OurTupelo

Gun and domestic violence research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center is seeking to better understand the causes of both and find ways to help those scarred by their impact.

Two federal grants awarded in September totaling $7.5 million from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are funding the research. 

“Each grant will enhance the other,” Dr. Lei Zhang, professor and associate dean in UMMC’s School of Nursing, said in a statement. “Gun violence and intimate partner violence are deeply interconnected.” 

Mississippi has the highest firearm mortality rate in the country (28.6 per 100,000 population), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the highest prevalence of domestic violence, based on data from 2009-2015 collected through the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System. 

One grant will establish the Mississippi Violence Injury Prevention Program at UMMC to address gun violence involving 11 investigators from multiple departments, including emergency medicine, psychiatry and preventative medicine. 

Zhang said the program represents a mindset change in how gunshot victims are treated. The focus will be more holistic and community based and on prevention. 

Dr. Matthew Kutcher, an associate professor of surgery, trauma and critical care, said another focus is addressing underlying conditions that lead to violence such as poverty, structural racism, housing insecurity and more. 

“(W)ithout addressing the root causes that keep our state at the top of the list for gun violence, we’re chasing the problem from behind,” Kutcher, the co-principal investigator, said in a statement.

Examples of community-based resources can include the dispatch of credible messengers to prevent violence retaliation, mentorship from community members who have experienced violence and treatment for post traumatic stress disorder. 

Rukia Lumumba,  executive director of People’s Advocacy Institute and community outreach organizer of the program, said hospital-based violence intervention programs have been proven to improve public safety. 

The oldest such program was developed in Oakland, California, in 1994. A 10-year evaluation by Giffords Law Center found that participants in the program were 70 percent less likely to be arrested and 60 percent less likely to have criminal involvement than a control group and produced a cost savings to hospitals of $1.5 million annually.

The next grant will train substance use disorder providers about domestic violence and how those issues intersect during pregnancy and after birth.

Mississippi has the highest prevalence of physical domestic violence before pregnancy and the second highest during pregnancy, according to the PRAMS data. 

Dr. Michelle Owens, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, said one of the goals is to strengthen the ability of providers to identify and help people who are at risk of domestic violence or are experiencing it. 

She said an integrated approach and community partnership will help bridge gaps and provide wraparound support for survivors of domestic violence and substance use disorder. 

The goal is to “(empower) them to take the steps to secure their health, safety and a better future for themselves and their families,” Owens said in a statement. 

The Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence is a partner on UMMC’s grant and will develop training, said Executive Director Wendy Mahoney.  

Those who experience trauma and coercion from domestic violence often turn to substance use as a coping mechanism, she said. 

“(The research) is a great thing because of the intersectionality of domestic violence,” Mahoney said. “It intersects with almost every aspect of life. I don’t think people look at it that way, but the intersectionality is quite vast.”

She said it is great that this research is happening in the state, and she hopes to see others look into other ways domestic violence intersect with other issues including gun violence, housing, other health issues and mental health. 

The post UMMC researchers join fight against gun and domestic violence appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Bo Eaton of Taylorsville says he still has the swizzle stick that he drew after his tie election with Mark Tullos of Raleigh in their 2015 bid for the House District 97 post. Eaton drew the winning stick in the unusual process that is spelled out in state law to decide tie elections, but the Republican majority seated their fellow party member, sending Eaton a five-term House veteran home. Eaton catches up on politics with Mississippi Today political reporters Geoff Pender and Bobby Harrison.

The post Podcast: Bo Eaton reflects on his infamous tied 2015 election appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Armed teachers, keycard locks, and lockdown buttons — these are just a few of the ideas and facility updates school districts are exploring as a way to protect campuses from the rising threat of school shootings.

School shootings have been on the rise nationally over the last decade, with 93 incidents in the 2020-2021 school year. Mississippi’s most notable school shooting occurred in 1997 at Pearl High School. More broadly, the Clarion Ledger reported there have been at least 25 incidents involving guns and students in Mississippi over the last 40 years. 

Government officials and school leaders interviewed by Mississippi Today agree that additional school resource officers are one of the best ways to respond to this threat, but acknowledge that without the funding to do so, arming educators could be a worthwhile secondary solution. At least nine states — Idaho, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming — have a provision or program for arming educators, a list that some in Mississippi hope to join.

A recent survey by Mississippi Professional Educators showed 64% of its members supported having properly trained educators or school staff respond to active shooter situations, a proposal that was also suggested by the governor in his recent legislative budget recommendations. 

Gov. Tate Reeves proposed the creation of a “Mississippi School Safety Guardian Program” that would train and arm nominated school employees through the Department of Public Safety. The program was developed with recommendations and input from the newly formed School Safety Alliance. 

Borne of concerns regarding student mental health and the frequency of school shootings, Mississippi Department of Education officials convened a group, launched in July of this year, to review existing school safety law and make recommendations for updates. The group consists of representatives from the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Attorney General’s office, local school district employees and several advocates. 

Earlier this year, the State Board of Education voted to update its weapons policy to conform with state law, which allows enhanced concealed carry permit holders to carry weapons on school campuses. Once the policy was adopted, MDE Director of Safe and Orderly Schools Brian McGairty said districts had concerns about the added liability of more guns on campuses and struggled to find an insurance carrier who would be willing to take it on, leading to discussions about creating a standardized guardian program. 

READ MORE: Guns have been allowed in Mississippi schools (for some people) since 2012

While the training required to receive that enhanced permit is “very credibly issued,” McGairty said it “… doesn’t take into account that you may have rounds being fired back at you when you’re forced to make those decisions.”

“You may have moving targets that are not the offender coming towards you. When you have 25 kids running down a hallway, can you make that shot?” McGairty said.” 

Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, said teachers have voiced concerns about the training process and the possibility of the gun ending up in the wrong hands. 

“Many of our educators do not want this added responsibility,” she said. “They feel as if they have enough duties as it is.”

 For districts that opt-in to the potential guardian program, Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell is proposing a two-week training academy that specifically focuses on responding to active-shooter situations. The training will cover how to use firearms, self-defense, and communications training. The two week academy would also include background checks and mental health assessments, and the certification granted by this program would need to be reauthorized once a year. 

Tindell said in the legislation his office is drafting, the firearms would be issued to school employees by DPS and would be standardized across the state, and the “guardians” would receive a $500 a month stipend. He added the department hopes the bill will have liability protections for districts and teachers in the case that an active shooter event does occur to help get buy-in from insurance companies.

READ MORE: School chiefs prepare for possibility of facing active shooter

Officials from the Department of Education and the Department of Public Safety agreed that having a school resource officer on every campus would be the best solution, but that sometimes the funding or local personnel may not exist to make that happen.

“I know some people are very wary of teachers carrying guns, but under the (policy) changes, they can do this anyway, and all we’re trying to do is provide an additional level of training … to give (districts) more comfort in the choice their making,” Tindell said. 

Phillip Burchfield, Director of the Mississippi Association of School Superintendents, agreed that the guardian program could be a good substitute measure in districts that can’t get a school resource officer on every campus, but he is still concerned about the additional liability and stress it places on teachers. Burchfield also said he is not convinced the program is more cost effective than just hiring school resource officers once supplies, training time, and increased liability costs are factored in. 

Some districts are also modifying their facilities to make them safer, should an active shooter event occur.

Fred Butcher, superintendent of the Natchez-Adams School District, said the district placed keycard locks on the exterior fencing at the newly renovated high school. Buildings were also renovated so that students don’t have to go outside as often to move between classrooms. The district has also added more cameras and created a lockdown feature that will shut down the campus in sections at the push of a button. 

In Covington County, a federal grant allowed the district to install an access control system, which placed keycard locks on exterior doors, and cameras similar to Ring doorbells that secretaries can use to buzz in parents. Only staff have the keycards to open exterior doors from the outside, but a motion sensor on the inside of the door unlocks it for any person exiting. 

“You don’t want to ever have a situation where a school is not welcoming, so it’s a really fine line and a balancing act,” said Superintendent Babette Duty. 

Duty said she prefers school resource officers to the guardian program — she hired two more resource officers when she first became superintendent, and she would like to add more to ensure there’s one on every school campus. 

“If you fully fund (the Mississippi Adequate Education Program), I can make decisions to keep our kids safe without somebody having to have a pistol,” she said. 

“That person chose law enforcement. That is their field and that’s their skill set, and so that’s the person that I feel most confident about carrying a gun on campus rather than an educator.”

Clarification 12/26/22: This story was updated to clarify that government and school officials touted the benefits of the additional resource officers.

The post How is Mississippi responding to the threat of school shootings?  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Tens of thousands of residents in south and northwest Jackson woke up without running water Christmas morning after several days of sub-freezing temperatures burst water lines and strained the capital city’s main water plant.

Leaders announced late Christmas morning that crews were searching for multiple water line breaks but had not yet identified them all. The water pressure could be remain low or zero, they said, until more breaks were identified and repaired. They gave no timeline for this work.

Officials on Sunday also implemented a citywide boil water notice.

“We understand the timing is terrible,” the city said in a press release on Christmas morning. “Please hate that we hate to issue the notice during the Christmas holiday.”

FULL COVERAGE: Jackson water crisis

Management of the aged, crumbling Jackson water system was taken over by the federal government in late November after the system collapsed in late August. The current Jackson water woes come after decades of deferred maintenance, gutted funding from the federal and state levels, and an exodus of taxpaying residents and businesses in the city.

The current crisis is most directly attributed to problems at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Facility, which provides running water to a majority of the city’s residents. Late Saturday night, crews slowed production at the plant in order to identify many of the leaks that are causing the loss in system pressure.

The city’s residents, forced for generations to struggle through water outages and boil water notices, got good news last week. Congress, in their stopgap budget measure, appropriated $600 million to the city for water system repairs. Those needed repairs, overseen at least in the short-term by the federal government, could take years.

READ MORE: Why Jackson’s water system is broken

The post Thousands in Jackson lose running water on Christmas after freezing temps strain system appeared first on Mississippi Today.

For the first time in more than 68 years, the statue of Theodore Bilbo will not be in the Mississippi Capitol when the Legislature convenes its 2023 session on Jan. 3.

The bronze statue of the diminutive demagogue who ran for and won two elections for governor and three for U.S. senator by spewing racial rhetoric and opposing anti-lynching laws has been banished from the Mississippi Capitol.

Some believe the monuments of two other racist figures from Mississippi’s past should be the next to be removed — but not from the state Capitol, but from the U.S. Capitol.

Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, the Mississippi Senate minority leader, has requested legislation to be drafted that he will author in the upcoming 2023 session to remove the statues of Jefferson Davis and James Zachariah George from the U.S. Capitol. Davis, of course, was president of the Confederacy. The lesser known George was one of the architects of Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution that was a blueprint for other Southern states to follow on how to discriminate against African Americans and prevent them from voting.

While George and Davis represent Mississippi in the U.S. Capitol, interestingly neither are native Mississippians. They were selected by the Mississippi Legislature in 1924 to represent the state in the nation’s Capitol.

Each state is allowed to select two monuments to be displayed in the U.S. Capitol. Mississippi is the only state where both of its statues, supposedly representing its people and its beliefs, are so directly linked to a racist past and the Confederacy.

The mothballing of the supposedly life-size bronze statue of Bilbo continues a trend that Simmons hopes to continue with the removal of Davis and George. The trend began in 2020 when the Mississippi Legislature surprised onlookers by voting to retire and replace the state flag that incorporated prominently in its design the Confederate battle emblem.

Legislators did not vote to remove Bilbo, but in a sense acquiesced in the mothballing. In late 2021, House Clerk Andrew Ketchings, who was elected by House members to oversee the day-to-day operations of the chamber, took it upon himself to quietly remove the statue from a key House Committee room where it has been exhibited since the early 1980s.

“Because of everything he stood for, I think this should have been done years ago,” Ketchings said in February 2022.  “It was way past time to do it.”

The Mississippi Legislature passed a resolution in 1948 soon after Bilbo’s death to place a statue of him “in a prominent place on the first floor of the new Capitol building.”

PHOTOS: Segregationist’s statue leaves Capitol for Two Museums’ basement

The statue was unveiled in April 1954, according to newspaper accounts. In the early 1980s then-Gov. William Winter had the sculpture removed from the 1st floor rotunda to what was then a little-used room in the Capitol. But in more recent years the room — 113 — has been used for House committee meetings, including by the Legislative Black Caucus. Members would use the outstretched arm of Bilbo as a coat rack.

Ketchings hid the statue, estimated to weigh about 2,000 pounds, in a Capitol storage room. It was recently moved to storage underneath the Two Mississippi Museums. Archives and History Executive Director Katie Blount said recently there is no plan to exhibit the Bilbo statue.

Simmons said he is filing legislation to remove the monuments from the U.S. Capitol because “we should continue the progress we made in 2020 when we replaced the state flag by removing symbols that divide us.”

Federal guidelines give the authority to each state Legislature to determine the statues to be exhibited in the U.S. Capitol.

In 2021, an effort was made to pass federal legislation to remove the two Mississippi monuments from the U.S. Capitol. All members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation opposed the federal legislation except 2^nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s lone Democrat and only African American member of Congress.

Thompson said he voted for the legislation because “statues of those who served in the Confederacy or supported slavery or segregation should not have a place of honor in the U.S. Capitol.”

Mississippi’s Republican members of Congress said they believe it should be up to states to decide the monuments representing them in the U.S. Capitol.

Simmons said he intends to give Mississippians, through their elected representatives, an opportunity to vote on the removal of the two statues.

Simmons said his legislation would reassemble the board that was put in place in 2020 to lead the effort to select a new flag for the state and give it the responsibility for selecting who would represent Mississippi in the U.S. Capitol.

If Simmons is successful, perhaps Bilbo would have company from Jefferson Davis and J.Z. George in the bowels of the Two Mississippi Museums.

The post Could Jefferson Davis, J.Z. George follow Bilbo to storage? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As a kid, Peter Kelly says he dreamed of becoming an astronaut. As fate would have it, the explorer in his heart chose another frontier for him, as a diver.

Or, if you will, an aquanaut.

Thanks to a scuba diving class offered at Ole Miss, Kelly thought it sounded like fun. He signed up for the course and discovered he loved it.

“The majority of our planet is water. I love diving because it’s my ticket to experience our world fully,” said Kelly. “Being able to engage in a completely foreign environment and be totally outside of my element gives me the opportunity to see what others only dream of,” he mused.

Currently, Kelly is an “enriched air nitrox diver” working toward his dive guide certification. He’s also one of the divers who hand feed a variety of aquatic life on display in aquariums at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson.

“Working with the museum has given me the opportunity to support their incredible efforts to educate and create stewards for Mississippi wildlife,” says Kelly. “Plus, museum staff is incredible, and getting to help inspire kids through interpretive diving is such a cool way to promote the protection of wildlife and ecosystems.”

The post Photo essay: How one diver hand feeds fish at Jackson’s natural science museum appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Two thousand fewer students are enrolled in Mississippi public education than last school year, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education. 

This change is smaller than the pre-pandemic annual change, where the state was losing about 5,500 students each year. However, between the 2019-20 and the 2020-21 school years, the state lost over 23,000 students, which education officials attributed to the pandemic. Enrollment numbers have not rebounded since that significant decline. 

National data for this fall is not available yet, but previous national data showed stagnation between the fall of 2020 and 2021. The fall of 2021 did show increased enrollment in pre-K and kindergarten nationally over the prior year, but not enough to overcome the significant declines seen at the start of the pandemic. 

A similar trend can be seen in Mississippi, where kindergarten and first-grade enrollment have improved, but not to their pre-pandemic levels. 

In terms of demographics, the numbers haven’t changed much over the last four years. 47% of students are Black, 5% are Hispanic, and 43% are white. In terms of gender, it is nearly evenly split, as 49% of students are female and 51% are male. 

The post Charts: See Mississippi’s K-12 enrollment trends since the pandemic started appeared first on Mississippi Today.

ProPublica has selected Isabelle Taft, Mississippi Today’s community health reporter, as a Local Reporting Network fellow for 2023. Taft will spend the next year in collaboration with the award-winning, nonprofit investigative newsroom on a special project.

She will begin her investigative project on Jan. 3.

While at Mississippi Today, Taft has covered abortion, maternal and infant health, mental health and the operations of the state Division of Medicaid. She previously reported on the Mississippi Gulf Coast at the Biloxi Sun Herald, where she won the 2020 Bill Minor Prize for Investigative Journalism from the Mississippi Press Association.

Taft and Mississippi Today will join four other partner newsrooms and local journalists from New Mexico, Louisiana and Mississippi in the network next year.

“Isabelle is an incredibly talented, passionate and hard-working reporter who has worked in the state for several years,” said Community Health Editor Kate Royals. “We at Mississippi Today are thrilled to partner with ProPublica on Isabelle’s important and impactful project, and we are looking forward to a year of close collaboration with one of the best newsrooms in the nation.”

ProPublica launched the Local Reporting Network at the beginning of 2018 to boost investigative journalism in local newsrooms. It has since worked with nearly 60 news organizations. The network is part of ProPublica’s local initiative, which includes offices in the Midwest, South and Southwest, plus an investigative unit in partnership with The Texas Tribune.

The post ProPublica selects Isabelle Taft, Mississippi Today as Local Reporting Network partner appeared first on Mississippi Today.

BILOXI — Geneva Dummer’s vision is a decade in the making. The Gulf Coast entrepreneur realized what her business community needed before they did.

By 2016, Dummer was one of Mississippi’s earliest leaders in flexible workspaces, virtual offices and co-working when she opened The Meeting Space in Biloxi. Four years later, the pandemic upended work habits across the country, making work-from-home more acceptable and got even the most traditional corporate leaders seeing the benefits of less traditional office setups. 

Dummer’s business helped fill in the blanks — and is growing fast with a second recently opened space in downtown Biloxi and a third soon to open in Gulfport. 

“Mississippi has co-working spaces and the demand is there,” Drummer said, “we’re still behind, but growing.” 

Mississippi’s flexible offices and co-working spaces — turnkey commercial offices and desks for independent remote workers, businesses and startups — are mainly clustered on the coast and near Jackson with a couple scattered in Oxford and Tupelo. They may not be as popular as they are in other states and bigger cities, but those creating the office spaces see an increasing demand.

“I think people are realizing work-from-home is great but work-from-home presents its own challenges and does not solve every problem,” said Adam Horlock, the center manager at Office Evolution in Flowood near Jackson. “Businesses are realizing: ‘We do not need a large lease or a large space somewhere, but we need something.’” 

The nation’s number of remote workers tripled to nearly 18% between 2019 and 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s community survey. Meanwhile, 6.3% of Mississippians work from home, according to the same set of data. It may be lower than the national average, but it’s still about three times more than what it was in 2016. 

Dummer and Horlock see remote workers who want an office to go to a couple times a week or few times a month and small businesses that need designated workspaces for employees without the headaches of renting a massive office space. 

Startups and small companies, especially for the state’s fledgling medical cannabis business, have gone to the flexible office spaces. There’s marketing firms that have workers who spend most the week at home but need a conference room for scheduled meetings a few times a month. There’s the independent behavior therapist who meets with patients for sessions in a private one-desk office and an accountant that needs a rented desk to get some quiet while the kids are home from school. 

“I knew I wanted office space,” said one of The Meeting Space’s members, Burl Barbour, from a private suite.  “I knew I wouldn’t be disciplined enough if I stayed home.” 

Barbour and his wife recently moved to Mississippi after years nearby in Mobile. Rather than leave his job working as a project manager for an Alabama-based commercial door company, he became a remote worker in Biloxi.

Before the move, he hadn’t heard of co-working spaces. Now, he’s a fan of his “own little world” at the shared office — just a 15-minute drive from his home. 

Dummer said the expansion of co-working spaces as an integral part of growing Mississippi’s economy. Folks need spaces to network, a hub to innovate with one another, and access affordable services without multi-year lease commitments. She seeks out downtown real estate, taking advantage of a metro area’s walkability.

Dummer said most often she’ll get a remote worker for about three months — maybe they just moved to the area and are still setting up their at-home office. Some opt for the open co-working spaces, where folks mingle and work, while other, like Barbour’s company, pay up for private offices.

Nearby in Jackson County, economic development leaders have isolated attracting more remote workers to the Gulf Coast as a way to diversify the region’s economy and attract wealthier people to the state. They’re now planning ways to market the county as a destination for remote workers not tied to any one location but want to see their salary go farther. 

“We have got five generations of people right now currently in our workforce,” said Mary Martha Henson, deputy director of the Jackson County Economic Development Foundation. “This remote working concept was already going on before COVID, but then in a COVID environment and a post-COVID environment, more people are in a situation where they can live where they want to and still be a productive employee.” 

While the county advertises Mississippi’s affordability compared to other coastal cities that are well-established destination cities, they still need to have the features millennials seek out — things that allow them to live, work and play in the same area.

“Some of the younger generation really care about quality of life features,” Henson said. “If we want to remain competitive, we really have to think about these things.” 

Among the hip coffee places, restaurants and local shops, co-working offices are keeping up  with the tastes of the millennial and up-and-coming Gen Z workforces. 

“We’re filling a need that traditional office spaces just can’t fill,” Horlock said. “We’re flexible, turnkey and the cost is low. We provide everything – even free Starbucks. Bring your laptop and you can usually set up that same day.” 

Dummer’s two Biloxi locations are a short walk from one another on Water Street and Howard Avenue, where parts of the historic downtown are closed off to cars. 

She’s seen other co-working spaces in the area fail — one tried making use of vacant spaces in a shopping mall. The location, she said, wasn’t ideal for a lot of young workers who want to feel connected to their communities and in hubs of activity.

She said for those seeking to start a coworking space of their own, the margins are hard to make work if the business operator doesn’t own their real estate outright. 

Her new location in Gulfport is on the edge of downtown, but she was able to partner with Omni Technologies – an IT support company – that will be a member of the new space. 

Nearby in Waveland, WorkWise’s primary business is providing administrative services and support to small businesses. But rather than let part of its office space sit vacant, the company offers private offices and coworking spaces similar to Drummer’s. 

Dummer wants to see flexible offices and coworking spaces spread across the state.  She has fielded calls from out-of-state companies seeking locations similar to hers for their remote employees in parts of the state where the options aren’t available — like Columbus and Natchez.

She has expansion on her mind, but one location at a time. After Gulfport is up and running, she may turn her attention to Hattiesburg.

The post Mississippi isn’t known for remote workers, but local entrepreneurs say demand is growing appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The gap between pay for faculty and staff and the salaries of college presidents in Mississippi is widening, according to data analyzed by Mississippi Today. 

While the average faculty and staff member at the state’s eight public universities have barely seen their pay, in nominal dollars, increase since the 2012-13 school year, the average salary for presidents has shot up by more than $150,000.

Several factors are driving this trend: In Mississippi, private university foundations supplement presidential pay, sometimes to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, while faculty and staff salaries are generally more dependent on legislative appropriations. As the state funding for the Institutions of Higher Learning has not recovered from the Great Recession, pay for faculty and staff has struggled to keep pace with inflation. 

The respective presidents of University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University now make $850,000 a year, $400,000 of which comes from the schools’ private foundations. That’s about double the supplemental salary the presidents in 2008 received, according to records Mississippi Today obtained last year. According to that same data, USM’s Foundation paid its president $125,000 in 2008; it now pays recently appointed Joe Paul $200,000.

Foundation supplements used to comprise a significant chunk of presidential salaries at Mississippi's other public universities, too, but this year, IHL limited the additional amount that presidents at four out of the five schools can receive in foundation supplements to $5,000. 

The Board of Trustees increased the state-funded salary for all five presidents in this group, who had previously been making varying amounts, to $300,000. 

If the average faculty salary in Mississippi in 2012 – $58,896 – had increased with inflation, it would have been about $66,300 in 2020, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, about $475 more than the average faculty actually made, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). 

That shows the raises IHL has procured for faculty since 2012 — including this past year —don’t result in more money in pockets on average or even keep pace with buying power. 

For staff, the average salary in Mississippi – $47,612 – is actually a little more than $1,000 over the inflation-adjusted salary for 2012 ($46,234.89).

This analysis does not take into account variations in occupation or seniority among staff or faculty tenure status, both of which can contribute to vast differences in salaries. At the University of Mississippi, the average tenured professor made far more than the average salary – about $115,000 during the 2020-21 school year, according to IPEDS. (The salary data from IPEDS includes the University of Mississippi Medical Center.)

Through a public records request last year, Mississippi Today obtained salary data for the presidents at all eight public universities going back to 2008. We've updated that data to include the raises that IHL granted this year in the searchable table below.

The post Data: Salaries for Mississippi college presidents ballooned as pay for faculty, staff barely kept pace with inflation appeared first on Mississippi Today.