Dear Students, Alumni, Colleagues, and Friends of the Graduate School,

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2020! Let me start by saying that I wish you well as we enter a new decade. Although it is a little colder outside, the University is a busy place with over 2,000 graduate students. Also keeping the campus busy is our new food delivery robot system. We encourage you to check out how the system works by downloading the Starship app in the App Store or Google Play Store. UM is the first school in the SEC to implement the program. Our Libraries are also helping us innovate and advance with technology with eGrove, which you can read about in this season’s newsletter. Clearly, 2020 will be a year of new opportunities and innovations on campus and beyond.

Although it can be exciting to have new technology on campus, the Graduate School is also a place where some things remain constant; namely, that we have outstanding students, strong programs, and want to provide opportunities that ensure the success of our graduates. In this Winter 2020 issue, we not only introduce our alumni and current graduate students to eGrove (where you can learn about excellent scholarship and research on campus), we highlight our newest SREB scholars and current graduate student athletes. These students are outstanding examples of the caliber of our graduate students—hard working, talented, and future leaders. In this issue, you can also read the recent new ranking for our campus MBA program and hear from students about why the program’s rankings are so strong. Finally, we are excited to share that our professional development programming for graduate students is evolving—we now offer themed mini-series. We are on pace to double the number of offerings we provided last year and have a balance of personal and professional topics to ensure our students are able to thrive on campus and in their careers and lives after they leave UM.

May the year 2020 be a wonderful time of growth for our Graduate School and a chance for our graduates, friends of the Graduate School, and others to visit and reconnect. We invite our alumni and friends to stop by the Graduate House when you are on campus or in Oxford.

We hope you enjoy this first newsletter of 2020, and we welcome your story ideas for future editions. We want to highlight the accomplishments of our excellent alumni and students. As always, we appreciate your support of our graduate students at the University of Mississippi.

Hotty Toddy,

Annette S. Kluck, Ph.D.
Dean of the Graduate School
Professor of Leadership and Counselor Education