It was located in the splendid Buena Vista Hotel, which had been built 10 years earlier to accommodate the large numbers of land speculators investigating the town's iron ore deposits.

In 1922, Durham's daughter, Margaret, married H. Russell Robey, who purchased Rowe's remaining interest in the school and became its business manager and treasurer.

Durham and Robey added college-level courses to the school's curriculum, and the first class of the new junior college program graduated in 1925.

The period of greatest physical growth of the school, by then called Southern Seminary and Junior College, occurred during the presidency of Margaret Durham Robey, who succeeded her father upon his retirement in 1942.

[7] In 1959, the Robeys turned over the ownership of the college to a board of trustees and the institution changed from proprietary to nonprofit status.

[7] The academic program was expanded to allow students to begin careers after their two years at the school or to transfer to four-year colleges.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s enrollment began to slip and the college became financially unstable, which led to a loss of regional accreditation in 1996.

In 2000 the school was accepted into pre-accreditation status by the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE), which is separate from accreditation bodies, and was renamed Southern Virginia University in April 2001.

[20] SVU offers several performing arts sections to its students, including its premier choir Chamber Singers, a women's choir (Bella Voce), Men's Chorus, opera workshop, and a contemporary a cappella group Accolade (formerly The Fading Point).

The theatre program has performed The Diary of Anne Frank, The Sound of Music, The Importance of Being Earnest, Seeking Higher Ground, and Beauty and the Beast, among many others.

On December 11, 2019, Southern Virginia announced it would join the USA South Athletic Conference, effective beginning in the 2021–22 academic year.