The first integrated coed college in the south is celebrating a milestone.

Berea College in Madison County turns 170 years old this year.

Kentucky Edition spoke with author Gretchen Dykstra about her book, Lessons from the Foothills, Berea College, and its unique role in America, and how the college has a mission to find and educate youth who come from impoverished, rural or minority backgrounds.

There hadn't been anything written comprehensively about modern Berea.

I spent the better part of a decade spending a lot of time on the campus and eastern Kentucky.

Overarching.

I'm struck by how it's maintained its adherence to its historical values, even as it continues to be innovative, and that strikes me as unique and fascinating.

Clearly, free tuition for low income students and their labor program makes it unique in the United States for higher education.

And then when you combine it with the liberal arts and the standards that they require from their extraordinary students, I think you have what many academics see as a special place that has lessons to learn.

Hence the title of the book, Lessons from the Foothills.

I asked myself a lot.

What makes Berea so special?

And I keep coming back to their admissions office and what an extraordinary job they do finding these talented young people, many of whom have gone through weak high schools, have shown perseverance to break the cycle of poverty and have shown themselves to be independent thinkers and curious students.

And I'm amazed at that and how they consistently find these extraordinary students.

Because one of the things that saddened me in the course of writing this book is how many people think that because it's poor students, low income students, the school is in fact easy or weak.

And in fact, I doubt if I could get through Berea.

I found it academically rigorous and very challenging, and I went to many classes.

So that was certainly a pleasant surprise and one that I hope the book can can help to mitigate that impression.

Berea is not woke and there's a lot of talk about woke institutions and what always interests me is that Berea was doing this embracing kinship and embracing smooth understanding between the races and the genders way before that was ever a term or let alone politicized.

They've been doing it since its founding.

I think that it is in many ways profoundly conservative because we're not talking about politics, we're talking about values, and we're talking about their historic values of doing something that was radical then but is no longer radical.

I think most sensible Americans realize that equal opportunity and racial understanding is a is a value we all seek.

The Wall Street Journal ranked the nation's top 500 for 2025, and Berea was 311th on the list in 2024, The Washington Monthly ranked Berea, the number one liberal arts college in the country.