DeeDee Baldwin, an assistant professor with Mississippi State University's MSU Libraries, recently launched a new digital exhibit showcasing the first African American men to serve on Mississippi’s state legislature during and immediately after Reconstruction.

The exhibit, which is titled “Against All Odds: The First Black Legislators in Mississippi,” documents more than 150 African American men who worked in the state legislature up to 1894. The site features more than 800 newspaper clippings, portraits, photos, biographical information, links and book excerpts.

Baldwin, a history research librarian, contributes to websites that help document cemeteries by uploading pictures of gravestones. She began researching her new exhibit after visiting an African American cemetery in Macon, Miss., where she discovered the grave of Isham Stewart. She later used ancestry.com and discovered a picture of Stewart that she found came from the composite photo of the 1874 Mississippi Legislature. Baldwin discovered that Stewart represented Noxubee County in the House of Representatives from 1870 to 1873 and his district in the Senate from 1874 to 1877, and was a delegate at the 1868 Mississippi Constitutional Convention.

During the 2020 fall semester, Baldwin was the guest speaker during the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s “History is Lunch” presentation and was featured on the latest MSU Libraries episode of “Cultural Conversations,” which is available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFUTv5OyZMQ&feature=youtu.be.

“Against All Odds: The First Black Legislators in Mississippi” is available to view online at http://msstate-exhibits.libraryhost.com/exhibits/show/legislators.

JSU Launches META Teletherapy Program for Students

Jackson State University recently partnered with META teletherapy, an app for college students that offers real-time video counseling services, to assist students with mental health counseling. The university is launching the new program alongside an awareness campaign that encourages students to take care of their emotional and mental well-being.

The META teletherapy program will work with the Latasha Norman Center for Counseling Services at JSU, which provides student-centered mental health services, a release from JSU says. JSU students will be able to use the app to search META’s network of mental health providers, including counselors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. Students can specify characteristics of a provider they are seeking, such as gender, therapy style, ethnicity and language.

Students can download the META app, choose a counselor and receive chat, video, or voice counseling over their smartphones. The app presents available online counselors and allows students to leave a chat or voice message to schedule a future session.

The META teletherapy app is free to download. For more information, visit meta.app.

JSU Biology Department Receives Grant for STEM Support

The National Science Foundation recently awarded a $399,958 grant to Jackson State University's biology department to help underrepresented students enter graduate schools and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The three-year grant program is called “Enhancement of Jackson State University Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience Program in the Biological Sciences.”

JSU-CURE plans to use the grant to improve the university's biology curriculum by adding a new course in bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary science field that combines biology, computer science, information engineering, mathematics and statistics, a release from JSU says. The grant will also support new research equipment and supplies and outreach activities for students.

The grant program will recruit eight JSU sophomore and junior biology majors to become the first cohort of CURE Scholars, the release says. CURE scholars will perform experiments, collect and record data and prepare oral or poster presentations to at least one local or national scientific conference. During the summer, the scholars will begin two-year, eight-week lab research roles, which biology faculty will serve as mentors for.

Scholars will also work with students from the JSU Department of Journalism and Media Studies to produce educational videos that focus on teaching biological concepts to the next generation of STEM students. JSU plans to circulate the videos via smartphones, SnapChat, Twitter, YouTube, video conferencing and Facebook Live.

For more information, visit jsums.edu/biology.