Mississippi College and Jackson State University (JSU) are receiving $5 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds for the creation of a public health partnership.
The joint project is one of six to receive funding from Gov. Tate Reeves’ second round of Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) aid, which totaled $15.57 million. The aid is meant to provide relief to schools and education-related groups that have been most significantly impacted by COVID-19.
Unlike in the first round of funding, Reeves awarded this money at his discretion, not through an application process.
The public-private partnership will create a bachelor’s in public health program at both institutions and allow students to share resources, including faculty and lab and classroom space. It will also create a pipeline for students at Mississippi College to transition into the master’s and doctoral public health programs at JSU.
Alisa Mosley, provost and vice president of academic affairs at JSU, said the partnership was the brainchild of the two institutions’ presidents.
The money will also go towards offering certificates for public health professionals. The goal is to equip those already in the workforce with a deeper knowledge of public health and more skills, said Brandi Newkirk-Turner, associate provost in the division of academic affairs and a professor of communicative disorders at JSU.
The main goal is to improve public health in Mississippi through the education of both future and current public health workers, in addition to community members.
“We want to use the expertise at both institutions to help advance public health in Mississippi,” said Keith Elder, provost and executive vice president of Mississippi College, who also has a background in public health. “Together with the combined resources we know we can make even a more significant impact.”
READ MORE: Schools, state slowly spending federal COVID-19 money
JSU and Mississippi College received the largest award.
Reeves also awarded $3 million to the Office of Student Financial Aid to assist students who have fallen behind during the pandemic in completing courses during the summer of next year.
Jennifer Rogers, the director of student financial aid, said the extra funding is significant because state aid is not currently available to students during the summer term.
“We appreciate Governor Reeves for recognizing the challenges faced by students over the course of the pandemic and for making this additional funding available,” she said, noting the office only recently learned about the award and has not yet established rules for the program.
Connect Our Kids, a Virginia-based nonprofit, also received $3 million. The organization provides software to foster care professionals that helps track down extended family members who could potentially care for children in foster care.
According to Reeves’ office, social workers at Child Protective Services will be able to use the program.
Representatives from both Connect Our Kids and Child Protective Services had not responded to requests for comment and more information by Tuesday.
Other recipients of this aid include:
- $475,000 to CampusKnot, an online teaching platform for K-12
- $2 million to National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to support current National Board Certified Teachers, candidates and eligible teachers to equip them with tools and training to improve instruction
Holly Spivey, education policy adviser to Reeves, said there is an additional project that has been approved, but details weren’t available at the time of publishing.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.