University of Mississippi

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University of Mississippi

Image:OleMissCrest.gif
Motto Pro Scientia et Sapientia ("On behalf of knowledge and wisdom")
Established 1848
Type Public State University
Endowment $415,000,000
Staff 1,332
Undergraduates 16,300
Location Oxford, Mississippi, U.S.
Campus Rural
Yearbook Ole Miss Yearbook
Colors cardinal red and navy blue
Athletics Rebels
Website www.olemiss.edu

The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1848, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford and three branch campuses located in Booneville, Tupelo, and Southaven. UM maintains a field station in Bay Springs as well as the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Additionally, it is both a sea-grant and space-grant institute.

Sixty-seven percent of undergraduates are from Mississippi, and nineteen percent of all students are minorities. International students come from sixty-six nations.

Contents

[edit] Academic divisions

The degree-granting divisions located at the Main Campus:

  • School of Accountancy
  • School of Applied Sciences
  • School of Business Administration
  • School of Education
  • School of Engineering
  • College of Liberal Arts
  • School of Nursing (added 2006)
  • Graduate School
  • School of Law
  • School of Pharmacy

The colleges in the University Medical Center in Jackson:

  • School of Dentistry
  • School of Health Related Professions
  • School of Nursing
  • School of Medicine

[edit] History

The Lyceum, built in 1848, is the oldest building on campus. In its first year, it housed all of the classrooms and faculty offices of the university. The Lyceum is now the home of the university's administration offices. The columned facade of the Lyceum is represented on the official emblem of the university, along with the date of establishment. The University was founded because of the suggestions of southern planters who were tired of sending their sons to the North for college, due to the anti-slavery sentiment in the northern universities.

The School of Medicine, which was originally located at the eastern gate of the campus, was used as a hospital during the Civil War for both Union and Confederate soldiers, especially those who were wounded at the battle of Shiloh. The School of Medicine is now located in Jackson, Mississippi and the original building, which served as a dormitory for male students in its last years before being condemned in the early 1970s, was replaced by a new Chemistry building in the mid 1970s. Soldiers who died in the campus hospital were buried in a mass grave located at the northeast corner of the Coliseum which was built nearly 100 years later as a venue for concerts and basketball games.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, classes were interrupted when the entire student body and many faculty from Ole Miss enlisted in the Confederate army. Their company, Company A, 11th Mississippi Infantry, was nicknamed the University Greys, and suffered a high casualty rate during The Civil War. This group was made up of 100 members from the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. A great number of those casualties occurred during Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, when the University Greys made the deepest encroachment into Union territory. Some of the soldiers actually crossed the Union defensive fortification wall, only to be killed, wounded or captured. On the very next day, July 4, Confederate forces surrendered at Vicksburg, Mississippi; the two battles together are commonly viewed as the turning point in the war. When Ole Miss re-opened, only one member of the University Greys was able to visit the university to address the student body. The university was led, during the post-war period, by former Confederate general A.P. Stewart, a Rogersville, Tennessee native, who was President from 1874-1886.

The University of Mississippi was also the site of rioting during desegregation, when James Meredith of Kosciusko, Mississippi, attempted to enroll in the school to become the university's first black student. Thousands of students and citizens from the surrounding area, a number of whom were armed, swarmed the campus on September 30, 1962 in a riotous effort to prevent Meredith's enrollment. It's also noteworthy to report herioc efforts were made at great risk by student government officers to calm the situation. Meredith, thanks to the protection afforded by federal marshals, was able to enroll and attend his first class on October 2. Two people died during the race riots on campus. Following the riot, elements of an Army National Guard division were stationed in Oxford to preserve the peace. While most Ole Miss students did not riot prior to his official enrollment in the university, many harassed Meredith during his first two semesters on campus. Though the majority of students accepted Meredith's presence, according to first person accounts chronicled in Nadine Cohodas's book The Band Played Dixie, students living in Meredith's dorm bounced basketballs on the floor just above his room through all hours of the night. When Meredith walked into the cafeteria for meals, the students eating would all turn their backs. If Meredith sat at a table with other students, all of whom were white, the students would immediately get up and go to another table. Because of this incident, the university itself is mentioned in Billy Joel's history themed song "We Didn't Start the Fire" ("Ole Miss").

[edit] Publications

  • The Daily Mississippian is the student-published newspaper of The University, established in 1937. Although The Daily Mississippian (DM) is located on the Ole Miss campus, it is operated largely as an independent newspaper run by students. The DM is the only college newpaper in Mississippi that is published five times a week. The editorial staff consists of approximately 15 students, along with a staff of 15-20 writers and 5 photographers, though these numbers vary from year to year and semester to semester. There is also an entire department devoted entirely to advertising sales and production. With a circulation of 15,000, it is one of the largest college newspapers in the country.[citation needed]
  • The DM Online is one of the few online college newspapers that is independent of the print edition. With an independent staff and editor in chief, The DM Online is dedicated to strengthening the publications of Ole Miss through multimedia interaction.
  • The Ole Miss annual is a 415-page color book produced by students with faculty advice. It has won various awards including the Gold Crown.
  • Rebel Radio 92.1, operated by students, is a 6,000-watt FCC-commercially licensed radio station.
  • NewsWatch is the only student-produced, live newscast in the state of Mississippi. Broadcast through the Vista III Media cable company, it is live at 5:30 Monday-Friday.

These five publications are a part of the S. Gale Denley Student Media Center at Ole Miss.

[edit] Accolades

  • University of Mississippi is among the top 30 public institutions with largest endowments per student.
  • University of Mississippi is notable for its production of Rhodes Scholars (24) and has also produced one Marshall, five Truman, and seven Goldwater scholars since 1998.
  • University of Mississippi is ranked by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as one of the top 100 Research Extensive institutions in the nation.
  • The School of Pharmacy ranks 20th in the nation among schools of pharmacy for funding from the prestigious National Institutes of Health and 2nd among pharmacy schools for total federal funding.
  • The University of Mississippi's Sally McDonnel-Barksdale Honors College (founded and supported by Jim Barksdale in honor of his late wife) was ranked one of the top 3 honors colleges in the nation by Reader's Digest.
  • The Mississippi Teacher Corps, one of the most competitive teaching programs in the country, is based at the university.
  • The University of Mississippi Medical Center was recently granted a secondary nursing program, which is a program for first semester nursing students who already have a degree. It is the only school in Mississippi with this type of grant.

[edit] Facts

  • The university houses the largest blues music archive in the United States. Some of the contributions to the collection were donated by BB King. The Mamie and Ellis Nassour Arts & Entertainment Collection, highlighted by a wealth of theater and film scripts, photographs and memorabilia, was dedicated in September, 2005.
  • The school grows U.S. government cannabis. The National Institute on Drug Abuse [1] (NIDA) contracts to the university the production of cannabis for the use in the few approved research studies on the plant as well as for distribution to the seven surviving medical cannabis patients grandfathered into the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program (established in 1978 and cancelled in 1991).
  • University of Mississippi Medical Center surgeons performed the world's first lung transplant in man and transplanted the heart of a chimpanzee - man's closest genetic relation - into the chest of a dying man.
  • William Faulkner's estate, Rowan Oak, is owned by the university. Faulkner's Nobel Prize for Literature is kept in the Ole Miss Library. The town of Oxford surrounds the campus which is located in Lafayette County and inspired Faulkner and his imaginary town of Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha County
  • The fictional Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of Star Trek attended this university. (Interestingly Ole Miss is a Space-Grant college.)
  • Charlie's Angel Kate Jackson and Long-time As the World Turns star Anthony Herrera attended the University.
  • The University has produced three Miss Americas: Mary Ann Mobley, Lynda Lee Mead, and Susan Akin.
  • In 2006, the average ACT score of entering freshmen was 23.0, second among the eight public universities in the state, and behind only the 23.3 average of Mississippi State.[2]

[edit] Athletics

Colonel Reb
Colonel Reb

University of Mississippi sports teams, originally known as the "Mississippi Flood", were re-named the Rebels in 1935 and compete in the competitive twelve-member Southeastern Conference (West Division) of the NCAA's Division I. The school's colors are cardinal red and navy blue, purposely chosen to mirror the school colors of Harvard and Yale, respectively.

Since 1983, the administration has distanced itself from Confederate symbols, including barring faculty from displaying any Confederate imagery in their offices. In 1997, sticks were banned, under the guise of fan safety, to discourage fans from displaying the Confederate battle flag at football games. This controversy began when head coach Tommy Tuberville complained that the battle flag had hampered his attempts to recruit a few top-notch black athletes. It should be noted however, that Tuberville was working under a probation handed down by the NCAA for numerous recruiting violations committed by his predecessor, Billy Brewer, which along with Ole Miss's sub-standard facilities at the time, also hampered Tuberville's recruiting efforts in his four seasons in Oxford. Tuberville departed for SEC rival Auburn in late 1998.

A couple of coaches prior to Tuberville expressed concerns about the difficulty of recruiting top-notch black athletes. John Vaught was the Rebels' most successful coach and led the team from 1947-1971. He served in the athletic department from 1971-72, during which time Ole Miss' first black football player, Ben Williams, was signed and began playing. [The defensive tackle, recruited out of a small school in the Delta region of Mississippi, eventually claimed All-SEC honors and had a long and successful NFL career following his stint at Ole Miss.] After a slow start to the 1973 season, Vaught took over as head football coach for the remaining games.

During the Vaught-led years, the Ole Miss football team did very well. The highlight was the Rebels being voted national champions in the post-season polls in 1960. The Rebels participated in post-season play almost every other season of Vaught's 24-year tenure. Ole Miss did not play in a bowl game following the 1972 season, ending a national record 15 year streak of bowl appearances.

After the Vaught-led season in 1973, however, Williams was elected Colonel Reb. Coaches Ken Cooper, Steve Sloan, Billy Brewer, and Tuberville, all spoke at one point or another about the difficulties of recruiting the best black athletes, although the number of black players continued to increase so as to constitute almost half of the regular starters by 1983.

In 2003, the administration eliminated Colonel Reb, the mascot since 1979. A contest was held in which fans were invited to design a replacement. The athletic department chose two finalists, Rebel Bruiser and Rowdy Rebel, and invited fans to vote on their favorite. The limited fan response as well as ridicule from fans of rival schools prompted the administration to cancel the poll, so Ole Miss currently has no official mascot. A group of Colonel Reb supporters, however, have created "Colonel Too". Supposedly he is Colonel Reb's cousin, and can be found cheering in the stands.

With a long history in intercollegiate athletics, the university competes in 18 men’s and women’s sports. Student-athletes, 630 in all, received all-conference academic honors from 1995-2004. On the field, Ole Miss has gone through many lean years since the 1960s, but had enjoyed a little more success recently, including a SEC Western Division Co-Championship and Cotton Bowl victory in 2003, as the Rebels were led to 10 victories by Eli Manning, the son of Ole Miss great Archie Manning. However, post-Eli, the Rebels only have 11 wins over the past three seasons.

The Ole Miss Rebel Baseball program has made great strides under the leadership of coach Mike Bianco. Since 2003 the Rebels have hosted three NCAA Regionals and two NCAA Super Regionals. The Rebel baseball team has missed the College World Series by only one game twice, falling to Texas, the eventual National Champion, in 2005 and to Miami in 2006.

No family has had more impact upon the shape of Ole Miss athletics than the Mannings. Archie was an Ole Miss football great in the late 1960s and his son Eli in 2003 led the Rebels to their first ten-win football season in thirty years. The impact of Archie Manning, who married a former Ole Miss homecoming queen, is undeniable. His uniform number, 18, has become the official speed limit of the Oxford campus.

Ole Miss' athletic rivals are LSU (the Tigers) and Mississippi State (the Bulldogs). LSU owns a 54-37-4 advantage in the all-time series with Ole Miss. The Rebels and Bulldogs close each football season with the Egg Bowl, with the victor receiving possession of the Golden Egg Trophy. Ole Miss leads the series, one of the south's most played, 59-38-6 dating back to 1901. In 2005, Mississippi State blew out Ole Miss 35-14; however, in 2006, Ole Miss came back to beat the Bulldogs 20-17. In basketball, MSU leads the series 132-103 and has won 10 of the last 12.

The school's fight song is "Forward Rebels" while the school cheer is entitled Hotty Toddy: The song, "Dixie" is the unofficial fight song, and is performed by the Pride of the South Band during the pre-game celebations in the Grove and at least once during Home Games. A modification of the Elvis Presley song "American Trilogy", now known as From Dixie with Love is also played during football games, both home and away. Students and fans know it as Slow Dixie, and have become quite attached to the song.


See also: Andy Kennedy - Basketball coach

[edit] Greek Life

Despite the relatively small number of Greek-letter organizations on campus, many students participate in Greek life at Ole Miss. The sorority chapters are very large, with many around 250 members. Recruitment is fiercely competitive and potential sorority members are encouraged to secure personal recommendations from Ole Miss sorority alumna in order to increase the chances of receiving an invitation to join one of the 9 NPC sororities on campus.

NPC Sororities

NPHC Organizations


Fraternities

[edit] Noteworthy alumni

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


Southeastern Conference
Eastern Division: Florida • Georgia • Kentucky • South Carolina • Tennessee • Vanderbilt
Western Division: Alabama • Arkansas • Auburn • LSU • Mississippi • Mississippi State
Public Colleges and Universities in Mississippi
Alcorn State University • Delta State University • Jackson State University • Mississippi State University • Mississippi University for Women • Mississippi Valley State University • University of Mississippi • University of Southern Mississippi
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