| Wednesday, June 10, 2026 |
| Art Doing Its Part to address litter | |
 | Pollution and the litter problem in Mississippi is being addressed by a lot of people in a lot of important ways, and some think art has a part to play in the effort. Art Doing Its Part is a statewide art and slogan competition aimed at personalizing the issue for communities by showcasing litter challenges specific to their regions, illustrating how local actions impact local and distant environments. The program is supported by the Mississippi State University Extension Service. "Mississippi and connecting water bodies face significant litter problems, much of which originate from inland areas," said Erin Wallace, MSU Extension associate at the Coastal Research and Extension Center in Biloxi. "Items like bottles, cigarette butts, straws, and fragmented plastics travel through rivers, streams, and stormwater systems to eventually reach coastal waters, affecting human health, local economies, and aquatic life. "Addressing this issue requires a statewide, collaborative approach, involving both inland and coastal communities," she said. The Art Doing Its Part effort is being championed by First Lady of Mississippi Elee Reeves. |
| Photographer Miah Hall captures the people and places of Nettleton with her photo project | |
 | Miah Hall picked up a camera for the first time in junior high. A few years later, she joined the annual staff at Nettleton High School, and her career path was chosen. Now 23, Hall recently graduated from Mississippi State University with a major in photography and a minor in communications and media studies. Her senior project, titled "Nettleton," is a photo essay of her hometown and its residents. The work was displayed at the Old Main Galleries last month on campus. "'Nettleton' is the exploration of the structure of small town life through photography," Hall said. "My images focus on the people who carry invisible and visible responsibilities within their communities, along with the spaces they occupy and move through each day." "Small communities are often reduced to simple notions or overlooked entirely," Hall said. "The people within my town are seen for their roles, but not always for their presence. It's a small town and nothing to turn your head at. But the main point is that there is more to it." And while Hall has already earned her bachelor’s of arts degree, she is not done being a Bulldog. Her next immediate task, graduate school and a master’s degree in communications. |
| MSU's Collins amplifies disabled writers' voices in new anthology | |
 | According to a press release, Mississippi State faculty member Christie Collins' new co-edited anthology features essays by 17 authors and educators living with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and neurodivergence, helping address a longstanding gap in creative writing scholarship. Collins, an English department lecturer, and co-editor Saul Lemerond, an assistant professor of English at Hanover College in Indiana, have compiled "Divergent Writers: Disability, Illness, Neurodivergence, and Ableism in Creative Writing." In the book's foreword, Stephanie Vanderslice, a creative writing professor at the University of Central Arkansas, calls the anthology "a groundbreaking and necessary work, both capacious and critical." Collins earned a bachelor's degree from Mississippi University for Women, master's degree from MSU and doctorate from Cardiff University in Wales. |
| LSU's plan to demolish library could restore original campus layout | |
| Standing at the north end of the Quad, the LSU Library is impossible to miss. In fact, it was designed to be that way when built nearly 30 years after the completion of the original campus. Now big changes are coming -- changes that will lead to the demolition of the library building and restoration of the Quad to its original cruciform shape. "The building that I'm sitting in right now, it cannot be preserved long term," Stanley Wilder, dean of libraries, said, "because it's crumbling in ways that can't be fixed." In the book "Under Stately Oaks: A Pictorial History of LSU," Thomas F. Ruffin wrote that the land where LSU's Baton Rouge campus sits was bought in 1918 from the Gartness Plantation. The university couldn't purchase the land on its own, so a group of Baton Rouge businessmen fronted the cost, Ruffin wrote. The university originally contracted the Olmsted Brothers to draw up the plan for the campus. The group was known for designing Audubon Park in New Orleans and the campuses of Stanford and Cornell universities. Rick Olmsted Jr. designed a plan modeled after the University of Virginia campus. It included two large quadrangles designed around the land's natural features, John Michael Desmond wrote in "The Architecture of LSU." Olmsted's design never came to fruition, as officials decided to move on due to cost, Desmond wrote. |
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