FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 10, 2004MUW to award five Medals of
Excellence, break ground for Emma Ody Pohl Building
By Jill D. O’Bryant
COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Mississippi University for Women will award the Medal
of Excellence to five individuals during commencement weekend Friday.
Awarded since 1979, the Medal of Excellence is the university’s highest
non-degree honor.
Those to be honored are Dr. Sheila Adams, Sen. Thad Cochran, Connie
Sills Kossen, Virginia Shanteau Newton and Carolyn Smithson Ritter.
“Every institution has wonderful people connected with it who need to be
recognized,” said Dr. Claudia A. Limbert, president. “MUW has been
blessed with these five people who have contributed and have helped us
dream, plan, achieve goals and - in some special way - become even
better than we were before.”
Adams, employed at MUW since 1973, is head of the Division of Nursing.
In 2003, for the second time in her career at MUW, she took on the role
of interim provost and vice president for academic affairs.
A member of the United States Senate since 1978, Cochran has been a
proponent of quality education and a strong supporter of MUW. His most
recent effort was the successful writing of a bill to award the
university approximately $750,000 to fund campus emergency equipment.
A 1964 alumna, Kossen currently serves as chairman of the MUW Foundation
Board of Directors. She and her husband, Tom, own Kossen Equipment Inc.
in Jackson, a distributor of Kohler Generators.
Newton, a 1979 alumna of Gulfport, serves on the Board of Trustees of
State Institutions of Higher Learning. She also serves on the Board of
Commissioners of the Mississippi State Port Authority.
A former chairman of the MUW Foundation Board of Directors and president
of the MUW Alumnae Association, Ritter, a 1957 alumna of Kosciusko, is a
lifetime member of the MUW Foundation Board.
A dinner in celebration of the Medal of Excellence and honorary
doctorate recipients, Mary Ellen Weathersby Pope ’26 and Marie Charlotte
Stark ‘33, will be held Friday, May 14 at 7 p.m.
Following dinner, a groundbreaking ceremony will be held for the Emma
Ody Pohl Building at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 11th Street South.
The building will house the Division of Health and Kinesiology, offices,
gyms and an elevated walking track.
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