The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS) is Mississippi's only public residential high school for academically gifted students and is located in

Columbus, Mississippi Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Lowndes County, on the eastern border of Mississippi, United States, located primarily east, but also north and northeast of the Tombigbee River, which is also part of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterwa ...

, United States on the campus of the

Mississippi University for Women Mississippi University for Women (MUW or "The W") is a coeducational public university in Columbus, Mississippi. It was formerly named the Industrial Institute and College for the Education of White Girls and later the Mississippi State College ...

. A member of the National Consortium for Secondary STEM School
(NCSSS)
it is a statewide public

magnet school In the U.S. education system, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities (usually school boards) as school ...

. Tenth-grade students are selected to attend through a competitive application process that includes standardized test scores, a written application, and an interview. The school enrolls students in the last two years of high school graduating over 100 students each year. In 2021, the school produced 21

National Merit Semifinalists The National Merit Scholarship Program is a United States academic scholarship competition for recognition and university scholarships administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), a privately funded, not-for-profit organizati ...

. While the main academic focus of MSMS is

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

, humanities, particularly

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

, and

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

are also emphasized.

History

Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS) was founded in 1987 by appropriations from the

Mississippi Legislature The Mississippi Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Mississippi. The bicameral Legislature is composed of the lower Mississippi House of Representatives, with 122 members, and the upper Mississippi State Senate, with 52 me ...

and was the fourth public, residential high school for academically gifted students created in the United States. As a public, residential high school, drawing students from all over the state, MSMS has occasionally struggled for existence. The property tax has been the sole form of finance for most schools in Mississippi. However, MSMS which draws students from all over the state, cannot levy a millage tax as a source of funding. It relies on grants as well as state, student, and alumni contributions. Starting in 2008, the

required MSMS and its sister school, the Mississippi School of the Arts, to charge students $500 per semester for room and board costs, making them the only public schools in the state that charge students to attend. However, if a student is eligible for free or reduced lunch in their home district, then this fee is waived. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, MSMS transitioned to an online-learning environment, beginning at the end of March 2020, using

Zoom Zoom may refer to: Technology Computing * Zoom (software), videoconferencing application * Page zooming, the ability to magnify or shrink a portion of a page on a computer display * Zooming user interface, a graphical interface allowing for image ...

and other telecommunications services. During the 2020–2021 academic year, the school utilized a hybrid learning environment, allowing some students to remain virtual while others attended in-person classes and lived on campus with quarantining restrictions.

Notable alumni

* Elizabeth Wayne (biomedical engineer), TED Fellow *Leslie & Mark Henderson, founders of Lazy Magnolia Brewing Company *Desmond Walker, Commander, US Navy; Executive Officer, USS Bainbridge (DDG-96) *Kajal Desai, co-founder of Doonya (Indian/Bollywood dance-fitness movement)

References

External links

MSMS homepage

MSMS Foundation
{{Coord, 33.491597, -88.417778, display=title Columbus, Mississippi Boarding schools in Mississippi Public high schools in Mississippi Magnet schools in Mississippi NCSSS schools Educational institutions established in 1987 Mississippi University for Women Schools in Lowndes County, Mississippi Science and technology in Mississippi 1987 establishments in Mississippi Public boarding schools in the United States

History

Notable alumni

See also

References

External links