New Millsaps College president Frank Neville addresses future, announces projects

Frank Neville took over as Millsaps College's 12th president this past week with his eyes wide open about the challenges facing the school. However, he is also bullish about where he sees the school going in the near future.

In a sit-down interview with the Clarion Ledger, he addressed some of those issues and broke some news about two projects coming in the near future.

The private liberal arts school in midtown Jackson has struggled in recent years with enrollment. Millsaps has seen enrollment numbers drop from a high of around 1,200 students in the 1900s to 850 in 2019. In the fall of 2023, there were around 160 freshmen that enrolled, and according to U.S. News data, Millsaps had 637 undergraduate students as of 2022.

In the wake of the much-publicized financial crises faced by Birmingham-Southern College, which shut its doors at the end of this semester, enrollment at small, liberal arts schools has come under more scrutiny.

Neville said he doesn't see a Birmingham-Southern situation on the horizon and said the financial situation for Millsaps is very good.

"There's no doubt small colleges have come under a lot of pressure," Neville said. "After the financial crisis, some places have been able to adjust better than others. Millsaps has a uniqueness. I think small colleges have to have a value proposition. And I think Millsaps provides an integrated education and sends people out into the world as a well-rounded person."

Neville comes to Millsaps from Georgia Tech after being selected by a 17-member search committee in January. he was previously the Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff at Georgia Tech. His background includes strategic planning, implementation, and executive management.

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"I don't think there is any question that this is a special place. Millsaps is producing leaders in our community and in our state," Neville said. "There are lawyers and there are doctors that are coming out of here. I mean our governor (Tate Reeves) is a graduate of Millsaps College. People have definitely developed multidimensional leadership skills by virtue of having gone through this institution."

Millsaps has long been ranked as one of the better liberal arts colleges in the country, currently ranked No. 124 by U.S. News. That ranking was tops in Mississippi.

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One of the ways Neville believes Millsaps can attract more students and expand is to expand what is offered.

In April, the school announced it is expanding its curriculum. Six new majors were approved for undergraduates along with two new master’s degree programs.

The new areas of study are:

• User Experience Design,

• Health and Exercise Science,

• Public Health,

• Computer Science,

• Data Science

• Business Analytics

"We are really refining everything within our programs to give students a leg up. This is part of that," Neville said. "Some many things were started before I arrived that show we are on the correct track."

New projects

Neville said the Board of Trustees has jumped in with both feet to help push the school forward. While the enrollment has dipped, the school still has an endowment of nearly $100 million.

He didn't provide any details, but Neville said the board has been working toward an announcement that a new athletic fieldhouse will be built in the next couple years and he also announced a new economic development project on the northeast corner of the campus just across from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

"We want to provide for our student athletes, so having a new fieldhouse that cutting edge and that is going to serve a large percentage of our students is going to be a very valuable investment in the future of the college," Neville said. "That generosity, that support and those wise investments and the hard work and the value propositions needs to be refined, communicated better and we need to adjust programs and deliver, but all of this together make me very optimistic about the future of this institution."

Without details, Neville also discussed a plan for the north campus in which the board has signed a lease with a developer that could benefit the college but also positively impact Mid-Jackson.

Many institutions such as Millsaps are using athletics as a way to bring more students to their campuses. But while Neville is happy the school will be building more athletic facilities, he doesn't anticipate adding more sports or increasing roster sizes for the current sports.

"My sense is we have enough sports and we have enough student athletes," said Neville, who was a three-sport athlete at Carleton College in Minnesota, where he received his undergraduate degree. "I think building a larger non-student-athlete population is really the enrollment focus."

Adding students

Regardless of new projects or anything else, the talk always comes back to enrollment and Neville said he understands that increasing the current numbers are priority No. 1

"My first 100 days will have a priority on enrollment. In fact, I just left a meeting in which that was the topic of conversation," Neville said. "It's about awareness, retention, graduation. It's about everything."

He said there are procedural, structural and operation things that will help kick start any initiatives for building student population.

"Honestly, though, if we are being honest and looking at recent yield and retention, the college has underperformed," Neville said. "It's going to take some hard work, but we can compete with other peer institutions and have similar enrollments as them. All of that is within the scope of resources that we already have here."

Millsaps, however, has not released its enrollment numbers with the May 1 student-deposit deadline but Neville believes the numbers will be up.

"We will see where we land with the fall class, but I expect to see a significantly larger incoming first-year class than we did last year. There is a lot of good momentum and a lot of good work being done there."

Partnerships

Neville said that Millsaps, as an entity, should be provide a leadership role for the City of Jackson and for the State of Mississippi and that he intends to push that line of thinking in the near future as well as a long-term priority.

"All you really have to do is to look at where we are situated in Jackson," he said. "We are sitting between two significant medical facilities, and we should do a better job of having partnerships with them and taking advantage of that. We have to do a better job of that."

He said there are thousands of healthcare workers in Jackson that can benefit from Millsaps College.

"We have been talking about providing specialized healthcare programs," Neville said. "Just look around the city. Healthcare is such a huge employer. So, how do we partner there. How do we help where there is a need? How do we build more programs that are beneficial to those populations. So, we are looking at that and getting recommendations."

In the end, while the Millsaps' enrollment has been the emphasis of a lot of scrutiny in the last few years, Neville believes the future has a good base with which to build back.

"We are fortunate to be in a stable financial position and have great support from our board and from our donors," he said. "I have been so impressed with the annual fundraising for a college of this size. What that says to me is that people really care about this mission, and they are willing to invest in it. Having that type of community is going to be a huge asset."

Ross Reily can be reached by email at rreily@gannett.com or 601-573-2952. You can follow him on Twitter @GreenOkra1.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Millsaps College president announces new projects in Jackson