Like most parents, Bob and Rita Vasilyev are rarely surprised by the actions of their three adult children. So the Oxford couple was not stunned when the trio committed $130,000 to the University of Mississippi's Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Management, establishing the department's first endowment in their family's name. Instead, Bob Vasilyev, president of…

  Margaret Lewis Draper and her husband, L.C. Draper, were known in South Texas for their longtime support of education. The Ole Miss graduate joined her husband in making many gifts to the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA).   When Margaret Draper of Edinburg, Texas, passed away, she remembered her alma mater with a gift…

Honoring thy mother is a commandment Gordon Thompson has taken to heart. When he decided to establish a scholarship in honor of his mother, who was also an Ole Miss student, Thompson followed the spirit of the commandment to a T.   The $100,000 Claude P. Thompson Ole Miss First Scholarship is for full-time entering…

  For the first seven years of his life, Charles Moore lived in a home with no electricity on a dirt road near Blytheville, Ark. As he matured, he made three goals for his life: to marry a nice young woman, to see the turn of the century, and to do well financially. The 1947…

Kristie and Charles Abney of Atlanta have made a major gift to the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), an institute of the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture (CSSC), to help meet the goal of endowing a professorship in the growing academic study of foodways. "We made the gift because we are…

The Stamps Family Charitable Foundation has partnered with the University of Mississippi to launch one of the top scholarship programs in the Southeast at the university. Valued between $98,000 and $138,000 each, the Stamps Leadership Scholarships at Ole Miss become the most comprehensive, full scholarship packages for in-state and out-of-state students identified for their strong…

College tuition is on the rise, but so are major scholarships. To strengthen its recruitment tools, the University of Mississippi has created the Chancellor's Scholars Program to expand substantial scholarships for academically talented students. The new umbrella of premier scholarships was established with the confirmation that Ole Miss has been selected as a partner with…

  When the late Bernice and John Denley Jr. were raising their family in Tallahatchie County following the Great Depression, money was tight and making even a meager living on their farm was difficult.    But one belief the couple held and passed on to their children was that getting an education is an important…

  Two couples who chronicled the life of Charleston and the lives of its residents by publishing the local weekly newspaper were honored in 2010 when Ed and Becky Meek of Oxford established two journalism scholarships in their names at the University of Mississippi.   This fall, three Ole Miss students, all enrolled in the…