Slice of Life • News from the Division of Student Life

In this Issue:
Ole Miss Needs You!
University Sets New Enrollment Record

Whitman Smith, Director of Orientation Programs

Hi folks,

Time for another Slice of Life e-newsletter, and I guess you could call this the “call to service” issue in that we’re asking for your help and involvement this week.

Leslie Banahan, our “former and new” Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Life has a great article about getting involved with the University as a parent. Leslie has had two students graduate from college as well as a lot of professional experience presenting information to and about parents of college students, so she knows what she is talking about! She has been a big shot in the arm for the division, and we have more about her below.

In addition, a driving force behind the e-newsletter is our Director Emeritus of Admissions Beckett Howorth (also the father of two students, one a college grad and one about to be). Beckett shares with you the most recent statistical data about our student body which I know will be of great interest to you, and the definitive answer to questions like, “how many students are at Ole Miss?” I know you’ll enjoy it.

Finally, we have an interesting project we’re editing and would like your input to help us finish. It is the most recent edition of the Ole Miss Parents Handbook that we distribute to new parents each summer. We thought you could give us some “parent-to-parent words of wisdom” from your experience as college parents that we could sprinkle throughout the handbook to help our new parents with this very new phase of life. Words of encouragement, advice on what worked and didn’t, how you dealt with the adjustment (or are dealing with it!), things you wished you’d paid more attention to at Orientation, and those things you do to help maintain contact and closeness with your student will all be appreciated and considered for the book.

For more information about the project, see my sidebar below. So, as we say in the business when making a request from colleagues, “thank you in advance!” Enjoy reading; let us hear from you, and as always, thank you for trusting us with your most valuable asset.

Whitman

Ole Miss Needs You!

By Leslie Banahan
Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

(The word “Ole Miss” is used a lot in this article)

As parents of Ole Miss students, you are important partners in their college education experience. We need you, and your student needs you, to be involved with the University community. How can you do this? There are many ways to be a part of Ole Miss and your student’s college life. Here are a few ideas to consider:

Join. Become a member of the Ole Miss Parents Association (OMPA) and the Ole Miss Alumni Association. Consider serving on the Parents Board, the formal voice for Ole Miss parents. The Board is used for fundraising and awarding financial grants from the Parents Fund.

Attend. Accept our invitations to visit campus for official events such as Family Weekend, concerts, theatre productions, lectures, and athletic competitions. Build campus-wide relationships by attending a variety of events throughout the year.

Participate. Be a part of your community’s Summer Send-off event for new Ole Miss students. Lend your voice to OMPA business meetings; we need to hear and understand your concerns.

Give. Contribute to the Parents Fund. Share your time and talent through one of our mentor or career alumni programs.

Learn. Increase your understanding of your student’s Ole Miss experience. Read the Daily Mississippian or the DM Online; regularly visit the University’s web site (www.olemiss.edu); read our parent newsletters and e-mail messages; become familiar with the special rhythms of the Ole Miss academic year (the academic calendar is online so you’ll understand the challenges and stresses your student might experience at different times of each term) and keep the Ole Miss Parent Handbook nearby to use as a quick source of information on a range of academic and student service topics.

Visit. Come to campus for “no special reason” other than spending time with your son or daughter. Students want and need to stay connected with their parents and truly enjoy a parent visit with a wide open agenda. But, no surprises! It’s rarely a good idea for parents to show up unannounced.

See how easy it is to be an active participant in your student’s Ole Miss years? Please contact us with any questions you may have about programs or events mentioned in this article, and we hope to see you on campus soon.

University Sets New Enrollment Record

By Beckett Howorth
Director Emeritus of Admissions

Last fall the University set several new enrollment records including largest Oxford enrollment (14,016) and largest all-campus total (17,312). Our Medical Center in Jackson bustled with 2,092 students, and other students attended our north Mississippi branches. The Desoto Center, located in the state’s fastest-growing county, led the way with 796 students.

Oxford’s student body includes 11,764 undergraduates, 508 law students, and 1745 students who are seeking masters, specialist, or doctoral degrees.

In narrowest statistical terms, an Oxford student is most likely to be white, female, from right here in Lafayette County, and studying in a department in the College of Liberal Arts. However, a look inside enrollment figures reveals a rich and much more complicated campus demographic.

Nationally almost 6 of 10 college students are female, but on the Oxford campus women account for a more traditional 51.6 percent. Slightly more than four out of five (80.4%) students identify themselves as white, while 13% are African-American or black. About 2.6% are Asian or Asian-American. Other ethnic groups each make up less than 1% of the student body.

Thirty-five percent of Oxford campus students hail from outside of Mississippi; all states except the Dakotas are represented. The top five are Tennessee (1071), Georgia (652), Texas (621), Louisiana (367), and Alabama (334). Missouri, Florida, Illinois, Virginia, and Arkansas all send more than 100 students; North Carolina falls just short with 97.

Some students come from much farther away: 3.1% are from other countries. More than a quarter of those 440 students are undergraduates, with Nigeria (20), Nepal (16), and South Korea (13) being best represented. Overall, students from 56 countries outside of the US attend Ole Miss. India has the largest enrollment (126), followed by China (88), and South Korea (29).

Closer to home, the University’s home county, Lafayette, with 1482 students, accounts for more than 10% of Oxford’s enrollment, though this is partially attributable to many older students legally becoming Mississippi residents. (Students must be at least 22 to accomplish this. See: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/registrar/forms/residency.pdf) Hinds County, home of the capitol city, follows Lafayette with 734 students. Next are Desoto (578), Madison (512), and Lee (441). Rankin County comes in sixth (374), closely followed by coastal counties Harrison (334) and Jackson (279). Issaquena County, where Teddy Roosevelt hunted bear, has no incorporated towns, no schools, and about 2,000 residents and is the only one of Mississippi’s 82 counties not represented.

The University remains close to its 159-year-old roots with 5,246 students studying in the College of Liberal Arts, home to our original degree programs. The Business School is next in enrollment with 2,869 students, followed by the Graduate School (1,588) and our newest school, Applied Sciences, with 1,388. The other professional schools are Education (712), Engineering (646, Mississippi’s original engineering school), Pharmacy (576), Law (508, established in 1854, our sixth year), and Accountancy (483).

So, yes, there may be a “statistically typical” student. However, there also are students from 81 Mississippi counties, 48 states, and 54 foreign countries enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts or one of the eight professional schools representing every hue of human color and a wide scope of world religions. All have in common the goal of earning a degree from the University of Mississippi.

Expect your next issue of Slice of Life on March 9

Are you ready to help the next generation of Ole Miss Parents?

Well, here is your chance.

We are soliciting your advice for our next Ole Miss Parents Handbook. In this summers’ issue, we want to have highlighted sections in the margins throughout the book called “Parent to Parent.” Simply stated, this is an advice section from current to new parents which gives you an opportunity to share your words of wisdom with our new folks.

If you have any tips that helped you navigate the freshmen year with your child on ANY TOPIC, we would love to hear from you, and it’s easy. Just e-mail us at stulife@olemiss.edu with your advice.

A couple of things to remember – we’d like to know from whom we’re getting this advice, so when you e-mail us, please include your full name, the name of your student and their year in school (freshmen, etc) and your hometown and a phone number (we’re not going to publish anything you don’t want us to, so don’t worry!) so we can call and talk with you if necessary.

Even if we don’t have enough room in the handbook, we can put your advice on our Parents web site or other places. So, put on your thinking caps, and send us your advice. Deadline for submissions is February 27, 2007.

Welcome Leslie Banahan!

Leslie Banahan, the University of Mississippi’s new Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Life, is something like Grover Cleveland was when he became US President in 1893. Like our only “skip-a-term” president, she took a few years off and is back to do it again.

Leslie was Student Life’s Assistant Vice Chancellor from 1996 to 1999, when she and her husband, Ben, newly “empty-nested,” took a leap and moved to Athens, Georgia where she served as Assistant Vice President working with her former Ole Miss boss who himself had moved on to the University of Georgia.

When Leslie left her job in Athens in 2005, she took some time off to write and to get to know her new granddaughter. She and Ben returned to Oxford that year and when the Assistant Vice Chancellor job opened up in 2006, no other candidate could possibly match her record. After all, she already had excelled at the job once!

Among other things, parent relations are of particular interest to Leslie. Her publications include monograph and book chapters on today’s college parents and on designing successful orientation programs. She is co-author of a new guide for college parents which will be published in October 2007. Originally from southern Illinois, she has degrees from the University in journalism, sociology, and higher education.

Copyright © 2007 The University of Mississippi. All Rights Reserved.
Last Updated: November 17, 2006 1:48 PM