There’s not much to Mayhew, at least not that first meets the eye. The unincorporated community lies roughly halfway between Columbus and Starkville has always been known for something, though.
For earlier generations, it was the go-to place to buy beer driving east on Highway 82, a significant landmark for Mississippi State students.
Tumble-down beer joints like Len Lew’s and Echols, along with “The Crossroads,” a gas station strategically located on the intersection of Highway 45 Alternate and Old Highway 82, all did a thriving business for generations of MSU students and anybody else who wanted to escape “dry” Oktibbeha County.
The arrival of legal beer sales in Starkville in 2005 spelled the death knell of those county-line beer joints.
And, too, Mayhew was known for its honey bees. Stover Apiaries supplied queen bees to domestic and international beekeepers for much of the 20th century. It closed in the 1980s.
Mayhew has as developed a different reputation since then.
Today the East Mississippi Community College Mayhew campus is home to innovative, non-traditional approaches to education.
EMCC is a hybrid educational institution. It still provides students an affordable option for students pursuing traditional four-year university degrees. But in recent years, EMCC has earned a reputation for its vocational curriculum, too. Its Center for Workforce Development equips students for the specific skills needed for employment in area’s manufacturing and industrial companies.
That program has proven to be an extremely popular option for young people who have no interest in pursuing a four-year degree but need training to work in today’s modern manufacturing/industry fields.
That program will take another big leap forward by the end of 2018 when it expands to the new, state-of-the-art, $42-million Communiversity will be completed a couple miles east of the EMCC campus.
2018 will be notable for Mayhew for another reason. That will be the year Golden Triangle Early College High School (GTECHS) celebrates its first graduating class. GTECHS is an innovative approach to public education, allowing students to pursue dual track studies which will enable them to earn an associate’s degree or one of the technical certification offered by EMCC as they complete their high school education.
Beginning with its first class of freshmen in 2015, GTECHS now has 165 freshman, sophomore and high school students. The school not only allows students to attain two years of college at no cost, but is geared to students for whom traditional high school, for a variety of reasons, is not a good fit.
It is also an opportunity for students to acclimate themselves to the realities of the college classroom, says GTECHS Principal Jill Savely.
“Our juniors for most of the day are all over EMCC’s campus,” she said. EMCC professors told Savely the ideal college student has good critical thinking and writing skills. So in every high school level class, the teachers make sure the students “read, write, think and talk,” Savely said.
When we consider the innovation that is becoming a trademark of EMCC Mayhew, we smile to think a place once identified as a place to quench a thirst, is satisfying a different kind of thirst — the thirst for knowledge.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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