February 23, 2017 – Jones College

Camping in DeSoto National Forest I decided to head north today to Hattiesburg Mississippi and Ellisville before continuing east.  I was the only sole in the campground.  And glad due to the bullet holes and warnings posted, I was only sharing the space with some beavers African American Military History Museum, which is housed in a restored USO building and was filled with schoolchildren, it being February and all.  

Jones College

From Hattiesburg I rode the short distance up to Ellisville to visit another Junior College. Finding Jones is not hard as long as you don’t make the mistake of turning off the road too soon and end up at Ellisville State School, which I learned is a mental institution.  Jones is on a large campus with a well-manicured lake and green lawns separating the halls.  Students live there in residency as well but it was sparsely populated at the time of my visit.  As with the previous college I visited, there was lots of maintenance and construction going on with the best-coiffured building being the president’s estate, which sits across the lake in its own park like setting.  The college had a chapel with no specific religious iconography on it.  It was closed and all I could see was a piano on the alter space.

I did manage to find the science building.  Most of the classrooms were non descript cinderblock interiors with no windows in the lecture halls.  I have noticed this is a common layout for large lecture hall spaces and understand its functionality but couldn’t we borrow from the church and at least put in some filtered light?  Perhaps given our issues with light shades in S300 this is not a good idea.  The outsides of majority of buildings I have seen in this state are red brick with many façade columns for the larger ones.  Interiors have mostly been unfinished cinderblock giving an institutional internal feeling unless the occupants have gone to extra measures to decorate.  At Jones College it was Spartan and what decoration there was clearly was put up ages ago and left in place.   Each building I entered did, however have a large bronze memorial plaque honoring the board of trustees and college officials that had build or renovated it.  I left feeling lucky that Carole started a pride of space committee in our Biology Department and look forward t renewed participation in it when I return home…  It makes a difference.

I managed to speak briefly with one instructor (Microbiology and General Bio.)  They liked the college but grumbled about the students, which did not give me a warm first impression.  

One thing I can pull as a common theme from my multiple discussions with faculty is they praise their administration when they are not micromanaged and complain when they are.  Most of the professorate believe they are hired to be experts in their field of study and the easiest way to degrade that espree-de-corps is to try and tell them how they should run their classes.  At Jones my n=1 was clear this college was much better than his previous employers in this regard.

From here I will head east over the state line into Alabama…