Berry College President Dr. Steve Briggs decided to retire in June 2025 because he wanted “to go out on top.”
Briggs has been Berry’s president since 2006, the second longest tenure of the eight presidents who have served in the college’s 122-year history.
“Things are going really well,” Briggs said during a 90-minute visit in Atlanta on April 5. “The leadership team is in as good a shape as it can be. We have strong board leadership. I think that’s what it means to lead well — knowing when to leave and to leave everything in ship-shape.”
Berry is a treasure among Georgia’s colleges and universities.
It has an amazing history of how a woman, Martha Berry, made sure children of poor families in northwest Georgia could have an education to lead more productive lives. Plus, Berry’s physical setting is striking. It has 27,000 acres of land — the largest contiguous college campus in the world — just north of Rome.
Briggs visited the Berry campus in the fall of 2005 on a “stealth” visit to see if he could envision being president.
“Wow!” was his first impression. “I was taken with the beauty and the opportunity. I knew there were things I could do to improve the college.”
Still, Briggs waited until the last moment that December to become a candidate. By early 2006, he was selected as Berry’s next president.
“Berry College is distinct among American colleges and universities,” Russ Hardin, president of the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, wrote in a text. “For over 100 years, it has stayed true to Martha Berry’s mission to educate the head, the heart and the hands. Steve Briggs has been the perfect leader for Berry. His humility and servant leadership have kept Berry focused on its mission and strengthened the institution. Martha Berry would be proud.”
In fact, at Berry’s last board of trustees meeting, the board voted to highlight its mission in a short, memorable statement: “We educate the head, heart and hands — to inspire leaders of integrity who cultivate thriving communities.”
But Briggs said the focus on head, heart and hands has been part of Berry’s history for 120 years. One of Berry’s unique attributes includes having students work (hands) on campus while going to school.
“Berry’s strength is being a residential campus where you can leverage the impact of living together to create this great head, hearts and hands education,” Briggs said. “When I arrived, we were down to 70 percent of students living on campus. We are now back up to 90 percent with a larger student body. And 85 percent of our students are working on campus as part of the campus work program. That had slipped to under 70 percent.”
Berry’s student body has grown from 1,700 to 2,200 in the 18 years Briggs has been president.
“Independent colleges do not receive an allocation of funds based on students like public institutions do. If you are using your financial resources to offset education, then it makes sense to keep your numbers small,” Briggs explained. “We keep the costs of tuition down by raising money for scholarships and raising money for new buildings.”
During Briggs’ tenure, Berry has opened or renovated a dozen buildings. On March 22, Berry broke ground on the Morgan-Bailey Health Sciences Building, which will be home to Berry’s existing nursing program as well as its new graduate-level physician associate program for 80 PA students and 160 nursing students with a third floor for student housing.
The lead donor for that building was Audrey Morgan, who made a $10 million gift. The Woodruff Foundation made a $5 million gift, and the Atrium Health Floyd-Polk Foundation made a $2 million donation for the health sciences building.
But that was not the first gift Morgan and her late sister Bobbie Bailey have made to Berry. In a telephone interview Monday, Morgan said she and her sister contributed at least $25 million to Berry.
“I have said: ‘When I found Berry, I found home,’” Morgan said.
For the past 20 years, she has been giving to the college — driven not only by the beauty of the campus but by its people — students, faculty and staff. Morgan said Briggs, who she called one of her best friends, checked every box in a wish list for a college president — integrity, vision, communications, humility and moral leadership.
“It’s going to be a tough one,” Morgan said about finding a successor to Briggs. “Steve Briggs is one of the best college presidents you could find. But I do have confidence in the board.”
By the time Briggs steps down as president, the Morgan-Bailey building should be completed. That was one factor he considered in his decision to retire.
“Our endowment is up considerably,” said Briggs, who said that helps keep class sizes small with an average of 18 or 19 students per class. “We live within our means. You have to be financially healthy where you are.”
Unlike many other small independent colleges, Berry is in strong financial shape. It has a total endowment value of close to $1.3 billion. Two-thirds of that endowment is held in trusts for the college by other organizations — the largest one being a trust administered by the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation — part of the Woodruff family of foundations.
Another point of pride for Briggs is how the Berry campus has become much more diverse during his tenure.
“We were 4 percent students of color when I arrived. And now we are approaching 30 percent students of color.,” said Briggs, who added that the campus has always had economic diversity.
“We are a place that is rooted in Christian principles. We value the dignity of an individual’s search for truth tempered with grace and the well-being of our neighbors. It’s an attitude of loving other people and being a good neighbor,” Briggs said. “We want to have vigorous conversations about hard things, but it’s how you do it. We want to be patient. We want to be humble. And let’s be warmhearted. We want to be a model of how you build a community.”
Looking ahead, Briggs said he and his wife Brenda will “have a foot in Rome for the foreseeable future” because his mother lives at the Spires, a retirement community developed on the Berry campus during his tenure. He hopes “to continue to do something purposeful” after he leaves Berry.
But, at 68, Briggs showed no sign of slowing down.
“I’m looking forward to this year ahead because we have a lot to do,” Briggs said. “It will be a splendid year. There’s a lot we can get done in preparation for the future. I’m going to pick up the pace. That’s what you do at the end of a race.”
Already, it has been quite a journey from the time Briggs first visited Berry in 2005 to now.
“I was attracted to Berry by its history and its identity and its potential and promise,” Briggs said. “I think we have been able to embrace the best of Berry and elevate that culture to a new level. It feels pretty great. That was my hope in coming, and this is my hope in leaving — that my successor will take it even further.”
In the interest of full disclosure, Maria Saporta has served on Berry College’s Board of Visitors for a dozen years.
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