Contact: Sammy McDavid

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Two Mississippi State staff members are taking on regional leadership of a major professional organization.

Jennifer B. Easley recently was selected to become president-elect of the Society of Research Administrators International/Southern Section with membership representing 14 states from Virginia to Texas, plus Puerto Rico. Easley currently is serving as president of the Alabama-Mississippi Chapter, and her MSU colleague Stephanie Hyche also has been chosen to serve this year as president-elect of the chapter.

In February, Easley became business manager in the university’s Bagley College of Engineering. Previously, the three-degree MSU alumna directed the Office of Sponsored Projects and, before that, business operations at the land-grant institution’s High-Performance Computing Collaboratory. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting are accompanied by a second master’s in information systems. She currently is pursuing an MSU doctoral degree in industrial and systems engineering.

Hyche is associate director of the Office of Sponsored Projects and leader of the new Proposal Services Office. She has more than 18 years of experience in sponsored programs management and administration, having worked as a project director, grant writer and research administrator prior to joining MSU in 2014. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and education from the University of West Alabama and is pursuing a doctoral degree in public policy and administration at MSU.

Easley’s and Hyche’s new SRAI duties will span three years. Easley’s role as Southern Section president-elect will begin at the April 17 business meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, and she then will go on to serve as president for a year and past-president in the final period.

Hyche will begin her year as Alabama-Mississippi Chapter president-elect during a Huntsville, Alabama, meeting in July. She also will go on to president and past-president roles in successive years.

As Easley serves as president-elect of the SRAI Southern Section, she simultaneously will serve as immediate past-president of the Alabama-Mississippi Chapter.

Easley expressed pleasure that “Mississippi State will have the opportunity to have someone in these roles, as it says a lot about the university as a research leader.”

Hyche said, “Membership in SRAI affords research support professionals a tremendous network of resources, for both personal and professional enrichment, and provides the members’ institutions with the most current policy and best practices information in the industry.”

SRAI has more than 5,000 members in over 40 countries. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, it is considered the premier body for developing, defining and promoting best management practices, administration, knowledge transfer and research enterprise growth. For more, see www.srainternational.org/about.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.