PRESIDENT'S
REPORT
2017
120TH ANNIVERSARY On the first Wednesday of September 1897, amid much fanfare and ceremony, the opening exercises for a brand new college were held in downtown Demorest, Georgia, as the new student body—from first graders to college juniors—began their studies. In its first year, the J.S. Green Collegiate Institute (the name was changed to Piedmont College in 1903) enrolled 367 students, an astonishing number given the rural nature of the area and the scant population. Today, just as they did 120 years ago, the students of Piedmont College arrive from all over the world, still carrying that same unquenchable thirst for education. Some are third, even fourth generation Piedmont students. Some are the first in their families to venture beyond high school. But all of them find at Piedmont an experience much like those students of 1897—a small college in which the faculty and students form a community with a rich academic tradition and where anyone with a desire for knowledge is welcome.
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