mandatory student work program. Mrs. Lloyd secured the success of her mission through generous financial support of her friends on the east coast, voluntary teachers, and “faith as firm as a rock and aspirations as high as the mountains.”