The next president of the Mississippi University for Women should prioritize listening to and understanding students, people within the institution’s community say.
That’s something Nora Miller, who retires effective June 30, did well, said Zander Hall, the university’s Student Government Association incoming president for the 2026-2027 school year.
Whether at sports games, campus events or in Columbus where the university is based, Miller made an effort to recognize students and remember their names, he said.
Mississippi University for Women President Nora R. Miller“She was very personable and engaging, and that is someone we need as students, someone who can get to know us and hear us,” said Hall, a senior studying elementary education from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning’s Board of Trustees has launched a search for Miller’s successor. In April, the trustees named Scott Tollison, provost and executive vice president of academic affairs, as the interim president.
IHL has not yet announced an official process for the national president search for the university. But IHL Board of Trustees held listening sessions in April, a first step in the search process, to get feedback on preferred traits of MUW’s next leader.
During those sessions, trustees requested that speakers not to name a preferred candidate for the top job. But, some speakers named Sally Burchfield Doty, director of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi. Doty is a 1988 MUW alumna and served in the state Senate from 2012 to 2020.
Doty told The Commercial Dispatch she is interested in the role.
Faculty, alumni and other MUW stakeholders also said they hope the university’s next leader can convey to state higher education officials and lawmakers the university’s uniqueness among the state’s eight public universities and highlight the success of its academic programs.
MUW’s college of nursing and health science continues to rank among one of the best schools in the state for future physicians, MUW nursing professor Mary Helen Ruffin said.
Sally Burchfield Doty Credit: Gil Ford PhotographyIt’s also the second year of the university’s M-CARE apprenticeship program, formerly known as Mississippi Earn, Ruffin said. Through the program, nursing students work with registered nurses at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle in Columbus to train and earn a license to enter the field. Students who complete the program are guaranteed a job at the hospital, Ruffin said.
“It’s important for the next leader to build upon the university’s enrollment growth and success of the academic programs,” Ruffin said. “I think we just really need someone who can continue to build upon the momentum that we have right now.”
While the W has a small student population, about 2,370 students, it has a big regional impact in Columbus and on the rest of the state.
The W “seems to be a gem in Mississippi higher education that is under-recognized and under-celebrated,” said Chuck Yarborough, who is also a history teacher at Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, which is a magnet school for high school students that shares a campus with MUW. Yarborough said he wants the next university leader to also acknowledge the strong, decades-long partnership between MSMS and the university, which continues to develop students to become future leaders in the state.
A student at Mississippi University for Women in Columbus walks to class. Credit: Molly Minta/Mississippi TodayMiller’s retirement announcement was a bittersweet surprise for Trip Hairston, who represents District 2 on the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors. The university’s next leader should be assertive, advocate for the W and have great finance management skills, Hairston said.
The next leader should also have a strategic plan for prioritizing the university’s long-term sustainability, he said.
Hairston and Miller advocated for MSMS to remain on the MUW campus. In 2025, the Mississippi Department of Education recommended MSMS relocate to Mississippi State University’s campus. The Legislature did not act on the recommendation.
“We spent a lot of time together, strategizing on what to do next and who to go see and who to call,” Hairston said.
“I’m going to miss her openness with me,” he said of Miller. “I believe that whoever the successor is has got some pretty big shoes to fill.”
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