The University of Southern Mississippi Museum of Art recently opened submissions for entries in its Little Things Matter: National Juried Small-Scale Sculpture Exhibition. The exhibition features small-scale sculptures by artists across the United States.

Artists 18 years or older may submit entries of original works they have created within the past five years. Works in any 3D medium and all forms of representational, non-representational, abstract and non-objective sculpture are eligible, a release from USM says.

Works to be displayed on pedestals must not exceed 10-by-10 inches at the base and must not be taller than 20 inches. Wall-mounted works or works suspended from the ceiling must not exceed 20 inches in any direction. All works must weigh no more than 30 pounds. Artists may submit up to three works for the exhibition.

The deadline for entries is Sept. 1. For more information regarding eligibility and specifications, visit artdesign.usm.edu/events/little-things-matter.

USM Partners with iGrad on Financial Literacy Platform

The University of Southern Mississippi recently announced that it is partnering with iGrad, an interactive online platform that supplies a suite of educational tools on financial topics such as budgeting, financial aid, banking, investing and more, as part of an effort to improve student financial literacy.

iGrad features videos, calculators, articles, recommendations, games and other resources and is free to all currently enrolled students, as well as faculty and staff. The iGrad platform also allows students to sync with the Department of Education to manage student loans and has an external scholarship feature that provides credible and vetted scholarship opportunities for students, a release from USM says.

USM’s Office of Undergraduate Scholarships is administering the program as part of the USM's financial literacy, insight, growth, help and teachings initiative, which it launched in 2018.

USM students can access the iGrad website directly at https://southernmiss.igrad.com/ or https://www.usm.edu/undergraduate-scholarships/.

MSU to Host Mississippi Poet Laureate Catherine Pierce

Catherine Pierce, Mississippi’s Poet Laureate and a professor in Mississippi State University’s Department of English, will lead a live Facebook event on Tuesday, Aug. 24, during which she will give a public reading and discuss her statewide appointment.

Gov. Tate Reeves appointed Pierce, who serves as co-director of the MSU English department’s creative writing program, as the state's poet laureate in spring 2021.

Pierce recently received the 2021 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award for her book “Danger Days.” She is also an awardee of the 2020 Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Artist Fellowship for her poetry. Her other poetry books include “The Tornado Is the World,” “The Girls of Peculiar” and “Famous Last Words.”

The MSU College of Arts and Sciences’ Institute for the Humanities is hosting the public reading, which will take place at 4 p.m. The Institute for the Humanities will livestream the free event on its Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/msu.humanities.institute.

For more information, visit english.msstate.edu. or ih.msstate.edu.