Berea College’s Francis and Louise Hutchins Center for International Education fosters understanding of, and respect for, all peoples of the earth.
Our Name
Established in 1998 as the International Center, the Center for International Education (CIE) was dedicated in November 2006 to Francis and Louise Hutchins in recognition of their work in China and America in fostering respectful and mutually beneficial international relations.
Francis S. Hutchins, President of Berea College from 1939-1967, taught in China in the Oberlin/Shansi Program from 1922-1924. He returned to Changsha, China in 1925 to serve as an instructor and representative of the Yale-in-China Mission for the next fourteen years. He returned to the United States in 1939 to lead Berea College through World War II and into the Civil Rights years of the 1960s.
Louise G. Hutchins, born in Changsha, China to Episcopal missionaries, earned her undergraduate degree from Wellesley in 1932, her medical degree from Yale in 1936, and completed her internship in pediatrics at Hunan Hospital in Changsha. She worked with refugees fleeing the Japanese invasion before coming to join her husband in Berea in 1939. She devoted much of her life in Berea to the healthcare of Appalachian women.
