Jackson Free Press

The Mississippi Business Journal recently named Jackson State University President William Bynum Jr. as one of the top 100 chief executive officers in the state for 2019.

Bynum was sworn in as JSU's 11th president on Oct. 11, 2018. At an inauguration dinner in his honor, he raised nearly $305,000 from donors to put toward student scholarships. During summer 2018, Bynum challenged JSU alumni to raise $5 million over two years as part of the JSU National Alumni Association's Millions of Eyes on Excellence Fundraising Campaign.

Under Bynum's leadership, the JSU School of Public Health became the only such institution in Mississippi to earn accreditation from the national Council on Education for Public Health in 2018. In 2019, JSU partnered with virtual reality company Lobaki to launch the state's first Virtual Reality Academy and partnered with NASA to become a prime federal research contractor.

Bynum has also overseen partnerships with the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and is working to establish an online degree program for historically black colleges and universities.

His wife, Deborah Bynum, has also made numerous contributions to the university since her husband's inauguration. She held a ribbon-cutting for her Tiger Pantry in October 2018 and started a clothing closet called the Tiger Career Closet. She also implemented a campus recycling program, and led JSU students and alumni through downtown Jackson in the American Heart Association's Metro Jackson Heart Walk in November 2018.

For more information on the Mississippi Business Journal CEO awards, visit msbusiness.com.

MSU Professor Named 2019 Social Worker of the Year

The Mississippi chapter of the National Association of Social Workers recently named Adele Crudden, a social-work professor at Mississippi State University, as its 2019 Social Worker of the Year at the association's annual conference.

Leigh Jensen-Crawford, who served as director of MSU's student-counseling services until her retirement in 2016, nominated Crudden for the award. NASW's website states that nominees must demonstrate outstanding leadership and advocacy for clients in social policy, social-work practice, program development, administration or research.

Crudden joined the MSU faculty in 1994 and has served as interim head of the sociology department since July 2018. She previously served as director of the department's social-work program from 2000 to 2013. During her time at MSU, she helped the university secure more than $11 million in federal research funds through the National Research and Training Center on Blindness and Low Vision.

She also formerly served as director of the Addie McBryde Rehabilitation Center for the Blind in Jackson and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor for people with developmental disabilities, chronic health conditions and physical disabilities.

The International Association for the Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired gave Crudden its John H. McAulay Award in 2008 and its Louis Viceceli Award in 2012.

For more information on NASW, visit socialworkers.org.

Millsaps Professor and Student Receive Grant for Research in Peru

Veronique Belisle, an assistant professor of anthropology at Millsaps College, and Matthew Brown, a senior from Senatobia majoring in sociology and anthropology, recently received a research grant from the Rust Family Foundation to study the obsidian trade in Cusco, Peru.

A release from Millsaps states that the research will focus on the effects of state colonization and regional trade networks on communities in Peru more than 1,000 years ago. Belisle and Brown's project will involve fieldwork at an obsidian quarry in Cusco, where they will document the area and collect samples of the rocks for lab analyses. Millsaps will use a portable x-ray device called a spectrometer to scan the obsidian and identify its chemical composition. The college will then send the samples to the University of Missouri Research Reactor in Columbia, Mo., for further chemical analysis.

Millsaps' release states that Brown plans to enroll in the University of Michigan after finishing his research in Peru. He will pursue a doctorate in anthropological archaeology, which is the study of past human cultures. He and Belisle will also collaborate to publish the results of their research in a scientific journal.