Established as a Methodist mission elementary and high school to educate mountain children with a curriculum that emphasized domestic and agricultural science, the school evolved into a junior college and is now a four-year college. John Wesley, Beckham, and Roberts halls, Schoolfield Memorial Chapel, the president's house (later remodeled), and the house to its left were built between 1913 and 1925. The brick Colonial Revival buildings stand on a long, high ridge with the chapel set at a little distance from them. Since the 1960s, the school has greatly expanded. The most eye-catching of the more recent buildings is Vaughn Memorial Chapel and Bell Tower (1968, Wright, Jones and Wilkerson). In the twenty-first century, the school continues to expand, almost explosively. Its new buildings are in a variety of styles but the whole is knit together by the careful use of landscaping and the universal use of brick as a building material.