Another new-old face at MSMS is once again proving that this school becomes a home to its students.

MSMS class of 2008 alum Sarah “Izzy” Pellegrine joined the school’s faculty earlier this month as an adjunct instructor in statistics. She is now the fifth current faculty member to have attended the school.

“Oh man, I’m so excited. It’s a lot of fun coming back,” Pellegrine said. “At MSU I tell corny math jokes and they get kind of weak responses, so I’m excited to be back in an environment where those things are commonplace.”

Originally from the Jackson area, Pellegrine came to MSMS in 2006, before the time of night time tutorials, Goen Hall, and the departures of the last remaining original faculty members. As a student, Microbiology, Human A&P, and Analytical Chemistry were among her favorite classes. She was a member of the yearbook committee and the math modeling team, and was a founding member of MSMS’s GSA (in their first years they hosted an all-genders dance and lectures by experts on LGBTQ+ issues.)

“Outstanding. Inquisitive. Determined,” said Dr. Bill Odom, giving his perspective on Pellegrine as a student.

After graduating, Pellegrine continued her education at Mississippi State University, earning two Bachelor of Arts degrees, one in Sociology and the other in Social Work, as well as an M.S. in Sociology. Currently, she is working on her doctoral dissertation, which focuses on education policy and sex education in the state of Mississippi. Her academic work experience to this point includes her work at MSU and a brief tenure as an instructor at Governor’s School.

Pellegrine lives with her dog, a rescue named after the French philosopher Foucault, and estimates that her time is split about 2:1 between MSU and MSMS.

Her current employment at MSMS comes as the result of a particularly serendipitous phone call. As Pellegrine puts it, she’d been searching for something else to do while working on her dissertation, when she decided to cold call her former school and ask if there was an opening for someone with her set of skills. This occurred in the middle of a period of turmoil in the school’s scheduling of statistics classes, so after explaining that around half of her work in sociology occurs as a result of applied statistics, one thing led to another and so on to Pellegrine’s hiring.

When she returned to MSMS, she found out that her classes were to take place in the room formerly occupied by the recently retired MSMS legend, Mrs. Emma Richardson.

“I was so intimidated,” Pellegrine said. “I told my students, ‘I don’t know if anyone has ever done math on these chalkboards.'”

However, despite the hallowed classroom space she is to fill, she is also excited for her time to come as an instructor at MSMS. If given the opportunity, Pellegrine would like to return in the future to teach a course in sociology, which she feels would fill in a gap in the school’s curriculum.

“That was the dream; I wanted to come back and offer a (sociology) class here,” she said. “I feel like students would really appreciate it. I think I could connect students to a lot of good resources in the area, especially at MSU.”