Maroon MEMO: Employee News (Mississippi State University)

The sun shines over Mississippi State University's historic Drill Field as a sprinkler waters a flower bed near the Swalm Chemical Engineering Building. Facilities and groundskeeping staff members are meticulously maintaining the campus and preparing for a return to more traditional operations to come. PHOTO: Megan Bean | Public Affairs

DAFVM Spotlight Employee: Jasmine Harris-Speight
Jasmine Harris-Speight has been working for the Mississippi State University Extension Service helping coordinating numerous Family Consumer Science and 4-H programs for 4 years. Her responsibilities include planning events for Rural Medical and Science Scholars, Junior Master Wellness Volunteers, Healthy Homes, and Servsafe. She works alongside specialists and other Extension personnel to maintain content delivery for each program. “I started working for Extension the same day I graduated in 2014,” she said. “After working for a little while, I knew this was where I was supposed to be.”

DAFVM Spotlight Employee: Karissa Logan
Karissa Logan has been working with different departments at Mississippi State University for four years. She currently works as a program assistant for Research and Education to Advance Conservation and Habitat (REACH) in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture. She is the head of the Mississippi Water Stewards program which is a pilot monitoring program that will cultivate citizen water-monitoring groups. “I love being a part of something bigger than myself,” she said. “Conservation is very important to me, and I enjoy being a part of projects and initiatives that directly promote conservation efforts.”

Arts and Sciences appoints inaugural faculty fellows
Mississippi State’s College of Arts and Sciences is announcing the recently created positions of Dean’s Administrative Faculty Fellows and the two faculty members appointed to this role earlier this year. Melanie E. Loehwing, associate professor in the Department of Communication, and Kathy M. Sherman-Morris, professor in the Department of Geosciences, are the inaugural selections named by Dean Rick Travis after their respective department heads nominated them to focus on projects enhancing production level within the college.

Looking for a way to help? Give to the MSU Student Relief Fund
The Mississippi State University community continually exhibits a great sense of responsibility and caring for enrolled students that make the land-grant institution such a special place. The MSU Student Relief Fund, built with private gifts, helps those members of the student body affected with day-to-day crises or like now, the impact to their daily lives posed by COVID-19. The Dean of Students' Office assesses needs and administers the fund for acute crises that may impact students’ ability to succeed academically. The funds have a direct impact on students in extenuating circumstances in order to help them achieve their academic success. The MSU Foundation accepts gifts year-round for the MSU Student Relief Fund. Contributions for this effort can be made online or by contacting the Annual Giving office at (662) 325-2466.

MSU Extension Service offers professional development courses free online
The Mississippi State University Extension Service is offering 10 of its online professional development courses free of charge through June 30. The courses are Personal Finance, Individual Excellence, Managing Customer Service, Creating Web Pages, Creating WordPress Websites, Keys to Effective Communication, Marketing Your Business on the Internet, Twelve Steps to a Successful Job Search, Small Business Marketing on a Shoestring Budget, and Fundamentals of Supervision and Management. Those who enroll in any of the self-paced classes will have three months to complete all course materials from the time they start the course.

University joins COVID-19 Technology Access Framework
Mississippi State University is joining the COVID-19 Technology Access Framework alongside universities across the nation to provide fast and royalty free access to technologies that can be used to fight the pandemic. As part of this commitment, we will follow the framework set forth by the network that are outlined below. If any MSU researcher has a technology that could contribute to relief of the pandemic or has received interest from industry to license a technology for this purpose, please contact the MSU Office of Technology Management at otm@msstate.edu.

Qualtrics and Stata software now available for MSU personnel
Over the course of this school year, the Office of Research and Economic Development worked through various channels to listen to the needs of faculty and researchers. Based on this feedback, the Office of Research and Economic Development has purchased a university-wide license for both Qualtrics and Stata. Qualtrics is a powerful online survey tool to create surveys, polls, and collect feedback using a wide variety of features and question types. Stata is a complete, integrated software package that provides data science needs -- data manipulation, visualization, statistics, and automated reporting.

SMART route changes in effect during COVID-19 pandemic to protect riders and staff
As Starkville-MSU Area Rapid Transit continues to evaluate the best ways to protect transit riders and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, service is being limited (one bus per route) to the following routes: Boardtown North, Boardtown South, Old Main, Highway 12, Sportsplex and Paratransit. Routes will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and will be limited to nine passengers per bus. Routes will stop from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for cleaning and spraying of all buses.

Smoke-free policy enhances healthy environment
Mississippi State University is a smoke-free campus. Official policy prohibits the use of any combustible or vapor products anywhere on campus property including university buildings, university grounds, university vehicles, parking areas and sidewalks. The smoke-free campus policy is part of the university's commitment to creating a healthy environment for all members of the campus community. Use of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, pipes, hookah or other similar devices are prohibited by this policy.

The Office of Public Affairs provides Maroon MEMO as a general information
resource for Mississippi State University employees.

Web links are subject to change. Submit news, questions or comments to Jim Laird.

Truax to lead American Society of Civil Engineers
The head of Mississippi State University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has been elected to serve as the president of the nation’s leading civil engineering organization. Dennis Truax will be inaugurated as president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers at the organization’s annual meeting this fall. He will serve as president-elect of ASCE in 2021 before becoming president in 2022. “Dr. Truax has been a leader to his department, to his college, to his university and to his profession,” said Jason Keith, dean of Mississippi State’s Bagley College of Engineering. “We are proud of Dr. Truax for his successful election and wish him the best as ASCE president-elect.”

Brown-Lemm elected vice president of Women’s Golf Coaches Association Board
Mississippi State women's golf head coach Ginger Brown-Lemm was voted by her peers into the position of vice president of the Women's Golf Coaches Association last week. Brown-Lemm is set to serve as president beginning in 2022. "What an honor to serve our Division I, II and III coaches of the Women's Golf Coaches Association," said Brown-Lemm. "I look forward to working with and learning from the brightest in our profession. My eight years with the Board of Directors in various capacities have provided such an amazing opportunity for growth and learning from the best minds in women's college golf. I consider it my responsibility and my pleasure to continue to give back and to work for opportunities for growing our profession and providing the best role models for these young women student-athletes."

Southern Conference on Language Teaching honors Moser with Educator of Excellence Award
The Southern Conference on Language Teaching is honoring Mississippi State Assistant Professor of Spanish and Pedagogy Kelly M. Moser with its 2020 Educator of Excellence Award. Moser, who joined the university’s Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures in 2018, is a former high school Spanish teacher and coordinator of MSU’s world language education program. She said she consistently strives to improve her practice, collaborate with world language educators across the globe, and advocate for quality programs for all learners. Moser’s selection as this year’s recipient was based on her teaching portfolio and letters of recommendation.

Tenure clock extension available due to COVID-19
In a Thursday [June 4] message to Mississippi State University faculty, Provost and Executive Vice President David R. Shaw announced that a tenure clock extension option is now available. "COVID-19 has disrupted every aspect of our personal and professional lives, and we recognize this includes a disruption in progress toward the attainment of tenure. MSU administration has requested, and the Board of Trustees of Institutions of Higher Learning has approved, an automatic one-year extension of the tenure clock for any faculty member who accepts this extension," Shaw wrote. "The acceptance can be made, at any point up to the deadline for tenure application, by any faculty member who was employed by MSU at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak."

Coronavirus/COVID-19 information and resources for the MSU community