Mississippi University for Women has been awarded the Best Student Support Services on Intelligent.com’s list of the Best Online Colleges in the state of Mississippi in 2023.
The research identifies top schools in the state based on tuition costs, the number of credits required to graduate and the online coursework delivery format.
“As an online student, you get access not only to 24/7 technology support, but also to all of Fant Memorial Library’s online resources, mental health counseling services, career advice and resources, and most importantly, academic support, including dedicated Student Success Navigators, peer tutoring, The W Writing Center and more,” Intelligent.com wrote.
Intelligent.com researched more than 3,000 colleges and universities for its 2023 online report. It implemented a unique methodology that ranks each institution on a scale from 0-100 across six categories. The scoring system compares each school according to tuition costs, admission, retention and graduation rates, faculty and reputation, as well as the student resources provided for online students.
Studies show obtaining a degree increases income substantially, with graduates earning 84% more than those with only high school diplomas or those without a completed GED. The percentage difference in earnings grows with higher learning degrees such as master’s, doctoral or professional degrees, with the unemployment rate decreasing to as much as 1.6% for those with a doctorate. To access the ranking, visit https://www.intelligent.com/best-online-colleges/mississippi/#mississippi_university_for_women
Intelligent.com provides unbiased research to help students make informed decisions about higher education programs. The website offers curated guides that include the best degree programs as well as information about financial aid, internships and study strategies. To learn more, visit https://www.intelligent.com/.
CPDC children will participate in ‘Read for the Record’
The children in the Mississippi University for Women’s School of Education’s Child & Parent Development Center will try to break a record Thursday, Oct. 27.
At 9 a.m., the CPDC children will participate in the world’s largest shared reading experience as part of Jumpstart’s “Read for the Record,” which celebrates children’s early language and social-emotional development.
“Read for the Record” started more than a decade ago to bring attention to high-quality learning. The event has grown into a global effort that engages millions of children and adults in a shared reading experience. This year’s special edition storybook that is exclusively available through Jumpstart is “Nigel and the Moon,” by Antwan Eady and illustrated by Gracey Zhang. The book is about a young boy who dreams big but is too scared to share his dreams with the world.
Rose Ford, an instructor and Jumpstart program site manager at The W’s School of Education, said the book encourages children to celebrate where they come from, who they are and who they are meant to be.
“This global campaign increases awareness about the critical importance of early literacy and makes high-quality diverse books accessible to children in underserved communities or families,” Ford said.
Dr. Catherine Cotton, an assistant professor of speech-language pathology at The W, will be the university’s special reader. Ford said Cotton’s contribution will continue the long line of support that has seen The W President Nora Miller, Dr. Marty Brock and many other university faculty members participate.
“We will help build their language skills by teaching children rich vocabulary selected from the storybook,” Ford said. “We will keep the dreams going by making superhero capes to represent who they are and who they want to become. We will design moon rocks to hold when we feel nervous or upset to build social-emotional skills.
“CPDC children and MUW Jumpstart members also will use the book to honor the diversity in our community and world, celebrate pride in where we come from and uplift the essential workers in our communities.”
Jumpstart is a national early education organization working toward the day every child in the United States enters kindergarten prepared to succeed. Ford said Jumpstart will provide CPDC teachers and children’s families with resource guides for follow-up activities after “Read for the Record.” She also said The W’s Jumpstart Corps members will engage with children following the event to extend their learning.
This year’s event Literacy Champions are Nigel Barker, Monique Coleman and Ashanti. Barker is an English reality TV show personality, fashion photographer, author, spokesperson, filmmaker and former model. Coleman is an American actress best known for her role in Disney’s High School Musical movies. Ashanti is an American singer.
Other sponsors and partners include TJX, Franklin Templeton, Lego, First Book, Novel Effect, Ferst Readers and more. All proceeds from “Read for the Record” support Jumpstart’s work to increase early education access for young children in underserved communities. Jumpstart delivers research-backed programming directly to children; works to grow and train the next generation of early childhood educators; and advocates for more equitable policies in the early education sector.
If you want to read more about this experience, please visit readfortherecord.org.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Oct. 25, 2022 Contact: Adam Minichino acminichino@muw.edu (662) 329-1976
Mississippi University for Women will continue to seek input with a public survey as the university explores a name change.
“We have received feedback and suggestions from our listening sessions, from emails and from our conversations with others. The next step in our process is to build on that by engaging our stakeholders through this survey,” said President Nora Miller.
Through the survey, participants can rank the importance of various factors and themes, suggest names and indicate willingness to participate in a focus group. A link for focus group registration will be at the end of the survey in order to not associate personal information with the survey. All survey responses are anonymous. To take the survey, please visit: https://lovecommslc.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5BaxCpHKoFnImsC.
Created and managed by Love Communications, a Salt Lake City-based firm, the university is partnering with for the naming process, the survey will be open until 12:00 a.m. Monday, October 31 CST. The market research firm also will randomly select participants for the focus groups.
Love Communications will provide a report detailing data, trends and comments from the survey. The report will be available on the university’s naming process website. In November, the agency will facilitate focus groups comprised of faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members to further research naming options and trends.
The Naming Taskforce will use the results of the survey and focus groups to move toward a consensus of a name. The selection will be presented to the university president. If more research and feedback is needed, additional focus groups will occur.
The taskforce is chaired by Amanda Clay Powers, dean of Library Services, and includes deans, provost, former provost Tom Richardson, executive director of University Relations, executive director of Alumni and Development, general counsel, director of the Student Success Center and representatives from Faculty Senate, Staff Council, Student Government Association, Alumni Association and the Foundation Board.
To participate in the survey and learn more about the university’s name recommendation process, please visit muw.edu/name.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Oct. 25, 2022 Tyler Wheat ltwheat@muw.edu
Established by the Legislature in 2010, the Educational Achievement Council annually provides benchmarks toward national educational goals for each university in the Mississippi higher educational system.
The EAC report card has recently been released, detailing each university’s progress in increasing the educational attainment and skill levels of the state’s working-age population to the national average by 2025.
Mississippi Delta novelist Steve Yarbrough returns as the keynote author for the 34th annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, Oct. 27-29 in Mississippi University for Women’s Poindexter Hall.
Steve Yarbrough
Yarbrough has received many awards for his fiction, including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, the Richard Wright Award and the Robert Penn Warren Award. He has been a frequent guest in the symposium’s early years featuring his three story collections, and this year will read from his eighth novel, “Stay Gone Days.”
Yarbrough’s novel, which Rain Taxi calls “wise, tender and honest,” provides a fitting launch for the symposium theme: “Telling Stories, Charting a Future: ‘Coming to the end of the road… the jumping-off place,’” inspired by Eudora Welty’s story “No Place for You My Love.” Yarbrough weaves the life stories of two sisters, Ella and Caroline Cole, beginning with their high school triumphs and foibles in the fictional town of Loring, Mississippi, where their roads diverge after their father’s tragic accident. Readers follow their separate twists and turns over four decades that lead them to Boston, California, Poland and eventually back to the Delta.
Annette Trefzer
The symposium begins with Yarbrough’s keynote reading on Thursday, Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in The W’s Poindexter Hall. Sessions continue Friday at 9:30 a.m. until noon, Friday at 1:30 p.m. until 4 p.m. and Saturday at 9:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.
Other writers who will present at the symposium will include Eudora Welty Prize scholar Annette Trefzer, who will discuss her book “Exposing Mississippi: Eudora Welty’s Photographic Reflections,” in which she explores Welty’s vision as a photographer in the context of the depression-era Mississippi she explored through her lens.
Chantal James
New voices in fiction include, Chantal James, who will read from her debut novel, “None But the Righteous,” a magical-realist story of Ham, a young Black man searching the South for home and freedom in the wake of hurricane Katrina, which The Los Angeles Times describes as “a deeply haunted novel that moves with calm and ruthless determination.”
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
She is joined by Virginia writer, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, whose debut collection of stories and a novella, “My Monticello,” was named one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction books for 2021, and Olivia Clare Friedman of the University of Southern Mississippi with her debut novel, “Here Lies,” which tells the story of two unemployed young women in a futuristic small-town Louisiana, weathering a restrictive culture in the wake of climate change and incessant storms.
T. K. Lee
Other Mississippi writers include poets T. K. Lee, assistant professor of English at The W, returning with his second collection of poetry, “Scapegoat,” Columbus native and W alumnus C. T. Salazar with his debut full-length collection, “Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking” and Derrick Harriell of the University of Mississippi, who returns to the symposium with his collection “Come Kingdom.” They are joined by Alabama poets Jacqueline Allen Trimble and Adam Vines, who return with their collections “How to Survive the Apocalypse” and “Lures.”
Veteran Kentucky writer Holly Goddard Jones also returns to the symposium with her fourth book, the short story collection “Antipodes,” which Garden and Gun has hailed as “extraordinary and life-crammed stories.” And making his Welty Symposium debut is Chattanooga poet Earl S. Braggs with his first memoir about growing up black and poor in rural North Carolina, “A Boy Named Boy.”
Holly Goddard Jone
On Friday afternoon, these 12 published writers will be joined by five high-school Ephemera Prize winners, whose poems, essays and stories were judged by Jacqueline Allen Trimble and Chantal James.
Other Welty Series events include the Welty Gala, a university fundraising dinner featuring Henry Winkler Friday evening, and the Welty Art Gallery exhibits, ongoing in Summer Hall.
All symposium sessions and art exhibits are free and open to the public. No reservations are required. For Welty Gala tickets, contact the MUW Foundation. For information on the authors, books and the Ephemera Prize, see the symposium website www.muw.edu/welty.
Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium Schedule
Thursday, Oct. 27
7:30 p.m.
Keynote reading: Steve Yarbrough, “Stay Gone Days”
Friday, Oct. 28
9:00 a.m.
Derrick Harriell, “Come Kingdom: Poems”
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, “My Monticello”
Adam Vines, “Lures: Poems”
Holly Goddard Jones, “Antipodes: Stories”
1:30 p.m.
Olivia Clare Friedman, “Here Lies”
Chantal James, “None But the Righteous”
Jacqueline Trimble, “How to Survive the Apocalypse”
