Matt Anderson
Midway, the storybook-pretty town where railroad tracks run right down the center of Main Street, is home to Midway University, which has undergone huge revisions in its 169-year history. Some of the biggest changes have occurred in just the last five years.
Back in 2013, Midway College—as it was known then—was facing an uncertain future. With its all-female day-student population shrinking to just 266, soaring expenses that outpaced revenue, and an identity problem, the future looked bleak. According to Midway University President Dr. John Marsden, the school had to borrow several million dollars to meet payroll obligations.
But a bigger issue was clouding the school’s future. Marsden said that, although Midway had been created with the principle of having an all-female population, research indicated that only two percent of high school seniors were interested in attending a same-sex college.
Massive changes needed to be made, and the path certainly was going to be bumpy. Marsden credited his knowledgeable team members, who helped him create survival plans for Midway.
“Bold decisions needed to be made by our board of trustees,” he said. “Some of the endeavors were risky, but these choices were pivotal turning points for us.”
Major changes and initiatives were given the green light, and today, the school is on a completely different trajectory.
“When I arrived in 2013, Midway was financially challenged,” Marsden said. “But we have moved beyond that, going from borrowing millions to now having millions in our endowment fund.”
Today, Midway is a co-ed university with more than 1,600 students enrolled in daytime, evening, online and dual-enrollment high school courses.
Katie Morgan, a 22-year-old senior biology major from Georgetown, has seen all the changes on campus during her years there.
“I chose Midway because it was small, so I was concerned about how all these new students would mesh with those of us who were already here,” she said. “It is a lot different now, but it is a more exciting atmosphere with guys and girls interacting. Activities and sporting events have better attendance, but even with the increase, professors still know all the students by name.”
Midway offers undergraduate majors and minors such as business, marketing, sports management, biology, nursing and education—as well as pre-professional majors like pre-med, pre-law and pre-engineering. Graduate degrees in business, nursing and education also are offered.
Aside from the allure of the bucolic and lush, green campus surrounded by stately brick buildings, visitors can be charmed by the sound of an occasional train whistle and the neighs, snorts and whinnies of horses in a nearby barn. Midway is situated on a 200-acre working horse farm, which is incorporated into what might be the school’s best-known major, equine studies.
“Historically, equine has given us a larger footprint,” said Ellen Gregory, vice president of marketing and communications. “For decades, students chose Midway because of the horse program.”
The campus has barns, horse stalls, an indoor riding arena and 70 acres of beautiful pastureland for the 38 horses that live there. Students in this field of study work with many different breeds, learning how to care for the horses and helping manage the farm. Reminders of the equine program and the muddy stables that come with it are apparent all over campus, as each building has a boot brush and scraper just outside the entrance.
Horses, which go hand in hand with Kentucky, are not Midway’s only iconic field of study. The university recently added a minor in bourbon studies. Designed to teach the history and production techniques of Kentucky’s native spirit, the program is a good companion to a business or communications major or a master’s degree in business administration.
“It was formulated around Kentucky tourism and the bourbon industry, which are both large employers in our state,” Gregory said.
Sports at Midway
Going co-educational with the day program in 2016 called for the addition of men’s sports. This process was streamlined with the transfer of more than 100 students from St. Catharine College in Springfield, which closed the same year. The university hired several St. Catharine coaches and encouraged them to keep their sports teams together. Midway also made the transfer process easy by waiving application fees, residency requirements and the minimum number of credits earned on campus, so the former St. Catharine students would graduate on time.
Changes were made quickly to accommodate this influx of students. Classes were added, dorms were converted to co-ed, and professors were hired. The transition was felt at every level, especially in sports.
According to Rusty Kennedy, Midway University athletics director, the school had eight female sports teams in the spring of 2016. By the fall of 2018, the school was home to 20 teams.
With this growth spurt came the growing pains of sharing the gym and campus resources. Midway’s Keeneland barn, where many of the horses reside, also houses a baseball batting cage and all the school’s archery equipment.
Midway is in the construction phase of a new baseball stadium as well as a new recreation building called Hunter Field House, complete with an auxiliary gym, a weight and cardio room, and a gathering space for students. Both are expected to open in the spring of 2020.
Today, Midway boasts more than 400 student athletes, whom Kennedy stresses are students first and athletes second.
“With a 3.12 cumulative GPA, it is obvious they work very hard,” Kennedy said.
The athletics programs have prospered at Midway. In its first year on campus, the men’s baseball team won the conference championship; the women’s golf team won the championship three years in a row—from 2016 to 2018.
Marsden explained that with all these teams comes a new visibility for the university. Larger crowds are attending games, families are traveling to attend events, and siblings are being introduced to the Midway campus.
“We’ve seen a lot of success in our sports, but that is because we have so much to offer,” he said.
How It Began
When the school opened in 1849 as the Kentucky Female Orphan School, it had one teacher and 16 female students.
“Originally, it was more like a high school,” said Ellen Gregory, vice president of marketing and communications. “The goal was to teach orphans so they could become teachers and become self-sufficient.”
Midway was the dream of Dr. L.L. Pinkerton, who was a physician and a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The school evolved into a post-secondary, career-training organization but kept its original name because school administrators felt it appealed to philanthropists’ interests.
The name was changed in 1942 to Midway Junior College, and in 1978, the school added four-year programs and dropped the junior college status. In 2006, online classes were added to the curriculum allowing male enrollment, though the day program remained all female.
Midway has always worked to preserve the past but still make transitions with the times. Luckily, there are reminders to show how far it has come. Pinkerton Hall, which dates back to 1859, is the oldest building on campus. This Greek Revival brick structure housed the entire school at that time and was used as both a classroom building and dorm.
Over the years, Pinkerton Hall has been used for classes and administrative offices, but with the recent influx of students, it is being transformed into a dorm. Modern amenities will be added for the students of today, but right above the back door that overlooks the railroad tracks is a sign reading, “Kentucky Female Orphan School,” which must have welcomed new students to campus when they got off the train more than 150 years ago.