BY CARL SMITHNews Editor

Various Mississippi State University constituency groups will have the chance to address the next potential MSU president during interview ses-sions throughout Wednesday.

Preferred candidate Mark Keenum’s public interviews will be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in various rooms of the Hunter Henry Center.

Shortly after the final interview ses-sion, the Mississippi Institutions of

Higher Learning’s Board of Trustees will vote either to make Keenum the next MSU president or reopen the presidential search process.

Evaluation forms will be provided to session participants in order for the board to gauge campus reaction.

Vice president for student affairs Bill Kibler said IHL staff will supervise MSU data-entry staff as the evalua-tions are processed after each interview session.

“Shortly after the board begins their meeting, we will be able to provide

them a summation of all the numerical rank-ings by question and group,” he said. “We also will provide a printed report with all of the comments.”

At 8 a.m., Keenum will have breakfast with the MSU vice presidents and athletic director Greg Byrne in the Shackouls Room of the Hunter Henry Center.

Kibler said he believes the collection of vice presidents will ask Keenum to address the main issues he faces if named the next MSU president.

“I’m sure he’ll address issues of com-munication and how he will plan to get up to speed as president,” Kibler said. “Overall, he will be talking about his own experiences and how they translate

to success as president.”One hour later,

Keenum will meet with MSU deans, associate deans and department heads in the Parker Ballroom.

General staff mem-bers and the Alumni Association Board will respectively have the chance to address Keenum at 10 and 11 a.m. in the Parker Ballroom and the Shackouls Room.

Jimmy Abraham, executive director of alumni activities, said many alumni want Keenum to be accessible and visible to as many alumni as possible.

“Alumni want to hear his vision and how he plans to take our university to the next level,” he said. “He holds

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BY COLIN CATCHINGS

Staff Writer

Students will have a chance to learn about foreign cultures at a variety of events in this week’s celebration of International Education Week.

Mississippi State University Cricket Club president Arun Sampathkumar said the cricket club is hosting a cricket clinic on the Drill Field from 2 to 5 p.m. today.

“The cricket clinic is an event where we let non-cricket playing cricket enthusiasts, people who do not know this game, we introduce them to this exciting game of cricket,” he said. “We basically give cricket enthusiasts an opportunity to try this game first-hand.”

A Maroon vs. White cricket exhibi-tion match will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. on the Drill Field Saturday.

“We put all the new members and the MSU alumni on the white team, and the maroon team is for the regular MSU team,” he said. “This basically is a match where the new members get a feel of how their team plays.”

Holmes Cultural Diversity Center assistant director Shaz Akram said there will also be a panel discussion from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the forum room in Griffis Hall today.

“We’ve got some economic profes-sors on board who are going to con-duct the discussion on the economic global crisis,” she said. “It’s something that not only affects American stu-dents, it affects international students, so we’ll get a diverse group of students to listen to that panel discussion.”

She said there will be an interna-tional fair on the Drill Field from 12 to 2 p.m. Wednesday.

“This year at the carnival we have African drumming,” Akram said. “Dr. Robert Damm’s percussion class I think is performing.”

MSU Ballroom Dance Club presi-dent Brandon Smith said the club will be performing at around noon or 12:30 p.m. on the Drill Field.

Interview sessions scheduled throughout Wednesday

BUD SOREY | THE REFLECTOR

Lecturer Molefi Kete Asante addresses the

McCool Hall crowd on Afrocentric history.

The

T H E S T U D E N T N E W S P A P E R O F M I S S I S S I P P I S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y S I N C E 1884

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AAS begins scholar-in-residence lecture series

Reflector

International Education Week

continues

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Diversity Center preparesfor fair

TUESDAYNOVEMBER 11, 2008

BULLDOGS WRAP UP PRESEASON WITH WIN

Campus groups prepare for Keenum’s visit

BY LAWRENCE SIMMONSStaff Writer

The newly-founded African-American studies program invited a nationally and internationally renowned orator to speak last week as part of the scholar-in-residence program at Mississippi State University.

Molefi Kete Asante, a professor of African-American studies at Temple

University, helped to create the first doctorate program in 1987 and is the most published African-American schol-ar, having written nearly 70 books and published 300 articles.

African-American studies director Stephen Middleton said the scholar-in-residence program is where AAS brings scholars who have national and inter-national reputations in their respective fields to MSU.

“During their period of residency, they are a part of the faculty in African-American stud-ies,” he said. “We hope that during this period of residency that we will build a relationship with [each] international scholar and establish a wonderful rela-tionship with him and our university.”

Asante said his purpose was to discuss the problems of the American education structure, to demonstrate the necessity of AAS and to point people in the direction of Afrocentricity.

Asante said Afrocentricity is about African people being located in a healthy,

safe and center position so they will be able to see the world clearly through their own eyes.

“There is no problem with someone from China to have a Sinocentric world view, but the problem is ethnocentrism,” he said. “Ethnocentrism is when you degrade other cultures and you impose your culture as if it is universal.”

Asante also discussed why AAS was not simply talking about black people.

“The first lesson we learned was that African-American studies is not and should not be an aggregation of courses about black people,” he said. “We got to that lesson because we discovered that universities had courses that talked about

Asante discusses the problems of the U.S. education structure

SEE SPEECH, 2

Keenum Kibler

Middleton

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