Two named Honorary Alumni

Longtime college friend David McCollum and long-serving English Professor Dr. John Williams were officially named LaGrange College alumni during the Homecoming awards luncheon hosted by the Board of Trustees on Oct. 25. The designations formalize the pair’s strong connections with the college.

McCollum (at left in the photo) earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration from Georgia State University.

He is a certified public and management accountant with 25 years of experience driving organizational success through tracking and analyzing operating results and financial measurements. Currently, McCollum lives in Macon, Georgia, and works as chief financial officer at Mid-State Energy Authority, a provider of natural gas to more than 5,000 customers in six counties.

McCollum enjoys working across all disciplines to encourage greater understanding of financial measurements and to develop tools and information needed to plan, direct and track achievement.

At LaGrange College, he and his wife, Kathy Reese McCollum ’81, M’17, are members of the President’s Circle and the 1831 Lifetime Giving Society. David has been a fixture at college events and a steadfast supporter of the institution. Kathy served as the college’s first female chair of the Board of Trustees from 2022 to 2024.

Williams earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Auburn University and a doctorate in English from Georgia State University.

He came to LaGrange College in 1989 as an English professor, a position he held until his retirement in 2015.

While at LaGrange, Dr. Williams served as chair of the cultural enrichment committee and coordinated the Georgia Author of the Year Awards in 1991 and 1992.

In his retirement, he has been working as an instructor and mentor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Reinhardt University in Waleska, Georgia.

In addition to teaching, Dr. Williams also writes fiction, non-fiction, plays, essays and film scripts. In 2003, he received the Georgia Writers’ Georgia Author of the Year Award for his first novel, “Lake Moon.” His most recent project was co-writing the screenplay for “Fried Chicken Day,” a production filmed in LaGrange. Other publications include “End Times” and “Atlanta Pop in the 50s, 60s and 70s: The Magic of Bill Lowery.”