LORMAN &045; Alcorn State University is home to Dr. Malvin Williams, retiring vice president of academic affairs. At age 5, he moved with his family to the campus at Lorman, where his father was employed.

&uot;I grew up on campus,&uot; Williams said, taking time from the packing and reorganizing that have filled his days in recent weeks.

And he will not go far away to begin his retirement, remaining in the home he shares with his wife, Delores Garner Williams, just outside the ASU campus.

He takes with him many memories of the 39 years of his Alcorn career, especially the warm relationships forged with students during those years, Williams said.

&uot;The biggest joy of being in academic work is getting the chance to work with a wonderful group of students,&uot; he said. &uot;It’s not necessarily the ones who come with the 28 ACT that you remember but, rather, the ones who struggle and have difficult times. You see them eight or 10 years later, and they are successful. You know they might not have been so without what you did for them.&uot;

Williams, like the other longtime ASU employees retiring this summer, Dr. Rudolph Waters and Wiley Jones, has witnessed many changes at the university during several decades &045; new buildings and new programs, in particular.

However, as academic dean and then vice president, he has been involved in efforts to boost graduation and retention numbers. After the establishment in 1984 of the College of Excellence, through which all students must enter Alcorn, retention rates rose from 50 percent to 75 percent.

The College of Excellence program helps students who may not be prepared for some of the college-level courses required, Williams said. For two years, all students remain under the College of Excellence guidelines, ensuring they are prepared for upper level work.

The program has been so successful that Williams was interviewed in a January 2005 publication, &uot;A Report by The Education Trust,&uot; featuring representatives from universities with high graduation rates.

Students not only are remaining and graduating at higher rates, Williams said. &uot;We think the College of Excellence is the basic reason for their higher scores on nationwide tests.&uot;

The late Dr. Walter Washington, then president of Alcorn, chose Williams for a challenging job in 1986, when the university found its budget cut by 29 percent.

&uot;I was given the responsibility by Dr. Washington of recommending how we could do it and implementing it,&uot; Williams said. &uot;We looked at every entity at the university. We had a decent fund balance. We did not have to lay off anyone immediately. We made a 2 percent salary reduction across the board and cut where we thought we could without damaging the academic and student services.&uot;

It worked. And because the process was open and fair, university employees supported it, he said. This belt-tightening also made implementing programs for accreditation a big challenge.

Williams was 34 when he became the academic officer at Alcorn, &uot;the youngest academic officer in the state,&uot; he said. &uot;Dr. Washington’s mentoring me and going with me from the beginning was very important to me. He reminded me that I was young but that I should not make the same mistakes over and over again.&uot;

Others during his career offered advice and mentoring. &uot;They counseled me and made sure that I kept my feet planted.&uot;

Of critical importance to the university are the good people working there. &uot;I’ve had some of the best. Take the nursing school at Natchez, with Cora Balmat, Frances Henderson and now Mary Hill. These simply are the best,&uot; he said. &uot;When you have good people, it’s easier to be successful.&uot;

Williams leaves good people in his own office on the Lorman campus, he said. And he looks forward to watching the university continue to grow.

His plans for retirement may include teaching a class sometime in the future. &uot;I’m a mathematician and a statistician by training. I might teach a class or get involved in a project,&uot; he said.

First, however, he plans to buy a new boat and a new tractor. &uot;I’m going to have the best-cut grass in the county.&uot;

Williams attended elementary and high school at the Alcorn lab school, then entered the university, where he graduated with a degree in mathematics in 1962. He went on to get a master’s degree in natural sciences in 1966 from Arizona State University and in that same year began his career at Alcorn as a mathematics instructor and a computer programmer and analyst.

In 1971, he left to pursue his Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, completing that degree in 1975 and returning to Alcorn as registrar, assistant dean of academic affairs and dean of academic affairs.

&uot;I won’t miss the meetings,&uot; he said. &uot;But the joy of seeing students achieve, I will miss that.&uot;