Southern Virginia University is a small private college in Buena Vista, Virginia. It has about 1,000 students. It is affiliated with, but not owned by, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The school was founded as a for-profit institution in 1867 as the Bowling Green Female Seminary. At that time "seminary' meant a school for girls or women. In 1900 the school was moved to Buena Vista and renamend Southern Seminary. The short form of "Sem" would be the common name of the college from then on. In 1922 the school became a junior college and was renamed Southern Seminary and Junior College. In 1959 it became a non-profit college under the control of trustees. In 1961 the school ended its high school program and became Southern Seminary Junior College

The financial health of the college began to decline in the 1980s, and by 1996 the school was at the point of closing. Late name changes were to Southern Virginia College for Women in 1990 and simply Southern Virginia College when the school began accepting male students in 1994.

In 1996 the school was sold to a group of LDS businessmen from Virginia and the Washington, DC area, who had the goal of establishing an LDS institution in the eastern United States. The three campus Brigham Young University only has campuses in Utah, Idaho, and Hawaii. This new board reformulated the college into an school founded on the principles of their church. In 2000 the school regained its acreditation and was renamend to its current name.

Unlike the three BYUs, SVU is not the property of the church, and does not receive financial support from it. Rather it answers to its own board of trustees.

Some alumni of Southern Seminary, however, do not consider SVU to be a continuation of their alma mater, and rather consider it to have closed in 1996 and SVU to be a new institution.