In April 2013 I visited the University of Mississippi, better known as Ole Miss. Ole Miss is the smallest of the SEC universities with only 16,000 undergraduates. For this reason a student can have both the exciting environment of a SEC school, and at the same time, take classes in a small school setting. The student-faculty ratio at University of Mississippi is 19:1, and the school has 47.4 percent of its classes with fewer than 20 students.
There is a very exciting new program at Ole Miss that is drawing a great deal of attention; it is called The Center for Manufacturing Excellence, which was created three years ago. In this program students will take courses in accounting and business as well as courses in engineering. We were able to tour the brand new state-of-the-art building that houses this new program. There is a shipping dock for sending and receiving materials on the side of the building, and inside are simulated assembly lines. One hundred students are accepted into this new program each fall. Fifty are from the state of Mississippi, and fifty are selected from outside of the state. This is truly an outstanding addition to the academic offerings at Ole Miss.