Alcorn State University plans new campus in Vicksburg - Brief Article

Black Issues in Higher Education, Jan 18, 2001

VICKSBURG, MISS.

Officials at Alcorn State University are planning a Vicksburg campus, the school's president says. Alcorn President Clinton Bristow Jr. announced the expansion plans last month during a talk to the Vicksburg Rotary Club. Alcorn State's main campus is in Lorman, about an hour's drive south of Vicksburg.

Bristow says the Vicksburg proposal would include a facility to house expansions of Alcorn's computer science program, its teacher education programs and its hospitality courses. A fourth program, for physician assistants, would be new to Alcorn. He says the decision of where to put the facility, if construction is required, has not been made. Also undecided is when action on the plans will take place.

The move into Vicksburg would be part of the expansion plans the historically Black school is making as a result of the Ayers desegregation lawsuit that was filed 25 years ago. Alcorn State currently operates a branch in Natchez that houses a nursing school and master of business administration program. That facility employs about 100 people and has about 300 students.

A large White student enrollment at the Natchez campus is helping bring Alcorn State into compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the college desegregation case.