Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A member of the political science and public administration faculty at Mississippi State is joining the executive board of the Mississippi Heritage Trust.
Bethany M. Stich, a public administration assistant professor who came to the university in 2006, recently was invited to join the leadership body of an organization dedicated to preserving state prehistoric and historic cultural resources.
With a membership of nearly 600, MHT works with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and Mississippi Main Street Association to provide continuity for and awareness of local preservation efforts, among other responsibilities.
While at MSU, Stich has been involved in research efforts focused on revitalizing the now-suspended Columbus & Greenville Railroad that for years linked East Mississippi with the Central Mississippi Delta.
Her work has included duties as co-principal investigator on separate projects with MSU's Franklin Furniture Institute, and Bagley College of Engineering's Industrial Outreach Service and department of industrial and systems engineering.
In the former, she and others worked to establish a state rail authority covering a nine-county region across North Central Mississippi impacted by the rail service. In the latter, she was involved with the C&G Rail Recovery Exploratory Study that examined the potential economic development impact of the line's reopening on local communities.
Before coming to MSU, Stich was associate director of Virginia Tech's Center for Transportation Policy and a senior research associate at the land-grant institution's transportation institute.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For additional information, contact Dr. Stich at 662-325-7859 or bstich@ps.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.