Berea’s 10th president, Dr. Cheryl L. Nixon, has spent her first year in office in countless conversations. She often reminds stakeholders how the college has long answered some of the most vexing issues facing higher education. Those answers began, of course, with Berea’s 19th-century founding, when it welcomed women and men, Black and White students, living and learning together. That was a brave answer for a divided nation.
Almost 170 years later, Nixon said, “It very much looks like colleges and universities today are in crisis, as some institutions are slashing budgets by cutting majors and staffing. In these situations, there is much gloom and doom—higher ed looks dark. I say, however, we need to look at an institution that has answers, that knows how to offer a bright light of life-changing education, of hope, of possibility.”
Berea continues to provide answers to higher ed that other institutions would do well to follow. Nixon is careful not to dismiss the many challenges to post-secondary education today; rather, she seeks to highlight Berea’s innovative model. And she has good examples to share.
Challenges Facing Higher Education Today
Many say that college is neither affordable nor accessible to students with lower household incomes. Berea College stopped charging tuition in 1892 and serves only students of promise eligible for a Pell Grant. The New York Times’ 2023 College Access Index ranked Berea No. 1 in the nation in access. No other school listed in the ranking was close to the percentage of Pell-eligible students Berea serves.
“I am most proud that Berea is No. 1 at answering these questions and charting a pathway forward for the students who deserve it most,” Nixon said. “Berea is No. 1 at opening a world of ideas and possibilities to students who might have believed that higher ed was not available to them.”
Critics claim that higher education fails to prepare students for the real world. “Berea alumni know better than anyone how important the Labor Program was to prepare them for work beyond Berea,” Nixon said. “All students can get jobs that can complement their academic major, and all get a stipend to offset housing and meal fees.”
Berea is helping students in internships and career development like never before. This summer, 400 students participated in a paid internship of their own design. Some of them will have a permanent job awaiting them at graduation. Career development support is robust, including advising through discernment, money for professional clothing and test preparation, and at least $500 for every graduate to relocate or use for an apartment’s security deposit. “What other college does that for its students?” Nixon asked.
Criticism that the college does not serve diverse students well has been leveled since Berea’s founding. And yet, both before and after the Day Law (the forced segregation of Berea College from 1904-1954), Berea has served students from a variety of places, races, genders and ethnicities. “While other colleges may say they welcome all,” Nixon said, “Berea means it through a deep sense of belonging. Our retention and graduation rates attest to that.”
A Success Because It Is Brave
Throughout her first year at Berea, Nixon often was asked how a school such as Berea has such an inspirational model. For the answer, she points to Berea’s history—what she referred to as “the bold, courageous founding of Berea”—and she emphasized “that Berea is a success because it is a Brave Berea.”
At its founding, Berea tackled not just the most difficult questions in education but the defining question of America itself. “Imagine the audacity,” Nixon said, “both the inspirational force and courage of our founder, an abolitionist preacher whose dream was to educate Black and White together, female and male together, all in a spirit of impartial love and a belief that ‘God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth.’
“Building on that bold vision of equal access to education, let’s jump ahead to the late 1800s, when we instituted our unique tuition and work-program models. Yet again, Brave Berea.”
In the 20th century, the college confirmed its commitment to Appalachia, particularly after Berea’s founding mission of interracial education was prohibited by the Kentucky legislature.
“We see ourselves as truly serving our state and region through that powerful force of educational access—and much more,” Nixon said.
In 2020, Berea provided more than $1 million in flood relief to Eastern Kentucky. Berea’s Grow Appalachia program tackles food insecurity and creates healthy food systems, and the college serves as an anchor institution in the new Association for Teaching Black History in Kentucky.
“Again,” she said, “this is Brave Berea.”
Nixon affirms the college’s Great Commitments. “In the 1960s, as civil rights were being fought for, we were, yes again, Brave Berea, forming the commitments to ensure that the College’s guiding principles would lead to a better world for all,” she said. “They really are our North Star. We refer to them every day and challenge ourselves to put these ideals into action. They keep us honest; they keep us true; they keep us brave.”
Lois Mateus, a decades-long friend of Berea College from her Kentucky art-and-craft marketing work with former First Lady Phyllis George Brown, is an enthusiastic fan of Nixon. “I have had the opportunity to spend some time with Cheryl since she arrived in Berea and have observed her eagerness and openness to engage with students, faculty and administrators, alumni, donors and community.
“It was pleasing to see she has lined the walls of her office with crafts made by students. We chatted of weaving’s warp and weft as metaphor for the strength and support of the work ethic instilled at Berea.
“Education and work experience, connecting vertically for strength and horizontally for collaboration, create the unique tapestry of Cheryl’s Brave Berea.”
Judge B. Wilson II of Versailles has been principal attorney for Berea College for 33 years, the last 23 of which have been spent on campus as general counsel and secretary. “The days of ‘top-down’ policy and decision-making are long gone in the academic community,” Wilson said. “Shared governance and academic freedom demand leaders who can manage conflict and build consensus. Cheryl is a positive thinker. She’s a great listener and assimilator of information and opinions from across Berea’s many constituencies.
“The Berea presidency demands a great deal. Of course, high intelligence, analytical ability and personal integrity are a given. Equally important are large reserves of patience, physical stamina, emotional intelligence and humility in dealing with the competing expectations and interests of multiple stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, townspeople, local, state and federal officeholders and agencies. Cheryl Nixon is the increasingly rare leader who has all these traits.”
Berea can continue to provide solutions to the newest challenges facing society, Nixon stressed. “Berea leads the country in providing access to education and graduating students debt-free,” she explained. “Berea is also known nationally for its innovative teaching—Berea doesn’t just provide access to education, it provides access to exceptional classrooms, where students are encouraged to ask big questions. Our students can tackle the newest issues facing their generation. For example, how do we create new forms of human intelligence in a world of artificial intelligence? How do we create new types of human community and connection when our lives are becoming virtual, dominated by social media?”
Nixon proclaims that Berea has the courage to put new ideas into action today and tomorrow—“connect[ing] innovation to bravery.” That work has been part of her Listening, Learning and Building Community Tour as well as the formulation of a nimble but necessary strategic plan.
“Berea is ready to tackle and lead on the issues facing higher ed,” she said. “In fact, I believe we must lead on these issues—higher ed needs the solutions we have. Berea is ready to take them to the next level, to be inspirational with those solutions, to be brave and courageous with those solutions. Higher ed needs a Brave Berea more than ever. Our students need—and deserve—a Brave Berea more than ever.”
Cheryl Nixon: Kinship and Magic
The 10th president of Berea College, Dr. Cheryl Nixon, has traversed a diverse career path, from being a dishwasher to a college professor, department chair, provost and vice president. Her journey, marked by resilience and adaptability, serves as an inspiration to those who may be finding their own way.
Nixon’s journey was guided by a love for literature that she developed as a child, reading late at night under the covers with a flashlight. This deep-rooted passion for literature, for the magic of entering new worlds through reading, is a connection point to which many can relate.
Nixon’s advisers at Tufts University said she could make a career out of reading by becoming an English professor, a path she had not considered. Not long after, she was at Harvard University, digging out legal records to compare real-world narratives against those presented in 18th-century fiction.
Once Nixon earned her Ph.D. from Harvard, she joined the University of Massachusetts faculty. “I started my career as a teacher, trying to create dynamic classrooms where we could engage in deep conversation,” she said. “That’s where you become a really strong thinker, where you can debate interpretations, listen to other opinions, and change your ideas. You change your thinking—change who you are. That’s the magic of a good classroom.”
Nixon’s leadership skills were put to the test when she joined Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, in 2019. She worked with a team to navigate the uncertain landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic, centering the school’s response around the Navajo concept of k’é, which means kinship. Her ability to lead in challenging times is a testament to her leadership skills.
This experience made Nixon a unique fit for Berea, founded in 1855 upon the biblical notion of “the kinship of all people.” The South’s first interracial and coeducational college still leans on this principle, providing debt-free education to students of all social and economic backgrounds.
Nixon, with her expertise in classroom magic and helping people understand their inherent kinship, is eager to work with the campus to write the college’s next chapter.
Jason L. Miller