The bell tolls. Its vitality and impact echo throughout the campus of the Mississippi University of Women, as undergraduate students and high school students walk alongside each other for the first time in Mississippi history. The year is 1989. The fleeting images of Michael J. Fox fade away as teenage girls put away their magazines. The iconic sound of Full House’s “Cut-it-out!” phrase merges with the genius of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” to create a sensory explosion throughout the dorms. As students depart from the Peyton and Fant residence halls, they approach the newly refurbished Hooper Science Hall, which would serve as a staple of the MSMS experience for decades to come. As the inaugural class for MSMS, these juniors would begin on the path that continues to affect lives today, learning from world-class faculty and exploring foreign realms of science, mathematics, humanities, and the arts. All of this from a small high school in the rural town of Columbus, Mississippi.

The bell tolls. Its vitality and impact echo throughout the campus of the Mississippi University of Women, where the sight of high schoolers and undergraduate students walking alongside each other has become commonplace. The year is 2018. Michael J. Fox’s majesty has been replaced by the youthful nature and voice of Harry Styles. The television now remains silent, as laptops and other portable forms of media have now taken over. This silence is broken with the “genius” of Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang,” creating a sea of headaches and complaints from RA’s and students alike. Boomboxes have been replaced with Bluetooth speakers. As students depart the Frazier and Goen residence halls, they approach the Hooper Science Hall. As the 29th class for MSMS, these juniors and seniors reap the benefits of the sacrifices that the previous classes and faculty faced to create the MSMS that we see today. This same small high school in the rural town of Columbus has now created countless graduates from some of the prestigious universities in the world, changing the course of history and impacting our own future.

Through these distinct time periods, where the sheer advancement of technology and the rapid change of culture have rendered each experience foreign to each other, there was one constant. A certain “Treasured Connection to the Past” that has served as the mainstay for MSMS culture and academics: Mrs. Emma Richardson.

A North Carolina native, Mrs. Richardson has been a teacher for over forty years and has been working at MSMS for thirty years. As an inaugural faculty member, Mrs. Richardson carries a sort of pride and confidence that has characterized her in her tenure.

“I am proud to be an inaugural faculty member of MSMS.  Along with visionary administrators and supportive staff members, we created something out of nothing.  Helping get MSMS ‘off the ground’—and helping to keep it going—is my proudest professional accomplishment because it means that thousands of Mississippi students have had their educations—even their very lives—enhanced by the educational opportunities available at MSMS.  And I believe the state of Mississippi reaps the rewards from our alumni,” Mrs. Richardson states.

Prior to arriving at MSMS, Mrs. Richardson had been a teacher at a large public high school in North Carolina for eleven years, where she not only found her identity as a teacher but grew exponentially. However, when she heard that her husband Tom had told her that he was considering a job “on the campus where Eudora Welty had been a student, located in the town where Tennessee Williams was born,”  she couldn’t believe it. “Of course I was all in!”

When she arrived at MSMS, she was introduced to Mr. Franklin, who had already hired the math and science faculty but was still searching for experts in the humanities. Mrs. Richardson, through a providential case of the right place at the right time, was interviewed for the humanities position. And the rest is history.

For her forty-four years and counting in education, and particularly in her time at MSMS, Mrs. Richardson has marveled at the students that she is able to work with. MSMS students who are currently enrolled share with their counterparts from thirty years ago a desire—a hunger, even—for educational opportunities not available to them at their home high schools.  Because of that desire for more academic rigor, those early students—as the ones today—were willing to take academic risks, to consider “large ideas” that perhaps challenged ones they had previously held, and to engage in new scholarly pursuits,” Mrs. Richardson says. 

Another constant at MSMS that has allowed Mrs. Richardson to achieve the success that she has had is the “talented faculty committed to public education, and—specifically—to the great experiment in public education that is MSMS.”

“Although the faces of my colleagues have changed, their dedication to helping MSMS students achieve all that they can is the same as those twelve of us who composed the original faculty,” she says. From Jack Carter to Thomas Easterling, the plethora of English faculty that have served MSMS have also elevated Mrs. Richardson’s own illustrious career.

Apart from the standard academic courses, Mrs. Richardson is also the director of the publication Southern Voices, the literary magazine her creative writing students have published every year since MSMS’s first. The Spring 2018 issue will be the thirteenth edition of Southern Voices; digital copies going back to 1998 are available on the MSMS website. Southern Voices has evolved from its initial stages. Once a slender 28-page 1989 black and white issue, the magazine is now 48 pages, with eight additional full-color pages of incredible student art.

Mrs. Richardson’s impact on students has served as a common thread between all classes, whether through her literature courses or the Southern Voices publication. This common ground has not only allowed MSMS students to be able to relate to one another even if they ten years apart, but it has allowed the legacy of Mrs. Richardson to cultivate.

“She is frankly incredible. Mrs. Richardson prepared me in ways that I never could have imagined, and I continue to see the many lessons that she taught me pop up in my own professional life,” Leena El-Sadek, Class of 2011, states. “In all my years at Duke University and the University of Chicago, her impact is still there. I still must explore ‘The Canterbury Tales.’ I occasionally have to speak on the satire present in ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ I think that speaks volumes.” 

This communication and admiration from alumni and past students is something that Mrs. Richardson cherishes deeply.

Even current students can already see the impact that Mrs. Richardson is having on them, with their own writing skills and understanding of English evolving with each class. Whether with creative responses, blog posts or traditional essays, MSMS students are able to explore English through multiple media, which provides them with the experience and knowledge that they so desire.

“I am a much better writer than I was last year. I have seen English, and specifically British literature, in an entirely new light, and I never would of thought that would happen,” Jordan Stone, class of 2018, states. “I also treated English as simply a subject I had to take. A subject that would simply involve me memorizing random facts and other book details that I would eventually forget the next day. Mrs. Richardson changed all of that. I am now exploring satire and medieval romanticism, and the differences in culture of British society through this literature. History is melding with English, where the simple syntax of a word could tell me so much. A really do look to a dictionary for fun now. After all, as Mrs. Richardson always says, ‘There’s a lot of fun to be had in a dictionary,’ or something like that anyway.” 

Mrs. Richardon’s career at MSMS has been an expansive and rich one; however, she is not done just yet. She will continue to teach and affect the lives of MSMS students, honing their writing skills and improving their own grasp of the English language. Retirement is something that continues to hover over her, but her love of teaching is something that can never go away.

As she has said on numerous occasions, “There’ll come a time, I know, when I’ll retire,” Mrs. Richardson concedes, “ and I know I’ll spend a lot of time reading as many books as I like for as long as I like. But I hope I can continue teaching as MSMS for as long as I am effective. I wake up every day looking forward to going to school, to seeing students in Hooper 107.”  

Mrs. Richardson is, and always be, a staple of the MSMS experience. She is our “Treasured Connection to the Past” due to the fact that she is our sole link to the storied beginnings of MSMS. The storied beginnings that have created an immense legacy that continues to affect Mississippi, and the world, today.