Ole Miss honors community engagement, maternal health project wins top award

Ole Miss used its 11th annual Celebration of Service Awards to put a price tag on public benefit: the university’s top community-engagement honor came with a $5,000 award for a maternal-health policy project aimed at changing outcomes in Mississippi.

The Excellence in Community Engagement Award went to Co-Producing Evidence for Maternal Health Policy Change in Mississippi: A Community-Engaged Group Concept Mapping Initiative, a team that included Sabrina Alam, Abigail Gamble, Zainab Jah, Hannah Sheridan, Nakeitra Burse, Janice Hall, Niketa Pechan and Amy Winter. Gamble is an associate professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Hall is a UMMC faculty affiliate, and Winter is a community assistant at Ole Miss. The award pointed to a problem far bigger than campus life: Mississippi ranks first nationally in the percentage of people living in maternal health care deserts, at 23.6%, and the state also has the nation’s highest infant mortality rate, at 9.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. The Mississippi Department of Health declared infant mortality a public health emergency in August 2025.

The awards also highlighted service work with immediate local reach. The Growing Middle School and High School STEM Outreach Program in Mississippi began in 2022 by working with Oxford-area high school students to improve science literacy, tying Ole Miss outreach directly to Lafayette County classrooms. The Center for Mathematics and Science Education says its work is built around improving math and science education in Mississippi by connecting university researchers with K-12 schools and promoting research-based classroom methods.

Other honorees showed a broader civic footprint. LEARN Science received the Excellence in Community Engagement Research Award for a library-based program serving kindergarten through second-grade children in Mississippi. The program, directed by David H. Holben, is backed by a $1.35 million NIH Science Education Partnership Award running from September 20, 2024, through July 31, 2029, and Holben has more than $4 million in funding for STEM and food insecurity research. LOU Second Responders received the Excellence in Community Engagement with Distinction Award after Ole Miss reported that the group set up 19 relief stations across Lafayette County following the January 2026 ice storm and distributed supplies at six additional sites, with another location underway.

The Center for Community Engagement says the awards are meant to foster excellence across colleges, units and departments, and the program also includes the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award and the Community Engaged Partnership Development Fund, which can provide up to $1,000 to strengthen partnerships. In practice, this year’s winners showed service that reached beyond Ole Miss branding and into Oxford schools, public libraries and storm-hit neighborhoods across Lafayette County.