Blue Mountain Christian University

Blue Mountain Christian University (BMCU), formerly Blue Mountain College, is a private four-year Baptist college in Blue Mountain, Mississippi. Founded as a women's college in 1873, the college's board of trustees voted unanimously for the college to go fully coeducational in 2005. The university offers an array of baccalaureate degrees as well as graduate programs. History By 1873, the college was founded as a woman's college by Confederate Brigadier-General Mark Perrin Lowrey, a pastor who was known as "a preacher general" during the war. Blue Mountain Female Institute, as it was called at first, started with 50 students with Lowrey and his two daughters serving as the faculty. In 1877, the college was officially chartered by the State of Mississippi. Lowrey, his sons W. T. and B. G., and grandson Lawrence Lowrey all served as the first four presidents. By 1910, the institution was using the name Blue Mountain Female College. After the sudden death of President Lowrey in 1960, a longtime professor at the school, Dr. Wilfred Tyler, became the first non-Lowrey family president followed by Dr. E. Harold Fisher in 1965. Dr. Bettye Rogers Coward served as the seventh president from 2001 to 2012. Dr. Janice I. Nicholson, a BMC alumna, served as transitional president prior to Dr. Barbara Childers McMillin's becoming the eighth president on August 1, 2012.