Executive Director's Message

From the Desk of Kelly Riley, MPE Executive Director

As 2011 comes to a close, MPE celebrates another successful year while looking forward to the promises of 2012. More and more professionals are joining the premier organization for professional educators in Mississippi. As I mentioned in my last column, MPE is unique in that our membership is open not only to K-12 staff, but to staff of Mississippi’s community colleges and four-year institutions as well. We also serve educators in both public and independent institutions. MPE values each member and their contributions to education. Thank you for your continued membership in the Mississippi Professional Educators.

MPE encourages our members’ professional growth for the benefit of themselves and their students. We also believe we should invest in the next generation of those entering our profession. MPE offers two scholarship opportunities to our members. We annually award up to five scholarships in the amount of $1,000 each to MPE members who wish to pursue graduate level studies at a college or university in Mississippi. We also offer a $500 scholarship to a student member at each of Mississippi’s fifteen schools of education. If you are interested in applying for a graduate scholarship, you will find the guidelines and application in the Quick Links menu of our homepage (www.mpe.org). Student members interested in applying for a scholarship should contact their dean’s office or their school’s director of field experiences.

Your MPE staff will be at the capitol monitoring legislative and budget developments during the upcoming legislative session. As 2012 is the first year of a new four-year term, this will be a four month rather than three month session, so as to allow for orientation of new members and transition of new leadership. Publishing deadlines do not allow us to include contact information for legislators in this issue, but we will post this information to our website as soon as it is available. As always, I am confident that you will be professional in your communications with legislators.

I hope you will mark your calendars now to join us at MPE’s 2012 Best Practices Symposium on April 14 at the Jackson Hilton. In addition to our keynote speaker, Mr. Ray McNulty of the International Center for Leadership in Education, the symposium will feature two break-out sessions for attendees. Four different presentations will be available during each break-out session. CEUs will be provided and we will also provide the latest news from the capitol. Online registration will be available on our website (www.mpe.org) beginning in February.

To contact Kelly Riley, please email her at kelly@mpe.org