Many alumni and friends were able to join us in April 1997 for a gala celebration of the 50^th anniversary of our insurance major at The University of Mississippi. In truth, few of us realized that the program had been in existence that long until I made a misstatement about the age of the program and Bill Bryson, a 1949 graduate who majored in insurance, called me on it. In searching the archives at Ole Miss, I soon found that Bill’s long-term memory still is intact because the insurance major first appears in the 1947-48 annual catalog. The first insurance courses were taught even earlier, first surfacing in the 1933-34 catalog.

To be sure, the new insurance curriculum in 1947-48 was modest indeed. The four true insurance courses were titled General Insurance; Life Insurance and Income Protection; Fire, Marine and Inland Marine Insurance; and Casualty Insurance and Surety Bonding. The remaining courses represented a mixture of economics, finance, and business law. Lamar Maxwell recalls that a high percentage of the early insurance majors were independent agents’ children who planned to return to their parents’ agencies upon graduation. The post-WWII expansion was in full bloom and Lamar recalls that few commercial risks wanted to place more than $10,000 of coverage with any one company, so insurance graduates also had their pick of jobs with insurers seeking to expand operations in Mississippi.

The first full-time insurance professor at Ole Miss was Ralph William Yuill. According to Bill Bryson, Mr. Yuill had some life insurance experience and he taught all four of the insurance courses. Bill “Mouse” Stevenson remembers that Mr. Yuill was a retired Army officer whose lectures were a mite dry. A couple of years after graduation, Bill took some CPCU exams and found that the questions were very familiar. He laments that he did not know enough to order CPCU materials a few years earlier, while taking Mr. Yuill’s courses!

When Mr. Yuill retired in 1965, he was succeeded by another long-time professor, Mr. Francis Swan “Frank” Scott. Many alumni recall that students referred to him as “New York” Scott because he regaled them with stories of investing in New York City real estate. Apparently, Professor Scott was a successful investor because he reportedly was the only faculty member who could afford to trade in his car for a shiny new one every two years (faculty notice--and remember--these things).

In the mid-1970s, Dr. Rufus Jones of the Ole Miss development office introduced the idea of an Insurance Excellence Program for which private funds would be raised to provide additional support for the insurance program. Among his early fund-raising recruits were Bill Bryson and Perrin Caldwell. In the late 1970s, Lamar Maxwell recalls that Professors Robert Khayat and Don Frugé, now Chancellor and Director of University Advancement, respectively, at Ole Miss, enlisted alumni to raise funds for a permanently endowed Center for Insurance Excellence. Tom Joyner joined Maxwell, Bryson, and Caldwell, among others, in this successful effort. After Mr. Scott retired, Dr. Joe Murrey, a former Arkansas State professor, accepted the newly created position of Director of the Center in 1979.

Prior to Dr. Murrey’s arrival, the Mu Chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma collegiate insurance society was established at Ole Miss in October 1976. Former chapter president Preston Derivaux recalls that Dr. Murrey was regarded as one of the most accessible, friendly professors on the business school faculty and he made special efforts to encourage students to actively support the Mu chapter. These efforts culminated in Ole Miss hosting the national convention of Gamma Iota Sigma in 1980, which students found to be a particularly invigorating experience.

In 1989, Dr. Mary Ann Boose joined the faculty as an assistant professor who taught both insurance courses and statistics. Mary Ann served as the faculty advisor to Gamma Iota Sigma and many insurance alumni who graduated in the late 1980s and early 1990s recall her efforts on their behalf.

Without a doubt, 1995 proved to be a year of enormous change for the insurance program. Dr. Murrey retired in May and relocated to his home state of Arkansas, settling in Jonesboro. At the same time, Dr. Boose resigned to become head of the insurance department at Indiana State University. The business school dean, Dr. Randy Boxx, sought additional funding from insurance alumni and they responded so that an endowed professorship was created. In June 1995, after nine years on The University of Georgia faculty, I was recruited to Ole Miss and named Holder of the Professorship of Insurance. One year later, Dr. Katherine Daigle assumed Dr. Boose’s former position and she taught insurance courses through the spring of 1999.

In the last eight years, dramatic changes have occurred. The curriculum has been revised to focus more intensively on commercial insurance and corporate risk management. A student internship program has been instituted and virtually all students seeking such experience have received paid internships. The number of Insurance and Risk Management majors has approximately quadrupled since 1995 and nearly all graduates have entered some aspect of the insurance business.

Perhaps the most important development since 1995 has been the formation and active participation of the Ole Miss Insurance Advisory Board. The Board consists of 25 industry practitioners with a wide variety of backgrounds. Under the dynamic leadership of the first two chairpersons, Tom Quaka and Van Hedges, the Board has made enormous progress in improving industry-university communication, student job and internship placement, and private funding of the Insurance and Risk Management program.

Perhaps the most visible activity of the Board has been the planning, development, and hosting of the Ole Miss Insurance Symposium each year. For several years now, the Symposium has reached sellout proportions and produced many positive ripple effects, even including the vast improvement of the Ole Miss basketball team! Another key accomplishment has been the quadrupling of the endowment so that the minimum funding goal for an insurance chair has been surpassed. On February 26, 1998, Dean Boxx announced that the Jack W. and Gwenette P. Robertson Chair of Insurance had been officially established at Ole Miss and yours truly was appointed the first holder of the Robertson Chair.

From the student perspective, our most important activity has become the annual Ole Miss Insurance Careers Day, held in late January. Approximately 20 insurance companies, brokers, and associations attend each year to both educate and recruit our students. Insurance Careers Day now attracts both regional and national concerns and has been the key to extremely high job placement rates for Ole Miss students upon graduation. The visibility of this event has also helped to attract many students to the Insurance and Risk Management major.

In the fall of 1999, the Insurance Advisory Board launched a drive to raise an endowment to create a new Professorship of Insurance. The Board perceived this need because students were routinely being turned away from the basic insurance principles courses, which were at capacity. The ultimate goal is to raise $500,000 in private support and the Board turned to its “old warhorse,” alumnus Lamar Maxwell, to lead the individual giving campaign. Bill Gates of Memphis has spearheaded a related campaign that targets leading insurance carriers and brokers. Many individual alumni and friends now have contributed to the endowment, along with corporate supporters such as Marsh, State Farm, and the Risk and Insurance Management Society of Memphis. Although fund-raising continues, the drive has been successful enough to allow us to hire a new assistant professor, Dr. Karen Epermanis, in the fall of 2001. Dr. Epermanis was a corporate risk manager prior to earning her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. She comes to Ole Miss from the University of Hartford. Dr. Epermanis has excelled in her new role as an energetic teacher, researcher, and mentor to the student insurance society.

With the tremendous changes over the past eight years, the future for the Insurance and Risk Management program never looked brighter. We have grown from 20 majors in 1995 to over 80 today and can expect at least 50% growth in the next few years. Graduates continue to experience strong demand, even through economically challenging times. The faculty also are increasingly visible in producing research that is recognized by the leading national academic societies and publications in the field of insurance and risk management. Rather than slowing down at age 55, the Ole Miss Insurance and Risk Management program continues to pick up the pace!

Larry A. Cox

September 2002

Copyright © The University of Mississippi.  All rights reserved.