{ALUMNI}
Crowning achievements
opinions, all of which is helpful in the interview process.”
By the time Chelsea Rick completes her reign as Miss Mississippi 2013, she will have educated thousands of students across the state about a healthy lifestyle, visited with hundreds of patients at Blair E. Batson Children’s Hospital in Jackson, and met countless Mississippians.
competition “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” a song from the
“I speak at almost every appearance, and that’s something
Cadillac GMC in Vicksburg. “I’m on my fifth car,” she said.
I enjoy,” said Rick, B.S. 2012. “It’s very beneficial to me for my future. That’s what this program is about, building skills for the future.” The opportunity to wear the Miss Mississippi crown was an ambitious childhood dream that grew into a goal. “I knew I wanted to be Miss Mississippi before I knew I wanted to be a doctor,” she said. “I always watched the pageant with my mother, and she made it all about the girls and how smart they were and what they were like—and not about the dresses and how they looked. When I got older, I learned it would be a way to gain scholarships to pay for college and a way to meet people and have a voice to make a lasting difference.” For Rick, persistence paid off, and she won the Miss Mississippi crown on her fifth attempt. She represented the state at the 2014 Miss America Competition last September in Atlantic City, N.J. “It was something I’ll never forget,” she said. Rick finished as a Top 15 finalist and also won a lifestyle fitness (swimsuit) preliminary competition. She was named a finalist for the Quality of Life Award thanks to her platform “Full Plates, Healthy States,” which is aimed at fighting hunger in America and providing healthy, nutritious food for those without. She also captured a $5,000 STEM Scholarship that was introduced as part of Miss America’s new STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) platform. “The first thing the panel of judges for the STEM scholarship did was ask me about my honors project at Millsaps,” she said, explaining they were intrigued by her honors project thesis title, “Epigenetic Markers of the Serotonergic System in a Rodent Chronic Stress Model: Examining the Extent of Methylation of 5-HT1A in the Prefrontal Cortex of Stressed and Home Cage
Rick’s only disappointment about the outcome of the Miss America pageant? She didn’t get to sing on the final night of Broadway musical “Showboat” that former Millsaps artist-inresidence James Martin helped her perfect. Since returning from the Miss America pageant, she has traveled 22,000 miles in Mississippi, receiving the use of a new car to drive about every 5,000 miles courtesy of George Carr Buick The Mississippi Academy of Family Physicians’ tobacco-free program (known as “Tar Wars”), the Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program (of which she is a recipient), the Food for Families Food Drive, and the Mississippi Wildlife Federation’s Hunter’s Harvest program that encourages sportsmen and women to donate venison to the Mississippi Food Network are among programs she has promoted. One of Rick’s first appearances was at the Blair E. Batson Children’s Hospital where she had volunteered as a member of the Wellspring Living and Learning Community while a Millsaps student. She now visits the hospital at least once a month. Rick credited a Faith & Work internship at Millsaps College with helping her realize her interest in gerontology. “I enjoyed seeing how the doctor I worked with was driven by compassion for her patients,” she said. While at Millsaps, Rick was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, president of the Student Council for College Advancement, a member of Chi Omega sorority, and a presidential ambassador for the Millsaps Admissions Office. A native of Fulton, Rick has earned a total of $40,000 in scholarships from her competitions. After her reign as Miss Mississippi is up, she plans to return to William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine and resume her studies as a second-year student. Her goal is to become an internal medicine physician specializing in geriatrics. “I’m very interested in quality of life issues, a subject that I studied in a directed studies class about biomedical ethics taught by Dr. Patrick Hopkins when I was at Millsaps,” she said.
Control Rats.” Rick, who earned a B.S. in biology at Millsaps, credits her four years at Millsaps with playing a role in her pageant preparation. “Everything I spoke about was rooted in my experience at Millsaps,” she said. “My experiences there helped me become confident in my intellectual abilities and to reason and form
Millsaps Magazine | Winter 2014
63