MERIDIAN — “Why is this building called H.M. Ivy Hall?" The question is frequently raised as one looks at the murals.  

    I could say "Some called him the South's most illustrious educational leader in last century."  However my short answer is "He led the founding of MCC."  And then I like to add "Dr. Ivy was a football coach." I don't tell them he also taught Latin and Greek.

    Nor do I tell them he was born 1884. His early years were spent in rural farming communities in Missouri, Texas and Arkansas but in 1893 his father, a teacher, joined the faculty of a teacher training school in Cape Girardeau, Mo. His niche was modeling the teaching of science for future teachers.  

And I rarely point out that young Horace Ivy's first paid job was in a blacksmith and wagon shop.

    The pay was 50 cents a day. Yep, and those were 11 hour days for a rising ninth grader. One of his jobs was bringing buckets of beer from a local brewery to the wagon shop. In his autobiography he observes the German metal workers preferred beer to milk. He also notes his mother vetoed that part of his job after she discovered it.

    I believe formative experiences matter. I know time and place matter.  And for illustrative example I prefer anecdotal data to statistical analysis. As our rural southland began emerging from "reconstruction" and moving toward the dawn of the 20th century, farm lads like Horace Ivy were moving to towns and cities. Young Horace Ivy's early years on farms and workshops and his family's commitment to work and learning nurtured his course as a practical academic.

    So it's no accident that his one-year-older brother, Andrew, a physiologist and physician, became vice president for health care education at the University of Illinois. Andrew Ivy pursued his medical training in Chicago so Horace Ivy's enrollment at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1906 is no surprise. Nor was his discovery of Joliet Junior College that same summer. After all, he was in Chicago to learn.

    Thirty-one years later, in 1937 MJC arrived. And what connection does this snapshot of H.M. Ivy have to do with MCC today? Good question. Simple answer. Three words. Access, Excellence. Community.

    What's access? Affordable, available opportunity to acquire and demonstrate knowledge and skills. Evidence? Check community college costs including college charges, the expenses associated with attendance. Check the range of curricula and courses accommodating learner objectives, skills and aspirations. Consider flexibility of scheduling including distance learning.

    Excellence? Of course I like to win ball games. But I prefer to look at success on national measures such as professional credentials or grades at universities beyond the community college. I even like to compare performance of community college transfer students to performance of students entering universities and other colleges directly from high school. Yep, I even like to look at graduation rates of community college athletes.

    Community? Preparing students to value community building and supporting engagement of faculty and students in "upbuilding" the community which has supported and lifted them is one of those things that is difficult to measure. It's also by and large marginally funded via both public policy and private support.

    Horace Ivy arrived in Meridian prepared to model all three. He walked the talk of accessibility, excellence and community. How? For starters, the community he came to serve was well prepared.  The seeds had been sowed. And that's a story for another day. Stay tuned.



    Dr. Bill Scaggs is President-Emeritus of MCC. The opinions and perspectives contained in this column are his alone.