Lyon College is an independent, residential,
co-educational, undergraduate liberal arts college affiliated with
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Founded in 1872, it is the oldest
independent college in Arkansas. Lyon is a close-knit teaching and
learning community distinguished by the quality of its academic
programs as well as its honor system, innovative residential house
system, and endowed Nichols International Studies program.
US
News and World Report ranks Lyon in the top tier in the
category of national liberal arts colleges. The College also ranks
number 15 on
US News and World Report’s list of “Best
Colleges, Best Values,” in the top 3 percent of
Forbes.com’s list of colleges nationwide, and as a “Best
Southeastern College” by the
Princeton Review.
Academics
A strong liberal arts college, Lyon offers degrees in a variety of
disciplines and provides an unusually strong science and
mathematics program. Many Lyon students are enrolled in
pre-medical, pre-dental, pre-pharmacy, pre-veterinary, and
pre-physical therapy tracks.
Lyon confers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees.
| Bachelor of Arts |
Bachelor of Science |
| Art |
Accounting |
| Biology |
Biochemistry |
| Chemistry |
Biology |
| Business Administration |
Early Childhood/Elementary Education |
| Economics |
Chemistry |
| English |
Individualized Majors |
| History |
| Mathematics |
| Music |
| Political Science |
| Psychology |
| Religion and Philosophy |
| Spanish |
| Theatre |
| Individualized Majors |
|
Faculty
Lyon's faculty members are talented teacher-scholars who excel in
the classroom, in their research programs, and as academic
advisors. The vast majority of Lyon classes are taught by full-time
faculty members, and more than 90% of Lyon faculty have their
terminal degrees (Ph.D. or M.F.A). In a record unmatched by another
college in the nation, Lyon boasts 14 out of the last 20
Carnegie/CASE Arkansas Professors of the Year. With an average
class size of 14 and a student-teacher ratio of 10:1, Lyon students
have unparalleled access to faculty members, many often building
lifelong friendships with their professors.
Students and Student Life
Lyon enrolls approximately 500 students from 21 states and 14
countries. The middle 50% of entering freshmen score between 22 and
27 on the ACT, while 72% rank in the top quartile of their high
school graduating classes. In the fall of 2009, Lyon enrolled the
largest entering class in the school's history with more than 290
new students.
Student activities include more than 40 student clubs and
organizations; five national Greek organizations; an active Campus
Ministry Program; a regulation Disc Golf Course; ready access to
some of the nations best camping, canoeing, caving, and hiking
locations; and a distinctive Scottish Heritage program.
Clubs and Organizations
Campus and Facilities
Lyon's picturesque campus is conveniently located in a secure and
comfortable neighborhood setting. The campus features modern and
attractive facilities such as the state-of-the-art Derby Center for
Science and Mathematics, the black-box Holloway Theatre, and the
Lyon Business and Economics Building (modeled after Harvard
Business School facilities).
Nine student residence halls are clustered into the three "Houses"
that make up the College's residential house system. Academic
buildings and all residence halls have digital key card access for
additional security. The Mabee-Simpson Library contains more than
200,000 media items and provides access to more than 20,000
periodicals.
Recreational facilities include a regulation soccer field, six
lighted tennis courts, the Becknell Gymnasium (featuring a fitness
center and an indoor swimming pool), the Scots Baseball Field, the
Kelley Indoor Baseball Complex, a new women's softball field, a
sand volleyball court, an 18 hole disc golf course, and an
intramural field.
Bryan Lake, located on the southern portion of the campus, features
a walking path and flowering trees.
Information Services and Technology
Laptop computers are provided to all new students, while wireless
internet is available campus-wide. All campus residence halls have
cable TV connections.
Financial Aid, Scholarships, and Costs
Lyon offers an extensive program of merit-based scholarships that
cover up to the direct cost of attendance. Athletic grants-in-aid
are also available as are federal and state need-based and
merit-based financial aid programs. More than 98% of Lyon students
receive some form of financial assistance.
Athletics
Lyon's athletic teams, the Scots (men) and Pipers (women) compete
in the
TranSouth Athletic
Conference, and Lyon is a member of the
National
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). The College
also fields an extensive intramural program.
Teams
History
Origins
When
Batesville lost to Fayetteville
in the bid for the state university in November
1871, Reverend Isaac J. Long and other ministers in the
Arkansas Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in the United States
led the effort to establish a denominational college there. Located
on the eastern edge of town, Arkansas College opened its doors in
September 1872 with Long as president and only one other
college-level faculty member. Typical of nineteenth-century
denominational institutions, Arkansas College maintained a grammar
school (which was phased out in the 1890s) and a secondary academy
(discontinued in the 1920s), and featured a curriculum heavy on
mathematics, the classical languages (
Latin
and
Greek), and religious
instruction.
Originally located on the block now occupied by the First
Presbyterian Church of Batesville, the college remained under the
guidance of the Long family for most of its first four decades;
Isaac J. Long served as president from the college’s founding until
his death in 1891, and his son, Eugene R. Long, served two terms as
president (1891–1895 and 1897–1913). The college was, from its
inception, nonsectarian in philosophy and coeducational. Arkansas
College’s first class of graduates in 1876 included three young
women who became the state’s first females to receive bachelor’s
degrees.
The lack
of access to secondary education in north central Arkansas
and the
state’s meager Presbyterian population kept Arkansas College
small. Before
World War I,
college-level enrollment rarely exceeded 100, and there were no
more than five full-time faculty, including the president. A
post-war boom expanded enrollment to 200 students by the mid-1920s,
however, and the college, whose tiny four-building campus had been
surrounded by residences, looked to expand its physical plant by
purchasing land in the East End Heights section of town, known
after the college’s move as the “middle campus.” The post–World War
I decade also witnessed modernization of the curriculum, including
a nearly wholesale abandonment of the traditional classical
curriculum, the adoption of semester “hours” and electives, and the
introduction of
fraternities and
sororities, which quickly replaced the
literary societies that had played an integral role in student life
since the 1880s.
But the boom years of the 1920s faded quickly. The school’s first
large fundraising drive because of the flood of 1927, and Arkansas
and Arkansas College sank into depression. By the early 1930s, the
very survival of the college was in jeopardy; on two occasions the
Synod of Arkansas came within a few votes of closing the school.
Only the tireless efforts of a group of Batesville supporters and
alumni prevented the Synod’s ax from falling, and only the timely
generosity of a few Arkansas Presbyterian families sustained the
school through the Depression.
World War II decimated the
institution’s already small enrollment—the class of 1944 consisted
of only two students—but Arkansas College received a new lease on
life after the war as GIs filled classrooms into the early 1950s.
In 1952, Dr. Paul M. McCain succeeded Reverend John D. Spragins as
president of the college. The arrival of McCain, the first Arkansas
College president with a university-earned Ph.D., marked a new era
in the institution’s history, and his subsequent seventeen-year
tenure witnessed a constant stream of change and progress.
1950 - present
The first and most obvious change was the move to a new campus. By
the early 1950s, the college was, in effect, maintaining three
small campuses spread over a one-mile (1.6 km) stretch—the
original block that contained all academic facilities; the “middle
campus” consisting of a dormitory, gymnasium, baseball field, and a
couple of college-owned residences; and the old Masonic Home for
Orphans on the eastern edge of town, a plot with three large brick
buildings that the college had begun renting as dormitories shortly
after World War II. Looking to consolidate the small college’s
far-flung activities and provide room for future growth, McCain
oversaw the move to the Masonic home property, site of the current
campus. The next decade and a half witnessed a frenzy of activity
at Arkansas College—accreditation by the North Central Association
in 1959, steady physical expansion during the 1960s, and
demographic alteration of the student body through
desegregation and heavy recruitment in the
northeastern United States, where baby boomers threatened to
overcrowd college classrooms in their own region.
The 1970s and 1980s brought further change as president Dan C. West
oversaw the implementation of significant curricular reforms
(including the adoption of a new core curriculum and the addition
of many new non-traditional majors), the introduction of innovative
fundraising techniques (including the creation of the college’s own
for-profit development corporation), the establishment of an
international studies program funded by a gift from former board of
trustees president Shuford Nichols, and the development of the
Scottish heritage program, which had come to be a defining symbol
of the college by the twenty-first century. The bequest of more
than $14 million by Jean Brown of Hot Springs in 1981—at the time
the largest single gift to an institution of higher learning in
Arkansas history—launched a drive that catapulted the college into
the ranks of the nation’s best-endowed small colleges by the
mid-1980s and paved the way for a dramatic expansion of scholarship
funds and endowed faculty positions.
In the 1990s, president John V. Griffith utilized this momentum to
place the college on the path to distinction while returning it to
its more purely liberal arts roots.
Among the innovations and changes of the
decade were the implementation of an honor system and the
development of a residential “house system.” In 1994, the board of
trustees voted to change the name of Arkansas College to Lyon
College, in honor of the half-century of service and support of
former board president Frank Lyon Sr. of Little
Rock
. Walter Roettger was president from 1999 to
2009, and Donald Weatherman assumed the presidency in the summer of
2009.
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