The Mississippi State University Extension Service and Division of Continuing Education have co-aligned to improve the outreach services offered across the state.
Both departments have been rearranged to report to University Extension and Outreach.
Joe McGilberry, the newly appointed executive director of the extension and outreach program, said that neither the extension service nor the continuing education department was being combined. Both were left as two separate and functional units.
“This (alignment of departments) offers a lot of opportunities to coordinate, cooperate and use each other’s resources,” McGilberry said.
McGilberry said the reason for having these two structures report to one entity was to help them work together more efficiently. The new arrangement was designed to help determine what opportunities are available to the extension service that could help the continuing education programs across the state.
Clay Taylor, the interim dean of continuing education, said the nation has seen a revolution in how technology has established newer teaching methods, one being virtual classrooms via computers.
“With modern technology, an instructor can deliver education from his home or office to a class all across the state or even outside the state,” Taylor said.
Taylor said the extension service reached into all 82 of the state’s counties. In each of these divisions extension services have personnel and advisers. With the alignment of these two university organizations, the office of continuing education would be allowed to use the facilities in the different counties to offer a wide range of services, including credit and non-credit courses.
McGilberry said that the university was more than educating on campus or in Meridian or conducting research. The school also had an impact on the economy of the state.
“Our goal is to make the university more responsive to communities, business and industry, and the citizens of the state,” said Charles Lee in a press release concerning the matter. “Mississippi State has a long tradition of bringing university resources and expertise to bear on local problems.”
McGilberry said in the early 1990s colleges across the country realized they had a responsibility to serve the community, such as businesses, industries and education, around them.
Taylor said that nationally renowned colleges such as Virginia Tech, Ohio State and Tennessee were some of the colleges that began this trend.
MSU has achieved recognition in its research over the years, and a long-term goal of this new plan is to offer a variety of services and resources to the business community, to work with them and to help them solve problems.