Fall-Winter 2010 Millsaps Magazine

FALL-WINTER 2010

From the President “A Community of Scholars in Pursuit of Excellence.” This was the title of my opening convocation address in August. I chose these words because they embody the meaningful legacy and anticipate the promising future of Millsaps College.

All who know our college know Millsaps to be a place where close and enduring relationships are formed—relationships that center upon our core educational mission and involve everyone who comprises this scholarly community.

All who know Millsaps also know that excellence is an attribute historically associated with the College, and it remains our touchstone.The subject of excellence comes up often in my conversations with faculty and staff on campus, and it has been an inspiring refrain as I’ve traveled about the country, talking with alumni and friends about their Millsaps experience.

Within the pages of this issue of the Millsaps Magazine you will find examples of excellence that abound in the lives of our people, and you will read testimony to the high achievement associated with the College and our liberal arts tradition. We have included the remarks of my friend, Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, who spoke about excellence and the liberal arts during the inauguration ceremony in October. Julian Murchison, president of the Faculty Council, gives readers faculty insight into the continuous pursuit of academic excellence.

Stories of students, faculty, staff, and alumni illustrate the point best.Those stories you will find within, from a feature about Keck Fellows who work as research assistants in theYucatán jungle to a faculty-student collaboration that teaches conflict resolution at the Boys and Girls Club in Jackson. You will also learn about the teaching and scholarly accomplishments of our faculty, the extension of our educational aspirations into the public schools of our community, and the high expectations of our student athletes. And, you will read about the pursuit of excellence in the lives of our alumni, from a recent Fulbright Fellow to a world-renowned quantum chemist to a highly acclaimed architect and historical preservationist.

It is fitting that this edition of the magazine includes the annual Honor Roll of Donors.To all who made gifts to the College last year I offer my sincere thanks. While the positive features of the Millsaps experience are legion, our financial position needs reinforcement.Thus, your support is vitally important to sustaining and advancing excellence in the future.

The past and present chapters of the Millsaps story provide a solid foundation for the future.

But, as I stated in my inaugural address, the next chapter is unwritten and every person who loves the College has a role in the narrative to come. Ultimately, our success as a community of scholars in pursuit of excellence depends on the support of all and will be judged by how well we educate our students in the liberal arts tradition—how well we do in transforming hearts and minds in ways that will lead to good and meaningful lives.

Yours sincerely,

In This Issue f e a t u r e

In pursuit of excellence

32

College focuses on virtues of liberal arts while inaugurating new leader

MILLSAPS MAGAZINE f a l l -w i n t e r 2 0 1 0 Executive Editor Patti P. Wade d i r e c t or o f c om m u n i c at i on s and marketing Design Kelley Matthews Publications Manager Nell Luter Floyd

d e p a r t m e n t s On Campus 2 Trustee Annual Fund Challenge under way 7 New members join the board of trustees 9 Student groups adopt Brown Elementary Fine Arts 19 Pop King to be remembered at concert 20 Extravoixganza! celebrates vocal arts Faculty Chat 21 Community of scholars pursue excellence Faculty & Staff 22 Pre-health director joins faculty 26 Campus Community Athletics 42 Saints victory celebrated 44 Scholar-athletes exemplify excellence

Major Notes 48 Architect keeps past alive 55 Classnotes 61 In Memoriam Parting Word 68 Faculty and friends tie family to Millsaps

42 c ov e r: d r. e d c ol l i n s, b. a . 1 9 5 2 , p r e s i d e n t o f m i l l s a p s f rom 1 9 7 0 - 7 8 , p r e s e n t s t h e m e d a l l i on o f o f f i c e t o d r. ro b p e a r i g e n. c ov e r p h ot o b y r i c k g u y / t h e

clarion-ledger

Contributing Editors Jason Bronson, B.A. 2004 Lucy Molinaro, B.A. 1994 Kara Givens Paulk Student Assistants Allison Montgomery, 2012 Lauren Williams, 2012 Contributing Photographers Greg Campbell Frank Ezelle, B.A. 1973 Peggy Hampton Ron May Administrative Officers Dr. Robert W. Pearigen president Dr. David C. Davis i n t e r i m d e a n o f t h e c ol l e g e Louise Burney v i c e p r e s i d e n t f or f i n a n c e Dr. R. Brit Katz v i c e p r e s i d e n t f or s t u d e n t l i f e and dean of students Dr. Charles R. Lewis vice president f or i n s t i t u t i ona l a dva n c e m e n t

m i l l s a p s m ag a z i n e i s p u b l i s h e d b y m i l l s a p s c ol l e g e, 1 7 0 1 nort h s tat e s t r e e t, jac k s on, m s 3 9 2 1 0 - 0 0 0 1 , f or d i s t r i b u t i on t o a l u m n i , pa r e n t s o f s t u d e n t s, a n d f r i e n d s o f t h e c ol l e g e. p l e a s e s e n d a l u m n i u p d at e s a n d a d d r e s s c or r e c t i on s t o m i l l s a p s m ag a z i n e, c a r e o f t h e a b ov e a d d r e s s. you c a n r e ac h u s at 6 0 1 - 9 7 4 - 1 0 3 3 , b y f a x at 6 0 1 - 9 7 4 - 1 4 5 6 , or b y e m a i l at c om m u n i c at i on s @ m i l l s a p s. e d u. v i s i t w w w. m i l l s a p s. e d u f or t h e on l i n e m ag a z i n e. c or r e c t i on s : C h a r l e s Wa l l a c e , C l a s s o f 19 61, o f Po r t R i c h e y, F l a . , l e t u s k n o w t h a t h i s f a t h e r, E l b e r t Wa l l a c e , w a s n e v e r a s t u d e n t a t M i l l s a p s .

H e r e c e i v e d a b a c h e l o r ’s d e g r e e f r o m B i r m i n g h a m S o u t h e r n a n d m a s t e r ’s a n d P h . D d e g r e e s f r o m D u k e U n i v e r s i t y. P r e s i d e n t M a r i o n S m i t h b r o u g h t h i m t o M i l l s a p s i n 19 3 9 t o e s t a b l i s h a n economics depar tment, which he did.

C l y d e M a t h e w s , 19 6 4 , i n f o r m e d u s t h a t h e s e r v e d a s a s t u d e n t a s s i s t a n t t o D r. B e n j a m i n G rav e s a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f M i s s i s s i p p i d u r i n g 19 6 4 - 19 6 5 w h e n G r a v e s w a s c h a i r o f m a r k e t i n g.

OnCampus i n

t h e

s p o t l i g h t

New board of trustees chair leads creation of annual fund challenge Tom Fowlkes, B.A. 1965, of Bristol, Va.,

is the new chair of the Millsaps College Board of Trustees. He succeeds Maurice H. Hall Jr., B.A. 1967, of Meridian, chair since 2002.

With leadership from Fowlkes, the trustees have committed to additional personal gifts totaling $500,000 to create the Trustee Annual Fund Challenge.

It challenges alumni and friends to double last year’s annual fund total of $750,000 as well as double alumni participation in giving. If successful, the Trustee Challenge will result in an annual fund this fiscal year of $1.5 million and an alumni giving rate of 44 percent.

“This is an extraordinarily generous commitment and a bold challenge offered by our trustees,” President Rob Pearigen said. “By meeting this challenge, we will boost our alumni giving level closer to where it should be, and we’ll be able to fund several important initiatives related to academic excellence and campus enhancement.”

Fowlkes has served as treasurer of the board and as chair of the 2009 presidential search committee. He has a law degree from the University of Virginia. He is active in business, law, and higher education, having served most recently as vice

2

millsaps magazine

president of institutional advancement and visiting associate professor at Emory and Henry College in Virginia.

“Tom Fowlkes offers demonstrated leadership in higher education and a passionate devotion to the College,” Pearigen said. “I look forward to working with Tom as we begin the next chapter of Millsaps College, with its past and present providing a firm foundation and the upcoming chapter unwritten and promising. Ultimately, our success as a community of scholars in pursuit of excellence is highly influenced by the support and leadership of our trustees.”

Fowlkes recognized the leadership provided by Hall. “We commend Maurice Hall for his excellent leadership and thank him for his many years of dedicated service to Millsaps College,” Fowlkes said. “In addition to his role as chair, he has led numerous board committees, including student affairs, development, and strategic planning. He has made a lasting impact on the college with his insight, attention to detail, and generosity.” Hall will continue to serve as a trustee.

Other officers of the board include Hope Morgan Ward, of Jackson, bishop of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church, vice chair; Jay Lindsey, of New York, treasurer; and Toddy Sanders, B.S. 1965, of Jackson, secretary.

Serving as committee chairs for this year are the Rev. Luther Ott, B.A. 1971, of Jackson, academic affairs; Murray Underwood, B.A. 1963, of Jackson, audit; Richard Hickson, of Jackson, finance and campus oversight; Eason Leake, B.A. 1968, of Jackson, institutional advancement; Bud Robinson, of Jackson, investment; Hal Malchow, B.S. 1973, of Washington, D.C., marketing and enrollment; Dan Bowling, B.A. 1977, of Pensacola, Fla., student life; and Cooper Morrison, B.A. 1978, of Jackson, trustee nomination and evaluation.

—Patti P. Wade

Philosophy, English departments have new academic chairs The two Millsaps College professors have much in common: A stellar work ethic.

Proven devotion to students. Leaders in and out of the classroom.

They also share the distinction of being named two of the College’s newest academic chairs, thanks to generous donors.

Dr. Steven Smith, professor of philosophy and religion, has been appointed the first holder of the Jennie Carlisle Golding Chair in Philosophy.

His colleague, Dr. Greg Miller, professor of English, has been appointed the first holder of the Janice Trimble Chair in English.

“In their careers at Millsaps, Steve and

Greg have compiled remarkable records of achievement as teachers, scholars, and leaders,” said Dr. David C. Davis, interim vice president and dean of the College.

“They have consistently exceeded the high standards the College sets for full professors, and not surprisingly have earned many commendations in teaching, scholarship, and service.”

The chairs are intended to recognize and reward faculty members in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of English who are full professors and who have consistently exceeded the standards of full professors.

Those standards include outstanding teaching; distinguished faculty leadership and devoted service to students, the faculty, and the College; and mature scholarship in the individual’s subject area or widely acclaimed accomplishments in the creative arts.

Appointment to each chair is for a fiveyear renewable term.

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

The Jennie Carlisle Golding Chair in Philosophy

Jack Golding of Gainesville, Fla., established the Jennie Carlisle Golding Chair in Philosophy with a million-dollar gift in memory of his wife, a supporter of education and charitable giving who died in April 2008.

Jack Golding said he chose to endow the chair in his wife’s memory because she valued education, even though she did not attend college. “She was always reading and learning things, and as such, she was always looking for a chance to learn. She felt education for young folks was very important,” he said.

Jack Golding attended Georgia Tech through the Navy V-12 program. He

Sculpture enhances Nicholson Garden Polly Dement, B.A. 1967, right, and her Millsaps roommate, Jean Nicholson Medley, B.A. 1967, admire the latest addition to the Nicholson Garden that is located between the Christian Center and Murrah Hall. Dement and John Mayer donated the sculpture “Southern Finding” in memory of Jim Dement, Polly’s brother, and her parents Pauline and Jimmy Dement, both of whom delighted in their roles as engaged Millsaps parents.

The idea to honor her family with a sculpture in the Nicholson Garden came from Dement’s conversations with Medley, who with her sisters created the garden to honor their parents.

Nationally recognized sculptor Glenn Zweygardt created the sculpture named “Southern Findings” and installed it in early August on campus. Zweygardt, emeritus professor of sculpture at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, transformed his “southern findings,” a Florida palm tree husk that dropped into his path on a walk, into a four-foot cast bronze and grey granite sculpture with a stainless steel circle that, according to Zweygardt, “represents the eternal seed in all of us.”

Sandra Murchison, chair of the art department at Millsaps, received her bachelor of fine arts from Alfred University while Zweygardt was on the faculty. Murchison commented, “It is essential at a liberal arts college to have public works of art which engage the whole community in contemplative, aesthetic moments. It is a treat for our students, staff, and faculty alike to be able to pass through the Nicholson Garden and see the ever changing flowering plants amongst timeless sculpture.”

fall–winter 2010

3

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

acquired his master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis while working for McDonnell Aircraft. He helped develop the Tomahawk cruise missile system and Harpoon missile system.

While living in St. Louis, he met and married Jennie Carlisle. Her early studies came by way of secretarial school where she was an excellent student. She attended college classes in carefully selected subjects like many fellow students who followed the same path of education in the 1940s.

Jack Golding became involved in philanthropy at Millsaps shortly after the end of World War II when his father became vice president of the College.

Jack Golding worked on the “Millions for the Master” campaign, a combined fund raising effort for Millsaps and the Methodist Church.

The Goldings established a scholarship to honor his father and later renamed it to honor both of his parents.

Jack and Jennie Golding’s roots run deep at Millsaps College and date to the late 1800s. Sullivan-Harrell Hall is named for John Magruder Sullivan, who was Jack Golding’s uncle. John Magruder and Pattie Sullivan had five children: Pattie, Sue Beth, Carruthers, Eleanor Gene, and Willie Jefferson, all of whom attended Millsaps.

Pattie Magruder, Jack Golding’s mother, married Millsaps alumnus Nathaniel Jackson Golding Sr., who served as a member of the Millsaps College Board of Trustees. Pattie Magruder and Nathaniel Golding had three children, one of whom, Pattie, attended Millsaps.

Smith, the author of five books, received the Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher Award in 2003 and the Millsaps Distinguished Professor of the Year Award in 1994. He has served as chair of both the religious studies and philosophy departments and director of the Heritage Program. He has a doctorate in religion from Duke University, a master’s degree in religion from Vanderbilt University, and a bachelor’s degree in religion from Florida State University.

4

millsaps magazine

The Janice Trimble Chair in English Janice Trimble,

B.A. 1943, an honorary trustee of the College and a member of the Founders Society, earned a degree in English from Millsaps. She entered Millsaps as a freshman in 1939 and roomed with her mother, Celia Brevard Trimble, B.A. 1940. Her mother was a widow at age 34 and didn’t want to be alone when her daughter left for college.

Janice Trimble earned a master’s in English language and literature at the University of Chicago in 1946. At Millsaps, she was secretary of Phi Mu sorority, Panhellenic president, a majorette, and copy editor for the Purple & White. She received the Bourgeois Medal, the Clark Essay Medal, and the Founders' Medal. She was in Sigma Lambda Women’s Leadership Honorary. She worked at the Home Study program for the University of Illinois for 11 years, and then spent 10 years at the LaSalle Extension University.

Janice Trimble’s family members who have graduated from Millsaps include her first cousin, E.B. Antley, B.A. 1955; and second cousins, Warren Trimble Burns Jr., B.B.A. 1989, and Dr. Leigh-Ann BurnsNaas, B.S. 1986.

Miller, the author of five books, was the Mississippi Professor of the Year in 2003 as awarded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Millsaps Distinguished Professor of the Year in 2002, and the Humanities Council Teacher of the Year in 1998. He has served as chair of the English Department and president of the Faculty Council. He has a doctorate in English from the University of California at Berkeley, a master's in English and creative writing from Stanford, and a bachelor's in French literature and political science from Vanderbilt University.

—Nell Luter Floyd

Millsaps offers semester in Yucatán for first time When the spring 2011 semester starts in January, some students and professors will be missing. They’ll miss basketball games and the start of baseball season. They’ll miss the azaleas blooming on campus and the crawfish at Major Madness.

But what they’ll experience is a first for Millsaps students—a complete semester studying in Yucatán.

“We’ve long dreamed of offering our own program in Mexico,” said Dr. Eric Griffin, associate professor of English and director of the Latin American Studies Program.

The College currently offers summer and winter intersession programs in nearly 20 countries. “If there’s one thing that a student should do during his or her college

USA Today readers chat on-line with Bey Recent discoveries by Dr. George Bey, Millsaps professor of anthropology and Chisholm Chair in Arts and Sciences, are rewriting Mayan history in northern Yucatán, and USA Today took notice.

Dan Vergano, USA Today science reporter, wrote a cover story that appeared in the Aug. 26 USA Today Life Section about Bey’s research into why the ancient Maya fled Kiuic, nestled in the Puuc foothills of Yucatán, around A.D. 880.

Bey participated in a first for the College: a USA Today online chat. The chat attracted 3,200 participants, editors filtered through 100 questions, and Bey answered 28 of them. “They said that usually the guest only answers about 10,” Bey said. “I said, ‘You told me to write really fast, so that is what I did.’ I typed really fast and didn't stop for the whole time.”

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

t

Yucatán site of continuing legal education course offered by Else School Millsaps College’s Else School of Management is offering 12 hours of continuing legal education credit in litigation practice, substantive law updates, and contemporary practice issues in a unique environment March 30-April 3, 2011. Millsaps’ facilities in the state of Yucatán, Mexico, will be the program base.

The program will begin in the Else School of Management’s Center for Business and Culture in Mérida, Mexico, a city dating back to the early 1540’s.

The environmental law update is planned during a trip to Kaxil Kiuic, Millsaps’ bio-cultural reserve in the Puuc hills of Yucatán. Several activities and excursions are planned for the trip.

Featured speakers are Dr. David Culpepper, B.S. 1980 and M.B.A. 1984, professor of accounting at Millsaps, Contemporary Issues in Business Valuations and Losses, an Expert’s Perspective; Dr. Blakely Fox Fender, B.A. 1992, associate professor of economics, Contemporary Issues in Valuations of Personal Injuries and Wrongful Death, an Expert’s Perspective; Millsaps Adjunct Professor John A. Brunini, Environmental Law Update: The Latest Environmental Issues and Hot Topics; Mississippi State University Professor Whit Waide, B.S. 1996, Constitutional Law Update: The Latest Constitutional Law Issues Affecting Federal and State Practice; Mississippi College School of Law Professor Mary L. Purvis, The Millennium Lawyer: How Litigation and Your Practice is Affected by a New Generation of Lawyers; the Rev. Luther S. Ott, B.A. 1971, a former lawyer, Life and Practice: Maintaining a Healthy Balance of Life and Law Practice; Jackson lawyer P. Ryan Beckett, B.S. 1996, program moderator.

Cost is $500 for 12 hours of CLE credit plus airfare, accommodations, and food. To register, e-mail Harvey Fiser at fiserhl@millsaps.edu or Ryan Beckett at ryan.beckett@butlersnow.com.

years, it’s take advantage of the opportunity to study abroad. It will never be this easy to arrange this kind of trip again. Even if you had the money and the time and an experienced travel agent, you couldn’t do it like we can do it,” Griffin said. “This semester-long program promises to up the ante on the experience.”

During the spring semester, students will take two semester hours of Spanish at the Centro de Idiomas del Sureste in Merida and four Millsaps faculty-led classes: South of the Border: Visions of Mexico in Anglo-American Literature, Film, and Popular Song; Colonial Yucatán and the Atlantic World; Reading the Maya Ruins: Building Form, Function, and Meaning; and Contemporary Culture and

Environment in the Yucatán.

Unlike a regular semester at Millsaps, the classes will be taught in blocks, with each lasting approximately three weeks.

Classes will begin in Merida at the Else School’s Center for Business and Culture, where students will experience modern Mexico in a safe, urban environment. The next six weeks will be spent in Oxcutzkab, a medium-sized market town and agricultural center. A week-long trip to the Maya Riviera is also planned for students to see the impact of tourism in the region.

“All of this added together is a comprehensive immersion course unlike any I’m aware of, anywhere,” Griffin said.

—Kara Givens Paulk

New Millsaps major explores brain, human behavior links Millsaps College senior Lauren Vucovich wants to know: Just how does the brain drive human behavior?

That’s why Vucovich is interested in delving into Millsaps’ new undergraduate major or minor in neuroscience and cognitive behavior.

“As a student working toward graduate school, the opportunity to take classes within the Neuroscience and Cognitive Studies Program allows me to expand and

fall–winter 2010

5

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s We’d like to thank those who have already made donations to the Brooking Endowment for Economics Beyond the Classroom. The gift categories honor the signature clothing of Carl Brooking, emeritus professor of economics and quantitative management.

vary my classes to specifically fit my needs as I decide what I want to pursue in the future,” Vucovich said.

Millsaps is the first institution of higher learning in the state to offer the major, which incorporates classes from various departments, including: biology, psychology, philosophy, and chemistry, in order to give students a broad range of perspectives.

“This new degree offers students the opportunity to study and integrate a variety of disciplines, which will lead them to a greater understanding of how the brain and human behavior interact,” said Dr. Melissa Lea, assistant professor of psychology and director of the Neuroscience and Cognitive Studies Program. “Neuroscience is a growing field, and the study of neuroscience can enhance a student’s medical school application.”

The major is a valuable option for students interested in pursuing a medical degree in neurology or a doctorate in neuroscience and/or cognitive science.

Within the major, students must complete four courses in one of two specializations: physiology and biochemistry, or behavioral and theoretical.

The physiology and biochemistry specialization includes courses such as neural anatomy and physiology, molecular cell biology, and biochemistry. The behavioral and theoretical specialization includes courses such as biomedical ethics, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioral medicine. A senior seminar also is required.

Millsaps junior Ganesh Swamy is among those exploring a major in the field.

“I’m excited about the new NCS program, because I’ve always wanted to learn more about the brain and the nervous system in general,” he said. “I believe a major in this program will allow me to pursue my interests and possibly a career in this field.”

—Kara Givens Paulk

6

millsaps magazine

Endowment boosts opportunities for business students Sometimes, it’s the extra stuff that makes a difference. It’s the experiences that aren’t from a book or lecture, but come from suddenly finding yourself in the center of the place you’ve been reading about — and it’s just as you imagined it.

That’s the kind of experience the Brooking Endowment for Economics Beyond the Classroom recently made possible for 18 Millsaps College students in the Else School of Management. Dean Howard McMillan, Millsaps Professor of Accounting Dr. Kim Burke, and Millsaps Associate Professors of Economics Dr. Pat Taylor and Dr. Blakely Fox Fender, B.A. 1992, accompanied the students on a trip to Washington, D.C. They met some of the country’s most influential decision-makers, visited the Federal Reserve Building, and learned more about banking.

Longtime U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R.-Miss., spent almost an hour with the students, answering questions on topics ranging from congressional voting procedures to the economic outlook in Mississippi. The Millsaps group also met with Diane Casey-Landry, American Bankers Association chief operating officer; Jim Chessen, ABA chief economist; and Wayne Abernathy, ABA executive vice president for financial institutions policy and regulatory affairs. Millsaps graduates Stephen Crochet, B.A.1997, who works in the ABA regulatory affairs division, and Ryan Zagone, B.B.A. 2008, who works in the economic policy and research division, sat in on the discussion.

The group had its own meeting with Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh.

Warsh shared his concerns about the nation’s current economic crisis, how it started, what the Fed is doing to correct it, and how it affects the geopolitical landscape.

The Brooking Endowment for Economics Beyond the Classroom was

Cowboy Boots Level $5,000 or more Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Ron and Blakely Fender Matt and Kelly Kaye John Pigott Dr. and Mrs. Billy Walker

White Button-down Level $2,500-$4,999 Ray and Monica Harrigill Mark and Lisa Ricketts

Straight-leg Jeans Level $1,000-$2,499 David and Anne Culpepper Doug and Gretchen Folk John and Marion Fox Seth R. Gouguet Jay Love Howard and Mary Eliza McMillan Cynthia and Hugh Parker Tate and Elee Reeves Kevin and Linda Kay Russell Heymoore and Kathleen Schettler Dek Terrell

These figures reflect gifts in named categories made by Sept. 24, 2010.

established in June 2009 to honor Dr. Carl Brooking, B.S. 1971, who retired after 28 years of teaching economics in the Else School. Some of Brooking’s former students took the lead in raising funds to establish the endowment, and more than $100,000 in gifts and pledges have been raised. The goal is to raise $400,000.

The Brooking Endowment supports trips to business centers, helps provide lecturers in economics, supports student competitions, and makes possible workshops led by non-faculty experts.

The Else School is known for combining a Millsaps liberal arts education with progressive business education. This unique combination educates a student for a meaningful business career.

McMillan said trips to major business centers broaden students’ perspectives, make them more comfortable visiting

big cities, and introduce them to some of the business world’s leaders, such as Federal Reserve governors, regulatory supervisors and agency heads, political leaders, and opinion shapers. “They have the opportunity to see that what they are learning has real-world application and practicality. They also have the opportunity to hear from senior executives and people in the early stages of their careers about how they have achieved their levels of success.”

The trips usually have networking opportunities, which sometimes lead to students getting jobs. Zagone knows all about it. A meeting with the American Bankers Association while on a trip with Millsaps students and professors sparked Zagone’s interest and led him to pursue a position in the ABA’s policy research group.

His job has given him a front-row seat to the financial and economic developments of the last three years.

“Through the excursions, I was able to see the practical application of my economics degree, to establish contacts outside of Millsaps’ immediate reach, and to develop better clarity in my job search, all with the Millsaps professors who understood my interest and were invested in my success,” said Zagone. “Through the trip, I not only learned about the ABA, but realized my potential at the firm. The exposure and opportunities gained from the excursions are a unique and valuable aspect of the Else School experience, furthering the business graduates’ competiveness on a national level.”

To make a gift to the Brooking Endowment, contact Nancy Flowers, B.S. Ed. 1983, at nancy.flowers@millsaps.edu or 601-974-1454.

—Nancy Flowers, B.S. Ed. 1983

New appointments announced to the board of trustees Eight new trustees have joined the Millsaps Board of Trustees.

William “Will” F. Goodman III, B.A.

1974, is a lawyer with the firm Watkins & Eager, the Jackson firm that was founded in 1895 by his greatgrandfather, William Hamilton Watkins, a Millsaps graduate.

Will Goodman received a law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1977. At Millsaps, he was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, Kappa Alpha, and the Millsaps Players, Singers, and Troubadours.

Will Goodman’s paternal grandmother, Marguerite Watkins Goodman, was a member of the English department faculty at Millsaps from 1935 to 1967. Millsaps graduates in the Goodman family include his father, Bill Goodman, B.A. 1949; aunt, Julia Goodman Puryear, B.A. 1947; and his sisters and brothers-in-law, Pat Ammons, B.A. 1975, and Clifford Ammons, B.A. 1975, and Meg Richards, B.A.1980, and Dan Richards, B.S. 1977. He and his wife, Tommie, have three children.

The Rev. Heather K. Hensarling, B.L.S.

1993, is senior pastor at Main Street United Methodist Church in Bay St. Louis. She received a master of divinity degree from Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Mo. in 1998. She has served United Methodist churches in Jackson, Star, and Braxton and was director of the United Methodist Campus Ministry at the University of Kansas. She has served on

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

the Millsaps College Alumni Council and the Millsaps College Council on Church College Relations. She is a member of the South Mississippi Kairos Outside Advisory Council, a board member of A.C.T.S. in Biloxi, a member of Rotary Club of South Hancock County, and a member of the BayWaveland Habitat for Humanity Board of Trustees.

The Rev. William Geoffrey Joyner,

B.A. 1976, is senior pastor at Brandon First United Methodist Church.

He received a master of divinity degree from Iliff School of Theology in Denver in 1986. He has served United Methodist churches in Vicksburg, Jackson, Lamar County and Jones County and has served as district superintendent of the Tupelo District. He is a member of the Mississippi Annual Conference Board of Trustees, East Jackson District Board of Trustees, United Methodist Foundation Board of Trustees, and Camp Wesley Pines Board of Trustees.

He and his wife, Sue, are parents of three children. Their daughter, Kristi Ann Joyner Tavenner, received a B.B.A. from Millsaps in 2001.

Dr. Robert C. Robbins, B.S.

1979, is professor of cardiovascular surgery at Stanford University. He earned his medical degree from the University of Mississippi in 1983. He completed general surgery training at the University of Mississippi and post-graduate training at Stanford University, Columbia University, the National Institutes of Health, Emory University, and Royal Children’s Hospital.

He has served as director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute since 2004 and has chaired the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery since 2005. He serves on numerous medical organizations and has served on the board of directors of two

fall–winter 2010

7

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

publicly traded companies. He has lectured widely and has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles. He and his wife are the parents of two sons.

Micajah Purnell Sturdivant, Jr., B.A.

1972, is a farmer at Due West Plantation in Glendora and vicepresident of Sturdivant Brothers Flying Service. He received an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1974. He is a director and member of the Executive Committee of Staple Cotton Cooperative of Greenwood, director of Delta F.A.R.M., a former director and chair of the Memphis Branch of St. Louis District of the Federal Reserve Bank, producer delegate to the National Cotton Council, director of the Chickasaw Council of Boy Scouts, past chair of Farmers Supply Cooperative of Greenwood, past president of the Delta Council, director of Mississippi Methodist Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, and an elder at First Presbyterian Church of Greenwood. He and his wife, Jan Carruthers Sturdivant, have two children.

J. Mack Varner, B.A.1967, is a lawyer in Vicksburg.

He received a law degree in 1970 from the University of Mississippi. He established the law firm of Varner, Parker & Sessums in 1976.

He has been the attorney for the Warren County Port Commission for more than 20 years and a community court judge for the city of Vicksburg for eight years. He is vice president and director of the Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park, past president and a member of the Vicksburg Rotary Club, past president and a member of the Vicksburg Convention & Visitors Bureau, past president and a member of the Board of Keep Vicksburg-Warren Beautiful, and past president and a member of the Board of Salvation Army of Vicksburg. He is chair of the Finance Committee and an

8

millsaps magazine

adult Sunday school teacher at Crawford Street United Methodist Church. He and his wife, Penny Sanders Varner, B.A. 1967, worked closely with the Office of Admissions from the mid-1970s through the 1990s to identify and recruit prospective students in the Vicksburg area.

They served as chair of the Parents Council when their daughters, Betsy Varner McIntire, B.A. 1993, and Emily Varner Shelton, B.A. 1996, were undergraduates.

The Varners received the Livesay Award in 1996. They participated in 2007 in the establishment of the John Wesley statue on campus.

Mark Freeman, B.A. 1990, is senior vice president, portfolio manager, and director of investments at Westwood Holdings Group, a $10 billion institutional asset management firm in Dallas. He serves as portfolio manager on all Income, Balanced, and Large Cap funds and is responsible for developing the firm’s economic outlook.

Freeman graduated cum laude with a degree in economics from Millsaps; he was a United Methodist Bicentennial Scholar. He received a master's of science in economics from Louisiana State University.

He is a board member of the Else School of Management’s Louis Wilson Fund, a student-managed fund that was established in 1989.

After completing his undergraduate studies, Freeman joined the U.S. Peace Corps and served as a program director for two years in Togo, West Africa. Before joining Westwood Holdings Group, Freeman worked as senior economist and fixed income strategist at First American Corp. Freeman achieved the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst in 1998.

Freeman is a member of the American Economics Association, the National Association of Business Economics, the CFA Institute, and the Dallas Society of Financial Analysts. He and his wife, Tara BondFreeman, B.A. 1991, an archaeologist and

adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University, are the parents of two children.

Peder R. Johnson, B.S. 1979, is managing partner of the Mississippi offices of the CPA and advisory firm, BKD. He received a degree in accounting from Millsaps.

He has worked with large and small enterprises in telecommunications, financial services, real estate, and manufacturing and has assisted these clients in a wide range of tax and business issues, including mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, business succession planning, and entity planning. Johnson is a former managing partner of the Jackson office of a major, national accounting firm. In 2006, he established Johnson, Bruce & Host with his partners and served as managing member until the firm was acquired by BKD in 2008.

Johnson is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Mississippi Society of Certified Public Accountants. He serves on several boards of directors for community organizations, including the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Andrew Jackson Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

—Nell Luter Floyd

Phoebe Pearigen, Millsaps students dance into hearts of JPS youngsters As music plays, kindergarteners stretch like rubber bands as the song’s lyrics guide them.

Later, second-graders count aloud quarter notes, then half notes, then eighth notes as they dance, and then fourth-graders go through the steps of a choreographed routine. Phoebe Pearigen leads them, offering encouragement in a soft voice, showering compliments and smiles on each dancer.

“I hope students will enjoy and learn to love dance,” Pearigen, wife of Millsaps College president Dr. Robert Pearigen, said about her teaching at Jackson’s Brown Elementary. “You go into class with a plan, but have to be flexible and sometimes willing to go in the direction the children find appealing.”

Partnering with Millsaps senior Laura Cost, Phoebe Pearigen employs both her heart for volunteerism and her master of arts degree in dance to bring creative movement and ballet lessons to Brown’s kindergarten, second-, and fourth-grade students. They’re fast becoming familiar with ballet terms such as plies, relevés, and tendus, thanks to the classes that dance right along with Millsaps College’s adoption of the school.

During the fall semester, Phoebe Pearigen and Cost are leading a weekly class in stretching, classically-based movement and rhythm exercise. Jackson has many dance studios, but Phoebe Pearigen wants to teach in a setting where students are unlikely to have access to dance classes.

She taught dance classes at The University of the South for more than two decades, created and advised the dance company Perpetual Motion, and founded and directed the Sewanee Dance Conservatory.

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

Everybody let’s dance!

Phoebe Pearigen dances with a student at Brown Elementary, where she taught during the fall semester kindergarten, second-, and fourthgrade students classically based movement and rhythm exercise.

“The main goal is to teach the joy of movement. For me, the most important thing is that when the students leave, they feel good about themselves,” Phoebe Pearigen said.

Millsaps student organizations are further transforming the school with the adoption of each of the 13 classrooms and the library, music, and after-school programs. Student organizations taking part include Alpha Kappa Alpha, Chi Omega, Delta Delta Delta, Delta Sigma Theta, Phi Mu, Kappa Delta, Lambda Chi, Pi Kappa Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Kappa Alpha, Kappa Sigma, the leadership honorary Omicron Delta Kappa, the Wellspring community service living-learning program, and the Campus Ministry Team.

“The potential of this partnership to produce real transformation is enormous,” said Dr. Darby Ray, Millsaps professor of religious studies.

Ray directs the College’s community engagement program known as 1 Campus, 1 Community, which connects Millsaps to

the local community in a myriad of ways and focuses on the Midtown neighborhood in Jackson and on K-12 education.

Members of the Millsaps community work with several other Midtown organizations, including the Mississippi Children’s Home, Rowan Middle School, Project Innovation After School Program, and Little Samaritan Montessori Pre-School.

“The energy level on our campus for community engagement is amazing,” said Ray. “We had hoped to recruit adopters for one-third of the classrooms at Brown Elementary by the time Millsaps classes began in late August. To our surprise and delight, we had a waiting list of student organizations wanting to adopt a class.”

The 100% Adopt-A-Class Program is supported by a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson. Grant funds allow for the creation of resource and training materials for the students adopting classes at Brown, a faculty mentor for Millsaps student adopters, and $200 per classroom to enrich the educational

fall–winter 2010

9

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

environment and experience. Community Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer Doug Boone, M.B.A. 1994, said the project is attractive to the foundation because of the academic help it will provide students and the potential impact Millsaps students will have as role models.

“We want all children of the tri-county area to strive for excellence in school and set goals to further their education. This program will foster that excellence,” Boone said.

Dr. Lonnie J. Edwards Sr., superintendent of Jackson Public Schools, said he expects the partnership between Millsaps and Brown Elementary will result in academic achievement and student development. “Dance and movement help fulfill a basic need as we address the issues of health, wellness and fitness with all of our students in combating obesity. Dance also gives our students another involvement with the arts,” he said.

Serenity Luckett, who began her tenure as principal at Brown in July, said Millsaps has been a friend to the school for several years, but the College’s volunteer commitment is at a new level this year.

“With the help of these Millsaps students, our potential to positively impact our children increases exponentially,” Luckett said. “When I walk into Mrs. Pearigen’s dance class, children are laughing and hanging on every word and movement she makes. She is providing new experiences for our children that will inspire some of them to be who they dream to be. We are so grateful for Millsaps’ dedication to our school.”

Rebecca Starling, Jackson Public Schools Partners in Education director, said the Millsaps partnership with Brown Elementary exemplifies tremendous involvement. “The relationships being formed here demonstrate that young people and adults at Millsaps care about our students’ success.”

Cost, a religious studies major, has danced since she was two years old. She enjoys teaching students some of the basic ballet steps: basic positions of the feet,

10

millsaps magazine

parallel and first; and basic port-de-bras (carriage of the arms); demi (small) and grand (big) pliés (to bend); relevés (to lift, or rise); and tendus (to stretch). “We also work on basic warm ups, flexibility, strength, posture, and turn out,” Cost said.

Phoebe Pearigen said the classes delight her. “I spoke with a friend from Sewanee after my first day at Brown Elementary, and she said she could hear the joy in my voice when I told about her about the classes,” she said.

One of the many things that attracted Phoebe Pearigen and her husband to Millsaps was its commitment to community, not only within the borders of the campus, but beyond. “It is my privilege and joy to participate in Millsaps’ involvement at Brown Elementary School,” she said. “I am a firm believer that arts and education can transform lives.”

—Nell Luter Floyd

Rwandan students join community of scholars at Millsaps For many Rwandan youth, education is but a dream.

Still recovering from the atrocities of genocide that gripped the country in 1994, the people of Rwanda in east-central Africa today often struggle with poverty and disease. Although education in the early years is free and public, the cost of uniforms and books can be a barrier to the classroom.

A partnership between the Rwandan government and a U.S. nonprofit, however, is bringing more than 220 Rwandan students to 19 colleges in eight states, including Millsaps College.

BRIDGE2RWANDA, based in Little Rock, Ark., sponsors the Rwandan Presidential Scholars program. Rwanda’s best math and science students are selected through the program for the opportunity to study in this country on four-year scholarships.

“All the students seem to work hard, and this is what I came here to do: to work hard,” said Faustin Mwambusta, who has completed his first semester at Millsaps as a Rwandan Presidential Scholar. “I’m getting a degree in biochemistry, which will allow me to get into medical school.”

Mwambusta is joined by fellow Rwandan Jean-Leon Iragena. Millsaps, he said, reminds him of his school back home.

“I’m making friends and have been into the city a couple of times. I like Professor (Anne) MacMaster, who is teaching the Heritage class, and I like the class,” Iragena said.

The Rwanda Presidential Scholars program was created in 2006 by Rwanda President Paul Kagame. The scholars must return to Rwanda after receiving their degrees and use their newfound skills to enhance the country’s economy and development.

Oklahoma Christian University in 2006 admitted the first 10 Rwandan scholars.

From there, BRIDGE2RWANDA board members David Knight and Tim Cloyd brought four students to Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. Cloyd is president of Hendrix College.

“When the Clinton Foundation came on board, they pulled together the colleges and universities in Arkansas as a pool for these Rwandan students,” Millsaps Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean David C. Davis said of the faith-based effort.“Then, because Hendrix College was involved with the Associated Colleges of the South, they felt like it would be helpful to broaden the program to a region and make it into a regional consortium. So it went from Arkansas to ACS schools such as Washington and Lee, Sewanee, Centre College, Millsaps and others.”

When he first heard about the Rwandan Presidential Scholars, Davis said, he was intrigued. “I thought it was a great opportunity to help rebuild a nation,” Davis said. “We have a wonderful community of scholars here in a small setting, which would be really beneficial to the Rwandan students, particularly in the areas of pre-

Jean-Leon Iragena, left, and Faustin Mwambusta model their Millsaps T-shirts. The two students from Rwanda are completing their first semester at Millsaps as part of the Rwandan Presidential Scholars program.

health and computer science.”

Dr. Iren Omo-Bare, professor of political science at Millsaps, attended a meeting sponsored by the consortium in February 2009 at the Clinton Library in Little Rock. “By the end of the meeting, we were quite impressed with the presentations that were made and especially with the Rwandan students we met,” Omo-Bare said. “When we got back to Millsaps, Dean Davis decided to put the idea before the Board of Trustees of Millsaps sponsoring one or two Rwandan students. It really did not require too much convincing.”

Board members recognized that Millsaps’ participation in the program is in keeping with its mission, Davis said.

Participation in the program also gives Millsaps students the opportunity to take part in internships sponsored through the Clinton Foundation, Davis said.

“Millsaps joined the consortium with the understanding that we would enroll two Rwandan students tuitionfree,” Omo-Bare said. “Room and board is the responsibility of the Rwandan government.”

The Rwandan students must study math and sciences, said Omo-Bare, who joined representatives from five other colleges in traveling to Rwanda in April to interview scholar candidates.

“The students that are involved in the program are the best students in terms of academic performance. In many countries across Africa and Asia, you have a final examination at the completion of your high school studies. It is taken by all students in the country. All the Rwandan students we interviewed got A’s in their major disciplines,” he said.

The interview team gave the Rwandan students a test in English to gauge their competency in the language, he said.

Fifty students were chosen as scholars and brought to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for an intensive, six-week summer program in English and cultural immersion.

“We selected our two students, and we were fortunate to get Faustin Mwambusta and Jean-Leon Iragena,” Omo-Bare said.

From there, Iragena and Mwambusta began their transformation into Millsaps students.

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

“We sent them Millsaps T-shirts and caps, which they wore proudly on the day of the selection ceremony,” OmoBare said. “My primary role now is as their academic advisor. They’re very outgoing, I’m proud to say, and they have been able to make friends, and the students they’ve met have found them quite pleasant.”

The two students “are an important addition to our mix of international students” from countries including Afghanistan, Serbia, and China, said Sherryl Wilburn, multicultural affairs director at Millsaps. “This helps make our international group richer by their input and what they can offer to us at Millsaps … not only what they can gain, but what we can gain from them.”

Davis hopes others with ties to Millsaps “will be challenged to help support our new Rwandan students with tuition scholarships. If so, the College can commit to bringing additional students and continuing this worthwhile program.”

—Jesse Yancy, freelance writer

Students teach youngsters to resolve conflicts peacefully In her education classes, Dr. Stacy DeZutter prefers students to learn by doing rather than by simply reading or observing.

With that in mind, DeZutter incorporated a service learning component into one of her Millsaps College classes, Educating Future Leaders for Peace and Non-Violence. “I felt that if my students could actually teach a conflict resolution program, that would be the best way to offer them a deep, personally challenging learning experience,” she said.

For ten weeks during the fall semester, DeZutter’s students taught 12 elementary-schoolers at the Bethlehem Center in Jackson and 35 more at the

fall–winter 2010

11

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

Mignon Sicard, right, a Millsaps senior enrolled in the class, Educating Future Leaders for Peace and NonViolence, assists a youngster at the Boys and Girls Club in Jackson with an art activity designed to build self-esteem.

Boys and Girls Club in Jackson how to solve conflicts peacefully. “We began by introducing the idea of conflict as a natural and necessary part of life,” DeZutter said.

“We then looked at differing ways that people might try to solve conflict, such as avoiding, accommodating, competing, or collaborating.”

Students talked about emotions related to conflict, pondered how communication skills play a role in resolving conflicts, and explored win-win solutions to conflicts.

“We learned very quickly that students respond best when we keep them active,” DeZutter said.

One afternoon, Millsaps students discussed how they could use positive words to describe others, and how negative words can cause hurt feelings. They talked about what it means to have respect for others and respect for one’s self. They helped the youngsters at the Boys and Girls Club create magazine covers with positive words about themselves.

Katie Sorey, a Millsaps senior, was drawn to DeZutter’s class after she took a

12

millsaps magazine

peace and religions class and learned about how Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King used non-violent resistance in furthering their causes.

“Since then, I have been interested in learning how to practice non-violence in my daily life,” Sorey said. “Dr. DeZutter’s class has taught me a lot about the sources of conflict and different conflict styles. The kids are teaching me a lot about managing a classroom and how to deal with students of different ages from different backgrounds. I’d like to think the kids are learning from us, but they’re actually teaching me so much about myself and how I deal with conflict.”

Katie Sundell, a Millsaps junior, said watching students learn non-violent ways to handle conflict has been rewarding.

“Seeing the students grow with the program and recall the past lessons makes us feel as if we are truly making a positive impact on these kids, which is why most of us want to be teachers in the first place,” Sundell said.

DeZutter said she developed the class

as a link with her field, education, and the peace studies minor that Millsaps offers.

“Once I decided to do this course, I knew I would need some training, so I applied for and received a faculty development grant that allowed me to go up to Cleveland, Ohio, and do a week-long training in conflict resolution in teacher education at the Global Issues Resources Center.”

Sundell said an ‘aha’ moment for the Millsaps group came when the older students reviewed six weeks of lessons with the youngsters.

“Knowing for a fact that these hours have not just gone in and out of their amazing brains gave us a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment,” she said.

“All of our students can talk through a conflict with the tools we have helped them to develop. Many of them will recognize their initial reactions as un-constructive, and know what they need to do to make sure that they resolve rather than add to a conflict.

“The students understand the impact of respect, active listening, positive body language, and ways in which it may be best to handle situations.”

Iisha Barnes, program director at the Boys and Girls Club, said youngsters at the Boys and Girls Club have benefitted from the work of the Millsaps students. “I have noticed a difference. We don’t have as many discipline problems,” she said.

Tina Halbert, unit director at the Boys and Girls Club, said she expects the youngsters at the Boys and Girls Club will remember the concepts that the Millsaps student taught them throughout life. “I think it will carry over into how they approach things at school and in other areas of their lives,” she said.

—Nell Luter Floyd

Gilman Scholarship assists student with study in France A five-month study abroad experience in France was an immediate plus for the resume of Millsaps College student Bryan Dupree.

Returning to this country last May, the Gilman Scholarship recipient landed a summer job as a bilingual tour guide at the antebellum Laura Plantation in Vacherie, La. “I gave anywhere between one and three French tours daily to Francophones from France, Belgium, Quebec, and even the Caribbean and Africa,” he said. “It was the best summer job I’ve ever had, and without my experience abroad, I would not have had the courage to take on that job.”

Dupree’s study in France was made possible by a grant from the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program that helps U.S. citizen undergraduates of limited financial means pursue academic studies abroad. The program seeks to support students who have traditionally been under-represented in study abroad, including students with high financial need, community college students, students in under-represented fields such as the sciences and engineering, students with diverse ethnic backgrounds, and students with disabilities. Award recipients are chosen through a competitive selection process and must use the award to defray eligible study abroad costs that include program tuition, room and board, books, local transportation, insurance and international airfare.

“Gilman scholarships are designed to allow our best and brightest students, like Bryan, to study abroad despite financial need,” said Dr. Mike Galaty, professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He also is Dupree’s Gilman advisor.

“I would encourage all Millsaps students who hope to go overseas and

are worried about money to take a look.

The Gilman budget actually increased this year. They hope to give out over 3,000 scholarships.”

Dupree studied French at the Rennes International Center of French Studies for Foreign Students in Rennes, Bretagne, which is about two hours west of Paris by train. He has studied French since age six.

“I feel like it was just the natural progression of things to go to France, but I didn’t feel like a summer would really do 13 years of preparation justice,” he said.

“All of my classes were in French, but they focused more on the culture and political atmosphere of France and Europe as a whole.”

Dr. Claudine Chadeyras, assistant professor of French at Millsaps, said Dupree flourished at the University of Rennes last spring while cultivating his interest in contemporary France. “Bryan is the first French major completing a minor in African Studies. His interest in non-standard cultural expressions such as ‘verlan’ (a kind of speech play by which French sub-groups communicate by inverting syllables) and the SMS/ texting language in French have prompted refreshing discussions in and out of class. Our French program has definitely been shaped by Bryan Dupree, who made us venture into Francophone literatures. We admire Bryan’s trail-blazing spirit as he pursues an international law

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

degree that will allow him to practice law both in the U.S. and in France,” she said.

Tanya A. Newkirk, associate director of international education at Millsaps, said Dupree is an excellent, well-rounded student, double-majoring in French and political science.

Newkirk said Dupree chose for his semester in France a program provided by the Council on International Educational Exchange. “It’s one of the top study abroad providers Millsaps uses, and the College is affiliated as an academic consortium member. This is because we believe strongly that their programs are a perfect fit for Millsaps students—both academically rigorous and culturally and linguistically immersive. CIEE, in turn, sees the potential in our students: It awarded Bryan a CIEE International Study Programs Scholarship, given to students who demonstrate both academic excellence and financial need, for his semester in Rennes.”

Dupree, a Plaquemine, La., resident who is a senior, plans to attend law school after he graduates in May. He was co-president of Pi Delta Phi French honorary and has been involved with Alpha Psi Omega Theatre Honorary, theatre productions, the French Club, the Political Science Club, and the Presidential Ambassadors. He was chosen to be a Ford Fellow.

Dr. Iren Omo-Bare, associate professor of political science at Millsaps, said Dupree is a studious researcher and writer who produces superior work. “He communicates his ideas very clearly, orally and in writing, and is a very perceptive reader. What is most impressive is his fine intellect that enables him to think clearly and to adopt a sound critical perspective on a chosen topic. During class discussions, he stands out for the freshness of his insights, his ease in carrying an argument to its logical conclusion, and his willingness to consider the viewpoints of others in his assessment of a problem.”

—Nell Luter Floyd

fall–winter 2010

13

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

Ministry experiences guide Millsaps student’s vocation In a society many would argue needs spiritual guidance, fewer than 7 percent of clergy in most denominations are under age 35.

That’s not surprising, given that interest among seminary students in congregational ministry has declined in recent years.

It underscores the need for leadership development among students from diverse backgrounds.

Millsaps College senior Katie Sorey is determined to reverse those statistics. The religious studies major from Brandon is exploring ministry as a vocation. Already, she’s interned at two Jackson United Methodist churches, traveled as a student missionary to Honduras, and lent her talents to the Mississippi United Methodist Conference’s Connectional Ministries Office.

As the recipient of a 2010 Fund for Theological Education Undergraduate Fellowship, Sorey was among 40 fellows who attended the FTE Leaders in Ministry Conference earlier this year at the Boston University School of Theology.

Her Millsaps experiences may be charting the course of her future. “All the religious studies professors have encouraged me to grow in what I believe and learn new things,” Sorey said. “I’ve been challenged, and I’ve been supported and encouraged by professors in other departments at Millsaps, too.”

Sorey’s fellowship recognizes students who have gifts for leadership and are exploring ministry as a vocation. She received $2,000 for tuition, other educational expenses or a self-designed experience related to ministry.

At the Boston conference, she gleaned valuable lessons from workshops about spiritual development and leadership in the church. The conference, she said, was “an

14

millsaps magazine

opportunity to see the breadth and depth of Christian ministry and how young people can engage.”

Dr. James E. Bowley, professor of religious studies at Millsaps, nominated Sorey for the fellowship award that is funded by the Lilly Endowment. “Katie’s remarkable devotion to her church and her commitment to service of others are wonderfully matched by her joy of learning and desire for true academic scholarship,” he said.

Fellows are selected by a national committee of theological educators and church leaders. Students must hold a minimum 3.0 grade point average, have an interest in pastoral ministry, and demonstrate leadership in a church or school community. FTE awards the fellowships to help ensure quality leadership and inclusive excellence in pastoral ministry.

“These exceptional students see ministry as a compelling path to serve others, to renew the church, and to create change in the world,” said Kim Hearn, director of FTE Ministry Fellowships.

“They bring intellect and compassion to community challenges of every type: spiritual, educational, social, and economic.”

Sorey, daughter of Millsaps Parents Council co-chairs Marti and Will Sorey, has chosen a pre-ministerial concentration with a minor in education. “I’ve learned a lot in education classes that can apply to ministry,” she said.

Last summer, she assisted with logistics for the Mississippi Youth Annual

Conference sponsored by the Mississippi United Methodist Conference. “There were great worship opportunities that were able to take place because everything ran smoothly,” she said.

Sorey interned last year at Alta Woods United Methodist Church in Jackson. She worked with the Rev. Eric Sanford, senior minister at the church, and the Rev. Jake Wilson, B.A. 2005, associate pastor. She assisted with the ministry to the homeless, preached twice, and taught a Wednesday night Bible study.

She also interned at her home church, Galloway Memorial United Methodist, where she worked with the Rev. Emily Sanford, pastor to students. Sorey wrote the Bible study curriculum used during the 2009 Mission Fest, a week when youth from grades seven through 12 and adults from churches across the state come together for inner-city service, Bible Study, worship, and fellowship. Participants are housed at Millsaps.

Sorey traveled to Honduras as part of a Galloway mission trip in January.

She was among participants who built a house, worked in a soup kitchen, and led a Vacation Bible School. “It was an eyeopening experience,” she said.

At Millsaps, Sorey is a member of the Campus Ministry Team and co-chairs the Chapel Committee. She led a morning Bible study last semester and has preached at the contemporary worship opportunity, SoulFood, and at the Wesley Connection.

She is president of CALLS, or Considering a Life of Ministry and Service. And as a Millsaps freshman, she attended an Interfaith Youth Conference in Chicago.

Sorey said she’s interested in working with racial reconciliation ministries and plans to attend seminary after graduation in May. “That experience has been a springboard for me into the interfaith experience at Millsaps,” she said of the Chicago conference. “Millsaps has been a blessing in terms of the opportunity and experiences provided.”

—Nell Luter Floyd

Keck Research Fellows study wildlife, plants in Yucatán Harmless tarantulas, beetles, spider monkeys, iguanas, lizards and even a jaguar were all sometimes part of a day’s work for Millsaps juniors Aubin St. Clair and Rachel Hall, who were Keck Research Fellows in the Yucatán Peninsula. They participated in research that combines interdisciplinary field experiences in Yucatán with laboratory analysis at Millsaps College’s Keck Center for Instrumental and Biochemical Comparative Archaeology.

Keck Fellows are academically promising students who receive prestigious fellowships funded by the Keck Foundation and Millsaps College. While in Yucatán, St. Clair and Hall helped Dr. Markus Tellkamp, assistant professor of biology, with vegetation and wildlife research, as well as an ethno botanical study with a local Mayan plant expert. As director of biological research and education on the reserve, Tellkamp conducts research and guides students in ecological research and tropical ecology field methods.

As field assistants, their work included checking mist nets for birds (and sometimes bats), collecting and recording data of bird species caught, in addition to banding them. Tasked with gathering various medicinal and toxic plants, the students helped catalog and press them while learning about each one along the way.

Researchers and field assistants encountered harmless tarantulas, colored beetles and spider monkeys, in addition to exotic amphibians, such as the unusual Mexican Burrowing Toad. Large lizards, such as the Serrated Casquehead Iguana, and birds, like the Thicket Tinamou and Barred Antshrike, were among many spotted. Photo images from a camera trap, a still camera set and timed to photograph wildlife, documented brocket deer and various mammals.

Tellkamp describes the photo of a jaguar as the most significant animal finding yet, not only due to the sighting itself, but because of what the female jaguar’s presence signifies. “Female jaguars don’t range as widely as males,” said Tellkamp. “The presence of a female jaguar is an indication that this portion of the reserve may be a breeding ground. Our image is the first photographic evidence we

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

have of jaguars on the reserve.”

Hall said the best thing about the trip for her was the jaguar. “I went there with an interest in large cats, as I am hoping to become a zoo veterinarian, and I was absolutely thrilled that I was there when they got photographic evidence of a female jaguar, the first jaguar to be recorded in ten years. ” St. Clair’s travel to Yucatán was preceded by another captivating trip—a field biology class with Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Debora Mann to the Galápagos Islands, a group of islands that are part of Ecuador.

Though an earnest student of the sciences, St. Clair discovered new things through field work. “I never realized how much patience you have to have to work out in the field. Nature documentaries are all well and good, but they only show action, action, action— not the long lulls in between. And your timing has to be perfect; the mist nets have to be opened and closed at certain times, and if there’s rain the nets must be up. No laziness.

Because if you don’t do it, no one else will,” she explained. “I’m glad I got to see the realistic side of field work.”

Attending Millsaps and having travel opportunities has broadened horizons for Hall, a biology major whose initial career

Millsaps student Aubin St. Clair, left, participated in field study last summer in Yucatán. Millsaps student Rachel Hall became acquainted with harmless tarantulas and other wildlife, as part of her field study in Yucatán. Both students were Keck Research Fellows and assisted Dr. Markus Tellkamp, assistant biology professor at Millsaps, with vegetation and wildlife research.

fall–winter 2010

15

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

Trip to Galápagos Islands brings sights of wildlife not found elsewhere Kristen Andrus measures a giant tortoise during the trip to the Galápagos Islands that Dr. Deborah Mann, assistant professor of biology, led last June. The group experienced a dazzling array of wildlife not found elsewhere in the world. They observed giant tortoises, sea lions, marine iguanas, land iguanas, penguins, fur seals, flamingos, flightless cormorants, blue-footed and Nazca boobies, green sea turtles, and Darwin's finches. Millsaps students Andrus, Nate Davis, Elizabeth Meyer, Aubin St. Clair, Miranda Tucker, and Ward Coker traveled with Mann and zoologist Tom Mann to Quito and the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, as part of their Galápagos field biology course. The class spent a week aboard the M/Y Floreana in the Galápagos visiting the islands of Baltra, Santa Cruz, Genovesa, Santiago, Bartolomé, Sombrero Chino, Isabela, Fernandina, and Rabida. Andrus, Davis, Meyer, and Coker received scholarships for the course from the Judy and E. B. Robinson, Jr. International Fellows Program, made possible through a generous gift to Millsaps College from Bud and Judy Robinson.

goal was small animal veterinary. “After going to Millsaps, not only did I become far more aware of how many options were there (such as field biology and zoo veterinary careers) but also all the schools that I could go to. I never expected to be able to attend a school like Millsaps, mostly for financial reasons, but Millsaps was able to offer me scholarships to fund the incredible education I am receiving.

The biology and chemistry departments are more than encouraging, and all the professors make themselves available to their students for advice,” she said.

At Millsaps, St. Clair is pursuing a major in biology and a minor in communications.

She hopes to combine the two by writing about her fieldwork, and the work of other

16

millsaps magazine

biologists and archaeologists, in ways that bring the stories to life for non-scientists.

Archaeologists and students are drawn to Yucatán for its Mayan marvels, said Tellkamp. Millsaps College and its nonprofit organization Kaxil Kiuic supports and operates a 4,000-acre tropical forest bio-cultural reserve in the heart of the Yucatán peninsula. The Helen Moyers Bio-cultural Reserve, with its biological and archaeological resources, serves as the center of Millsaps’ Living in Yucatán Program that offers courses in archaeology, art, business, computer science, ecology, education, geology, history, literature, math and socio-cultural anthropology. Facilities include an off-the-grid Center for Research and Learning; a laboratory and research

facility in the Maya town of Oxkutzcab; and the Center for Business and Culture, a dormitory and classroom facility in Merida developed by the Millsaps Else School of Management.

The Keck Laboratory at Millsaps, to which St. Clair and Hall will contribute plant samples, is funded by a three-year grant. The College uses this grant to purchase sophisticated research equipment, which supports faculty and student research teams in addressing complex archaeological inquiries and analytics.

—Patti P. Wade and Rachael Rober ts, freelance contributor

Darwin exhibit to be on display at Millsaps during January Make plans to learn more about Charles Darwin and the publication of On the Origin of Species with a trip to the MillsapsWilson Library Jan. 10-28. On display will be Rewriting the Book of Nature, an exhibit developed and produced by the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, and the National Institutes of Health Office of History .

Charles Darwin’s 1859 work, On the Origin of Species, was instantly seen as a potent sign of a new science, a new way of conceiving the world. His theory was an immediate threat not just to those who were wedded to an older conception, but to all who relied on a given and settled order for meaning and for power. Emerging just as liberal reforms in western society seemed headed for radical explosion, just as technological change provided a social and economic motor that sped up life beyond all imagining, changes in science portended changes in society: “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

On the Origin of Species evoked life in all its intricacy, fecundity, and creativity.

This is the world that Darwin explored and surveyed, described and explained—his enduring legacy to science, and to us.

In conjuction with the exhibit, Dr. Amy Wiese Forbes, associate professor of history at Millsaps who arranged for Millsaps to host the exhibit, and Dr. Patrick Hopkins, associate professor of philosophy, will discuss Darwin and evolutionary medicine, medical understandings that have incorporated and been influenced by evolutionary theory, during a Millsaps Forum at 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 21 in the Academic Complex. The forum is free and open to the public.

Former Mississippi governor suggests grads become lobbyists for good Former Mississippi Governor William F. Winter told members of the Millsaps College Class of 2010 that opportunity awaits them to make improvements to society.

“It is in times like these that we have the greatest opportunity to make corrections. We have a good reason to set aside some of the worn-out, wasteful ways of the past,” he said.

Two-hundred-eleven undergraduates and 56 graduate students received degrees during the May 8 ceremony at Christ United Methodist Church in Jackson. The ceremony was the 116th commencement of the College.

Winter said the most important office in the U.S. political system is that of private citizens. “We weaken democracy if we overlook that,” he said.

Winter suggested graduates become lobbyists for the public good and issues such as health care, public education, the environment and responsive government.

He said cynicism and apathy can be overcome by graduates with integrity, optimism, persistence, competence and compassion.

He characterized Millsaps as “one of the great liberal arts colleges in America, an intellectual oasis, a place where people can seek the truth without fear of being intimidated.”

Honorary degrees were bestowed upon Sister Mary Dorothea Sondgeroth,

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

o

a

n

c

m

p

u

s

president and chairman of the Board of St. Dominic Health Services, Inc.; Fred L. Banks Jr., former presiding justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court; Christy Gilliland Dunaway, B.A. 1985, director of LIFE (Living Independence For Everyone of Mississippi); and Rt. Rev. Duncan Gray Jr., former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi.

The Millsaps Founders’ Medal, awarded to the graduating senior with the highest grade point average for their entire college course of study and a grade of excellent on the comprehensive examinations, went to Laura Heather Litton, B.B.A. 2010.

James W. Walley Jr., B.A.2010, was honored for his essay on the value of a Millsaps liberal arts education with the Frank and Rachel Ann Laney Award. The winning essay becomes required reading for the next incoming class.

The Don Fortenberry Award, which recognizes the graduating senior who has demonstrated the most notable, meritorious, diligent and devoted service to the college with no expectation of recognition, reward or public remembrance, was given to Brittany Nicole Tait, B.A. 2010.

Dr. Kristina L. Stensaas, associate professor of chemistry, received the Distinguished Professor Award.

fall–winter 2010

17

OnCampus f

i

n

e

a

r

t

s

Food, music and media focus of Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series There’s still plenty of time to take in the feast of programs about food, music, and media that remain in the 2010-2011 Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series.

Established in 1967, the Arts and Lecture Series offers a mix of programs that are informative, thought-provoking, and entertaining, said Dr. Nola Gibson, director of continuing education and executive director of the Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series. “We strive for variety, and we try to book programs with some connection to the state or to the South,” she said.

Malcolm White, executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, said the series plays an integral role in Jackson’s cultural offerings. “Metro Jackson benefits greatly from this caliber of exchange and dialogue. This kind of institutional programming is critical to a community’s cultural value,” he said.

Make plans to attend the Jan. 11 Arts & Lecture Series program and hear Amy Evans Streeter, oral historian for Southern Foodways Alliance, speak about “The Stories Behind Southern Food.”Streeter will show two of the alliance’s short documentaries: “Smokes and Ears” about Jackson’s Big Apple Inn on Farish Street, and “Rolling Tamales on M.L.K.” “There are so many unique culinary traditions in our state, so many wonderful stories to be told,” Streeter said. “This is the idea that fuels the work of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Through the production of documentary films and the collection of oral history interviews, we collect the stories behind the food.”

Pianists Alice Rybak and Susan Grace of Quattro Mani will perform on Feb. 15. The duo has performed throughout the U.S.A, Europe, and Asia and is known for its 20th

18

millsaps magazine

Food will be the focus on April 26, when Mississippi native Martha Foose comes to the Millsaps campus. A talented chef and storyteller, Foose’s book, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, won the coveted James Beard Award for American Cooking.

and 21st century repertoire.

The media and legal shenanigans come under scrutiny on March 15, when Alan Lange, Tom Dawson, and Curtis Wilkie will speak about “Traditional Media vs. New Media.” The three authors will discuss the status of traditional media and how new media such as blogs and radio talk shows affect public issues. Lange runs YallPolitics. com and Dawson was the lead prosecutor in the Richard Scruggs case. They coauthored Kings of Tort about the Scruggs bribery case. Wilkie is a journalist and professor at the University of Mississippi who wrote The Fall of the House of Zeus, also about the Scruggs scandal. Sid Salter, perspective editor at The Clarion-Ledger, will moderate.

Food will be the focus on April 26, when Mississippi native Martha Foose comes to the Millsaps campus. A talented chef and storyteller, Foose’s book, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, won the coveted James Beard Award for American Cooking.

“I will be doing a talk with photographs by Chris Granger from my upcoming book, A Southerly Course: Stories and Recipes from Close to Home,” Foose said. “I’ll be focusing on how local cooks’ travels throughout the South and around the world inform the way we cook today.”

The 2010-11 Arts & Lecture Series kicked off in September with “A Katrina Retrospective” that featured Vicksburg artist H.C. Porter and photojournalist/ documentarian David Rae Morris. The focus

in October turned to Southern songwriters Will Kimbrough, David Womack, and Eric Stracener. The mid-term elections were the subject of the November program when Jackson’s sparring political gurus Jere Nash and Andy Taggart gave a “Reflection on the Election.”

Dr. Charles Sallis, emeritus professor of history, moderated a discussion in December with Alex Heard and Stokes McMillan. Heard wrote The Eyes of Willie

McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South, and McMillan is the author of One Night of Madness, set in the

civil rights-era South.

“Stokes McMillan and Alex Heard are native Mississippians who spent years of careful research, including interviews with surviving participants and family members,” Sallis said. “McMillan’s and Heard’s are stories of their personal pilgrimages to uncover the truth of two tragic episodes of racial injustice which occurred at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement and the McCarthy Era. Their books offer excellent historical perspectives and provide for all of us good lessons in human frailty.”

All programs are scheduled at 7 p.m. in the Ford Academic Complex at Millsaps.

Tickets to each program are $10. For more information, call the Arts and Lecture Series at 601-974-1130 or go online to www. millsaps.edu.

—Jesse Yancy, freelance writer

Millsaps alums honor ‘great teacher, great friend’ Pop King One, a retired author and lover of a

cappella

Alvin Jon “Pop” King

music.

The other, a noted symphony composer.

It was, said Millsaps Singers director Dr. Tim Coker, “a marriage

made in heaven.”

Millsaps College alumnus Vic Shaw, B.A. 1962, a longtime author and master trainer in the addictions field, has partnered with Sam Jones, B.A.1957, composer in residence with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, to honor their mutual friend: Alvin Jon “Pop” King, founder of the Millsaps Singers.

Shaw has commissioned an original composition by Jones as a tribute to the late King. It will be performed at the Singers’ April 15 spring concert on campus in the Ford Academic Complex Recital Hall.

Their stories are forever linked by their common love of music and song and mutual respect for each other.

King was a choir director in Jackson public schools, churches and at Millsaps for more than 40 years. He studied at conservatories at Wooster and Oberlin, Ohio, and at Northwestern University and taught at Taylor University in Indiana.

He founded the Millsaps Singers in 1935, retired in 1954, and received an honorary doctorate from Millsaps in 1955. He also taught at Wood Junior College in Mathiston until 1958.

“Last fall, Vic Shaw called me, out of

the blue,” Coker remembered. “He was thinking about Pop King, and he was pondering how to do something in Pop King’s memory. He asked me if it were possible to have a piece of music written, and I told him it was. I said I know some composers, and I’d be glad to see about getting that done.”

Coker said that the first person who came to mind to compose the piece Shaw wanted commissioned was Jones. “Sam has written many things for us. He was also a student of Pop King, a student conductor under Pop King, and he also remembers King with much fondness,” Coker said.

“So, here we have a man who wants to do something in memory of Pop King, and a composer who feels very strongly about Pop King.”

Shaw remembers King as a gifted teacher who brought out his inner musician.

“I was a freshman ministerial student in the fall of 1958 when I entered Wood Junior College in Mathiston,” Shaw said.

“I was not at all prepared for the demands of college life. Pop King had recently retired from Millsaps and was living on the Wood campus and directing the Wood Singers. I think he sensed I was having difficulties that year, and took me under his wing.

“I couldn't carry a tune in a basket, but I did have a very raw double bass voice.

So, Pop encouraged me to join the Wood Singers, which I did, and learned to sing.”

Shaw remembers that King would spend hours teaching him without any thoughts of compensation. “I, of course, began to love choral music and Pop King as well,” Shaw said.

When he graduated from Wood and enrolled at Millsaps, Shaw said, he thought his singing days were over. Much to his surprise, then-Millsaps Singers director Leland Byler invited him to audition.

“Singing with the Wood Singers was one thing, but singing with the Millsaps Singers was beyond my imagination,” Shaw remembered. “I may never know what prompted Mr. Byler to contact me, but I have a hunch Pop King had a hand in the

f

i

o

n

n

e c

a

a

r

t

s

m

p

u

s

conspiracy. I sang with the Singers two wonderful years and cultivated my love for a cappella choral music, without even being able to read music. I have also sung in church choirs much of my adult life, all thanks to Pop King.”

Coker said he wanted Jones to compose the musical tribute to King, even though the sought-after composer was busy. “He doesn’t write that much choral music. Most of his compositions are for orchestra,” Coker said.

For Jones, the decision was easy.

“Pop knew how deeply committed I already was to music, and he made me his assistant conductor of the Singers,” Jones said of his days at Millsaps. “When he made an LP recording of the Singers in 1956, he asked me to conduct one of the works.

“And, he also knew of my interest in composition, and he had the Singers sing one of my early compositions, a piece of juvenilia, but still important to me at that point in my development.

He greatly admired Paul Christiansen, F. Melius Christiansen's son, and took a couple of us boys along with him to drive to Brevard, N.C., for a week of study at a choral seminar with the younger Christiansen. Paul Christiansen was also a good composer, and Pop arranged for me to meet personally with him and to have a composition lesson. Such a great teacher.

Such a great friend.”

What made King great, Jones said, was that “he never thought only in terms of how he could use a voice, or a person.

He saw the person as a whole, and he had a genius for cultivating that person, for appreciating that person, and for establishing a relationship with that person that far transcended any thought of simple pragmatism.”

Although most of his time is spent with orchestral compositions, Jones said, he is grateful to Shaw for the opportunity to write Meditations, the piece dedicated to King. “It has been a great joy,” Jones said.

“I knew Sam would give us more than we could pay for, which was essentially a two-and-a-half to three-minute a cappella

fall–winter 2010

19

f

i

n

o

n

e c

a

a

r

t

s

m

p

u

s

work for chorus,” Coker said. “The reason we’re doing it a cappella is that Pop King did everything a cappella. All the music the Singers did at that time was in the a cappella tradition that he came from.”

King liked music from the Russian liturgy and from the Scandinavian traditions, Coker said. “It was the Scandinavian people coming over into the upper Midwest who developed the choral

tradition that Pop King grew up in,” he said.

“He was at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, so it was this tradition that he brought in here, the Norwegian and Russian traditions. Sam found two texts that he liked a lot, and as a result, instead of a three-minute work, we have a work of three very contrasting movements that’s probably going to last about 10 minutes.

Meditations is a really significant work.”

Under Pop King, the Millsaps Singers always ended their performances with “My God and I” and the Lutkin Benediction.

“Sam recalls these styles, and ‘My God and I’ at the end of his piece,” Coker said.

“Many people who attend the concert won’t get this, but the people who remember Pop King will get it strongly.”

—Jesse Yancy, freelance writer

CELEBRATING THE VOCAL ARTS Sing in the New Year with Millsaps College during Mississippi Vocal Arts Week! Mississippi’s premiere liberal arts college will host this week-long Extravoixganza! with the state’s leading cultural institutions, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, Mississippi Opera, and the Mississippi Chorus along with Jackson’s finest musicians and internationally-renowned guest artists. To celebrate, we have invited esteemed master teacher and former Metropolitan Opera star Benita Valente, rising Metropolitan Opera soprano Susanna Phillips, and returning favorite, mezzo-soprano Catherine Keen to join the party. The Millsaps Department of Music faculty and other distinctive, regional guests will share their passion and expertise through a series of choral concerts, recitals, master classes, lectures, and Informances for students and enthusiasts of the greater Jackson community. Most events are free and open to the public. The week will culminate in a rousing Open Community All-Sing! honoring the historic acts of the men and women of the civil rights movement known as the Freedom Riders during their 50th anniversary celebration year on January 17, 2011, our national holiday commemorating the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

schedule of events SUNDAY, JAN. 9, 2011 7:30 p.m.

Texas Tour Home Concert ; Free Admission/$5

Suggested Donation; Galloway United Methodist Church

MONDAY, JAN. 10, 2011 4 p.m.

Schubert & the German Lied; Free Admission/$5

Suggested Donation; Millsaps AC Recital Hall 7:30 p.m.

Schubert’s Die Winterreise; Free Admission/$5 Suggested donation; Millsaps AC Recital Hall

TUESDAY, JAN. 11, 2011 4 p.m.

Master Class with Benita Valente; Free

Admission/$5 Suggested donation; Millsaps AC Recital Hall

7:30 p.m.

Great Singers & Great Singing; Free Admission/$5

Suggested donation; AC 215

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 12, 2011 3 p.m.

Musicians & Muses; Free Admission/$5 Suggested

donation; Millsaps AC Recital Hall THURSDAY, JAN. 13, 2011 11:30 a.m.

Dining with the Divas Luncheon; MS Opera & The

MS Chorus Benefit Tickets: $25; For ticket information please

call MS Opera Box Office at 601.960.2300 or visit their

website, www.msopera.org; Leggett Center 4 p.m.

Master Class with Benita Valente; Free Admission/$5 Suggested Donation; Millsaps AC Recital Hall

FRIDAY, JAN. 14, 2011 11:30 a.m.

Clef Notes Luncheon; For ticket information, please call

601.981.5195. A $26.50 advanced reservation is required; 20 m i l l s a pFairview s m aInng a z i n e

4 p.m.

Vocal Maladies & Maintenance; Free Admission/$5 Suggested Donation; Millsaps AC Recital Hall

7:30 p.m.

The MS Opera & the MS Chorus Gala Benefit For ticket information please call the MS Opera box office at 601.960.2300 or visit their website, www.msopera.org; Wesley Biblical Seminary

SATURDAY, JAN. 15, 2011 9 a.m.

Youth Day: Music, Theater, & Young

Performers; Free Admission/$5 Suggested Donation;

Millsaps AC Recital Hall 12 p.m.

Vocal Master Class; Free Admission/$5 Suggested Donation; Millsaps AC Recital Hall

6:45 p.m.

The Orchestral Song; Free Admission; MS Museum of Art

7:30 p.m.

Mississippi Symphony Orchestra; For ticket infor - mation please call the MS Symphony Orchestra box office at 601.960.1565 or visit their website, www.msorchestra.com; Thalia Mara Hall

SUNDAY, JAN. 16, 2011 3 p.m.

Apparitions; Free admission/$5 Suggested Donation;

Millsaps AC Recital Hall

MONDAY, JAN. 17, 2011

10 a.m.

Millsaps/Tougaloo MLK Celebration; Free

Admission; Millsaps AC Recital Hall

o

n

t

e

a

c

h

i

n

g

FacultyChat Pursuit of excellence binds community of scholars at Millsaps

Dr. Julian Murchison Associate Professor of Anthropology

We’ve heard the word ‘excellence’ on a number of occasions in recent months. Dr. Pearigen’s convocation address was entitled “A Community of Scholars in Pursuit of Excellence” and it offered an important reminder of the commitment to excellence that is inscribed in the College’s motto. In short, that commitment is what Millsaps has always been about and always will be about. As the president of the Faculty Council, I had the pleasure of being one of the first to publicly welcome Dr. Pearigen into this community that strives for excellence back in February. The YouTube video documenting the occasion of Dr. Pearigen’s official introduction as president includes my own invocation of excellence as a way of welcoming Dr. Pearigen to Millsaps. I’m not sure how long YouTube videos really last, but these events become part of the College’s long history of discussing and seeking excellence.

The pursuit of excellence is something that faculty members enjoy talking about.

The ‘perfect’ class discussion, lecture, or demonstration will always be out of reach, but the pursuit of excellence is what makes teaching exciting and invigorating. As a teacher, when you can see the learning, analysis, and creativity happening in abundance, that is excellent. We seek excellence in the classroom, but we also seek it in our many other endeavors. When I spend hours in the printmaking studio on the third floor of the Academic Complex working alongside my wife, Sandra —me writing and her printing —we are each engaged in our pursuit of excellence as we look to make a lasting impression on our respective chosen fields of anthropology and art. Each of our colleagues is engaged in a similar, but distinct, pursuit, whether that happens in a studio, lab, archive, or office. The pursuit of excellence relies on

both the process and the product; the two are integrally intertwined.

But we, as faculty, are not alone in the pursuit of excellence. Our endeavors require the support of the College in various ways, but more importantly we have many companions in this pursuit.

Students come to Millsaps to pursue excellence and to partner us in this journey.

I am fortunate this semester to have three particularly engaged and committed classes.

They even usually laugh at my silly statistics jokes! From Introduction to Anthropology to Senior Seminar, they are seeking and expecting excellence. No, they’re not superheroes or perfect, but as a collective whole they set a high bar when they seek excellence together. Students who make the most of Millsaps embrace the goal of excellence in multiple ways and partner with faculty and with classmates in the pursuit of excellence. One of the joys of teaching at Millsaps is the opportunity to work with excellent students as honors students and Ford Fellows. These facultystudent partnerships embody the pursuit of excellence as they seek its fulfillment in the areas of teaching, research, scholarship, and artistic endeavor. Anyone who has undertaken one of these programs will tell you that it requires hard work, but the pursuit of excellence is ultimately exciting and rewarding.

In my mind, excellence, a lofty goal rather than an attainable endpoint, is at the heart of the lofty goals of a liberal arts education, the shared project that binds us together in a community. The true value of the Millsaps education for both current students and alumni is rooted in this commitment to excellence. We see this commitment in the everyday and in the extraordinary accomplishments of faculty and students.

fall–winter 2010

21

FacultyStaff & i n

t h e

s p o t l i g h t

Pre-health director joins Millsaps faculty Millsaps College has a rich history of preparing students for medical school. The College now has a faculty member focused on strengthening student preparation for medical school, dental school and other health-related programs.

Dr. Naila M. Mamoon joined the faculty in August as pre-health director and assistant professor of biology; she is an instructor of pharmacology and toxicology and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“Naila Mamoon brings an intense focus on pre-health students and their advising. She is the faculty member whose primary responsibility is personalized, specialized attention to student preparation for medical careers. She trained as a physician and brings additional expertise in pharmacology and toxicology to our instruction,” said Dr. Tim Ward, associate dean of sciences and professor of chemistry.

Mamoon said she counsels students about pre-requisites for medical, dental and other health-related programs, required standardized tests, and even extracurricular activities. “Medical schools look for students who have good MCAT scores, good GPAs and also who are well rounded,” she said.

Mamoon said she plans to discuss the

22

millsaps magazine

results of practice standardized tests with students to help them identify subject areas that need more attention. “That will help them improve their test scores,” she said.

Ward said one of his top priorities for Mamoon is to advise and mentor freshmen who have identified themselves as interested in health professions. It is imperative that students interested in prehealth fields like interacting with people and are studious and committed, she said.

Ward said plans call for Mamoon to examine the Millsaps curriculum, including course content, medical mentoring programs, and MCAT preparation. Outreach to prospective pre-med students will also be a focus.

Mamoon currently teaches human physiology. Her training will allow her to also teach human gross anatomy, pharmacology and toxicology. Physicians from UMMC and the community have been invited to her physiology class to teach students how to take a patient’s history in a short amount of time and how to perform physical examinations; it’s a way to make the classroom experience more relevant to clinical practice.

Ward said he would like to add a clinical correlations biochemistry course that looks at diseases and biological responses, such as sickle cell disease.

In collaboration with the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience at UMMC, Mamoon is currently conducting research to determine if an environmental factor such as chronic stress predisposes a person to develop mental illness by influencing the epigenetics of neural pathways. Her project, directed at investigating the epigenetics of cell differentiation in leukemia cells, has recently received funding from the Mississippi IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence. She hopes to have Millsaps students assist with her research.

Mamoon has a bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery degree from Sir Salimullah Medical College in Bangladesh and a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

in the

spotlight

f a c u l t y

New this year is the establishment of a Pre-Health Advisory Board made up of medical professionals in Mississippi. The board will provide advice on curriculum, outreach to students, serve as guest speakers and mentors, and assist in fundraising for program initiatives to enhance student learning. Current members of the Pre-Medical Advisory Board are Dr. Gene Barrett, 1970; Dr. Ben Brock, B.S. and B.A. 2005; Dr. Vonda Reeves-Darby, B.S. 1978; Dr. Kent Darsey, B.S. 1974; Dr. Raymond Martin, B.S. 1942; Dr. Don Mitchell, B.S. 1964; Dr. Earl Stubblefield, 1964; Dr. Meredith Travelstead, B.S. 1993; Dr. Frank Wade, B.S. 1980; Dr. Carla Webb, B.S. 1997; Dr. Lamar Weems, B.S. 1953; Dr. Virginia Anne Jones-Whitley, B.A. 1968, and Dr. Terrel Williams, B.S. 1976.

—Nell Luter Floyd & Patti P. Wade

Humanities Council honors professor who teaches Greek, Latin The experience of developing a nuanced understanding of another language changes the way one thinks about and uses one’s own language, said Dr. Holly Sypniewski, the 2010 Humanities Teacher of the Year at Millsaps College.

“I love teaching students how to read Greek and Latin and how to appreciate literature as it was written in its original language,” said Sypniewski, associate professor of classics and chair of the Department of Classical Studies. “I teach all levels of Greek and Latin classes, a

Roman civilization course, and study abroad courses in Italy. Teaching abroad is a favorite: nothing brings antiquity alive for students better than walking through the streets of ancient Pompeii, exploring the decadent Roman villas in the bay of Naples, or strolling down the Via Appia among Roman tombs and early Christian catacombs.”

The Mississippi Humanities Council gives the award each year in celebration of Arts and Humanities Month. In connection with the award, Sypniewski lectured on “Who Needs Greek?” at Millsaps in November.

Sypniewski is known for her creative classes, conscientious mentoring, and outstanding leadership on campus, said Dr. David Davis, interim dean and vice president of the College. She has taught at Millsaps since 2002.

Sypniewksi earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati and a master’s and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin. Her research has been published in respected journals and numerous conference papers. She was the recipient of the Millsaps Outstanding Young Faculty Award in 2006.

Dr. Catherine Freis, emerita professor of classics at Millsaps, said Sypniewski infuses students with joy and excitement whether she is teaching a civilization course on the ancient world, a Greek or Latin language course, or directing an honors project.

“Although she has high standards—and expects her students to work as hard as she does—she has a talent for keeping her students engaged by constantly inventing new and interesting class activities and assignments. She actually teaches her students to think and to write, as well as to master content. Many students who have taken a course with Dr. Sypniewski have confessed to me that before studying with Dr. Sypniewski they had no interest at all in the ancient world. These same students then pursued a classics major or a minor because Dr. Sypniewski had shown them how important a knowledge of the ancient world was for understanding our

&

s ta f f

own times and our own lives. She is a true exemplar of a liberal arts educator and richly deserves to be recognized for her teaching.”

Sypniewski has had an impact across the Associated Colleges of the South thanks to her leadership from 2002 until 2006 in the collaborative Sunoikisis InterInstitutional Collaborative course and workshops.

“We developed highly successful interinstitutional Greek and Latin courses based on common syllabus and curriculum. These were taught in a virtual classroom with live video and audio lectures by leading researchers in Classics, and with interactive discussion with students and faculty at other campuses,” Sypniewski said. “In their on-campus sessions, students read Greek or Latin in the original just as they would in any advanced translation course, but on a wider range of texts and themes than traditionally offered at small colleges. In addition to providing greater breadth, these classes required a deeper level of discussion and introduced new modes of analyzing texts. By pooling intellectual resources through technology, we offered students at the ACS schools a class as rigorous as those taught by large Classics departments at research universities but with the individualized attention of the liberal arts enviroment.”

Millsaps senior Brandi Buckler said Sypniewski has the uncanny ability to both engage and challenge her students.

“Despite the fact that many of her upper level translation courses in Latin and Greek combine students at the 3000-level and 4000-level, she still manages to balance their varying abilities with ease. Her teaching is meticulous and her students can always depend on her precise lesson plans, clear-cut assignments, and consistently fair assessment,” she said. “She goes out of her way to be unfailingly available to her students despite her many commitments outside of the classroom. After I took a semester off two years ago, I struggled to keep up with my peers in one of my translation classes. Instead of letting me fall

fall–winter 2010

23

in the

spotlight

f a c u l t y

&

s ta f f

behind, Dr. Sypniewski took it upon herself to meet with me for an hour every day before class until I had caught back up with my peers.”

Philip Cortese, B.A. 2009, recalls one project as indicative of Sypniewski’s approach to teaching. “After a semester of reading Cicero’s forensic speeches—and imagining how they would have been ‘performed’ in court—she had each member of the class memorize a section of a speech to declaim before the class. As students of an ancient language, we had grown comfortable interacting with written Latin, but the prospect of pronouncing the words aloud was daunting.

“When the day of the presentations arrived, Dr. Sypniewski, decked out in full Roman toga, stood before us and recited a passage herself. Instead of simple recall, it was a dramatic interpretation that brought alive the ancient Romans as a vibrant and expressive people to whom we could relate.

We students then declaimed our own passages and gained valuable insight into the original context of these ancient texts.

This ‘down in the trenches’ approach was present in all of Dr. Sypniewski’s translation classes. She was always right there with us, wrestling with the text and demanding superior academic work by constantly modeling the high level of intellectual engagement she expected.”

—Nell Luter Floyd

Trip to Sudan brings inquiries about refugees in Jackson In June, the rainy season in Southern Sudan, I accompanied Episcopal Bishop Duncan Gray III as we visited our companion diocese of Twic East. After a day of driving—or rather sliding—through mud, often around overturned or stalled trucks, we stopped at All Saints Cathedral in Bor Town, on the reedy banks of the Nile, children playing in the compound, Bishop

24

millsaps magazine

Sudanese youngsters surround Dr. Greg Miller, professor of English and chair of the Sudanese ministry for the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi. Miller traveled to Sudan last summer to check on progress there.

Gray and Sudanese Bishops Nathaniel Garang and Ezekiel Diing talking, clergy and lay leaders arriving to greet and welcome us.

As we were leaving, an older woman of the church, Magdalena, took my hand and asked me the names of the child refugees who were still alive. I rattled off as many names as I could remember as quickly as I could. (I had gotten in trouble once before with our driver for lollygagging.)

On my mind were the young people who had completed their college degrees that year: an accounting major at Belhaven College, a business major at Jackson State, a health sciences major at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, two young women who had finished their high school degrees, among many others.

I know about half of the Dinka in Mississippi by their baptismal first names and Dinka last names, yet on Magdalena’s face I read joy. They had survived. Not all those who disappeared during the war died.

Most of these young refugees were tutored by members of the Campus Ministry Team and English majors after their arrival alone as teenagers in Mississippi in 2000. Even these many years after the war, many people do not know the fate of their children; nor do children always know the fate of their parents.

Communications are poor, survivors have been spread over continents, and literacy rates are low. Lists of names, even when they are available, cannot always be read. In one town we visited, we discovered living relatives of the Bishop’s daughter, relatives she had assumed were dead; they, in turn, had assumed she had not survived.

More than 60 refugee children arrived in Mississippi under the auspices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and Catholic Charities of Mississippi. Bishop Gray and I visited the towns from which most of these young people fled attacks by Sudanese government troops in the 1990s. We saw a downed fighter plane and burned-out personnel carriers along the road.

I have been involved with the refugees since they first appeared at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Jackson in 2000.

The young refugees, the “Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan,” came to the United States without parents or elders, most having survived for years in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Most had travelled hundreds of miles on foot as children from Southern Sudan before that to relative safety in Ethiopia; many had witnessed the starvation or violent deaths of family members and friends.

The Campus Ministry Team at Millsaps College actively tutored these young

in the

spotlight

f a c u l t y

people for several years as they finished high school degrees in the Jackson Public Schools and the Education Center School.

Millsaps College students tutored math, English, social studies, and they taught practical skills: how to read phone books, newspapers, and maps, for example.

One of the refugees, Bul Mabil, B.A. 2006, attended Millsaps after having been tutored as a high school student by Millsaps student and Rhodes Scholar Kenny Townsend, B.A. 2004. Mabil completed his degree in political science, working on the Mississippi Coast for Lutheran Episcopal Relief immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Mabil's wife arrived from Africa in December of 2009, and they have begun a family.

Bishop Gray and I flew from Nairobi to Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, staying in the Episcopal Guesthouse there before driving the mud roads to Bor Town, Maar, Jongelei, and other towns.

Bul’s wife Apajok sang to me gleefully before I left: “Say hello to my grandmother!

I will tell her to look for you!”

I never met Apajok’s grandmother, nor many of the others I was told to seek out, in part because we appeared unannounced in places without electricity or telephones.

I must return with refugees when they themselves return, I have been told, to celebrate with their families.

The fragile 2005 Peace Accords have held in Sudan, but barely, and there are signs war could resume in January, when there is a scheduled referendum on Southern independence; people have begun returning to build their homes again on land that reminds me of the Mississippi Delta: flat, rich, and agricultural. Cattle, most of which were killed or stolen during the civil war, have become plentiful again, in part because of money sent back from refugees in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

We had to stop our car several times as

&

s ta f f

large herds of cattle passed around us, moving to new pastures.

For several years, I have been chair of the Sudanese Ministry Committee of the Episcopal Diocese; two of my classes have offered service learning opportunities for Millsaps College students, and an on-line version of a pamphlet of refugee stories is available on the Millsaps College Faith & Work website, along with a website that includes videotapes of interviews with refugees: www.millsaps.edu/sudan/.

We must avoid any renewal of war. The price of any such resumption, now that so many vulnerable people have returned from refugee camps, is unimaginable. To learn more about how you can make your voice heard and have an impact in Sudan for peace, contact me at milledg@millsaps. edu or Father Jerry Drino at jdrino@ hopewithsudan.org.

—Greg Miller, Professor of English

2010-2011 new faculty members New faculty members front row, from left, are Dr. Stephanie Rolph, visiting assistant professor of History; Dr. Emlee Nicholson, assistant professor of mathematics; Dr. Ann Gleig, faculty teaching fellow in religious studies; Colleen Keough, visiting assistant professor of art; back row, Dr. Davis Davis, interim dean of the College; Dr. Bennie Reynolds, visiting assistant professor of religious studies; Victor Shonk, visiting assistant professor of theatre; Jamie Bounds, coordinator of cataloging and acquisitions; Marko Horn, assistant professor of strategic management and leadership; Dr. Naila Mamoon, Pre-Health director and assistant professor of biology; Dr. David Yates, visiting assistant professor of classical studies; and Dr. Anne Applin, visiting professor of computer science.

fall–winter 2010

25

c a m p u s

c o m m u n i t y

FacultyStaff & Arts and Letters Sarah Wamester Bares (Spanish) had

two articles published in The Latin Americanist. “The Unspoken Speaking: Silence and Identity in Hilma Contreras’ Entre dos silencios” was printed in the March issue, and “A Horrifying Encounter: Economies of Desire in Carmela Eulate Sanjurjo’s La muñeca and Rosario Ferré’s ‘La muñeca menor’” came out in the June issue.

James Bowley (religious studies) had his book, The Dead Sea scrolls concordance: The biblical texts from the Judaean desert, written with Martin G. Abegg Jr. and Edward M. Cook, published by E.J. Brill Publisher. The Dead Sea scrolls concordance for the first time indexes all of the biblical materials that have been found in a wide range of Judaean desert sites.

Amy Wiese Forbes (history) had her

book, The Satiric Decade: Satire and the

Rise of Republicanism in France, 18301840, published by Lexington Books/

Rowman and Littlefield. Building on themes first approached in “The Lithographic Conspiracy: How Satire Framed Liberal Political Debate in Nineteenth-Century France” (French Politics, Culture and Society, Summer 2008). The book analyzes how republicanism took shape through the political satire that flooded French newspapers, theaters, courtrooms, and even academic life in 1830. Forbes shows that satire was the chief source of the critical spirit of republicanism that erupted in the 1840s and sustained the republic in the 1870s.

Kristen Brown Golden (philosophy) had her book, The Trauma Controversy:

Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Dialogues, edited with Bettina Bergo,

published by State University of New York Press. The collection includes an introduction by Golden as well as her

26

millsaps magazine

chapter, “Trauma and Speech as Bodily Adaptation in Merleau-Ponty,” and a chapter by Michael Galaty (sociology and anthropology): “The Snake that Bites: The Albanian Experience of Collective Trauma as Reflected in an Evolving Landscape.”

Steve Kistulentz (English) recently won

the Benjamin Saltman Award for his first book of poems, The Luckless Age. The book will be published in early 2011 by Red Hen Press. The book has won praise for its delivery of a sharp and operatic rebuttal to the false optimism and persistent distractions of the Reagan era and its abiding hope that America itself is enduring enough to live up to its promises.

Bennie Reynolds (religious studies) has co-edited two books released in November. Together with Armin Lange, Eric Meyers, and Randall Styers, Reynolds co-edited Light Against Darkness: Dualism

in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and the Contemporary World (Vandenhoeck &

Ruprecht). Together with Emanuel Tov, Armin Lange, and Matthias Weigold, he co-edited The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context:

Integrating the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Study of Ancient Texts, Languages, and Cultures. Volume I (Brill). Dr. Reynolds is also a contributing author to The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context.

Elise Smith (art history) gave four

conference presentations in 2010: “'Trim as the Corporal’s boots’: Order and Proportion in Victorian Garden Style,” copresented with Judith Page, Victorians Institute Conference, Charlottesville, Va., October 2010; “Open Wide: Architectural Signals for the Inclusive Museum,” Third International Conference on the Inclusive Museum, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, JuneJuly 2010; “‘To amuse and instruct’: Children’s Sketchbooks in the Georgian and Early Victorian Period,” Irish Society for the Study of Children’s Literature, Dublin, Ireland, March 2010; and “The

Performance of Domesticity in the Paintings of Maria Spilsbury,” Nineteenth Century Studies Association, Tampa, Fla., March 2010.

Steve Smith (philosophy, religious

studies) published an article, “Intrinsic Value, Goodness, and the Appeals of Things,” in International Philosophical Quarterly (June 2010). He presented a paper in Istanbul at the 2010 Conference on the Inclusive Museum, “Staging Shared Action: The Museum as Historical Mobilizer,” discussing programs at Jackson’s International Museum of Muslim Cultures.

Else School Jesse Beeler (accounting) had “Financial

Reporting by an 18th Century Charity” accepted for publication in the December 2010 issue of the Accounting Historian’s Journal with Roger B. Daniels and Mike Braswell. He presented “Transparency and the Sub-Prime Crisis” with James Madden, presented to the International Conference of the Global Business Development Institute in March; it was accepted for publication in the Journal of Global Business Development in the fall 2010 issue.

Damon Campbell (management) had

two articles published: “Designing Interfaces with Social Presence: Using Vividness and Extraversion to Create Social Recommendation Agents, Journal

of the Association for Information Systems, December 2009, and “Diagnosing and Managing Online Business-toConsumer (B2C) Relationships: Toward an eCommerce B2C Relationship Stage Theory,” AIS Transactions on HumanComputer Interaction. He had two articles accepted for publication: “The Effect of Perceived Novelty on the Adoption of Information Technology (IT) Innovations: A Risk/Reward Perspective,” Decision Sciences Journal; and “Mapping the Need for Mobile Collaboration Technologies:

campus community f a c u l t y

the archaeology and heritage management A Fit Perspective,” International Journal program at the University of Tirana, of e-Collaboration; both articles are Albania in May and June. The seminars forthcoming in the fourth quarter issues were entitled: “What is Anthropological in 2011. His conference paper, “What Are Archaeology?”, “Archaeology in the Your Intentions: An Empirical Analysis Laboratory”, and “A Short Introduction to of the Distinction between Behavioral the Archaeology of North America”.

Intentions and Behavioral Goals?”

Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-44), Lee Lewis Maggio (chemistry) had her chapter, “Isothermal Frontal Kauai, Hawaii, 2011 is expected to be Polymerization,” published in Nonlinear available in January.

Kimberly Gladden Burke (accounting), Blakely Fox Fender (economics), and Susan Washburn Taylor (economics)

wrote “Resuscitating the Dormant Accounting Scholar,” which was published in The Journal of Applied Business Research, 2010.

Harvey Fiser (business law) received the

Else School of Management Excellence in Teaching Award.

Blakely Fox Fender (economics) won the W. Charles Sallis Award for Distinguished Service to the College.

Walter Neely (finance) and Bill Brister (finance) had their article, “Credit Crisis Driven Changes to Asset Allocation and Spending Rates for College Endowments” published in the Winter 2009 edition of Financial Decisions.

Science Stacy DeZutter (education) is serving

as a member of the Review of Research Award Committee for the American Educational Research Association. AERA president Carol Lee appointed her to the position. DeZutter is secretary/treasurer for the Teaching Educational Psychology Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

Michael Galaty (sociology and

anthropology) presented a series of three seminar lectures for graduate students in

Dynamics with Polymers: Fundamentals, Methods and Applications in October.

Julian M. Murchison (anthropology)

had his book, Ethnography Essentials: Designing, Conducting, and Presenting Your Research, published by JosseyBass in January. The book is a guide to ethnographic research and includes the fundamentals of choosing and proposing a topic and selecting a research design. It describes methods of data collection and analyzing and writing ethnography.

Jessica Piekielek (post-doctoral fellow

in environmental anthropology) had her article, “Cooperativism and Agroforestry in the Eastern Amazon: The Case of ToméAçu,” appear in the November issue of Latin American Perspectives. She accepted an appointment, beginning this fall, to the executive committee of Friends Association for Higher Education.

&

s ta f f

lunches and Body Mass Index measures of high school and elementary school children. The hypothesis is that shorter lunch periods lead to faster consumption of foods and over time form a behavioral pattern of eating quickly, thus reducing oral monitoring of calories.

Marlys Vaughn (education) presented the paper, “Thinking Otherwise: Transitioning K-12 Best Practices for Cognitive Rehabilitation,” at the Seventeenth International Conference on Learning in July in Hong Kong. The paper was published in September 2010 (in The International Journal of Learning, volume 17, issue 4.

Staff Ken McRae (admissions) was elected

to a two-year term to the Colleges That Changes Lives Board of Directors.

Colleges That Change Lives Inc. is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and support of a studentcentered college search process. Colleges That Changes Lives Inc. was founded as a result of the book, Colleges That Change

Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College, researched and written by the late Lauren Pope, retired

New York Times education editor. Millsaps is among the colleges profiled in the book.

Don Schwartz (computer science) presented a paper entitled “Incorporating Service Learning into Capstone/Software Engineering Group Projects” at the 2010 International Conference on Frontiers in Education: Computer Science and Computer Engineering in Las Vegas in July.

Kurt Thaw (psychology) received an ACS Andrew Mellon Faculty Renewal Grant to conduct research in collaboration with Rollins College. The title of the research grant is: “Assessing School Lunches as a Mediating Factor in Childhood Obesity.”

Thaw’s research will examine the correlation between the length of school

Andy Till (athletics) recently earned

the Level 2 Endurance designation from the USA Track & Field Association; he studied advanced sport science concepts and training principles. He attended the USA Track & Field Level 2 at Villanova University, where he presented an annual training plan for the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

fall–winter 2010

27

28 29

millsaps magazine

Millsaps College Inaugurates Dr. Robert W. Pearigen 11th President October 7, 2010 The Bowl

T

he inauguration of Dr. Robert Wesley Pearigen formally installed Millsaps’ eleventh president—and honored the founders, traditions, and ethos of the College.

It celebrated Millsaps as a community of scholars in pursuit of excellence, remembered the role faculty and students played in the civil rights movement, and recognized the College’s roots in the Methodist faith and Wesleyan tradition. It extolled the virtues of the liberal arts in a global age.

Dr. Jim McKeown, professor of biology and faculty marshal, carried the College mace—used for the first time—as faculty resplendent in their academic robes processed behind him. Delegates from other colleges, universities, and learned societies joined alumni and trustees in the processional. Students, staff, and friends of Millsaps lent support.

More than 800 people turned out on that sunny fall day to watch the College’s newest president assume his duties amid pomp and circumstance. Helen Hargrave Cabell, B.A. 1935, represented the earliest class, while Cree Cantrell, B.A. 2010, represented the most recent.

Maurice Hall, B.A. 1967, then chairman of the Millsaps Board of Trustees, began the inauguration ceremony. Mississippi Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant

fall–winter 2010

29

Dr. Robert W. Pearigen and Dr. Brit Katz, vice president and dean of students, admire the framed copy of the Millsaps crest and seal that Scott McNamee, president of the Staff Council, presented during the inauguration.

and Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. provided greetings.

Bishop Hope Morgan Ward of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church presented Pearigen with the Mississippi Conference Journal of 1890, which records the date of the official charter of the College. Maud DeLes Lancaster, B.A. 1984, president of the Alumni Association, presented a gavel made of wood from the original main building at Millsaps and first presented in 1917 by alumni to Dr. W.B. Murrah, first president of the College.

Dr. Julian Murchison, president of the Faculty Council, presented Pearigen with the Register of the College from 1895-1906, the earliest printed catalog of the College. Scott McNamee, president of the Staff Council, presented a copy of the Millsaps crest and seal.

Stephen Passman, president of the Student Body Association, presented the walking stick of Major Reuben Webster Millsaps.

The Rev. Rwth Ashton, Millsaps chaplain, held the Millsaps Family Bible, upon which Pearigen rested his left hand as Hall presided over his investiture.

Dr. Ed Collins, B.A. 1952, president of Millsaps from 19701978, and Else School of Management Dean Howard McMillan, assisted as Pearigen donned the medallion of office.

Jon Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former editor of Newsweek magazine, served as the keynote speaker. Meacham defined the liberal arts as a way of knowing and thinking.

“A liberal education is about living a good life, not the good life—a life of doing good and saying your prayers and helping the needy and cherishing your children and reading good books, of knocking on doors for candidates you believe in, of e-mailing your congressmen—of becoming a congressman, come to that,” Meacham said.

30 31

millsaps magazine

“Mississippi’s Shelby Foote, the historian and novelist, once told Walker Percy that he thought the purpose of writing was to teach people how to see. To teach people how to see: that, too, is the function of the liberal arts, for once we learn to see—even if it is through a glass, darkly—then whole universes open up before us. We have been taught that we shall know the truth, and the truth shall set us free. But first we must see the truth; only then can we know it. On this day of beginnings and of affirmations, may all of us remember the work you are about, and that President Pearigen loves so dearly: the work to see, to know, and to become free. There is no greater task, and no greater joy.”

Pearigen spoke about how Millsaps prepares graduates for a life of learning, leadership, achievement, and service. He encouraged students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends to join in writing the next chapter of the College’s history.

Paired with Homecoming 2010, inaugural events included the Else School Fall Forum with speaker Steven Johnston, chief executive officer of SmartSynch; a roundtable discussion about the civil rights movement and the role Millsaps played; and the Summers Lecture by Professor Jack Sasson from Vanderbilt University about “Time and History in Ancient Israel.” Also included in the festivities were a faculty art exhibit in Lewis Art Gallery, a program featuring student perspectives on study abroad, a program about Ford Fellow teaching assistants, a program about Millsaps Carnegie Awardwinning faculty, and a Millsaps Singers concert.

Inaugural Acceptance of President Robert W. Pearigen Lt. Governor Bryant, Governor Winter, Mayor Johnson and officials of our city and state, Presidents Collins and McMillan, Vice Chancellors Ayres, Williamson, and Cunningham, Bishops Ward and Duncan, Chairman Hall and the members of the Board of Trustees, presidents and delegates from colleges, universities and Learned Societies, devoted alumni, faculty, staff, and students of the College, family and friends: As many members of the Millsaps community have already discovered, bringing me on board as president meant getting frequent lessons in classical political theory. So, it will come as no surprise that I begin my remarks with the fourth century B.C. philosopher Plato.

In his search for the meaning of Justice, Plato offered the following dialogue between his mentor Socrates and a citizen of Athens named Glaucon.

“Tell me,” asked Glaucon, “is there in your opinion a kind of good that we should choose to have not because we desire its consequences, but because we delight in it for its own sake—such as enjoyment and all the pleasures which are harmless and leave no after effects other than the enjoyment in having them?”

“In my opinion, at least,” said Socrates, “there is a good of this kind.”

“And what about this,” Glaucon asked, “Is there a kind of good we like both for its own sake and for what comes of it, such as thinking and seeing and being healthy? Surely we delight in such things on both accounts.”

“Yes” said Socrates.

“And, do you see a third form of good,” inquires Glaucon, “which includes gymnastic exercise, medical treatment when sick, and the rest of the activities from which money is made? We would say that they are drudgery but beneficial to us; and we would not choose to have them for themselves but for the sake of the wages and whatever that comes from them.”

“Yes,” said Socrates, “there is also this third kind, but what of it?”

“Well,” asked Glaucon, “in which of them would you include justice?”

“I, for my part,” said Socrates, “suppose it belongs to the finest kind of good, which the man who is blessed should like both for itself and for what comes of it.” * Six thousand years later, Socrates continues to remind us that the finest kind of good is that which has value both in and of itself and for what comes of it—a good that has both intrinsic value and extrinsic meaning—a good that we should seek for its deeply personal and inherent value as well as for its purpose and utility.

While framed in the context of the search for justice, I believe this formula of the “good” applies also to liberal arts education—the kind of education that promotes learning for its own, personal, and meaningful sake as well as for the purposeful benefit of the learner and the society— the kind of education, I believe, that was at the heart of the Founders’ vision for Millsaps College 120 years ago, that has characterized her essence ever since; and that will be essential to her strength and influence in the years to come.

And, because I believe that liberal arts education is fundamentally transformative to individuals and crucial to society, and because Millsaps College is, at its best, an exemplar of liberal arts as preparation for a good and worthy life, it is my high privilege to accept the position and formally begin my service as the 11th President of this remarkable College.

It is also my privilege and great pleasure to be installed as president in the presence of my dear family (Phoebe, Carolyn and Wesley, my parents and my brothers) and in the company of so many wonderful people— devoted friends from the past who touch me deeply by your love and presence here today, and friends and colleagues in this new chapter of my family’s life here in Jackson, Mississippi.

I give special thanks to my friend Jon Meacham who honors this place and privileges me by offering the inauguration address this morning.

fall–winter 2010

31

Twenty years ago this fall, when Jon was a student at Sewanee and I was a dean there, I wrote a letter of recommendation for him for graduate school.

In that letter I quoted Plato’s definition of courage to describe one of Jon’s finest attributes. Courage, said Plato, is not, despite the dominant view of the time, chiefly about military valor and heroics on the battlefield. Rather, it is about maintaining one’s convictions in the face of formidable challenge and in opposition to popular opinion. Courage, quoting Plato, “is a certain kind of preserving—the preserving of opinion and not casting it out in pains and pleasures and desires and fears.” It’s like a “color-fast dye,” says Plato, “that cannot be washed out by those lyes and soaps so terribly effective at scouring.” Jon, you are one of the most courageous thought-leaders of today.

We appreciate your wise and influential voice in the national arena and on our campus this morning. Thank you, my friend.

I also want to express my gratitude to Chairman Maurice Hall and the Board of Trustees for your confidence; to the leaders and people of Jackson for so warmly embracing my family and me and, at every turn, reminding me of the importance of this College to the city and state; to the hundreds of Millsaps alumni who have offered their enthusiastic welcome and, especially this morning, to the alumni representing classes going back to 1935. I’m touched by this profoundly visible support representing nine decades of Millsaps’ alumni; the students and staff of the College who have shown incredible enthusiasm and commitment over the past few months as we have begun our life and work together; (with a special word of thanks to Nola Gibson and all who helped with this inauguration—stretching over every department in the College and including volunteer friends of Millsaps—that worked so hard to plan these wonderful events and to David Wilkinson’s team that, with a wonderful spirit, has made our campus, our buildings, and the president’s home on Peachtree Street so beautiful for the occasion).

And finally, I want to thank the faculty that has demonstrated a level of dedication and ambition for the institution and encouragement and support of me that most college presidents could only dream of.

Family members of Dr. Robert W. Pearigen joined the College community for the inauguration.

32 33

millsaps magazine

Our faculty and staff are unequivocally committed to Millsaps as a community of scholars in pursuit of excellence. Together, with the alumni, the Board of Trustees, and all who love Millsaps, we will advance this institution in the years ahead.

To do so will mean boldly telling the story of our outstanding and courageous past, promoting our remarkable contemporary educational experience, and articulating and ensuring the success of a compelling vision for the future.

From her beginning and under the inspired leadership of the founders, Reuben Millsaps, Charles Galloway, and William Murrah, the story of Millsaps College has been one of academic excellence and enlightened and generous access for those who could not afford private education in Mississippi and for those whose gender precluded their enrollment in many of the most prestigious all-male colleges in the country. Helen Hargrave Cabell, representing this morning her class of 1935, is a beautiful reminder of the legacy of women students, women leaders, who have been part of the Millsaps story from the beginning. Mrs. Cabell, I salute you and extend my heart-felt appreciation for your presence today.

Millsaps’ story is also one of a church-related institution in which the principles of the Methodist faith and the Wesleyan tradition have reinforced the value of a broad-based education in light of reason and faith. As matters of religious faith have and always will profoundly shape the human experience, it has stood us in good stead to have had a context for discussing these matters and creating common ground on which dialogue may occur and relationships may be built.

And, certainly, our story is one of courage during the civil rights movement when Millsaps students, professors, board members, and alumni were instrumental in our College being the first all-white college or university in Mississippi to voluntarily admit African-Americans. We celebrated our leading role in history yesterday when Mr. Meacham participated in a panel discussion that included leaders of the civil rights movement, Governor William Winter,

Dr. Jim McKeown, led the processional, carrying the new mace.

President Leslie McLemore, alumna Jeanne Luckett, and author Jerry Mitchell.

It is a personal privilege to have had this conversation with these brave Americans as part of the activities associated with my inauguration.

Today’s story of Millsaps is no less focused on principle and progress; no less committed to our abiding character as a community of scholars pursuing excellence in all that we do.

We have a stellar academic environment provided by a nationally acclaimed and deeply caring assembly of teacher-scholars and by a staff that understands the inextricable and enormously important connection between the academic and extracurricular life and between the role of the mind and heart in personal growth and transformation.

We have a curriculum that, through our traditional core courses, our comprehensive disciplines, and our progressive interdisciplinary areas of study highlights the values and essential ingredients of the liberal arts tradition and exposes our students to the best that higher education has to offer.

But, while committed to core values and classical learning, we’re also mindful of advances in thought and information, and we challenge our students to question assumptions and take intellectual risks. In this vein, I’ve always loved the words of John Milton from his treatise "Areopagitica" written in 1644, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sullies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.” We encourage our students to undertake this race and intellectual journey during this rare moment in their lives when they are at their greatest freedom to explore; when their identity is still being shaped; when their future is limitless.

In these ways, we promote the intrinsic pleasures of learning and philosophic self-reflection that are essential to a thoughtful life—essential to what chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi calls a “programme of selfidentification” in which our beliefs are brought to light and our self-doubts are conquered.

Dr. Tim Coker conducted the Millsaps Singers in the choral acclamation, I Will Greatly Rejoice.

At Millsaps our education is, indeed, a “programme of self-identification” and a platform for personal growth. But here, there is also an incredible valueadded, for we have woven into this tapestry curricular and extracurricular threads that position our students for meaningful, result-oriented lives after college; for careers that have significance; for making a difference in the world they will inherit and lead.

From our distinctive international education opportunities (that take not only half our students but also half our faculty to the far corners of the world, including Vietnam, Tanzania, Albania, Israel, Italy, and our very own 4,000-acre bio-cultural reserve in the Yucatán Peninsula); to our extraordinary program of business education, approached through the liberal arts and extending to the board rooms and factory floors of businesses in this country and in cities in Latin America, and throughout Eastern and Central Europe, that is training future business leaders for productive, entrepreneurial, and ethical careers; to our pre-professional initiatives that provide eye-opening career possibilities for our students and connect them, for example, to leaders in state, local, and national government whose offices are a few blocks south of campus; to educators and practitioners in the field of medicine whose labs and hospital rooms are across the street to our north; to our meaningful community service activities that open our hearts and hands to the needs of others, including our neighbors just across West Street, and make a powerful impact on those who serve as well as those whom we serve; to our leadership development programs in the residence halls, along sorority and fraternity row, and on the fields and courts of varsity athletics.

What I’m describing, then, is an institution that develops worthy habits of heart and mind and that is a model of liberal arts as meaningful and transformative in and of itself and as a valuable preparation for life—a life of learning, achievement, leadership, and service.

I believe that Millsaps, at its best, is a modern day representation of the transformative path of philosophy—which is also a path of education—offered by my frequently invoked philosopher, Plato. In his well-known allegory of

Helen Hargrave Cabell, B.A. 1935, and Cree Cantrell, B.A. 2010.

fall–winter 2010

33

the cave in Book VII of The Republic, Plato analogizes the philosophical and educational process to an arduous journey in which, through revelation and reason and with the compelling assistance of a wise and principled teacher, a person makes his way out of the shadows and pretentious illusions of a cave and into a world where genuine beauty and justice are found and where a transcendent reality before and behind all things becomes known. Plato says of this transforming experience: “This, then, is not the twirling of a shell but the turning of the soul around from a day which is like night to the true day.”

Plato was right; in the end, this process of turning, growth, and transformation—this process of education through grace, reason, instruction, and experience—is not something inconsequential but something fundamental and powerful; the turning of the soul—the heart and mind—around “from a day which is like night to the true day.”

The Millsaps story is one of education as transformation. It’s a story still in the making and one that demands a compelling vision for the future. That vision—our guiding image of success—will be, as it always has been, one of excellence as we strive to make ever stronger the quality and value of this experience.

But, I believe the vision that is coming into focus will also feature a Millsaps College that is a more nationally recognized and influential leader in distinctive areas of excellence; a Millsaps College that plays an increasingly prominent role in this city, state, and region; a Millsaps College that is one of the most beautiful urban campuses in the country; a Millsaps College that embraces its historic relationship with the Methodist Church and uses that heritage to promote freedom of thought, reflection on the most important questions in life, and advancement of the virtues extolled by the prophet Micah—“to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before your God.” And, finally, a Millsaps College that transforms her students and sends them forth with a high sense of honor, an abiding loyalty to their alma mater, and a commitment to change the world for the better.

Our story is still in the making. And while its past and present chapters

Methodist Bishop Hope Morgan Ward offered greetings.

34 35

millsaps magazine

provide a firm foundation, the next chapter is unwritten and every person who loves this place has a role in the narrative to come. Ultimately, our success as a community of scholars in pursuit of excellence depends on the support of all and will be judged by how well we educate our students in the liberal arts tradition; how well we do in transforming hearts and minds in ways that will lead to good and meaningful lives.

I conclude with the words of St. Paul from his letter to the Philippians— words that reflect the finest kind of good—a good that blesses us for what it is and for what it does.

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Thank you.

*Allan Bloom, trans. 1986. The Republic of Plato. New York: Basic Books Inc.

Jon Meacham joined Dr. Pearigen, Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson, and Mississippi Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant for the occasion.

Historical artifacts of Millsaps College The inauguration of Dr. Robert W. Pearigen celebrated the history of the College with the use of historical artifacts.

Mace During the 2009-2010 academic year, Dr. Jim McKeown, professor of biology and longtime faculty marshal, initiated discussions for the creation of a Millsaps College mace. A mace is the traditional college symbol of educational authority and institutional identity and is presented at all formal rituals and traditions. Jackson resident and master craftsman Jerry Summerford crafted the mace from the finest walnut in honor of his wife and College alumna Julianna Summerford (1969) and in honor of two of his children and College alumni Thomas Summerford (1996) and Helen Summerford (1998). A small circle of wood cut from a fallen oak tree on campus is part of the mace. The mace is 36 inches in length and is topped by a lantern headpiece that is accented on four sides with alternating brass medallions of the College crest and the College seal. The mace debuted at the August 26, 2010, convocation at which President Robert Wesley Pearigen presided.

Mississippi Conference Journal of 1890 The Mississippi Conference Journal of 1890 records the date of the official charter of Millsaps College. In December of 1888, the Mississippi Conference passed a resolution favoring the establishment of a “college for males under the auspices and control of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South . . . at some central and accessible point in the state of Mississippi.” A few days later, with Bishop Charles B. Galloway presiding, the North Mississippi Conference passed a similar resolution. A committee from the joint conferences was appointed. In February of 1889, the committee elected Major R.W. Millsaps chairman. Major Millsaps “proposed to give $50,000 to endow a Methodist male college in the state, provided the Methodists of Mississippi would give a like sum for said purpose.” Through the efforts of many, led by Bishop Galloway, Agent A.F. Watkins and the ministers in the pulpits, the Methodists met the Major’s challenge, completing the first $100,000 in 1894. Classes officially began in 1892.

Gavel The gavel is made of wood from the original main building of Millsaps College (Old Main, constructed 1891-1892), which burned in 1914. Alumni of the College presented the gavel to the first president of the College, Dr. W.B. Murrah, in 1917 at the Methodist Conference held in Vicksburg—the first one in Mississippi during which he presided. Bishop Murrah’s son, W.B. Murrah, returned the gavel to Millsaps during Homecoming in 1957.

fall–winter 2010

35

Register of Millsaps College 1895-1906 The Register of Millsaps College is the earliest printed catalog of the College. It includes information for academic years from 1895 to 1906 and lists College trustees, faculty, students, and classes offered. It also includes faculty academic credentials, descriptions of earliest courses of instruction, academic calendar, honors conferred at previous commencements, detailed statements about academic departments, photographs, general information about the College, and a register of alumni and their post graduate positions. A complete series of registers and catalogs, along with other College publications, is housed in the archives in the Millsaps-Wilson Library.

Millsaps Crest and Seal Edward Escowitz of Queens, New York, designed the crest when he studied at Millsaps in 1968. According to History Professor Ross H. Moore, who chaired the crest committee, the symbolism in the crest is the following: “The cross indicates Millsaps’ role as a Christian college . . . The three stars represent the three founders of the College: Major Reuben W. Millsaps, Methodist Bishop Charles Betts Galloway, and President William B. Murrah; and the three divisions of the College: Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. The purple stripes on a white background represent the Millsaps colors, purple and white. The date is the year the College was chartered.” Magnolia Coullet, who taught Latin at Millsaps, is credited with the motto, “ad excellentiam,” translated “in pursuit of excellence.” The crest was adopted in 1968 with the approval of faculty, trustees, and students.

The Millsaps Seal was used on college documents as early as 1907, when it was engraved on the commencement program. No records exist to document its origin.

The image is a likeness of College Founder Major Reuben Webster Millsaps. The 1891 date on the seal commemorates the selection of Jackson as the location of the College and the 1891 construction of Old Main, the main building of the College.

Walking Stick The walking stick of Major Reuben Webster Millsaps has a gold knob handle inscribed “Major R.W. Millsaps from W.B. Jones.” Jones was a prominent minister in the Mississippi Methodist Conference, serving 15 years as secretary of the conference and 50 years as a pastor and a presiding elder. A member of the College’s third graduating class in 1897, Jones was awarded the Founders Medal. Mrs. Webster Millsaps Buie, Jr. donated the walking stick to the Millsaps College Archives in 2002.

36 37

millsaps magazine

Millsaps Family Bible The Mississippi Annual Conference of the Methodist Church received the family Bible of William Millsaps, grandfather of Major Reuben Webster Millsaps, during an Annual Conference session at Millsaps in 1954. Mrs. M.L. Wright, great-granddaughter of William and Rebecca Millsaps, original settlers in 1811 in Mississippi, made the gift.

The Bible is part of the Millsaps Family Manuscript Papers in the Millsaps College Archives. It includes four pages of handwritten family records. The earliest entry recorded is the birth of William Millsaps, born in October of 1769. The Bible’s title page and first pages are missing; it was rebound in Moroccan leather with gold trim in 1964.

Chairs The armchairs used in the inaugural ceremony are part of the dining room furniture originally owned by Major Reuben Webster Millsaps. Millsaps family descendants Sara Buie Morris and Joe Ellis Buie Love donated the furniture to the College in 1978. The furniture, which consists of an oak dining table and oak sideboard, circa 1880, ten side chairs and two arm chairs, is used in the home of the College president.

fall–winter 2010

37

“Without the kind of education you offer here—without the values of free inquiry, critical thinking, sanctity of the individual, and the obligation to love one’s neighbor—we are going to lose more than our economic way.

38 39

millsaps magazine

we risk losing our way entirely.”

The Liberal Arts in a Global Age inaugural address

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and editor Jon Meacham For many of us here today, this is something of a bittersweet occasion. I have known Phoebe and Rob Pearigen for nearly a quarter of a century; I remember when Carolyn and Wesley were born; my family and theirs have, in company, passed Christmases and Easters and summers together on a Tennessee mountaintop dear to all of us, and to so many of you.

To the Millsaps community, to Jackson, and to Mississippi, I am compelled to say: Well done. You are fortunate in your new president, and he and his family are fortunate in you. You could not be in better hands—the hands of a man of spirit and of strength, a man of uncommon wisdom and of exceptional heart, a man of integrity and of grace. And the fact that you have appointed Rob to this post as the price of having the lovely, kind, and brilliant Phoebe in your midst is a secret safe with me.

I am a child of the liberal arts. I believe in the educational mission of Millsaps with, to borrow a phrase from my particular reli-

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham speaks about the value of a liberal arts education.

gious tradition, all my heart, and with all my mind, and with all my soul. One of the wonderful things about the liberal arts is that they give those of us who love them particular examples of the universal.

To shift the metaphor slightly, they offer us windows on the past and the present, affording us a view of the world, and of worlds beyond the immediate sensory one, that informs us and delights us.

That was Horace’s definition of the function of poetry: to delight and to instruct.

But it is more than that, too, and I would like to take our time together this morning to suggest an even larger possible role for the liberal arts. It is this: I believe the liberal arts as I will define them offer, in a phrase from the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren, a kind of redemption from what Warren called “the accidents, evils, and errors of life—and of our lives.” Redemption is the key idea here—redemption in the sense of rescue and ransom from injustice, from discredited ideas, from the selfishness that afflicts all of us.

Delegates dressed in academic regalia for the inauguration.

fall–winter 2010

39

So what are the liberal arts? Their roots can be found in Hindu culture, and it is useful to note in the West the thing we think of as the liberal arts is found in both pagan and Christian culture. Cicero defined a liberal education as the study of geometry, literature, poetry, natural science, ethics, and politics; St. Augustine and the medieval Roman church worked in a similar vein, finding their mission statement, so to speak, in II Timothy, which hoped that education would make “the man of God…perfect, furnished to every good work.”

I think we may agree in broad terms on this definition: the liberal arts are those disciplines that help introduce the student to what Matthew Arnold described as the best that has been thought and said in the world, and that train the mind to think clearly, respecting the force of fact and reason. From mathematics to Mozart, from political history to the basics of physics, from Mandarin to Toni Morrison—from, really, anything to anything else, the liberal arts offers us a way of knowing and thinking.

And the affairs of the world of the early 21st century are global in nature; borders have not mattered so little since gazelles first began loping across the savannah. As Americans, we face fundamental economic, political, and moral challenges. We must remain innovative and competitive, for experience tells us that broad, shared prosperity is crucial to the maintenance of democracy. Politically we are in the midst of a great partisan struggle in which a professional political class of activists on the Internet and on cable television appear to have more invested in the perpetuation of conflict than they do in the resolution of problems. Morally we face the question of whether the great achievement of the last century—the building, often at public expense, of a sturdy middle class that benefited from both private enterprise and government investment—is to be sustained

or discarded. Such, in my view, are the issues that confront all of us.

It is true that every generation tends to think of itself as challenged and under siege; the questions of the present assume outsize and urgent importance, for they are, after all, the questions that shape and suffuse the lives of those living in the moment. Humankind seems to be forever coping with crisis. Strike the “seems”: humankind is forever coping with crisis, and will until what your native son William Faulkner described as “the last red and dying evening.”

Southerners know this in their bones; Mississippians feel history keenly, because to you, as Faulkner noted elsewhere, the past is never dead; it isn’t even past. On the streets of this city and in places all over this state a half century ago, Americans confronted the worst of hatred and violence, and, in so doing, found the best in themselves. It is to those who marched and fought and died for an end to Jim Crow that we will be forever grateful.

So many of the great universal human perils and promises find vivid expression here at Millsaps. This is an institution founded in the tradition of John Wesley, a divine who believed in the value of education and in the centrality of the individual. This is an institution sitting in the heart of a state and of a region where, the day before yesterday, Americans were forced to stand up and be counted in the great struggle for racial justice. This is an institution devoted to the study of ideas that have shaped this nation and the world in this, an hour in which peoples and nations have never been so intimately connected and yet remain forever divided by differences of birth and of faith.

The role of the liberal arts in this global age cannot be overstated. Without the kind of education you offer here—without the transmission of the values of free inquiry, critical thinking, the sanc-

Former Millsaps President Ed Collins and Else School Dean Howard McMillan assist with the College medallion.

40 41

millsaps magazine

Ben Watts, B.B.A. 1980, cast the medallion of office.

tity of the individual, and the obligation to love one’s neighbor—we are going to lose more than our economic way. We risk losing our way entirely.

So what to do? The liberally educated person in the America of 2010—and 2011, and 2012, and on and on—should know certain facts. You cannot appreciate the epic series of events in the struggle for power between rulers and the ruled that shaped—and, truth be told, still shape—our world without knowing about Magna Carta and the English common law, of which we are heirs, and whose principles, after centuries of strife and bloodshed, led to the end of Jim Crow and, ultimately, to the election of Barack Obama. That a line runs from Runnymede in 1215 to the pending midterm elections in a nation in a continent then two centuries away from even being discovered by the Western European powers is worth knowing, and not just to impress people, or to feel superior to those who might not know it, or to win a category on “Jeopardy!”

Knowing the history of freedom—and liberal in the sense in which we are speaking is rooted in its Ur-definition as “free”—is not only illuminating but enabling. How? Because a person who understands the past, in all its glory and grandeur and horror and injustice, understands that, as Winston Churchill once put it, the path of civilization, while never straight, is essentially upward—upward to what he called the sun-lit uplands of happiness and peace.

To know what has come before, and to know how to think about seemingly disparate and distant events in relation to one’s own time and own complications, is to be armed against despair, for if the men and women of the past—with all their flaws and limitations and ambitions and appetites—could press on through ignorance and superstition, racism and sexism, selfishness and greed, to, at least in the American context, form a more perfect union, then

perhaps we, too, can right wrongs and leave the world—the stage— a better place than we found it.

Now, there is plenty of debate—how could there not be?— about the content of a liberal education. No doubt some may find the allusions I have made too Western, possibly even too male, and there is perennial tension about what should be taught. I welcome the work of the last three decades or so, decades in which the voices of the previously silenced or marginalized have at last been given something of their due. From women to African-Americans to Native Americans, we are slowly rectifying centuries—even millennia—of exclusion. We are, in other words, redeeming the sins and omissions of the past. That is work that must go on.

A liberal education is about living a good life, not the good life—a life of doing good and saying your prayers and helping the needy and cherishing your children and reading good books, of knocking on doors for candidates you believe in, of e-mailing your congressmen—of becoming a congressman, come to that.

Mississippi’s Shelby Foote, the historian and novelist, once told Walker Percy that he thought the purpose of writing was to teach people how to see. To teach people how to see: that, too, is the function of the liberal arts, for once we learn to see—even if it is through a glass, darkly—then whole universes open up before us.

We have been taught that we shall know the truth, and the truth shall set us free. But first we must see the truth; only then can we know it. On this day of beginnings and of affirmations, may all of us remember the work you are about, and that President Pearigen loves so dearly: the work to see, to know, and to become free. There is no greater task, and no greater joy.

Trustee Chair Maurice Hall, Dr. Robert W. Pearigen, and Dean David C. Davis stand ready to greet delegates after the inauguration. Dr. Pearigen pauses before the statue of John Wesley.

fall–winter 2010

41

Athletics New Orleans Saints reminisce, share Super Bowl trophy with Millsaps More than 250 students, faculty, staff, and friends descended on Harper Davis Field on Nov. 17 to view the Vince Lombardi

“The seeds of the championship season were sown at Millsaps College. The foundation for our program started in earnest that summer in 2006. Our experience there was first-class,” Saints Coach Sean Payton said in a statement provided to the College.

42

millsaps magazine

Trophy that the New Orleans Saints won for Super Bowl XLIV. BankPlus was instrumental in the trophy event. Retired Saints player Deuce McAllister reminisced that the training camps in the summers of 2006-2008 were steps in the team’s championship journey.

The Saints organization presented Millsaps with a football signed by Saints Coach Sean Payton, a framed copy of The Times-Picayune front page that proclaimed the Super Bowl victory and was autographed by Saints quarterback Drew Brees, and a framed set of tickets from the winning season.

“The seeds of the championship season were sown at Millsaps College,” Payton said in a statement provided to the

College. “The foundation for our program started in earnest that summer in 2006.

Our experience there was first-class.”

David Wilkinson, director of the physical plant at Millsaps, like many faculty and staff members, worked countless hours during the training camps. “I definitely felt like we were part of the Super Bowl win. I was proud.”

“The same NFL stars that we watched on TV and saw lift the Vince Lombardi trophy had eaten in our cafeteria, slept in our dorms, sat in our classrooms, and ridden across our campus on scooters,” said John Conway, director of campus life at Millsaps.

“I remember that Drew Brees was the first to practice and the last to leave practice. He would be the last to leave the classrooms at night after the team meetings.”

Dr. Brit Katz, vice president and dean of students at Millsaps, said it was apparent when the Saints were on campus that they were organized, committed and striving for a winning season. “I saw that Coach Payton and General Manager Mickey Loomis were focused and intentional about a winning season, winning a divisional title, entering the playoffs, winning a Super Bowl.

I truly thought it was possible; when you look at a group of men who are as large as Mount Everest, you believe they can achieve anything in sports.”

The Saints chose to train at Millsaps to get away from distractions after Hurricane Katrina. The campus offered a gated community, a location near medical centers, and a choice of natural grass and artificial turf fields (the team plays on both).

Payton praised Millsaps in his 2010 book, Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life: “One thing was obvious: The people at Millsaps were totally committed to making everything right.

They were awesome.”

The team and staff stayed in New South, Ezelle, and Sanderson residence

a

halls. Players lifted weights in the Maurice H. Hall Activities Center, practiced on the campus fields, talked strategy in classrooms in Sullivan-Harrell Hall, zipped across campus on electric scooters, and ate in the cafeteria.

Dave Woodward, chef at Millsaps, fondly recalls the weeks of the training camp when he would come to work at 4:30 a.m. and leave at 9 p.m. seven to ten consecutive days.

He said he would sit down long enough to eat a meal as fast as he could so he could get back to work to get ready to feed the team the next meal.

“It was hard long hours, but it was awesome,” he said. “You get to meet some really nice people and make some friendships, and then see those friends play football on TV and call them by their first name.

This was one of the best groups I have ever worked for, and I would do it again in minute. You know that you rank up there when Coach Sean Payton walks into the Caf ’ at the beginning of camp on his way to one of their offices and walks right past the president, chairman of the board, and a vice president of the College and walks up to you and says, ‘Hi, chef, how ya doing? Good to see ya again, We ready for another one?’ We then talked about the off season, kids and other things before he took off to his meeting.”

Woodward said the 200 persons associated with the team ate this much food on a daily basis: 350-400 pounds of proteins, 400-450 pounds of carbohydrates, 150-200 pounds of fruits, and 100-125 pounds of vegetables. That’s about what he prepares daily for 800 students.

The weather was hot and humid, but the classrooms where team meetings were held were so cold team players, coaches and others wore sweat shirts. “Sean Payton told me he wanted it so cold if the players went to sleep in a classroom they would

Retired New Orleans Saints player Deuce McAllister holds the Vince Lombardi Trophy during a November event on campus during which faculty, staff, and students could view the trophy and have photos taken with it and also with McAllister.

freeze to death,” Wilkinson said.

Accommodating the NFL Team meant work 24/7, Wilkinson said. The housekeeping staff laundered the teams’ sheets and towels seven days a week, physical plant employees removed desks from classrooms and set up tables and chairs in classrooms and daily checked to see how the rooms needed to be set up, and grounds maintenance crews painted stripes on the natural grass football fields every day.

The College gained numerous capital improvements, including an airconditioned Hangar Dome, industrial-sized laundry room, paved parking lots, new athletics fields at Woodrow Wilson and West Street, and an enhanced football locker room.

t

h

l

e

t

i

c

s

“The Saints also attracted an astounding amount of publicity for the College,” Katz said. “We heard from alumni and College supporters in as far-flung locations as Connecticut, Wisconsin, Colorado, and New York as a result of their watching ESPN or other sports networks.

Bill Hetrick, B.A. 1984, recalls watching first-year coach Payton, Brees, rookie running back Reggie Bush, and former Ole Miss star McAllister practice. “It’s not often one can see a professional sports team work in such a cozy environment around so few people. They just look more human, and it’s a whole different perspective when you are on the same plane with them and barely 20 yards away.”

Hetrick said he believes the Millsaps experience had a lot to do with the Saints championship. “They built their foundation and established their commonality under the gaze of the observatory on what was the golf course I grew up three blocks from.”

Patrick Cooper, B.A. 1994, director of residence life and a native of New Orleans, said he became a bigger Saints fan after working with the team to make sure the residence halls met their needs and seeing firsthand their generosity.

“The Mustard Seed, an organization for adults with developmental disabilities, came the second year the Saints were on campus to a practice so they could get autographs,” he said. “The next year, the Saints had planned to leave, but they stayed for an extra practice so the Mustard Seed adults could come. That’s also the practice that Kenny Chesney came to.”

The Saints were consummate professionals, Katz said. “We would welcome their return in a Mississippi heartbeat; the gates to campus are still open to you, Saints!”

—Nell Luter Floyd

fall–winter 2010

43

a

t

h

l

e

t

i

c

s

New leadership for Millsaps women’s basketball team Chuck Winkelman brings more than 25 years of head coaching experience to Millsaps College.

He was the head women’s basketball coach at Hendrix College for nine seasons (1995-2004), leading the Warriors to three SCAC Championships, three runner-up finishes and three trips to the NCAA Tournament.

Winkelman also brings in a talented former player, Jerrie Cooper, as assistant coach for the Majors. Cooper was All-State for Winkelman at Class 5A Mesquite High School from 1990-1994. She was named Newcomer of the Year in the Southland Conference and Southland Conference Tournament MVP during the 1996-97 season. The 1996-1997 team led by Cooper earned a berth in the NCAA Division I playoffs.

“We’re in the process of trying to bring along a group of young ladies who we do not know very well, but we’re developing relationships,” Winkelman said. “I have expectations of a championship program.

If we can be excellent in so many ways on this campus and have such a storied history as an institution, then why not women’s basketball as well?”

44

millsaps magazine

Winkelman said he is pleased to have Jerrie Cooper as assistant coach. “Having her is crucial to this program’s rebirth,” he said.

“Coach Winkelman has very high expectations,” Cooper said, “It’s a challenge for some of us to accept those expectations and push ourselves to meet the goals. But we’re making improvements, and we’re surprising ourselves at how good our work can be if we just believe in ourselves.”

Winkelman admits the Majors face a tough schedule. “You like it to be even the first year, but we inherited a tough schedule. We have a very small window to institute a whole new style of play, and then before you know it, you’re in conference play. In this year’s conference schedule, we’re nine on the road, seven at home with three of those home games right up front. The rest of the way out, we’re nine on the road, four at home. In January of the four weekends, we’re on three road trips, tough ones.”

“I remember some of the great games that Hendrix had against Millsaps in the early nineties, when both of our schools were going to the national tournament,” Winkelman said. “We want to reestablish the tradition Millsaps had in the nineties of being successful in terms of how they conduct themselves on the court, how they play together, just how they go about their business as scholars and as athletes.”

—Jesse Yancy, freelance writer

Stellar studentathletes a Millsaps College tradition

Millsaps College student Victoria Romano wears many hats: Student. Athlete. Sorority member. Campus leader.

Between hitting the books, playing for the Lady Majors volleyball team, and philanthropic activities with her sorority, she still finds time to lead. Romano is organizing the Mississippi Young Women’s

Leadership Conference, to be held Jan. 28 on the Millsaps campus.

Her philosophy? “I believe that the training of the whole person, mind and body, is essential to becoming a welleducated and well-rounded individual,” the senior public management major said.

Romano’s time management skills and dedication to excellence embody Millsaps College’s strong tradition of educating and training scholar-athletes.

Last year, Millsaps received the prestigious David M. Halbrook Award, given for the highest student-athlete graduation rate (92 percent) among private colleges in Mississippi. It’s the third consecutive year the College received the award, an achievement Millsaps has earned for 19 of the past 25 years.

This winning combination of academic excellence and athletic opportunity continues to attract outstanding students to the College campus. “I chose to come to Millsaps because it was well known for its academic prowess and hands-on learning environment,” Romano said. “I would have the unique opportunity to be a studentathlete and contribute to the campus and community in many extracurricular activities.”

Junior business administration major Brian Merkel knew he wanted to play basketball on the collegiate level. The question was: Where? “I was recruited by several schools to play basketball, and Millsaps was one of the last schools to contact me,” Merkel said. “Once I left Millsaps from my visit, I knew that Millsaps was the school for me. I wanted to go to a school where I could play, but also get a great education. After meeting the coaches and hearing of the outstanding academic reputation Millsaps has, the decision was a no-brainer for me.”

Millsaps’ recipe for success in recruiting student-athletes played a key role in the decision made by Lauren Williams, a tennis player and junior business administration major.

“I knew that I wanted to play tennis in college, but it was not until my senior

a

t

h

l

e

t

i

c

s

year that I received becoming a better a tennis brochure time manager by from Millsaps and combining athletics immediately became with academics. interested in the “My grades are school,” Williams actually better in said. “The former season than they are tennis coach at in the off season, Millsaps had been due to the increase contacting me in structure and regularly during discipline in my my senior year in schedule,” Moroux high school, which said. “Sometimes the led me to strongly two run together, consider Millsaps.” but priorities must Williams said be set in order to she ultimately chose Junior Lauren Williams makes a forehand shot.

Senior Victoria Romano sends the volleyball over the net. make the right Millsaps “because of choice.” the strong academic “Balancing reputation, smaller sport with study is classes, and more individual attention.”

Soccer was one reason junior a very tough task,” Merkel said, “but the The small campus allows busy studentaccounting major Drew Moroux took a faculty here at Millsaps understands the athletes to easily take part in a variety of look at Millsaps. “Coach Johnson was the demands of being a student-athlete. Every activities, she said. “Along with playing first person I met at the school when he professor I’ve had so far has worked with collegiate tennis over the past two years, saw me play, and through that relationship, me on moving tests or assignments due to I had the opportunity to be in a sorority, playing soccer in college became more and games or road trips, without complaint.” sing in Millsaps Singers, and be involved more of a reality along with other schools,” Time management also keeps Williams in other Christian and volunteer-centered Moroux said. “I felt that Millsaps was a fit grounded. “I try to do homework in my organizations. I wanted the total package for me, not only as an athlete, but also and spare time throughout the day,” Williams for my college experience, and Millsaps more importantly as a student.” said. “I definitely have to be conscious of offered just what I wanted.”

He, too, has reaped the rewards of being organized when I am busy with

Mo comes to campus Quinn Lemieux, a Millsaps basketball player, met Mo Williams, a guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association. Williams and his foundation hosted at Millsaps his annual basketball camp that in 2010 benefitted the Boys and Girls Clubs. Williams is a native of Jackson and graduate of Murrah High School who played for the University of Alabama before entering the NBA draft. He has played for the Utah Jazz, the Milwaukee Bucks, and the Cavaliers.

fall–winter 2010

45

a

t

h

l

e

t

i

c

s

school and sports, but also find that since I’m on a deadline, I am more productive because I have to be.

“The practices every day are fun, because the team does a lot of team building, conditioning, and strengthening to prepare for our tennis matches,” Williams said. “I realize that the reason I want to win is not solely for me. It is for my team, coach, and the ‘team’ that I am proud to represent every time I put on my uniform: Millsaps College.”

Millsaps’ student-athletes excel not just on the court or field, but in their College community. Merkel and Moroux are intramural sports supervisors; Williams is a Millsaps College First Year Experience leader.

“I also participate in the Habitat for Humanity program, both here in Jackson and in my hometown of Baton Rouge,” Merkel said. “It’s a great feeling to help out families in need, and I always look forward to those opportunities to help out in the community.”

Moroux is philanthropy chair and house manager of Kappa Alpha Order. “I

am an active member of the Catholic Student Association, and I also work in the business office doing administrative work,” he said.

Williams’ leadership roles include helping freshmen become acclimated to their new home. “During the fall semester, my partner and I lead meetings presenting information that addresses important college issues,” she said. Williams has been active in the Campus Ministry team, the Millsaps Christian Fellowship, and the Millsaps Singers. She is a member of Chi Omega sorority, serving as Sisterhood Chair and on the Community Service Committee.

Romano isn’t just directing the Jan. 28 leadership conference. It is her own creation, prompted by “years of frustration with the lack of women’s political leadership in the state of Mississippi, and inspiration from a Southern Women in Public Service conference I attended in May.” Drawing on her experiences as a student-athlete, she took action.

“One of my minors is in Women and Gender Studies, and I will able to use

the conference as my senior project in fulfillment of the minor as well,” Romano said.

Romano plans to gather between 50100 Mississippi girls in grades 9-10 on the Millsaps campus “and give them the inspiration to think of being involved in Mississippi public life as a career and future interest.” Their options, she said, include careers in politics and nonprofit or community service, the study of women’s issues, and initiatives to improve women’s health.

Her goal: Recruit young women early on to become active in public service.

“The speakers I have arranged, Mississippi women already involved in public life, will help these girls see that women are an important part of our state and need to be fully involved with its decisions,” Romano said.

—Jesse Yancy, freelance writer

Sports Hall of Fame 2010 Inducted into the Millsaps College Sports Hall of Fame during Homecoming 2010 were from left, Howard Smith, B.B.A. 1976, football; Brad Price, B.S. 1996, basketball; Scott Maddox, B.S. 1993, soccer; Bill Campbell, B.A. 1969, football; Brad Madden, B.S. 1997, football; and Tom Rhoden, B.S. 1967, who received the Dr. Sam Knox Distinguished Service Award.

46

millsaps magazine

homecoming 2010 a

t

h

l

e

t

i

c

s

MIllsaps College Homecoming 2010 Alumni, family, and friends turned out for Homecoming 2010, a campus-wide celebration that included a football game against Huntington College; tailgating; cook-outs sponsored by the Biology, Chemistry, and Geology departments; Pi Kappa Alpha/Phi Mu Barbecue Benefit; Tasting at The Tents; reunions for Class of 1960, Class of 1970, Class of 1980, Class of 1990, Class of 2000, and young alumni; the dedication of the Walter Neely Room in Murrah Hall; a baseball alumni game; a volleyball conference; Celebration of Millsaps Diversity Reception; and a memorial service for alumni and friends.

fall–winter 2010

47

MajorNotes i n

t h e

s p o t l i g h t

Architect’s passion keeps past alive, relevant to today Rarely does a company’s name reveal everything about the organization. The firm of Robert Parker Adams, Architect, comes close, telling us the owner’s name and identifying his profession, but the story of Millsaps alumnus Bob Adams, 1959, and his accomplishments requires far more than four words. His work on the preservation and restoration of historic buildings has been carried out over four decades and has itself become a living part of Mississippi’s history.

Adams has spent more time in Mississippi public buildings than most of our politicians. A cynic might say that he’s also given taxpayers more for their money.

He has twice overseen restoration of the Old Capitol building and did the same for the New Capitol.

For good measure, he presided over the restoration of the Governor’s Mansion, the War Memorial Building, Jackson City Hall, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s Historic Preservation Division headquarters, once the GM&O railroad terminal.

And those are just the government buildings in the Capital City.

Other municipal restoration commissions include Oxford City Hall,

48

millsaps magazine

Meridian City Hall, and county courthouses in Carroll, Lamar, Holmes, Marion, Sharkey, and Stone Counties. He also worked on the Leflore County courthouse, but limited his efforts to the clock tower.

Adams is a nationally recognized authority on the preservation and restoration of historic structures. His firm has a policy of not entering awards competitions, but clients and others have often done the nominating, resulting in a significant number of awards. Among these is the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, conferred for a body of work in the field of historic preservation.

Born in Jacksonville, Fla., Adams said, “We moved around a lot. My dad was a troubleshooter for a large national company and too valuable to put in one place.” That movement came to a halt in Jackson in 1951, however, and his father went into homebuilding and real estate.

A member of the Jackson Central High School class of 1955, Adams credits Richard Bacon, a career counselor and mechanical drafting instructor at the school, for giving him his first insights into design.

“I showed a particular interest in his course, which was unusual I suppose for a 17-year-old,” Adams said. “He gave me advanced work to challenge me and tried to talk to me about architecture, whatever that was.”

After graduation, Adams entered Millsaps College where he pledged Pi Kappa Alpha.

Joe M. Hinds, B.A. 1959, and Adams have been lifelong friends since their days at Central High School and at Millsaps when Adams had a Whizzer bike—a bike with a motor on it—and they rode all over town on it.

Hinds said it’s come as no surprise that Adams has built a career in architecture.

“Even in high school he was always drawing house plans,” he said.

Betty Miller Sadler, B.A. 1958, said the friends she made at Millsaps— including Adams who was her first real boyfriend—are among the best she’s ever

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

m a j o r

n o t e s

Bob Adams resides in Fountainhead, the Jackson home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The home was 30 years old when Adams and his family moved in and began what was a five-year restoration. The home contains no 90-degree angles.

had. “The fifties were such a fun time.

We would go to dances. We would go to picnics. We would go to ‘tacky’ parties where you would wear the tackiest thing you could find.”

Adams was a good student and more.

“He could fix anything,” Sadler said.

Adams planned to follow Millsaps with the study of civil engineering at Mississippi State but he realized that he wanted more artistic elements in his academic work.

This led him to Auburn University, where he spent five years before receiving his terminal degree in architecture, finishing first in his class.

At Auburn, Adams found time to serve as president of his fraternity and to court the Pike dream girl, Mary Orr. They wed in 1961 and would remain married for a half-century before the happy union was sundered by cancer in the spring of 2010.

After Auburn, Adams entered the army

and did his first design work for the Army Corps of Engineers. For his exceptional service in directing construction operations during the Vietnam conflict, Second Lieutenant Adams was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. He left the army as a captain.

After exiting the army, Bob and Mary Adams came to Jackson where Bob worked as chief designer for Barlow & Plunkett and later held the same position with the John L. Turner firm.

“I got tired of large firms and possibly modern architecture,” said Adams, “So I opened my own office in 1970 and consciously kept the firm small so I could maintain involvement.”

The first independent Adams offices were at The Quarter on Lakeland Drive, followed by a stay at One Le Fleur’s Square in an office building he designed. His next and final move exemplifies his belief in

architecture as an integral ingredient in everyday life. In 1988, he restored and moved into the Greyhound Bus Station on Lamar Street.

Generations of Central High School’s male students knew the Greyhound terminal as “The Dog,” and they would congregate there in the hour before classes began to play its nickel pinball machines, oblivious to the art moderne structure’s streamlined exterior. The building would later serve as a terminus for the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights years of the 1960s before a new bus terminal was built. Today the 1937 structure is a Jackson landmark and has been featured in numerous articles, one in the Washington Post.

“I also date from 1937,” Adams told the Post.

Even Bob Adams’ non-business life has a significant architectural component.

fall–winter 2010

49

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

m a j o r

n o t e s

In 1979, Bob and Mary bought and restored Mississippi’s only Frank Lloyd Wright structure, the former J. Willis Hughes residence in Fondren’s Woodland Hills neighborhood. The house, named Fountainhead by Wright and the late Mrs. Hughes, is made of concrete, copper, and red cypress and nestles in a hidden woodsy glen all but invisible from the street. Its long copper roofline, slab chimneys, and harmony with the natural landscape are Wright trademarks, as is the stream that cascades from a fountain into the swimming pool.

Fountainhead was more than thirty years old when the Adams family moved in, and Adams describes the five-year restoration as “long and expensive.”

The house had not been maintained for years, and Adams said his first thought after his first look at the interior was that Fountainhead was like Elizabeth Taylor.

“It had been through a lot, but there were good bones under there.”

Wright designed Fountainhead in 1948, and the house took more than five years to finish, interrupted at least once by Hughes’s fluctuating success as an oil wildcatter. It is built in Wright’s “Usonian” style, a cost-conscious one-story construction method characterized by a carport instead of a garage, no basement or attic, and sparse ornamentation. The house has radiant heating in the floors, and its interior rooms take the form of parallelograms.

“It’s subliminal,” Adams said, “But there are no 90-degree angles.”

Few men in Mississippi architectural history have touched so many familiar buildings with so much care and artistry.

His restoration work has included academic buildings at Jackson State University, Alcorn State University, and Mississippi University for Women; churches include the Episcopal Chapel of the Cross, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral, St. Peter’s Catholic Cathedral, College Hill Presbyterian Church in Oxford, and Oakland Chapel at Alcorn State.

In Jackson, Adams’ skilled hand has treated historic residences including the

50

millsaps magazine

Eudora Welty House, the Manship House, the Oaks House Museum, and the oldest residence in Jackson, The Cedars. His work also includes the Coker House at the Edwards Battlefield Site and the Holtzclaw Mansion in Utica.

Ken P’Pool, deputy state historic preservation officer, said Adams is one of the foremost preservation architects in the Southeast, perhaps because of his attention to detail. For example, Adams oversaw repairs when the state Department of Archives and History restored the Welty House, and he devised a plan to build new footings and make structural repairs from the inside out so that none of the camellias and other shrubs that Welty and her mother had planted would be disturbed. “It was a very surgical approach,” P’Pool said.

Of particular interest to his fellow Millsaps alumni, Adams is working to help restore the oldest building on campus, the James Astronomical Observatory, located on the west side of the campus just south of Woodrow Wilson Drive. In researching the observatory, he has uncovered forgotten fact after unknown fact about a structure long a trademark of Millsaps College.

Given Adams’ extensive record of accomplishment in the close-knit world of historical preservation and renovation of historic buildings, one might conclude that he had time for little else in his fortyyear career as an independent architect.

That would be a false conclusion. One of the Adams specialties over the years was a concentration on facilities for financial institutions, more than 400 of them. A recent financial building, the Bank of Yazoo on U.S. Highway 80 near Brandon, is allnew but exhibits historical overtones that remind one of bank buildings from the early 1900s.

At the age of 69, Adams completed graduate work at Goucher College and the Harvard School of Design and was awarded a master’s degree in historic preservation.

He both lives and works in structures that he not only bought and renovated but which are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Fountainhead is

secluded; the Dog is not.

“From my office in the Greyhound Station behind Central, I look out of my office window and see the room where Mr. Bacon taught drafting and wonder if he somehow sensed all this.”

Speaking of his most recent restoration of the Old Capitol, completed in 2009, Adams said, “Sixteen million dollars and fifteen years of research and restoration later, the stucco is back, the interior is restored, and the original iron fence that none of knew existed, are all in place.

Richard Bacon’s influence is deep within our Old Capitol building.”

—William Jeanes, B.A. 1959

Bartlett’s theory: Millsaps educating the next generation Just turning 18 years old and a procrastinator, I was in the spring of my senior year at Whitehaven High in Memphis, located just south of Graceland, on what is now called Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Besides knowing I would go to college, I hadn’t really given too much thought to where I should go, so I sat down and considered what was important to me. I was as interested in the humanities as the sciences, and I liked the size and nature of a demanding liberal arts college, so I looked for one in the vicinity.

My requirements were that it have more girls than guys; no ROTC; be affordable; and be far enough from Memphis that I would only come home on special occasions. As Millsaps was a recognized “best buy,” it satisfied all the parameters. Then, they sealed the deal by giving me a scholarship—for $50!

The choice of Millsaps was my first epiphany. So, two score and eight years ago, I walked onto the Millsaps campus for the first time. Unlike today, when prospective

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

m a j o r

n o t e s

Not really knowing what to do, but noticing how many of my new classmates were in pre-med, I thought maybe I should be, too. So, I listed myself that way, and had the great fortune to have Dr. Jim McKeown as my advisor.

One of the nice things about Millsaps alumnus Rodney J. Bartlett, B.S. 1966, known for Millsaps is that faculty advisors his developments in theoretical chemistry, has won a trifecta of international awards: the American Chemical Society Award (2007); actually listen, and when the Schrödinger Medal of the World Association of Theoretical and talking to me, Dr. McKeown Computational Chemists (2008) and the Boys-Rahman Award of the saw that I was less interested Royal Society of Chemistry (2009). This year, he was named Southern in pre-med, per se, than in the Chemist of the Year by the Memphis section of the American sciences. He had the foresight Chemical Society. to put me in physics instead of He is renowned for developing improved mathematical methods his zoology course, along with for obtaining accurate wave functions, which allow scientists to the math and chemistry I’d be compute the properties of molecules. taking anyway. And that made “That means we know about binding energies, activation barriers, quite a difference! whether reactions will occur or not, and all a molecule’s spectroscopic Under the influence of signatures,” he said. “In short, everything one would want to know. That is the carrot held out to the quantum chemist. We can do chemistry without test tubes and smelly laboratories.

Bill Hendee, Sam Knox, and We just have to be good mathematicians and computer scientists to enable the evaluation of a molecule’s especially Roy Berry, who wave functions.” kept Jim Purser and me Bartlett developed what is known as many-body methods, which are suited to the description of manybusy working problems in electrons, and go by the names of many-body perturbation theory, coupled-cluster theory, and the equation-ofAcy's Grill most afternoons, motion coupled-cluster method for excited states and spectra. The methods Bartlett developed are in routine I experienced a new world. use in most electronic structure programs and applied extensively by many workers in the field. These methods Like Bill Hendee, Dr. Berry had helped electronic structure theory be accepted by the chemistry community as a reliable and integral branch just arrived, and he taught me of chemistry. freshman chemistry. Partway The field has many applications including drug design, characterization of inter-stellar species that cannot through the semester, this led be studied experimentally, improved combustion, solar energy capture and storage, the development of better to my second epiphany: that rocket fuels, explosives, and batteries.

Bartlett’s developments in theoretical chemistry have led to his work being among the most cited in what I wanted to do with my chemistry, according to the Institute for Scientific Information. Ninety of his papers have been cited over 90 life was to be a professor like times, and several have been cited 1,000 times. Bartlett’s contributions have also led to many of his prior junior Dr. Berry. associates assuming faculty positions in prime research universities, and the vastly popular electronic structure To do that, though, I had program suite (ACES II and III) was developed under his leadership. to prepare myself for graduate He is a graduate research professor at the University of Florida’s Quantum Theory Project. He has published school and pursue a Ph. D. more than 500 papers and book chapters, presented more than 200 invited lectures at major meetings, edited That sense of direction started six books, and co-authored an advanced text on many-body methods. my freshman year. In fact, on many a Friday and Saturday night, I would hunch over my students might visit several campuses indeed interesting times, as James Meredith Spartan desk in Burton studying to be good before deciding where to go, I first saw and I were contemporaries. enough to go to grad school, while my Sig Millsaps when I arrived in late August of Now ensconced at Millsaps I had to brothers would be trying to get me to go 1962. decide what I should study. I thought it out.

My parents dropped me and my few might be English, where I might write Another imposing influence from my belongings at Burton Hall, doubtless long poetry, which I had dabbled at in high sophomore year was seeing Dr. J. B. Price ago condemned. It was Spartan even then: school like most adolescents. But after teach physical chemistry, which he did two hard beds, two desks, and two closets. realizing I didn’t know what T. S. Eliot was almost to the day he died in November Not even a light for the desk. These were talking about, I decided that wasn’t for me! 1963. His illness was such that he couldn’t

Millsaps alumnus wins trifecta of international chemistry awards

fall–winter 2010

51

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

m a j o r

n o t e s

speak, so he wrote his lectures on the blackboard for us.

After analytical chemistry with Dr. Berry, and his organic course, which soon became legendary, I had the opportunity to have my first course in my senior year with Dr. Gene Cain. By that time, my soon-tobe-wife, Beverly (Bartlett), B.S. 1966, had transferred into Millsaps as a senior! Given Millsaps’ oral and written qualifying exams and miscellaneous other required courses that were not required at then-Mississippi State College for Women, this took some courage.

Dr. Cain taught us in a course called Advanced Inorganic Chemistry, out of a book by Day and Selbin, that Bev, Rick Varcoe, B.S. 1966, and I would use the next year at the University of Florida.

Millsaps’ chemistry was ahead of the curve.

But in particular, this course offered me my next epiphany: I learned about quantum chemistry, which means approaching the structure, spectra, and reactions of molecules from solving the quantum mechanical equations for their electrons.

In the words of Robert Mulliken, if we “know what the electrons are doing in molecules,” we can know all there is about molecules and their reactions. It also enabled me to put physics, math, and chemistry together in a nice, neat package, and not have to go into a smelly lab ever again! That’s exactly what I have been doing for the last 43 years, and I hope to continue to do so for the remaining time I’m given.

Al Bishop joined the faculty after we left, so my interactions with him occurred when I would return for some purpose, perhaps recruiting Millsaps students to go to grad school, or to check on my son Ron (Bartlett), B.A. 1996, or in my capacity on the Science Advisory Board of Jackson State University.

Bishop’s enthusiasm for chemistry and teaching at Millsaps was contagious!

He was clearly a memorable personality who had a major influence on Millsaps and many students. How many chemistry professors can readily assume the guise of Darth Vader?

52

millsaps magazine

Bev and I left Millsaps in 1966 to join the Quantum Theory Project at the University of Florida. Even that was greatly influenced by Drs. Berry, Cain, and Cliff Mansfield, all of whom had done time at the Florida school, with Dr. Mansfield getting his Ph.D. there.

One of my favorite lines was spoken by that famous Mississippian, William Faulkner, who wrote: “In the South, the past is never past.” When it comes to the kind of education we benefitted from at Millsaps, the past is never past.

When you consider all the Ph.D.s Millsaps College and its chemistry department in particular have graduated, what other occupation than being a professor and teacher can have such a continuing influence on the world?

Just as Drs. Cain, Berry and Bishop educated us, many of us have become professors and teachers ourselves. We have educated the next generation.They and many others who have benefited from the education I and others received at Millsaps will educate the next generation, and they, in turn, the next.

The legacy of these scientists, these teachers, Drs. Berry, Cain, and Bishop, will never be in the past. It will always be with us.

—Rod Bar tlett, B.S. 1966

Fundraising continues for the Chemistry Smart Lab and the LegacyWall of Fame in Olin Hall, and it is still possible to make a contribution in honor of Dr. Berry or in memory of Drs. Bishop and Cain. For more information, contactVernon King, director of development at Millsaps, at 601-974-1035 or kingve@millsaps.edu.

Alumni work together as cast, crew on film Numerous alumni, professors, and current students of Millsaps served in central positions on the cast and crew of the suspensecomedy film Shock, recently accepted and screened to a sold-out theater at the 2010 Crossroads Film Festival in Jackson.

“They were essential to getting the film done,” said Chris Spear, B.A. 2007, director and writer of Shock. “I know production wouldn’t have happened nearly as smoothly—or Shock been such a great finished film—without them.”

Other alumni involved in the film also included David Lind, B.A. 2009; Kevin Slark, B.A. 2007; Monte Kraus,1989; Sarah Anne Moore, B.S. 2007; Carolina Whitfield-Smith, B.S. 2001; and Lisa Papale, B.A. 2010. Other participants in the production were Millsaps student Lizzie Wright; Nina Parikh, who has taught filmmaking as an undergraduate course at the College and Beth Kander, who has taught playwriting in the Millsaps Community Enrichment program.

Shock follows Dan and Jamie, a young couple alone in a creepy house one evening. Filmed entirely in Jackson, the film is a first for Spear in the roles of writer and director. One of the earliest graduates of the film studies concentration under the English major at Millsaps, Spear hopes to work with his Millsaps colleagues again in upcoming projects.

Spear plans to submit Shock to additional festivals around the country.

i n t h e

s p ot l i g h t

m a j o r

n o t e s

perspectives in my area of study.

The best parts of these conferences were listening and learning from conflicting theories and applications in the field and participating in collaboration to find a resolution with the Nadia AlHashimi, B.A. 2010, will opposing opinions in mind.” walk in the footsteps of Jordanian AlHashimi is among an women, reaching out to nomadic estimated 1,600 students receiving Bedouin groups and traveling a Fulbright Fellowship this year through the northern Albanian from the U.S. Department of State. mountains.

The award offers recent graduates, She arrived in September in postgraduate candidates, and Amman, Jordan, enrolling in an developing professionals and intensive Arabic language program artists opportunities to conduct at the Qasid Institute for Classical study and research abroad. The and Modern Standard Arabic. She’s Fulbright Program is designed to spending a year studying the lives increase mutual understanding and experiences of women in between the people of the Jordan as a prestigious Fulbright United States and the people of Fellow.

Nadia AlHashimi, a 2010 graduate, is spending the year studying the lives other countries by providing and experiences of women in Jordan as a prestigious Fulbright Fellow.

“I hope to gain new ways opportunities to study, teach, and of understanding so that when I conduct research, exchange ideas return to a graduate program in and contribute solutions to shared the United States, I can help build a bridge changing roles and experiences in the Shala international concerns. of mutual understanding between cultures Valley of northern Albania.

AlHashimi is the first Arab-American that have long stood on opposites sides of She presented a paper based on her woman from Mississippi to receive the the expanse,” AlHashimi said. honors research at the annual meeting of fellowship and the second Millsaps student Her journey to Jordan was fueled the Southern Anthropological Society in in three years to receive it. Chelsi West, through travel to Albania as an Savannah, Ga., in March, said Dr. Julian B.A. 2008, received the honor in 2008. The undergraduate.

Murchison, Millsaps associate professor fellowship funded her research and study “My interest in Albanian families of anthropology. AlHashimi received in Albania, where she lived in the capital began in 2008 on a Millsaps study abroad the Frances and L.B. Jones Award in city of Tirana and took classes in social program led by Dr. Michael Galaty,” she Anthropology presented to the outstanding science and Albanian at the University of said. “The following year, I followed anthropology major at Awards Day in April. New York, Tirana. up my intensive literature research on At Millsaps, she took part in the Dr. David C. Davis, interim vice an independent trip to Albania. For six Ford Teaching Fellows Program designed president and dean at Millsaps College, said weeks, I lived and worked in the Albanian to attract qualified students into college AlHashimi’s selection as a Fulbright Fellow mountains with families as they taught teaching by encouraging the development speaks volumes about the type of student me about their lives. The classroom in of a working relationship between a fullwho excels at Millsaps and the supportive, Albania was a mobile classroom. I spent time faculty and an undergraduate student. collaborative relationship between students my days with women tending the garden, “With Dr. Julian Murchison as and faculty. cooking, escorting the cow across the pass, my mentor, I have been stretched “Such recognition by the Fulbright and working next to them in both the and pulled in various directions as a Fellows program validates the quality household and in the fields.” student, teacher, colleague, and research of education provided here in Jackson, AlHashimi, a resident of companion,” AlHashimi said. “The Ford Mississippi, by Millsaps, a nationally Franklinton, La., majored in sociology Fellowship allowed me to attend multiple ranked liberal-arts college,” he said. “As and anthropology. She completed an anthropological conferences in which one of (AlHashimi’s) friends remarked, independent honors thesis in which she I was introduced to other professionals ‘Researching Bedouin women and examined northern Albanian women’s and varying and sometimes conflicting roaming the mountains of Thethi, Albania,

From Jackson to Jordan: alumna builds bridges

fall–winter 2010

53

i n t h e

s pot l i g h t

m a j o r

n o t e s

completely on her own, studying isolated societies of women...h ow many students have the opportunity and have chosen to do this? Millsaps provided this opportunity.

Nadia took advantage of it.’ ” AlHashimi is a gifted student of anthropology and will in years to come be an outstanding college professor, Galaty said.“She is a natural ethnographer, quite able to approach people, put them at ease, and then work with them as

anthropological informants. She brings a consistently high level of professionalism, curiosity, poise, and grace under pressure to all that she does,” he said. “In going to Jordan, surely she will recapture some of her heritage as an American of Middle Eastern descent. I look forward to seeing the results of her research there with Jordanian women, Bedouin in particular.”

AlHashimi will use her rich experiences as a springboard to the next chapter of her

life.

“I hope that over this next year I will come back a better student so that I can continue this work in a graduate program and continue to cultivate my education,” she said. “From Mississippi to desert sands … Here I come!”

—Nell Luter Floyd

Take a literary tour of Ireland in May I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

William Butler Yeats, “Lake Isle of Innisfree” Millsaps College alumni, their friends and family are invited to participate in the Literary Tour of Ireland that Dr. Catherine Freis, emerita professor of classics, and Dr. Anne MacMaster, associate professor of English, will lead May 14-29, 2011. Ireland is a treasure house of landscapes and literature that millions have found enchanting. This tour will concentrate on places memorable in themselves and equally on places mirrored in the greatest twentieth century Irish literature. The tour will focus on two writers in particular, the novel-transforming writer of Ulysses, James Joyce, and the greatest of Irish poets, William Butler Yeats.

Participants will read selections from the works of Joyce and Yeats and discuss them as they travel. They will see the reciprocal transformation of literature and landscape. Participants from another storied landscape, the deep South, will be familiar with this interplay of geographical reality and literature in the works of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and others. Participants in previous tours of this design have found themselves returning over the years to the rich paths opened to them by their two-week May tour.

The tour will include Kilkenny, Cork, Killarney, Galway, the Aran Islands, Sligo, Kingscourt, and Dublin. The group will stay in memorable hotels, including a castle. For more information, contact Freis at 601-519-6524 or freiscr@millsaps.edu.

54

millsaps magazine

MajorNotes c

l

a

s

s

n

o

t

e

s

Millsaps Magazine prints only information sent in specifically for Major Notes. In the past, material was gleaned from newspaper clippings and other sources. The change was made to protect the privacy of alumni and to simplify the editing process. We would like to encourage all alumni to send in their news items, whether big or small, personal or professional, to Nell Luter Floyd, Office of Communications, Millsaps College, 1701 North State Street, Jackson, MS 39210-0001. Fax : 601-974-1456. Phone: 601-974-1033 or 1-86-MILLSAPS (1-866 - 455-7277). Email: communications@ millsaps.edu. Please include your name, address, phone numbers, email address, graduation year and degree, and any news you want to share. Appropriate items include births, weddings, advanced degrees, awards, job promotions, etc. Photographs are also welcome. If you are aware of alumni who are not receiving the magazine, please send us their names and addresses.

1960

1970

Hunter Cole, B.A. 1960, is author of the

book, Legs Murder Scandal, published by University Press of Mississippi. The book is a detailed history of what arguably is Mississippi’s great crime story of the 1930s. The case, known as the Legs Murder, was front-page news throughout America. Cole was associate director and marketing manager at the University Press of Mississippi at the time of his retirement in 2003.

Dorothy Davis Miley, 1960, was honored by the Hinds Community College Development Foundation for her service to the college and the foundation. The Mississippi Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals honored her during its 2009 National Philanthropy Day luncheon on Nov. 19, 2009 at the Country Club of Jackson.

1966

Amanda F. Frank Stokes, B.S. 1966,

retired after a 44-year career in the computing industry. She is now a gardener, grandmother, railroad advocate, volunteer firefighter and future therapy dog handler. She lives in Huntsville, Ala., in a house in the woods with her dog and cats.

1967

The Rev. Dr. Daniel D. McKee, B.S. 1967,

subdean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Little Rock, retired after almost 39 years of ordained ministry. He served churches in Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. He and his wife Diane plan to move to Madison, where their daughter Katharine McKee Surkin and her family live.

Bishop Larry Goodpaster,

B.A. 1970, resident bishop of the Charlotte area (Western North Carolina Conference), recently took office as the president of the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church. The council comprises the United Methodist Church’s top clergy leaders, who guide the 11.5 million-member denomination in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Richard Perry, B.A. 1970, retired after teaching for many years at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, N.C. He recently entered the doctoral program in sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

1974

Greg Frascogna, B.A. 1974 and M.B.A. 1982, of Madison, joined Stephens, Inc. as a senior vice president and branch manager in Ridgeland. He had worked for Smith Barney as a branch manager for 24 years.

1975

Alan Huffman, 1975, is a freelance

writer who divides his time between Bolton, Miss. and Brooklyn, N.Y. His most recent book is Sultana (HarperCollins,

2009), a nonfiction account of the worst maritime disaster in U.S. history. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about politics to be released in January 2012. Previous books include Mississippi in Africa and the photo-essay book Ten Point. Huffman has contributed to The NewYork Times, Washington Post Magazine, Smithsonian, Outside, the Oxford American, Lost Magazine, Preservation, National Wildlife, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Los Angeles Times, The Clarion-Ledger and numerous other publications.

1979

Christopher Yochim,

B.S. 1979, experienced the thrill of having Early Shirley, the five-year-old trotting mare, that he owns, set a record as the fastest Delaware Sired Trotter in the state’s history.

The lifetime mark of 1:54:1 occurred at Dover Downs Racetrack on Jan. 27. Bred and owned by Yochim and his trainer Daryl Glazer, Early Shirley has won 13 races and has lifetime earnings of more than $100,000. Yochim is the owner of Easy Rider Stable in Parkesburg, Pa., and raises standard bred race horses and Dutch warmblood show horses.

1980

Ann S. Ables, B.M.1980, received the “Soli

Deo Gloria Award for Excellence in Church Music,” presented by Perkins School of Theology/Southern Methodist University during the 50th anniversary celebration of the Master of Sacred Music degree

fall–winter 2010

55

c l a s s n o t e s m a j o r

n o t e s

Stay in touch with Millsaps Here’s how: • Check out the College website at millsaps.edu.

program. This was the inaugural award, and it was presented to five alumni at a banquet on Sept. 28. Since 1994, Ann has been the director of music and fine arts at Memorial Drive United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas, which has more than 7,000 members.

1984

1987 Melissa Cumbest Bixby, B.B.A.1987,

• Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/millsapscollege.

and her husband Drew announce the birth of their daughter, Kendall Quinn Bixby, on March 9.

• Read the Millsaps e-newsletter at millsaps.edu/alumni_friends/enewsletter.

• To find alumni online, log on to MyMillsaps.com.

Betty Burton Arinder,

B.A.1984, is a partner at Wells Marble & Hurst in Ridgeland. She handles workers’ compensation and litigation in federal and state courts in Mississippi. She was selected to serve as a statewide mediator in a program administered by the Workers’ Compensation and Administrative Law Section of the Mississippi Bar of which she has also served as chair. She is a past member of the Advisory Council to the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Commission.

Bill Hetrick, B.A, 1984, and his wife, Marilyn, with REMAX Alliance were recently recognized as the 2nd-ranked real estate sales team in the Mississippi REMAX system for 2009, and are the topproducing husband-wife REMAX team in Mississippi. For the past six years, they averaged more than a closed transaction per week, and closed 57 homes in 2009. Bill, a member of the REMAX Hall of Fame, is in his thirteenth year in real estate. He has his Real Estate Brokers License, is a graduate of the Mississippi Real Estate Institute and is certified as a sellers representative specialist, an accredited buyers representative, and an ePro Internet professional. The Hetrick team recently added the designation of Certified Distressed Property Expert and Short Sale/Foreclosure Resource to their credentials, gaining unique training to

56

• Become a fan of Millsaps on Facebook at facebook.com/millsapscollege and facebook.com/millsapscollegealumni.

millsaps magazine

• Email your alumni news to communications@ millsaps.edu.

assist homeowners in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.

1985

Lowell Martin, B.A.1985, used the pen name, Garland Stewart, and wrote the book, Say Uncle. It was published by iUniverse.

The book is about his life teaching in the Middle East and then coming home to Mississippi to help raise his sister’s five children.

1986

Grady S. “Chip” Bailey III, B.M.

1986, completed the master of arts in liberal studies degree at Nazareth College of Rochester, in Rochester, N.Y. His Capstone Thesis, Music

as aWay Of Knowing, included a solo recital as well

as original ethnographic research. In recognition of his scholarship he received the 2010 Award for Excellence in Liberal Studies. Bailey and his partner Dan have lived in Rochester for the last 16 years.

Bailey teaches applied voice in the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and serves as organist choirmaster at St. John's Episcopal Church of Honeoye Falls, N.Y.

1988

Angela Roberts Sallis, B.A.1988, is

president of the Rotary Club of Stennis Space Center. She and her husband, David Sallis, B.A.1987, a federal contractor with General Dynamics Information Technology, live in Bay St. Louis. Angela is outreach coordinator for NOAA’s National Coastal Data Development Center at Stennis Space Center. She is a graduate of Leadership Hancock County.

1989

Major Paul Wilson, B.A. 1989, retired from the United States Air Force on May 1.

He was a master navigator with more than 2950 flight hours in the C-130 E and H models including 340 + combat sorties in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He served as a contingency flow cell chief and led Air Mobility Command strategic airlift planning efforts for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and 2004. He received numerous awards and decorations, including a Meritorious Service Medal with one oak leaf cluster, an Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters, an Aerial Achievement Medal, an Air Force Commendation Medal, an Air Force Achievement Medal with one oak leaf cluster, a Combat readiness Medal with four oak leaf clusters, a National Defense Service Medal with bronze star, an Armed Force Expeditionary Medal, an Afghanistan Campaign Medal with bronze star, an Iraq Campaign Medal with bronze star, a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.

c l a s s n o t e s m a j o r

n o t e s

Economic Education in New York.

1993

The Rev. Karen Koons Hayden,

BA. 1993, of Columbia, Mo., is the director of pastoral excellence in the Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Ellen Trappey, B.A. 2002, married Matt Ray on Aug. 21 on campus in Fitzhugh Memorial Chapel. Trappey’s grandfather, the Rev. Sale Lilly, B.A. 1952, officiated at the wedding, 58 years after his own wedding in the chapel. Sale Lilly and Evelyn Hawkins Lilly, B.A. 1952, were married in May 1952 a day after their graduation from Millsaps.

They were the first couple to be married in the chapel. The Lillys met in Sullivan-Harrell in biology class. As a class assignment, they were asked to draw a dissected frog. When Sale Lilly walked away from his drawing, Evelyn Hawkins snuck over to his table and wrote “a frog?” above the drawing, and so their romance began. Sale Lilly graduated from Chandler School of Theology and became a United Methodist mister.

1990 Dr. Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, B.A. 1990, launched the third iteration of his long-running sustainability blog (www. sustainablog.org), which now includes the Green Choices products comparison engine.

Visitors to the site can now find, compare, and buy a wide range of green product such as recycled paper towels, gardening supplies, appliances, and renewable energy products. The blog, which has been in operation since 2003, features news, information, and insight on a wide range of environmental sustainability issues.

In addition to his work as founder and editor of sustainablog, McIntire-Strasbourg is a writer for the Sundance Channel’s SUNfiltered blog.

1992

Selena C. Swartzfager, M.B.A. 1992, is president of the Mississippi Council for Economic Education. The council offers comprehensive, K-12 economic personal

finance and entrepreneurial education programs, including the basics of entrepreneurship, consisting of teaching resources across the curriculum, professional development for teachers, and nationally-normed assessment instruments.

Programming is delivered largely through the five Centers on Economic Education at Delta State University, Millsaps College, Mississippi College, Mississippi State University and the University of Southern Mississippi in partnership with the Mississippi Department of Education. In six years of programming, the Council’s programs have reached more than 5,600 K-12 teachers and more than 560,000 students in Mississippi. The council is affiliated with the 60 year-old Council for

1994

Susan Hearn Morgan,

B.S.1994, and her husband, Patrick Morgan, of Memphis, announce the birth of their daughter Katherine Grace Morgan, on April 13.

Dr. Robert C. Tenent, B.S. 1994, of Broomfield, Colo., was recently promoted to senior scientist in the Chemical and Materials Science Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. His work about a new and potentially cheaper method of making electrochromic windows was featured in an article in Technology Review magazine published

by MIT. Electrochromic windows change color in response to changes in the weather and that can help save on electricity costs by absorbing sunlight in the winter and reflecting it in the summer.

fall–winter 2010

57

c l a s s n o t e s m a j o r

1996

n o t e s

of their daughter, Mia Austin Paolicelli, on June 8.

Kelly Merriman,

Latanishia D. Watters, B.A.

B.B.A. 1996, and Austin McMullen, B.A. and B.B.A, 1997, announce the birth of their daughter, Mary Austin, on Feb. 15.

She is welcomed by her brother, Reagan, age 4.

1998, an attorney with Haskell Slaughter Young & Rediker in Birmingham, has been elected as the 2010-2011 assembly clerk of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.

Allison Tays Musso, B.B.A. 1996 and MAcc Watters has a diversified commercial litigation practice, focusing on tort and 1997, and Matt Musso announce the birth of their daughter, Sarah Tays Musso, on Sept. insurance defense and other complex civil litigation. She has served as president of 18, 2009. Sarah is welcomed by big sister the Magic City Bar Association, chair of the Mary Frances.

Birmingham Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Committee, and member Mike Tagert, B.S. 1996, administrator of the BBA Women Lawyers Section of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Executive Board. She is the Alabama/ Development Authority, has been named Georgia District representative to the Young to the Trade and Transportation Advisory Lawyers Division of the American Bar Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Association and was named as a Minorities Atlanta. in the Profession Scholar by the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division, Whit Waide, and a 2008-2009 TIPS NOW! Fellow B.A.1996, was by the Tort, Trial and Insurance Practice named the 2010 Section of the American Bar Association.

Outstanding She served as assistant diversity director Political Science for the ABA Young Lawyers Division for Professor at 2009 - 2010. In 2008, she was named as Mississippi State one of Birmingham’s “Most Influential” in University. He was the second edition of Who’s Who in Black also selected to Birmingham. She is also a member of attend the 2010 the Girls, Inc. Committee of 25 and the Environmental Law & Policy Summer American Cancer Society Board of Directors.

Program at Vermont Law School. His textbook American Governance was published last fall.

2001

1998

Molly Austin Paolicelli, B.A.

1998, and David Paolicelli of Alexandria, Va., announce the birth

58

millsaps magazine

Leah Sams Lumm, B.B.A.

2001, of Memphis, and George Lumm, B.B.A. 2000, announce the birth of their son, George David

Lumm, on Dec. 22, 2009. He is welcomed by sister Emma Grace.

2003

Daniel Rich, B.S. 2003, is pursing a

master’s of business administration degree at the University of Michigan.

He started Synchronizer, a community where users can follow chat conversations about anything from “Jersey Shore” to “Econ 503.” His site received attention in TechCrunch and KillerStartups.

2004

Joye Cox Anestis,

B.A., 2004, and Michael Anestis announce the birth of their son, Jonah Luke, on Feb. 24.

Joye and Michael are both doctoral candidates in clinical psychology at Florida State University.

Gwendolyn Kayce Cotten,

B.A., 2004 and Jeffery Alan Smith were married on March 21, at Whitefield Chapel in Savannah, Ga. Bridesmaids included Joye Cox Anestis, B.A. 2004; Margaret Yoste, B.B.A. 2004; and Betsy Staby, B.B.A. 2004. After their honeymoon to Riviera Maya, Mexico, the couple resides in Atlanta, where Kayce is an admissions representative at Gwinnett College and Alan is a senior telecom consultant with Amdocs, Inc. While at Millsaps, Kayce was a member of Kappa Delta sorority.

Matthew Luter, B.A. 2004, completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in August. His

c l a s s n o t e s m a j o r

n o t e s

GerryEllis.net

Will Selman, B.S. 2003, releases Brown Pelicans at Rabbit Island in southwest Louisiana that were rehabilitated after

the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Selman and other biologists have observed flying and foraging of translocated Brown Pelicans with native pelicans, so it is likely the pelicans will remain in southwest Louisiana. Selman, a wildlife biologist for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Coastal and Non-game Resources, completed his doctoral degree in the department of biological sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi. His dissertation was on the conservation and ecology of the Yellow-Blotched Sawback (Graptemys flavimaculata), a threatened, riverine turtle species that is endemic to the Pascagoula River system of southeast Mississippi. He is stationed in Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, which is located in Cameron and Vermilion parishes in southwestern Louisiana. The refuge is known for its diversity of wildlife and its pioneering research on marsh ecology and recovery of the American alligator. Selman is married to the former Christine Cherry, B.A. 2004.

dissertation was about representations of celebrity culture in contemporary American fiction. He served as fiction editor of The Carolina Quarterly for three years. For the 2010-11 academic year, he is a visiting assistant professor of English at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C.

2005

Louise Chandler, B.A. 2005, is an associate

attorney with the HF Law Group in Memphis, working in the areas of personal injury, intellectual property, medical malpractice, and commercial litigation. She

earned her juris doctorate from the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in 2009. While attending law school, she received the CALI award in Torts I. She was a member of the Moot Court Board, and a member of the Duberstein Bankruptcy Moot Court Team for 2008 and 2009. Chandler had an

externship with Judge David S. Kennedy and Judge Paulette J. Delk at the United States Bankruptcy Court in the Western District of Tennessee and clerked for Judge John R. McCarroll, Circuit Court Division 1. She is a member of the Association for Women Attorneys, where she is the current newsletter chair, as well as a member of the Memphis Bar Association, Tennessee Lawyer’s Association for Women and the Tennessee Bar Association. She and her husband, Jay Biedenharn, B.A. 2005, a Methodist minister, live in Memphis.

fall–winter 2010

59

c l a s s n o t e s m a j o r

n o t e s

Sarah Wilkinson, B.A.

2005, married Barry Kidder, B.S. 2005, on Dec. 12, 2009, at the First United Methodist Church in Coppell, Texas.

The wedding party included Stacey Douglas, B.S. 2005; Elizabeth Olds Marston, B.A. 2005; Courtney Rowes, B.A. 2005; Rebecca Day Kimberling, B.A. 2005; Karla Kregting, B.S. 2005; Whitney Pool, B.A. B.A. 2007; Matthew Little, B.A. 2005; William Massey, B.A. 2006; Jay Patterson, B.A. 2005; Drew Varnado, B.S. 2005, and Barret Lehman, B.A. 2007. Sarah received her master’s degree in social work from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009. Sarah is the Mental Health Policy Fellow at the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. Barry received his master’s degree in anthropology from Texas State University in 2009 and does cultural resources management for various private environmental firms in Central Texas. They live in Austin, Texas.

2006

Lindsey Greer, B.A.

2006, is operations and marketing administrator at Hancock Investment Services.

Lacey Cook, B.A. 2007, married Gunter Cain, B.S. 2006, on July 17, 2010 at The South in Jackson.

The wedding party included Jordan Willett, B.A. 2008, maid of honor; Carrie McDonnell Wadlington, B.B.A. 2006 and M.B.A. 2007, matron of honor; Pam Beidleman, B.A. 2007, bridesmaid; Courtney Costello, B.S. 2007, bridesmaid, Nickolas Fowler, B.S. 2006, groomsman; Trey Hester, B.S. 2006, usher; and Travis Scharr, B.S. 2006, usher.

Lacey is employed by VIP Jackson Magazine.

Gunter is pursuing a doctor of medicine degree at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The couple resides in Jackson.

Carly Deweese, B.S. 2007, graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a Doctor of Physical Therapy in May. She is a staff physical therapist in acute care at University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital.

60

millsaps magazine

service. Trey will graduate from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and College of Business with a law degree and a M.B.A. in December and sit for the Louisiana bar exam in February. He has clerked for the law firm of Herman, Herman, Katz, & Cotlar in New Orleans.

Leah is a middle school language arts and reading specialist at St. George’s Episcopal School in Uptown New Orleans.

2008

Robert Quimby, B.S. 2008, of Hernando received an award from Mississippi College School of Law during its annual Law Day Ceremony.

Quimby was the recipient of the Estate Planning Council of Mississippi Award, given to a student who excels in trusts and estate planning.

Carl “Trey” Allen Woods, III , B.B.A.

2007, married Leah Mary Seddelmeyer,

B.A. 2006, on Oct. 9, at the Terrell House Bed & Breakfast in New Orleans. Millsaps members of the wedding party were Sigma Jennifer Boully, B.S. 2007, and her Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers Clay husband, Robert, announce the birth of Waterman, B.B.A. 2007, a groomsman; their daughter, Elliana Grace, on March 22.

Reade Alpaugh B.S. 2007, a groomsman; She is welcomed by her sister, Emma Paityn. Jeff Newbern, B.S. 2006, a groomsman;

2007

and Scott Hays B.B.A. 2007. The Rev. Peter Gray, B.A. 2004, officiated at the

Any submission for Classnotes received after Oct. 1, 2010 will appear in the next issue of Millsaps Magazine.

MajorNotes i

n

m

Russell Nobles, B.A. 1937, of Jackson,

Ruby McDonald Price, B.A. 1950, of

died July 26, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, Omicron Delta Kappa, and editor of The Bobashela.

Atlanta, died Aug. 24, 2010. At Millsaps, she was a member of Beta Sigma Omicron sorority, the Millsaps Singers, and Kappa Delta Epsilon honorary educational fraternity.

George Rice Wilson Jr., 1940, of St.

Van Andrew Cavett, B.A. 1953, of

Petersburg, Fla., died April 25, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and a V-12 alumnus.

Jackson, died April 21, 2010.

Lookout Mountain, Tenn., died April 11, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity and Omicron Delta Kappa, editor of the Purple and White, vice president of the International Relations Club, and served on the Student Executive Board. He earned the Sigma Delta Chi Award for journalism and was listed in

William Julius Crisler, 1944, of Jackson,

Who’sWho Among Students in American Colleges and Universities.

died June 13, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Catherine Swayze Wallace, B.S. 1953, of

J.B. Lipton, 1941, died Nov. 12, 2009.

Maxine Laird Woodard, B.A. 1942, of

Dr. Robert Thomas Hollingsworth Jr., B.S.

1947, died July 15, 2010. At Millsaps, he was president of the senior class, a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, a Millsaps Singers member, and listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities.

Jackson, died April 19, 2010. At Millsaps, she was a member of Chi Omega fraternity and an elementary education major.

e

m

o

r

i

a

m

Relations Club, Millsaps Players, and IRC. He was also on the Dean’s list.

Robert Earlton Lewis, B.A. 1965, of

Galveston, Texas, died Jan. 20, 2009. At Millsaps, he was a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, the Millsaps Players, the Economics Club, and the Bobashela staff.

Dr. Charles Harrison Moore, B.A. 1965, of

Jackson, died July 11, 2010. At Millsaps, he was the president of the freshmen class and a member of Kappa Alpha fraternity, the Millsaps Singers and Omicron Delta Kappa.

He was named to Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities.

Jerry McClane Pettigrew Sr., B.A. 1966,

of Union, died April 23, 2010. At Millsaps, he was an officer of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, president of the Ministerial League, and president of Christian Council.

Marion W. Francis, B.A. 1968, of Jackson,

of Terry, died Aug. 8, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of the Classical Language Honorary Society.

died June 22, 2010. At Millsaps, she was a member of Chi Omega fraternity, the Millsaps Singers, the Millsaps Players, and the Millsaps Troubadours.

Virginia Leep Shields, 1948, of

Janella Lansing Perry, B.A. 1954, died

Jane Baker Gibbons, B.A. 1969, of

Richardson, Texas, died March 17, 2010. At Millsaps, she was a member of Chi Omega fraternity and the Millsaps Singers.

Sept. 6, 2010. At Millsaps, she was a member of Kappa Delta sorority and graduated with honors.

Dr. Loutrelle Stribling, B.S. 1948, of

Bill Rush Mosby Jr., B.S. 1958, of Natchez,

Brandon, died June 17, 2010.

died Aug. 25, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, Wesley Fellowship, and participated in intramurals.

Carolyn Hays Hughs, 1949, died Nov. 17,

2009. At Millsaps, she was a member of homemaking and Beta Sigma Omicron.

Elsie Logan, 1949, of Meridian, died June

19, 2010.

John Fletcher Rollins, B.A. 1949, of

Centreville, Miss., died Aug. 17, 2010.

Robert Lee Williams Jr., B.S. 1949, of

Jackson, died Aug. 18, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

The Rev. William Thomas Gober, 1954,

Dr. Frank Howard Tucker Jr., B.S. 1958,

of Meridian, died April 23, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member and officer of Kappa Sigma fraternity, in the Millsaps Singers, and model pledge of Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Clyde E. Whitaker, 1959, of Sardis, died

June 28, 2010.

Dr. E. Ronald Carruth, B.A. 1960, of

McComb, died June 25, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of the International

Jackson, died April 19, 2010. At Millsaps, she was a member of Chi Omega fraternity and an elementary education major.

Thomas Gary Stewart, B.A. 1969, of

Jackson, died Oct. 22, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Lambda Chi fraternity, president of the Christian Council, president of Eta Sigma Phi, president of Baptist Student Union, and a manager of the football team.

Robert Mylas Herring, B.A. 1974, of

Arlington, Tenn., died April 13, 2010. At Millsaps, he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity.

The Rev. Andrea Kersh Johnson, B.L.S.

1999, of Madison, died Oct. 1, 2010.

Any submission for In Memoriam received after Oct. 1, 2010 will appear in the next issue of Millsaps Magazine.

fall–winter 2010

61

i n

m e m o r i a m

m a j o r

n o t e s

Carol Howie Allen Honorary Trustee

“She was a lovely person who wanted to carry out her husband’s wishes to honor Millsaps.”

—Jack Woodward, former dean of men

Carol Howie Allen, a Millsaps honorary trustee, died on May 17, 2010.

She and her husband, H.V. Allen, B.S. 1936, established the H.V. and Carol Allen Endowed Scholarship Fund. The Allens were longtime members of the Presidents Society and the Founders Society. Their names are listed on the Millsaps Bell Tower.

In an undated handwritten note to Dr. George Harmon, Millsaps president from 1978 until 2000, Carol Howie Allen expressed how her husband felt gratitude for “all Millsaps did for him in his early years and throughout his life.”

H.V. Allen’s love for Millsaps motivated their support of Millsaps, said Mary Ann Chapman, Carol Howie Allen’s daughter who lives in Chandler, Ariz. “As long as she lived, my mother kept that commitment,” she said.

H.V. Allen was president of the Millsaps Alumni Association and the Millsaps Arts & Lecture Series. He received the Jim Livesay Service Award in 1990. He died on Nov. 7, 1995.

Jack Woodward, B.A. 1951,who served Millsaps for more than 38 years in roles that included director of religious life, director of financial aid, and dean of men, said Carol Howie Allen often attended the annual luncheon that provides donors the opportunity to meet recipients of the scholarships they have endowed.

“She loved that,” he said. “She was a lovely person who wanted to carry out her husband’s wishes to honor Millsaps.”

Carol Howie Allen grew up in Jackson in a home that once stood where Regions Bank has a branch at 947 N. State St. Her father was district attorney in Jackson for 22 years during the 1920s and 1930s. She had six sisters and one brother and was the last sibling to die, said John McGowan of Jackson, Carol Howie Allen’s nephew.

“Carol was Miss Central High School,” he said. “She was the prettiest girl at Central.”

She attended Mississippi State College for Women, now Mississippi University for Women, but dropped out to get married, her daughter said. She promised her father that she would obtain a college degree and she later earned a degree from Belhaven College, now Belhaven University, she said.

Carol and H.V. rekindled their friendship at their fiftieth Central High School reunion.

“She had a party at her house, and from then on they acted like kids in high school,” Chapman said.

—Nell Luter Floyd

62 63

millsaps magazine

i n

m e m o r i a m

m a j o r

n o t e s

Billy Marshall Bufkin Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages Billy Marshall Bufkin, emeritus professor of modern languages who retired from Millsaps in August 1991, died Feb. 4, 2009 in Fremont, Calif.

He taught Spanish at Millsaps for 31 years. He served as chair of the Romance Languages Department from 1967 until 1980 and as chair of the Modern Languages Department from 1980 until his retirement.

A native of Texas, he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Texas Tech University. He pursued graduate studies at Tulane University in New Orleans, and spent a year studying at the University of Madrid in Spain. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and the Korean War. Bufkin’s interest in Spanish began when his family moved to New Mexico when he was in the fourth grade, and he dreamed of visiting Mexico City.

At Millsaps, he was instrumental in the establishment of Sigma Delta Pi, the Spanish international honorary, and Phi Eta Sigma, the national freshman academic honorary.

Dr. Robert Kahn, associate professor of romance languages at Millsaps, said Bufkin was chair of the department when he joined the faculty in 1976.

“He was very enthusiastic and lived life to the fullest,” he said. “I was always amazed at the amount of traveling he did. It seemed as though he went on a major trip every year. He especially enjoyed going to countries where Spanish was spoken. As a teacher of Spanish, he was enthusiastic about every aspect of Hispanic culture.”

Dr. Richard Freis, emeritus professor of classics and former Heritage Program director, said Bufkin was known for giving the Heritage Program lecture on Don Quixote.

“He always read it freshly, but never changed a word or witticism, so for the faculty at the back of the Heritage room it gave the comforting satisfaction of listening to a traditional prayer or of a child hearing a well-known story,” he said. “I miss him.”

Dr. Elaine M. Coney, B.A. 1974, who teaches at Southwest Mississippi Community College in Summit, said she is grateful to have had Bufkin as her adviser and professor.

“I suspect that if I had had another adviser, he or she might have strongly suggested that I change to another major. Professor Bufkin remained my adviser. He must have seen my potential when I probably did not. Although my best could have been much better, he encouraged me to do my best. From heaven, he is beaming to know I have become a better teacher and better adviser because of him,” she said.

“He was enthusiastic and lived life to the fullest...As a teacher of Spanish, he was enthusiastic about every aspect of Hispanic culture.”

– Dr. Robert Kahn, associate professor of romance languages

—Nell Luter Floyd

fall–winter 2010

63

i n

m e m o r i a m

m a j o r

n o t e s

John H. Christmas Former Dean of Students John H. Christmas, B.S. 1948, who served the College as dean of students and vice president

“His imposing presence was our lighthouse in things temporal, and he was our North Star in things moral. The dean was that rare combination of both strength and compassion.”

—Ronald Goodbread, B.A. 1966

of admissions and student affairs, died April 27 in Jackson.

Christmas was born in Laurel on Nov. 28, 1925, to James Y. and Lucille Christmas.

He was a graduate of Carr Central High School in Vicksburg. He attended Louisiana State University and graduated with a degree in physics from Millsaps. At Millsaps, he played football and basketball and was a member of the M Club and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

He received a master’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and did advanced studies at LSU. He was a counselor and football coach at Laurel High School.

He became dean of students at Millsaps in 1961. Alumni from the 1960s recall that it was “his way or no way,” and learned to just “grin and bear it.” In 1964-1965, Christmas, Dean Frank Laney, and Business Manager J.H. Wood were assigned to run the College for about six months between the terms of Dr. Homer Ellis Finger Jr. and Dr. Benjamin Graves.

Christmas was named vice president of admissions and student affairs at Millsaps in 1985. He retired after 30 years of service to the College, at which time President George Harmon praised his candor, friendship, and untiring commitment to College.

Ronald Goodbread, B.A. 1966, of Falls Church, Va., said he was among students fortunate to have known Christmas.

“He was at once a rock and a star. His imposing presence was our lighthouse in things temporal, and he was our North Star in guidance for things moral. The dean was that rare combination of both strength and compassion.”

The 1965 Bobashela honored Christmas with these words: “He is the man who commands the respect of all, whether he is joking with friends in the grill or seriously counseling a student concerning some academic or social problem. He is the man whom the girls adopt as their ‘father away from home.’ He is a brother to the boys.

Few have achieved the sincere respect and immense popularity that this man has.

“Every new day brings many surprises from the student body, but he is patient. In ways which we cannot trace he guides us from our first day through graduation. He sees each of us as ‘promising products’ of society, even though we do not as yet have final coats of paint and varnish. He wants only the best for us and is satisfied with only the best from us.”

As a member of the Millsaps Navy V-12 Association, Christmas helped organize reunions that brought men from across the country back to the campus. He was quick to remind the College that if it were not for the Navy V-12 program, Millsaps might not have survived those World War II years. Christmas pushed the College to include a plaque honoring the Navy V-12 Association on the Millsaps Tower because their collective gifts in the form of insurance and estate planning would one day be equal to the required $1 million donation.

To make a memorial gift to the John H. Christmas Scholarship Fund, contact Vernon King at kingve@millsaps.edu or call 601-974-1035.

—Nell Luter Floyd

64 65

millsaps magazine

i n

m e m o r i a m

m a j o r

n o t e s

Herman Hines Life Trustee Jackson banker, community leader, life-long learner, and Millsaps College Life Trustee Herman Hines, 95, died May 10 at the home of his daughter, Martha Hines Botts, in College Station, Texas.

“Other than his family, Herman’s loves were Deposit Guaranty Bank, St. Dominic Hospital, and Millsaps College,” said Howard McMillan, dean of the Else School of Management at Millsaps. “He was a constant fundraiser for Millsaps even when there was not a capital campaign in progress.”

Hines was born on Sept. 8, 1914, in Jackson, one of eight children. He graduated from Central High School in 1932 and went to work for Morris Ice Company. In 1936, he joined the staff of Deposit Guaranty Bank & Trust Company as a clerk and part-time runner. He left the bank during World War II to serve in the U.S. Army in the Pacific Theatre, but rejoined the bank’s staff in 1946. Hines remained with the bank through 1979 and retired as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. During retirement, he made a daily trip to his bank office and assisted customers until he closed his office in 2010.

Nat S. Rogers, B.A. 1941, a life trustee of the College, said Hines’ story is remarkable in that he never earned a college degree, but “rose to the top and was president of Deposit Guaranty Bank, which at that time was the largest bank in Mississippi.”

Hines became a Millsaps College trustee in 1974 and served as treasurer for many years.

He served on numerous board of trustee committees, and worked with the late James. B. Campbell during the 1980-1990 Centennial Development Fund, a 10-year campaign to raise $30 million. Hines received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Millsaps in 1979.

Jack Woodward, B.A. 1951, former director of financial aid at Millsaps, and Hines served together on the boards of the Mississippi Higher Education Assistance Corp. and Education Services Foundation.

“He didn’t join a board to put his name on a board,” Woodward said. “He did it because he thought it was worthwhile. He was on time to every meeting and expected everyone else to be on time.”

“He had a good sense of humor, but when it came down to getting work done he wanted it done right. He didn’t mind asking questions and putting you in the spotlight if he thought it would help. He could talk about the (College) investments and knew how to ask people about the day-to-day operations.”

In the 1980s, Hines enrolled as a non-degree seeking adult at Millsaps and took classes ranging from Western Civilization to Ethics.“He was genuinely a life-long learner,” said Dr. Harrylyn Sallis, dean emerita of adult learning. “He was interested in learning and interested in what others interested in learning had to say, regardless of their age or gender.”

He participated in the British Studies program at Oxford University in the summer of 1987. “He loved it and the students loved him,” said Bud Robinson, Millsaps trustee.

To make a gift in memory of Herman Hines, contact Vernon King at kingve@millsaps.edu or call 601-974-1035.

“Other than his family, Herman’s loves were Deposit Guaranty Bank, St. Dominic Hospital, and Millsaps College. He was a constant fund-raiser for Millsaps even when there was not a capital campaign in progress.”

– Howard McMillan, dean, Else School of Management

—Nell Luter Floyd

fall–winter 2010

65

i n

m e m o r i a m

m a j o r

n o t e s

Rachel Anne Tillman Laney Friend

The Frank and Rachel Anne Laney Award recognizes the graduating senior who has written the finest essay reflecting on the value of a Millsaps liberal arts education.

Rachel Anne Tillman Laney, wife of the late Frank M. Laney, a former dean of the College and member of the History Department, died April 27 at the home of one of her sons near Jackson.

The Rachel Anne and Frank Laney Award recognizes the graduating senior who has written the finest essay reflecting on the value of a Millsaps liberal arts education. The winning essay becomes required reading for incoming freshman the next year.

Rachel Anne Tillman Laney was born on July 24, 1919, in Meridian and reared by her aunt and uncle in Greenwood after her mother died in a tornado.

She graduated from Meridian High School, attended Mississippi State College for Women, now Mississippi University for Women, and received a master’s degree in English from the University of Mississippi. During 1941 she taught at Amory High School and then did secretarial work at Army Air Base Key Field in Meridian until 1944, when she enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve W.A.V.E.S. and served on active duty until 1946.

In 1947, she married Frank M. Laney, Jr. of Tupelo, and in 1948 they moved to Atlanta, where he taught history at Emory University. In 1953 they moved to Jackson, where he began his long association with Millsaps College in the history department. They celebrated 50 years of marriage in 1997, shortly before his death in 1998.

Dr. Catherine R. Freis, emerita professor of classics, said Rachel Anne Laney was a kind, intelligent, and generous woman.“Her vitality, wit, and engagement with life was inspiring —and just as vibrant in her ninetieth year as it had been decades before,” she said. “Every year I looked forward to receiving the homemade Christmas card she and her son David would send. They were always the most thoughtful and meaningful cards my husband and I would receive.”

Dr. Robert A. Shive Jr., professor of mathematics and computer science, said Rachel Anne was always supportive of her husband. “I always thought of her as friendly, respectful, helpful, interested in helping others, and a Millsaps person all the way,” he said.

Brad Chism, B.A. 1982, said Rachel Anne Laney was an active poet at 90, writing until just weeks before her death.

“She was short, frail, thin, soft spoken woman whose love for all God’s creations was evident in her green thumb, conservation ethic, and the parade of neighborhood children and dogs who joined her afternoon walks,” he said.

To make a memorial gift to the Frank M. Laney Endowed Scholarship Fund or the Frank and Rachel Anne Laney Award, contact Vernon King at kingve@millsaps. edu or call 601-974-1035.

—Nell Luter Floyd

66 67

millsaps magazine

i n

m e m o r i a m

m a j o r

n o t e s

Tommy Ranager Coach Long-time Millsaps athletic coach Tommy Ranager, 68, died March 22 in Brandon.

He began a long, successful, happy career at Millsaps in 1964. For 25 years, Ranager served as Coach Harper Davis’ only assistant. Together they won games, broke records and touched the lives of hundreds of young men and women. Davis retired after 25 years, and Ranager became head football coach, concluding his career at Millsaps in 1996 after 32 years.

During his tenure at Millsaps, Ranager taught health and physical education while also serving as the Majors’ head baseball coach for 19 years. He was succeeded by the current coach, Jim Page, B.S. 1986, who played baseball under Ranager, served as an assistant baseball coach with Ranager for three years and helped Ranager coach football.

“Winning was important, but it wasn't about the final score but how you handled yourself. Much of what he taught relates to how you live life. He taught me to have a work ethic, respect for myself and others, and to take pride in what I'm doing. He gave his heart and soul to his family and Millsaps College,”Page said.

Ranager did not want to hear excuses, but taught players they were capable of doing more than they thought they could, Page said. “He was my coach always. He was one of the last old school coaches, and I say that with respect,” he said.

In 1975, Ranager led the defensive unit to finish first in the nation in both scoring defense and total defense. In 1980, he led the defensive unit to set the Division III mark in scoring defense for a season by holding the opposition to 3.4 points per contest. In 1991 he led the football team in capturing its first Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship.

Dr. Colby Jubenville, B.A. 1994, associate professor of sport management at Middle Tennessee State University and director of the Center for Sport Policy and Research and publisher of The Journal of Sport Administration and Supervision, said Ranager had such a powerful impact on his life that he was convinced he wanted to coach college football, and in 1998, Jubenville helped start the football team at Belhaven College with another great Mississippi coach, Norman Joseph.

“Prior to starting that football team at Belhaven, I wrote a dissertation while completing a doctoral degree at the University of Southern Mississippi on the coach/athlete relationship, largely based on my Millsaps experience and what I endured with Coach Ranager over that four-year period,” he wrote in a tribute to Ranager.

Ranager was inducted into the Millsaps Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995. In 2005, he was honored when Millsaps named the field house the Tommy Ranager Field House. An academic scholarship was also established in his name. After retirement, Ranager worked for Rankin County School District Alternative School.

To make a memorial gift to the Tommy Ranager Field House or the Tommy Ranager Academic Scholarship Fund, contact Vernon King at kingve@millsaps.edu or 601-974-1035.

“Much of what he taught relates to how you live life. He taught me to have a work ethic, respect for myself and others, and to take pride in what I'm doing. He gave his heart and soul to his family and Millsaps College.”

Coach Jim Page, B.A. 1986

—Nell Luter Floyd

fall–winter 2010

67

IN CELEBRATION OF 120 YEARS, WE PAUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE OUR WESLEYAN ROOTS “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

—John Wesley, father of the Methodist movement A United Methodist College (1890-2010)

spring–summer 2010

1

Alumni president recalls family ties with Millsaps faculty and friends As Millsaps celebrates its 120th year, I find myself thinking about how my great-great-great uncle, Major Reuben Webster Millsaps, and a group of devoted Mississippi Methodists shared a vision of opportunity for the students of our state. I wonder if the Major envisioned the academic excellence and national recognition that Millsaps celebrates.

We celebrated the inauguration of Millsaps’ eleventh president, Dr. Robert Pearigen, on Oct. 7. President Pearigen has a clear vision for Millsaps and believes the efforts of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and trustees will move the College forward. He and a team of Millsaps staff have visited alumni across the United States during the last few months, and I hope you met him.

All alumni of the College are members of the Alumni Association, and technological advances such as the Internet, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter make it easy to connect with fellow alumni and the College. The Alumni Board and the Alumni Relations Office work with the College in recruitment/admissions, career development/networking, financial giving, communications, faculty support, and special events. We welcome your involvement.

During the last six years, I have been honored to be both a Millsaps parent and an alumna. It brought me joy to spend the night with my daughter in Franklin Hall, two doors down from my freshman dorm room, and to listen as my daughters, Darrington and Elizabeth, performed on the stage where I fell in love singing with their father and my husband, Ken. My parents, my four siblings, my husband and my brother-in-law all attended Millsaps. I remember my mother speaking of how beautifully the opera singer and professor, Magnolia Coullet, sang during chapel, the same Mrs. Coullet who became my voice teacher and friend. I think of my father who gave an oral interpretation for Lance Goss—one that Lance remembered as the same reading I gave some 30 years later. I think of my brother George who marched with Jeanne Middleton and a group of students from Millsaps during the civil rights movement—the same Dr. Middleton who became my education professor.

I am proud of our daughters for the individuals they have become while attending Millsaps. They have been a part of a campus that is focused on community service. They have learned empathy, respect, and tolerance for those with beliefs different from theirs.

I get a little blue when I think about not having a child at Millsaps after our daughter, Elizabeth, graduates in May. But then, I think of how I will enjoy being there once again as a parent when our now 15-year-old son, Neal, is a freshman at Millsaps.

Maud DeLes Gober Lancaster, B.A. 1984, of Corinth, leads the Millsaps Alumni Association.

OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS 1701 NORTH STATE STREET

Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage P A I D Jackson, MS Permit No. 164

JACKSON • MS • 39210-0001

Meet the challenge!

In recognition of the outstanding quality of the Millsaps experience and to advance the College by inspiring additional financial support, the Millsaps Board of Trustees is committing additional personal gifts to the annual fund totaling $500,000 to create the Trustee Annual Fund Challenge.

This remarkable, half-million dollar challenge will be provided if gifts to the Millsaps Annual Fund by alumni and friends total $1 million or more in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2011. Last year, alumni and friends gave a total of $750,000 to the Millsaps Annual Fund.

As part of the Challenge the percentage of alumni who make gifts to the Millsaps Annual Fund must reach 44 percent, doubling last year’s percentage of alumni participation.

This is a bold Challenge to our alumni and friends and demands a bold response. We need your support in order to capitalize on this extraordinary opportunity. Make your gift today.

Millsaps Department of Annual Giving 1701 North State Street Jackson, MS 39210 - 0001 601-974-1023 1-86-MILLSAPS (toll-free)

www.millsaps.edu