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Ole Miss Alumni Association

Ole Miss Alumni Association

“The University is respected, but Ole Miss is loved. The University gives a diploma and regretfully terminates tenure, but one never graduates from Ole Miss.”
-Frank E. Everett Jr.

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APSEC22 Keynote Speakers

 

 

John T. Edge

John T. Edge hosts the television show TrueSouth on the SEC Network and ESPN. The Penguin Press published his latest book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, named a best book of 2017 by NPR, Publisher‘s Weekly, and a host of others. Now in paperback, Nashville selected the book as a citywide read for 2018. Edge is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun. For 22 years, he served as a columnist for the Oxford American. For three years he wrote the “United Tastes” column for the New York Times. He has won four James Beard Foundation Awards, including two M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Awards. Elected to the Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame in 2019, he received an honorary doctorate from Centenary College of Louisiana that same year.

 

Eduardo Prieto

Eduardo Prieto became the university’s first Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management in March 2021. He is responsible for designing and implementing the university’s master enrollment strategy, incorporating recruitment plans and strategic enrollment initiatives, and leading financial aid optimization efforts using data analysis, enrollment forecasting and industry best practices. Prieto serves on the senior administrative team and oversees the Division of Enrollment Management. Prieto is a higher education veteran with more than 28 years of expertise and experience working in enrollment management, competitive admission efforts, student recruitment and financial aid, among other areas. He joined UM from his previous position at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, where he served as vice president for access and enrollment management. Before that, he was associate vice president of enrollment management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and vice president of enrollment services at Oklahoma City University. He also served as dean of admissions at University of St. Thomas in Houston, and associate director of prospective student services and director of the Tulsa Office of Recruitment at the University of Oklahoma.

 

Jeff McManus 

Jeff McManus grows things. As the landscape leader at the University of Mississippi, he grows plants … he grows people … and he grows fresh ideas. In his side hustle, Jeff speaks and works with problem-solvers all across the country, who understand that doing more with less is a key to being productive and profitable. Taking his team, affectionately known as “weeders,”and cultivating them into “leaders” has reaped acres of rewards in the form of national recognition by the USA Today, Princeton Review, Newsweek and the New York Times. Jeff graduated from Auburn University in Horticulture, he is a professional certified grounds manager, and a certified arborist.

 

Bob Warner

Bob Warner, Jr. (BA 79, MD 83) began his one-year term as president of the Alumni Association in October 2021. He is a surgeon at Arkansas Methodist Medical Center Surgical Clinic. He is board certified and is a fellow of the American College of Surgery. While at Ole Miss, he was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa honors society, active in student government and in Delta Psi Fraternity. He served as fraternity alumni advisor for 15 years. He has served as charter president of the Northeast Arkansas Ole Miss Club. Bob is active in Rotary International at the local, national and international level. He and his wife of 27 years, Mary Ellen (BSN 79) reside in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and are members of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church.

 

David Kellum

 “The Voice of the Rebels,” David Kellum, returns for his 32st season handling the Ole Miss radio play-by-play call. The veteran broadcaster also serves as the play-byplay announcer for both Ole Miss basketball and baseball. In 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2017, Kellum was honored as the Mississippi Sportscaster of the Year, as voted on by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association members in the state. In August 2006, he received the “Lindsey Nelson Outstanding Sportscaster” award from the AllAmerican Football Foundation. Kellum’s first link with Ole Miss Athletics was in 1978. As a 19-year-old freshman, he began broadcasting Rebel baseball, and has handled the baseball play-by-play for the past 43 seasons. Kellum hosts Ole Miss’ weekly radio shows for men’s basketball and football. He is married to the former Mary Evelyn Kuehn of Oxford. They have two daughters, Stefanie Marie and Staci Michelle along with a new granddaughter.