Service planned for former student affairs VP Robert L. Jones
Robert L. Jones
A celebration of life service for former Mississippi State Vice President for Student Affairs Robert L. Jones will be held at 3 p.m. on Oct. 3 at Stewart Family Funeral Home in Tyler, Texas.
Jones, 87, died on Sept. 10 at Hospice of East Texas. A native of Russellville, Arkansas, he graduated from Arkansas Tech University in 1950, and then pursued a master’s degree from the University of Arkansas. He completed his Ph.D at Arkansas in 1966. He served with the Seventh Division Artillery during the Korean War, and was awarded the Bronze Star.
Jones began two decades of service at Mississippi State University in 1967, where he was hired as the first vice president for student affairs and charged with initiating and implementing a modern, professional organization to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and growing student body.
Jones brought a level of professionalism and national networking to MSU, including mentoring of young staff, establishing trained residence hall head residents, a student counseling and career/placement center, collaboration with freshman academic departments, aggressive student recruitment programs, student leadership training programs, freshmen, parent orientation programs and intramural programs.
Jones was challenged immediately to defuse and redirect student activities in the midst of society’s upheavals. Some of the volatile themes included the Civil Rights Movement, the Jackson State and Kent State tragedies, the John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, the Vietnam War protests, and the Women’s Liberation activities, including Title IX implementation.
In April 2013, a new Hall of Honor at Mississippi State paid tribute to Jones and his colleagues who provided sustained and distinguished service at MSU. (See more at http://www.msstate.edu/newsroom/article/2013/03/msu-announces-launch-student-affairs-hall-honor.)
After leaving MSU, Jones served at the University of Texas at Tyler as vice president for administration and as chief student affairs officer from 1984-1994. He resumed full-time graduate teaching in 1994 as professor in higher education leadership at UT-Tyler. He retired in 2000 as professor emeritus.
This past summer, the East Texas Chapter of Mississippi State University Alumni Association announced the naming of the chapter’s scholarships in honor of Dr. Robert L. Jones.
Survivors include his wife, Shirley M. Jones; four children, Sarah Jones Kersch Peterson and husband Brian, Robert Bradford Jones and wife Ronni, Melinda Maxwell Connolly and husband Doug, and Randall E. Maxwell; one brother, Ralph N. Jones and wife Hazel; 10 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. He was the father of the late Susan Jones Zachery Swink, and the brother of the late Shirley Jones Townsend.
