The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss or USM) is a public research university with its main campus in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award bachelor's, master's, specialist, and doctoral degrees. The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity".
Founded on March 30, 1910, the university is a dual-campus institution, with its main campus in Hattiesburg and its other large campus, Gulf Park, in Long Beach. It has five additional teaching and research sites, including the John C. Stennis Space Center and the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory (GCRL).
Originally called the Mississippi Southerners, the Southern Miss athletic teams became the Golden Eagles in 1972. The school's colors, black and gold, were selected by a student body vote shortly after the school was founded. The color scheme was inspired by the Mississippi Native species, Black Eyed Susans. While mascots, names, customs, and the campus have changed, the black and gold colors have remained constant. USM's 17 sport programs participate in NCAA Division I athletics, mainly as members of the Sun Belt Conference.
History
The University of Southern Mississippi was founded on March 30, 1910, as Mississippi Normal College, a teacher-training school. The Normal College was created to standardize the process of training upcoming teachers. Before the existence of a specialized teaching college, instructors were required to travel throughout Mississippi in preparation for teaching their students. R. H. Hunt designed the original campus plan and seven buildings in the Colonial Revival style.University of Southern Mississippi. Special Collections. Exhibits and Events Retrieved March 2, 2020.Sutton, Cantey Venable. ed. (1929). History of Art in Mississippi. Gulfport, Miss.: The Dixie Press. p. 7. The college's first president, Joseph Anderson Cook, presided over the opening session of instruction on September 18, 1912, and oversaw the construction of College Hall (the academic building); Forrest County Hall (men's and married students' dormitory); Hattiesburg Hall (women's dormitory); the Industrial Cottage (training laboratory for home management); and the president's home (now the Ogletree Alumni House). In its first session, Mississippi Normal College had an enrollment of 876 students, and stood for "clean, pure, efficient lives."
As the school developed its curriculum and departments, its name changed to reflect its progress: in 1924, to Mississippi State Teachers College, and in 1940, to Mississippi Southern College.
The college's fifth president, State Archivist William David McCain, was installed in 1955 and worked to expand Mississippi Southern College. He oversaw the construction of 17 new structures on campus and convinced Governor Ross Barnett to upgrade the school to university status in recognition of its graduate programs. On February 27, 1962, Barnett signed the bill into law that renamed the school the University of Southern Mississippi.
Desegregation and civil rights In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. But when Clyde Kennard, a black Korean War veteran, attempted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College in the late 1950s, USM President William McCain made major efforts with the state political establishment and local black leaders to prevent it. Kennard was turned down three times. After he wrote letters about educational integration to the local paper, he was twice arrested on trumped-up criminal charges; he was eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state prison.
McCain's direct involvement in this abuse of the justice system is unclear. He was likely aware that the charges against Kennard were fraudulent, but neither he nor other public officials made any objection.Tucker, William H. The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund, University of Illinois Press (May 30, 2007), pp 165-66. Speaking to businessmen in Chicago on a trip sponsored by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, McCain said: "We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a segregated society. ... In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting," he said. "The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands." Kennard was finally released on parole in 1963, when he was terminally ill with cancer; he died six months later.
By the early 1960s, national pressure was growing to integrate Mississippi's institutions of higher learning. McCain was well known to vehemently oppose having any black students at Mississippi Southern. In 1962 James Meredith attempted to enroll at the University of Mississippi, the state's flagship institution. His enrollment was accomplished after white rioting and use of federal troops to end the violence.
By the fall of 1965 both Ole Miss and Mississippi State University had been integrated—the former violently, the latter peacefully. McCain, USM, and state leaders recognized that the state needed to integrate to appeal to businesses outside the state. They made extensive confidential plans for the admission of USM's first two black students. A faculty guardian and tutor was secretly appointed for each to help with the transition. The campus police department was instructed to prevent or quickly stop any incident against the two black students. Student athletic, fraternity, and political leaders were recruited to keep the peace and protect the university from the kind of negative publicity Ole Miss had suffered during rioting against Meredith's enrollment.
As a result, black students Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong and Raylawni Branch were enrolled without incident in September 1965.Branch (Raylawni) Collection, The University of Southern Mississippi – McCain Library and Archives. Retrieved on November 7, 2008. In 2018, USM unveiled a Freedom Trail Marker in honor of Clyde Kennard in front of Kennard Washington Hall, named after him and the first African-American doctoral student to graduate from USM, Walter Washington. Shortly thereafter, at the commencement ceremonies in May 2018, Kennard was posthumously awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa. A student in Kennard's Sunday School class at Mary Magdalene Baptist Church in Eatonville, Mississippi, accepted the honor on his behalf.
Between 1955 and 1965, USM and McCain infringed upon gay and lesbian students' civil rights. Gay and lesbian students, especially male homosexuals, were targeted and expelled. McCain's intention was to purge the campus of all sexual impurities.
In 1969, the Afro-American Cultural Society (AACS) was founded. Alvin Williams, an early member of the organization and professor emeritus of media at the university, called AACS an "instrumental part of student life for black students" attending the university in the late 1960s. The organization was renamed the African American Student Organization (AASO) in the 1990s.
The transition from the 1960s to the 1970s involved a surge of social activism and major changes at the university. In response to black students' growing concerns, the university ramped up its efforts to hire black faculty. In 1972, "General Nat" (Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest) was discarded in favor of the Golden Eagles. In 1974, standout football player Fred Cook was voted the first black Mr. USM. The first black Greek organizations premiered in 1975. By the time McCain retired in 1975, enrollment had climbed to 11,000 students.
In the years following McCain's campus transformation, The University of Southern Mississippi continued to expand dramatically. Changes included replacement of the quarter system by semesters, creation of the Polymer Science Institute, reorganization of the university's 10 schools into six colleges including the College of Nursing, affiliation with Conference USA, the implementation of online classes; and an expansion of the Gulf Coast campus.
Presidents
Joseph Anderson "Joe" Cook – 1912–1928 Claude Bennett – 1928–1933 Jennings Burton George – 1933–1945 Robert Cecil Cook – 1945–1954 Richard Aubrey McLemore (acting president) – 1955 William David McCain – 1955–1975 Aubrey K. Lucas – 1975–1996 Horace Weldon Fleming Jr. – 1997–2001 Aubrey Lucas (interim president) – 2001–2002 Shelby Freland Thames – 2002–2007 Martha Dunagin Saunders – 2007–2012 Aubrey Lucas (interim president) – 2012–2013 Rodney D. Bennett – 2013–2022 Joseph S. Paul – 2022–present
21st century
In the early 21st century, Southern Miss developed under the presidency of Shelby Thames. His tenure was characterized by a significant increase in the quantity of research conducted at the university. USM was classified as a "Doctoral / Research Extensive" university by the Carnegie Foundation during the Thames era. According to the National Science Foundation, USM spent $61 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 183rd in the nation.
Thames's work to respond to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina brought praise from the community. In October 2005, the Faculty Senate of the Gulf Park campus passed a resolution of appreciation. The Hattiesburg American reported that Thames's post-Katrina address to the faculty at Hattiesburg was well received. Thames did not lay off any university employees after the storm, although the Gulf Park campus alone sustained over $100 million in damage (By contrast, Tulane University in New Orleans released approximately 25% of its staff and dropped significant athletic and academic programs, including the computer science major and most engineering programs, in retrenchment after closure and damage to the campus.)
The Thames administration gained financing and supervised several campus construction projects, often in partnership with private-sector entities. An addition to the student union houses the second-largest Barnes & Noble store in the southern U.S., which is open to the community. Barnes & Noble pays $1.5 million in annual rent for the facility. Thames also negotiated a food services agreement with Aramark which will donate $9 million to university construction projects. Other enhancements include the upscale Power House restaurant (at a former college power plant adapted for this use); the $15 million sorority village; additions to the football, basketball, and baseball facilities; and urban design elements to make the campus more open, "green," and pedestrian-friendly.
The university experienced an unexpected, highly publicized drop from "Tier 3" to "Tier 4" in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings in 2004. This roughly coincided with the height of the Shelby Thames controversy, when he fired tenured professors for "dissension". Several organizations scrutinized his actions' legality, as tenure is designed to protect academic independence. In 2004, the USM Faculty Senate expressed its grievances to Thames after the allegations were heard.USM Faculty Senate. "Open Letter to President Thames," Faculty Senate Resolutions, Paper 38, (2004): 2. https://aquila.usm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1015&context=faculty_senate_resolutions The Faculty Senate later published a review of the Thames Administration describing its controversies. After Thames resigned, by 2009, U.S. News & World Report again ranked the university as in the upper portion of "Tier 3.".U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges 2009 In the 2011 U.S. News & World Report College ranking, USM was in the "Tier 2". In 2016, USM was ranked by U.S. News & World Report 125th in national public universities and 220th in national universities.U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges Rankings 2016