About the Institute

As chairman of the board of the Journal Publishing Company and executive editor of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, George McLean made significant contributions in the areas of local education and community development.

He received the Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Mississippi in 1926, and the Master of Arts degree from Boston University in 1928. He began a teaching career at Adrian College, Michigan, and in 1931 moved to Southwestern College in Memphis, Tennessee.

Three years later, McLean purchased the Tupelo Journal, a biweekly newspaper with a paid circulation of less than 500. From that beginning, McLean built the Journal into a daily publication with a circulation of nearly 40,000—the largest circulation of any newspaper in a city the size of Tupelo.

His background in the field of education kept McLean, and the Daily Journal interested and involved in local education. One program initiated by McLean provided reading aides in each of the Lee County school system’s first grades. McLean served on the advisory committee that secured a Tupelo branch of the University of Mississippi and was a member of the steering committee that secured the Tupelo Branch of the Vocational and Technical Center of Itawamba Community College. He served as chairman of Gov. Waller’s Quality Education Committee.

In the field of community development, McLean was involved with groups such as the Community Development Foundation; the Rural Community Development Council; CREATE Inc., a non-profit charitable, religious, and educational organization; and Lift, Inc. a local community action agency designed to provide Head Start and other services.

McLean was recognized as Nation Magazine’s Man of the Year 1937 with Supreme Court Justice Brandeis and Wisconsin’s Robert LaFollett; Progressive Farmer’s 1948 “Man of the Year” in Mississippi agriculture, as the first recipient of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s “Distinguished Citizen” award, and as the first recipient of Tupelo Civilian Club’s annual “Outstanding Citizen” award. He was selected for the University of Mississippi’s Hall of Fame; The Old Miss Journalism Department also honored McLean by selecting him as the first recipient of the “Silver Em” award for outstanding journalistic achievement; and Adrian College, where he had taught early in his career, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his lifetime accomplishments.

Anna Keirsey Rosamond McLean of Tupelo was president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board for Journal Publishing Company which publishes the Northwest Mississippi Daily Journal, the largest Mississippi-owned newspaper.

In 1972, she and her husband, George, founded CREATE, Inc., a non-profit charitable organization that serves as a community foundation for Northeast Mississippi.

McLean also founded and provided the initial funding for the George A. McLean Institute for Community Development, located at the University of Mississippi. The institute trained local leaders throughout northeast Mississippi and has become a model for the Southeast and nation.

In 1986, McLean oversaw the development of Mississippi’s first jointly sponsored corporate child development center, serving employees of the Daily Journal and three other local corporations.

A native of Paragould, Ark., McLean received a Bachelor of Arts degree in education from the University of Mississippi in 1927. Before she and her husband moved to Tupelo, McLean taught at Byhalia High School and in the Boston Public School System.

Active in civic affairs, McLean served as an elder and Sunday School teacher for First Presbyterian Church, an organizer of the Tupelo Service League (now the Junior Auxiliary) and a board member for the Community Development Foundation of Tupelo.

Vaughn Grisham, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Mississippi, believes his life’s purpose is to raise the quality of life for others, so much so that he founded an institute focused on that.

Recently, the former McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement, housed on the Ole Miss campus, was officially renamed to honor him.

A $100,000 planned gift from the professor and his wife, Sandy, will help the Grisham-McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement continue its work for generations to come.

“I know the faculty at the Grisham-McLean Institute quite well and have enormous confidence in them,” said Vaughn Grisham, who retired after 50 years of teaching more than 30,000 students in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College.

“They’re going to help build a better Mississippi, and so that’s most important.”

The McLean Institute for Community Development was founded in 1984. For more than twenty-five years, Dr. Vaughn Grisham led the institute. It was named in honor of George McLean, whose mission was to raise the quality of life for all Mississippians. McLean understood that universities could be a resource for communities and regions seeking to raise their own quality of life. The institute that bears his name has cultivated leaders, researched problems, and implemented solutions for communities around Mississippi and the nation.

In 2012, the McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement was expanded to implement transformation through service on campus, providing the basis for work that served to institutionalize community engagement at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Albert Nylander was recruited to lead and direct this expansion, as the University of Mississippi's inaugural director of community engagement. The Institute's efforts led to the university's formation of its inaugural community engagement council, the creation of what is now the Division of Access, Opportunity and Community Engagement, and the establishment of vice chancellor and assistant vice chancellor-level roles pertaining to community engagement. In 2020, these institutional transformation efforts were recognized when UM attained the Elective Carnegie Community Engagement Classification.

In 2022, the Institute was renamed to honor Dr. Vaughn Grisham's legacy of teaching and scholarship that transformed lives and uplifted communities by inspiring hope, leadership, and resilience. Today, the Grisham-McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement is a resource for the entire University of Mississippi campus, and collaborates with students, faculty, and staff on a range of high impact practices, including capstone courses, community-based learning, collaborative projects, internships, and undergraduate research. The Grisham-McLean Institute then works to leverage these university resources to partner with communities across the state to solve problems relating to poverty.

Mission

The Grisham-McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement empowers campus and community partners to fight poverty through education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Vision

The Grisham-McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement will be recognized for its success in building and growing campus and community partners to fight poverty through education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

By 2030, the Grisham-McLean Institute will continue to:

• Equip University of Mississippi students with the knowledge, skills, and mindset's to catalyze positive change, and prepare students to be the next generation of entrepreneurs and problem solvers;
• Broaden engagement opportunities that mutually benefit University of Mississippi students, faculty, staff, and community partners and deepen the institutional culture of community engagement;
• Expand scholarship and dialogue on community development throughout Mississippi; and
• Boost awareness of its commitment to fight poverty through education, innovation, and entrepreneurship in Mississippi.

Core Values

The Grisham-McLean Institute reflects the following values in its organization and programs;

• Academic Excellence: The Grisham-McLean Institute promotes community engagement opportunities that enrich classroom learning.
• Transformation: Through engaged scholarship and reflective community action, the Grisham-McLean Institute connects university research, teaching, and service activity with community partners to transform lives and communities across the state.
• Collaboration: The Grisham-McLean Institute values the strengths and assets of all people and the organizations with whom we partner.
• Integrity: The Grisham-McLean Institute believes in listening honestly, processing information accurately, and following through on its commitments. 

The Grisham-McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement has worked to institutionalize the culture of engagement at UM. In 2012, Dr. Albert Nylander was hired as the University’s first ever director of community engagement.

The UM Council on Community Engagement was chartered by Dr. Nylander in October of 2012 to advise the Grisham-McLean Institute on how to strengthen the culture of engagement on campus. COCE members represent faculty, staff, and students from across campus, and have developed Common Definitions to expand the conversation around community engagement. COCE members have served as champions to advance the application process to obtain the Carnegie Foundation’s Classification for Community Engagement. Thanks to the Grisham-McLean Institute’s foundational work along with countless partners of UM the university was recently recognized with Carnegie’s classification. 

Community engagement is a partnership between the University of Mississippi and community partners throughout Mississippi. Community engagement occurs when UM faculty, staff, and/or students partner with non-higher education collaborators in the public or private sectors to accomplish a goal that benefits all parties. These partnerships evolve over time, and the types of partnership include: outreach, consulting, involvement, shared leadership, and community-driven, and characterized as long standing.

Community engagement occurs within all facets of the University’s research, learning, and service missions. Community engagement advances UM’s mission while benefiting society through the discovery, development, and/or dissemination of knowledge that ultimately improves the learning, behavior, and conditions of individuals and communities.

Whenever a University of Mississippi student, staff, or faculty member collaborates with a community partner to accomplish a goal that benefits all parties – that is community engagement.

The Grisham-McLean Institute, in collaboration with the Council on Community Engagement, works to craft a common vernacular around community engagement, and to elevate best practices that promote service and transformation. The following definitions were adopted in September 2018.

Community Engagement describes collaboration between UM and partnering communities for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity while fulfilling UM’s mission of scholarly learning, research, and service.

Communities consist of groups of people in the public and private sectors who are affiliated by geographic proximity, special interests, or situational similarities at the local, regional/state, national, or global levels.

Community-Engaged Learning denotes academically-based community engaged courses that may integrate a range of teaching and learning strategies, including, but not limited to: service-learning, Co-op, externship, internship, practicum, clinical, capstone, research project, public service, practice-based learning, experiential education, and experiential learning. Community-engaged learning uses a defined curriculum and can be formal (credit granting) or non-formal (non-credit granting).

Community-Engaged Research refers to a research partnership between UM and communities that is mutually beneficial and includes some degree of shared decision making and leadership between communities and UM.

Community-Engaged Service defines collaboration between members of UM and a community or community-based group that results in beneficial services. Community-engaged service may, or may not, be related to an academic program and can be performed by students, faculty, and staff. Community-engaged service includes co-curricular service and civic engagement.

Scholarship of Engagement or Engaged Scholarship is scholarship resulting from the collaborative and mutually beneficial partnership between university member(s) (i.e. faculty, staff, and/or student) and external non-higher education partner(s). Engaged scholarship is typically created and communicated through any of the following activities: discovery of new knowledge, development of new knowledge, dissemination of new knowledge, change in learning, change in behavior and/or change in conditions^[1].

Community Partner includes any non-higher education individuals, groups, and organizations from the public and private sectors.

Partnership – an association between community partner(s) and UM to undertake a shared, mutually beneficial action or endeavor.

Outreach – activities that serve UM and the community by facilitating and providing learning experiences that engage minds, transform lives, and serve others while inspiring change and growth by building relationships and working collaboratively with University students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners.

Civic Engagement is a type of community-engaged service that fosters citizenship through engagement in issues of public interest and/or participation in governance activities.

Co-Curricular Service is a type of community-engaged service performed by faculty, staff, and/or students that is not formally linked to an academic curriculum, but fosters student learning.

Service Learning is a teaching and learning strategy that uses reflection to link community service with academic course objectives to enrich the educational experience of students, teach civic responsibility, and meet the needs of a community.     

Scholarship “is creative intellectual work that is validated by peers and communicated^[2]” to the larger world. Scholarship includes, but is not limited to, obtaining grants, conducting research, writing scholarly publications, delivering presentations, creating curricula, creating art, and producing artistic performances.

Mutuality refers to an interdependence or shared interest, purpose, or benefit between two or more collaborators.

Reciprocity refers to a mutually beneficial exchange between UM and its community partners. 

[1] Franz, N. (2009). A holistic model of engaged scholarship: Telling the story across higher education’s missions. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 13(4), 31-49.

[2] Weiser, C. J. and Houglum, L. (1998). Scholarship unbound for the 21^st Century. Journal of Extension, 36(4). Retrieved from https://www.joe.org/joe/1998august/a1.php