Contact: Sammy McDavid
Two special recognition programs will be sponsored late next week by the educational leadership department at Mississippi State University.
On Friday [April 23], the Jayne A. Burrows Sargent Awards Symposium will be held on campus in the Wise Center's Tait Butler Auditorium. Esther H. Egley, interim head of MSU's department of curriculum and instruction, is keynote speaker for the 3:30 p.m. public program.
Named for the veteran educator who now heads the Jackson Public Schools, the Sargent Awards Symposium annually honors two women educators for outstanding professional achievements. Phyfa D. Eiland of Raymond and Columbus, education program manager with the Weyerhaeuser Co. Foundation, and Kathy Baxter, Meridian Community College's dean of general education, are this year's honorees.
The following day [the 24th] at the Starkville Ramada Inn, the department will recognize the 20-member inaugural graduating class in a two-year licensure program that prepares teachers, counselors and others for positions as principals or assistant principals. Created in 1997 and the first of its kind in Mississippi, the specialized administrative training curriculum recently was accredited by the Washington, D.C.-based Educational Leadership Constituent Council.
Donna Davis of West Point, a teacher and current head of the Mississippi Board of Education, will be speaker for the Saturday program.
For more information on the awards programs, telephone department head Ned Lovell or graduate assistant Mary L. Alexander on the Starkville campus at (601) 325-3041. On the Meridian campus, telephone associate professor Sherry Dungan at 448-0182.