Mississippi Today

USM’s new president making $650,000; all public college presidents saw raises this year

Published

2 years ago

December 2, 2022

USM’s new president making $650,000; all public college presidents saw raises this year

by Molly Minta, Mississippi Today
December 2, 2022

Joe Paul is being paid an annual salary of $650,000 as the 11th president of University of Southern Mississippi, according to a copy of his contract the Institutions of Higher Learning provided to Mississippi Today.

The salary makes Paul the third-highest paid college president in Mississippi and represents a $50,000 raise over that of his predecessor, Rodney Bennett, the university’s first Black president who departed earlier this year.

Paul’s contract, which ends on Oct. 31, 2026, shows he is making $450,000 in state funds, the same amount he was making as interim president. He is also receiving a $200,000 supplement from the University of Southern Mississippi Foundation, a decrease in the supplement the foundation paid to Bennett.

In Mississippi, the presidents of the state’s eight public universities are permitted by the Board of Trustees to boost their taxpayer-funded salaries with private, foundation-funded dollars. They are also allowed to receive income from “outside employment” as long as they request prior approval from the board in writing.

Other details from Paul’s nine-page contract include a hefty payout if the board terminates him in the next two years – $900,000, equal to two years’ salary. After October 2024, Paul would receive the remainder of his salary. He is also required to live on campus and was provided up to $15,000 in moving expenses to relocate, a standard benefit that other college presidents receive.

Paul was originally supposed to lead USM in the interim as the board looked for a new president – a short-term charge that was reflected in his initial 7-month contract the board approved in executive session in June.

At that same June meeting, the board also voted to raise the state-funded salaries of all eight college presidents. When the board voted to pay Paul $450,000, it also increased the state-funded portions of the salaries of Mark Keenum (Mississippi State University), Glenn Boyce (University of Mississippi) and Thomas Hudson (Jackson State University) to $450,000.

Though the board has in the past announced changes to presidential salaries in press releases, this information was not made publicly available until minutes of the executive session were published in August, two months after the raises were granted, because the board did not meet in July.

Hudson, who was previously making $375,000 as president of Jackson State University, now makes $455,000 with his foundation supplement. Keenum and Boyce now make $850,000, up from $800,000 last year.

Since 2017, IHL has sought to pay the presidents of the state’s top research universities the same state-funded amount. Due to the difference in the amount each school’s foundation can pay, historically the college presidents have been compensated in that order: UM and MSU at the top, followed by USM then JSU.

IHL also approved across-the-board reductions in the amount that university foundations can pay presidents – figures that vary dramatically. Keenum and Boyce are now permitted to take $400,000 from their university foundations, but Hudson can only receive $5,000, per the June meeting minutes. Previously, Hudson received a $75,000 supplement from JSU’s foundation.

The state’s two other historically Black colleges – Mississippi Valley State University and Alcorn State University – as well as Mississippi University for Women also had their foundation supplements limited to $5,000. (The board did not approve a foundation supplement for Delta State’s interim president.)

The state-funded salaries of Jerryl Briggs (MVSU), Nora Miller (MUW) and Felecia Nave (ASU) were increased to $300,000.

As the board has granted raises for the university presidents, faculty and staff have barely seen their pay increase in the last decade, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. The average faculty member in Mississippi took home $65,827 in 2020, up from about $58,000 in 2012. The average staff member made $47,612 that same year, an increase of a little more than $6,000 since 2012.

The board also approved a “retention” pay plan for Boyce at the meeting in June. If he stays on as chancellor at UM through the end of his contract in June 2024, the university foundation is now permitted to pay him a bonus up to $400,000.

When the board granted Keenum the opportunity for a similar bonus last year, he wrote to MSU’s foundation that he would like “a majority, if not all” of the retention funds to go to student scholarships.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1906

Published

3 hours ago

January 22, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-22 07:00:00

Jan. 22, 1906

Willa Beatrice Brown served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. Credit: Wikipedia

Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky.

While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.”

In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S.

She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen.

In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics.

After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Stories Videos

Mississippi Stories: Michael May of Lazy Acres

Published

19 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – rlake – 2025-01-21 14:51:00

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey takes a trip to Lazy Acres. In 1980, Lazy Acres Christmas tree farm was founded in Chunky, Mississippi by Raburn and Shirley May. Twenty-one years later, Michael and Cathy May purchased Lazy Acres. Today, the farm has grown into a multi seasonal business offering a Bunny Patch at Easter, Pumpkin Patch in the fall, Christmas trees and an spectacular Christmas light show. It’s also a masterclass in family business entrepreneurship and agricultural tourism.

For more videos, subscribe to Mississippi Today’s YouTube channel.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1921

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-21 07:00:00

Jan. 21, 1921

George Washington Carver Credit: Wikipedia

George Washington Carver became one of the first Black experts to testify before Congress.

His unlikely road to Washington began after his birth in Missouri, just before the Civil War ended. When he was a week old, he and his mother and his sister were kidnapped by night raiders. The slaveholder hired a man to track them down, but the only one the man could locate was George, and the slaveholder exchanged a race horse for George’s safe return. George and his brother were raised by the slaveholder and his wife.

The couple taught them to read and write. George wound up attending a school for Black children 10 miles away and later tried to attend Highland University in Kansas, only to get turned away because of the color of his skin. Then he attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, before becoming the first Black student at what is now Iowa State University, where he received a Master’s of Science degree and became the first Black faculty member.

Booker T. Washington then invited Carver to head the Tuskegee Institute’s Agriculture Department, where he found new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops.

In the past, segregation would have barred Carver’s testimony before Congress, but white peanut farmers, desperate to convince lawmakers about the need for a tariff on peanuts because of cheap Chinese imports, believed Carver could captivate them — and captivate he did, detailing how the nut could be transformed into candy, milk, livestock feed, even ink.

“I have just begun with the peanut,” he told lawmakers.

Impressed, they passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922.

In addition to this work, Carver promoted racial harmony. From 1923 to 1933, he traveled to white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Time magazine referred to him as a “Black Leonardo,” and he died in 1943.

That same year, the George Washington Carver Monument complex, the first national park honoring a Black American, was founded in Joplin, Missouri.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.