Jackson Free Press

The University of Southern Mississippi's Southern Miss Alumni Association recently announced the completion of a multi-use entertainment venue called Southern Station in Spirit Park on the university's campus. USM began construction of the station in 2020 as part of the Alumni Association's celebration of the university's centennial. The venue's name refers to the former postal address for the institution's Hattiesburg campus, a release from USM says.

Southern Station features a 34-by-24-foot stage and more than 1,250 square feet of event space behind the stage, which overlooks M.M. Roberts Stadium. The facility also features climate-controlled restrooms and a 275-square-foot space for storage or event preparation.

Albert & Robinson Architects, PLLC, designed Southern Station, and B.W. Sullivan Building Contractor Incorporated of Hattiesburg constructed it. For more information, visit SouthernMissAlumni.com/SouthernStation.

MSU Hosts Annual Startup Summit

Mississippi State University's Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach recently hosted its annual Startup Summit, a student business venture competition. The event concluded with a first-place tie between Shuvam Saha, an engineering doctoral student from Kolkata, Ind., and Stone Vincent, a fashion design and merchandising master's student from Bolton, Miss. The two each received a $5,000 award.

Participating students competed for cash prizes totaling $36,000 of seed capital funding for their proposed startup businesses. Judges evaluated business model pitches based on company technology, management, financials and market, a release from MSU says.

Saha's business, Triton Aerospace, creates drones for commercial and military use while Vincent's startup, Mycelium Leather, develops biodegradable, sustainable and vegan leathers made from mushroom mycelium.

Christopher Nalls, a senior marketing major from North Carrollton, won second place for The Mississippi Hat Company, a startup selling custom women's hats such as church headdresses and fascinators. Another tie took place between third place winners Alyssa Olive, an educational leadership master's student from Kosciusko, Miss., for oLive Juicery LLC, a business that sells fruit and vegetable juices made strictly from produce; and James Watters, a senior computer science major from Edwardsville, Ill., for Answers Analytics, an offline digital resource to record real-time sport analytics and data visualization.

Three judges committed $6,000 additional prize money to help fund the five highest-placing projects due to the ties at first and third place and the high-quality presentation of viable business plans, MSU's release says.

For more information or to see the complete results from the 2021 Startup Summit, visit ecenter.msstate.edu/summit.

JSU Joins NMAAHC Consortium

Jackson State University and four other historically black colleges and universities recently joined the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture's consortium, which aims to improve the participating universities' ability to share archives that tell the story of African Americans and their role in American culture and history.

NMAAHC's strategic partnerships office is leading the consortium, which will feature internships, fellowship programs and professional training for underrepresented groups to establish a pipeline of museum and archive specialists in the next generation, a release from JSU says. NMAAHC will also assist in digitizing HBCU collections and creating a digital archive in an easily accessible format for academic scholars and the general public.

The consortium also plans to develop a traveling exhibition drawing on the collections from the partner universities, which will begin at NMAAHC and then travel to the consortium members and other venues around the United States. The other consortium universities are Clark Atlanta University, Florida A&M University, Texas Southern University and Tuskegee University.

For more information on NMAAHC and the consortium, visit nmaahc.si.edu.