A Tupelo newspaper's contribution is continuing a student awards program at Mississippi State University begun several years ago by the widow of the paperÕs founder.
Billy Crews, publisher and president of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, recently made a $25,000 pledge to endow the Daily Journal Undergraduate Research Awards in Mississippi StateÕs College of Arts and Sciences. The pledge provides $5,000 a year for five years.
The awards were begun in 1992 by Anna Keirsey McLean, the newspaper's chairman of the board. Some 80 awards have been presented over the past three years.
Designed to provide opportunities for students to broaden their educational experiences, the awards support such activities as participation in experimental and creative research projects, presentation of research papers at academic seminars and attendance at conferences.
Mrs. McLean's late husband, George, bought the local weekly in the early 1930s and established it as a daily in 1936. Mr. McLean died in 1983.
Today, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal has a readership of nearly 39,000 and is among the state's three largest newspapers. The paper also owns several weeklies in the region.
This year's gift honors Glenn L. McCullough Jr., director of the Mississippi office of the Appalachian Regional Commission and manager of the Northeast Mississippi Office of the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
McCullough is a 1977 Mississippi State agricultural economics graduate.