Jackson State University President Dr. Carolyn W. Meyers praised faculty and staff of the College of Education and Human Development saying: “You change lives — literally! — through education.”
While on her “college tour” this week to visit and listen to the concerns of faculty in each of JSU’s colleges, she recalled with wry humor her own history in teaching.
Saying her parents were educators, “the last thing I thought I ever wanted to do was teach.” But, to the laughter and applause of the faculty, she recounted that through a series of events, she ended up teaching “with three kids, a husband, two dogs and a cat in graduate school.”
Those times weren’t always easy, she recalled. “You can imagine being a woman engineer in the late 1960s — and the only black woman.”
Meyers received her bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering at Howard University in 1968, her masters in mechanical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in 1979, and her Ph.D., in chemical engineering there in 1984. She assumed the presidency at JSU in January, 2011.
Meyers praised the college for enrollment gains and its Blackburn School initiative. In 2013, JSU and Jackson Public Schools collaborated to form the first laboratory school in this area, Blackburn Laboratory Middle School.
Noting that scholars from all walks of life are at Jackson State, Meyers likened JSU to the CBS TV program Scorpion where diverse people from widely divergent backgrounds come together to focus on problems and provide creative solutions.
The president said she should start calling the college “the College of Leadership for all it brings to the city, state, region and the world.”
As previously on her tour, Meyers was accompanied by Dr. James C. Renick, provost and senior vice president for academic and student affairs, who also fielded questions with her at the Joseph H. Jackson building, where she was treated to a presentation of flowers by pre-school children.