As the first university in the South to hire a woman to its faculty (Sarah Isom in 1885) and one of the first in the region to admit women (1882), The University of Mississippi has a long history of supporting women in higher education. Today more than half of the College’s students are women (55.7 percent), as is more than one-fourth of its faculty members. And the number of women faculty members is growing. In 1990, only 19 percent of the faculty members in the College were women. This year, 28 percent are women.
The number of women on the faculty will surely continue to increase as more women pursue advanced degrees, and projections show that the number of women enrolled in the College will remain high. Although long underrepresented in higher education, women have made important contributions to the academy. Take, for example, the four women profiled on the following pages, each representing a different area of the liberal arts: fine arts, humanities, physical sciences and social sciences.
Each of the women—Norma Bordeaux, an artist and alumna; Beth Ann Fennelly, an assistant professor of English and critically acclaimed poet; Rebecca Bertrand, a political science student and the first female Associated Student Body president in almost a decade; and Susan Pedigo, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry—exemplifies the best in creativity, scholarship and leadership that women contribute to the College as students and members of the faculty.
We hope their stories, and that of altruistic alumnae such as Kathryn Black and Nancy Stumberg, inspire other women—and men—associated with the College of Liberal Arts to invest just as fully in themselves, their education, their talent and their communities as these women have done and continue to do.
Glenn Hopkins
Dean of Liberal Arts