JACKSON — When the Two-Year College English Association of Mississippi held its annual conference on Sept. 21, Holmes Community College Goodman campus professors Jessica Brown, William C. Moorer and LaShonda Levy accepted leadership positions with the association. Brown and Moorer will serve two-year terms as co-chairs, and Levy will serve as Holmes’ representative on the executive committee.

TYCAM, a Two-Year College English Association-Southeast affiliate and part of the National Council of Teachers of English, provides resources to help further English teaching methods and practices in Mississippi’s community colleges. Presidents of those schools and the Mississippi State Board of Community and Junior colleges support it.

In their positions as co-chairs, Brown and Moorer will have the responsibility of planning and running TYCAM conferences and textbook publications. Levy will serve as the liaison between Holmes’ English faculty and TYCAM, and will also work with the executive committee to run the annual conferences.

Brown, Moorer and Levy teach composition, as well as developmental English and reading at Holmes. Brown, co-chair of the college’s English department, also teaches American literature. Moorer, who also teaches creative writing, is the director of the Goodman Writing Center and has served as Holmes’ TYCAM representative on the executive committee since 2012. Besides composition and developmental English and reading, Levy teaches African American literature.

For more information, visit holmescc.edu.

Four State Universities to Share $20 Million NSF Grant

Jackson State University announced on Sept. 19 that it will be partnering with Mississippi State University, the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Mississippi to establish the Center for Emergent Molecular Optoelectronics, an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional materials research program. MSU will serve as the project’s administrative lead, and USM will serve as the science lead.

The center will focus on collaborative research in optoelectronics, energy and biotechnology, especially in relation to the study of organic semiconductors, or solid, nonmetallic materials that exhibit electrical conductivity.

The state received a $20-million, five-year grant through the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, which “enhances the research competitiveness of states and jurisdictions by strengthening STEM capacity and capability,” a press release from the university says.

“This initiative will be a tremendous benefit to the people of Mississippi and to our research universities,” MSU President Mark E. Keenum said in a press release. “Increasing our university research capabilities makes our state and our institutions more competitive, increases educational opportunities and keeps us at the forefront of emerging technologies. This new center and its focus on organic semiconductors will make existing Mississippi industries more competitive and help the state attract new companies. I am proud that MSU is playing a lead role in this endeavor.”

The center will establish research instrumentation, or measurement tools designed to get data on a topic from subjects, to use across the state and support research collaboration among institutions.

The release says that the optoelectronic functionality developed from the center’s research will support the basic knowledge necessary for creating new technologies and could result in new intellectual property and job creation.

The center will have connections to national labs, research universities in NSF’s top 100, development officials and representatives from industries. The grant will also help fund outreach efforts in secondary education to create greater diversity in students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, pipeline.

“The grant from the National Science Foundation demonstrates the incredible capabilities housed within our research universities,” Alfred Rankins Jr., state commissioner of higher education, said. “Working together, these capabilities are amplified. The research conducted through this grant will put Mississippi on the forefront of emerging technologies.”

For more information, visit jsums.edu.