Students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community stakeholders will soon be able to weigh in on the qualifications and qualities they want to see in candidates for the next president of the Mississippi University for Women.
The Mississippi Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning announced Tuesday it will host a pair of listening sessions on April 14 as it searches for a new president of the roughly 2,400-student public university in Columbus. Listening sessions will be held at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the Cochran Limbert Assembly Room inside Thad and Rose Cochran Hall on the MUW campus. Sessions will be livestreamed, and comments may also be submitted online through 5 p.m. on April 14.
“The listening sessions will be an initial step in the search process. IHL Board of Trustees has not yet formally announced a timeline for the process,” a statement from the IHL Board reads as it searches for a replacement for Dr. Nora Miller, who will retire June 30.
The IHL Board is the constitutional governing body for Mississippi’s eight public universities and charged with top-level hiring and personnel decisions.
Miller, who announced her retirement in January, assumed the MUW presidency in 2018 after serving as vice president and senior vice president for finance and administration for 17 years at her alma mater.
She led MUW through the COVID-19 pandemic, when enrollment noticeably dipped, and into one of the brighter periods of the school’s storied history. That includes the first enrollment increase since 2019, a stronger financial foundation, expanded workforce programs, and national recognition for programs such as nursing and speech pathology as well as overall affordability.
Miller has also been a steadfast proponent of MUW changing its name to better reflect its student population. The university became coeducational in 1982 and is now about 22% male. However, the state legislature has not been able to agree on the university changing its name.
MUW was founded in 1884 as the first state-supported college for women in the U.S. and now offers more than 70 majors and concentrations.