Frances A. Karnes Center for Gifted Studies

Honoring the Life of Dr. Frances A. Karnes

 On this site, we typically post the static information regarding the Karnes Center's Programs.  However, our focus now is not on a workshop for parents, academic program for children, or continuing education opportunity for teachers.  Today we bring you a special invitation to join us in celebrating the life of our founder, Dr. Frances A. Karnes, who passed away on the evening of Friday, August 22, 2025.  

For those of you who participated in any of the Center’s events, or who had the joy of being in any of Dr. Karnes’s courses at USM, you know the matter of fact way that she delivered information and shared from her heart. She was a woman with a mission and she did not back down. Dr. Karnes believed that every child should be taught at their appropriate instructional level in such a way that they could achieve continuous progress and not be held back by arbitrary concepts of promotion defined by birthdates or how many hours they had spent in a classroom. She saw the detrimental impact of the myth that gifted students would “get it on their own,” and knew without a doubt that she could do something to change our educational system.

Dr. Karnes and a team of dedicated teachers began to study the practices that best served gifted and high-ability students and to create classrooms where those practices were the norm, not the exception. They worked to spread those practices through trainings that eventually became the Day of Sharing for Teachers. They fought to insure that students had the right to be taught in a manner appropriate for their learning needs by meeting with their representatives and helping to pave the way for Mississippi’s Gifted Education Act. To this day, that legislation places Mississippi in the top four states in the nation for gifted education in that it 1) mandates the identification of intellectually gifted children in grades 2-6; 2) mandates that children identified as intellectually gifted are served for a specified number of hours per week; 3) mandates that teachers are appropriately licensed to serve those children; and 4) funds the salaries of those teachers. There are still numerous states that have no definition of giftedness codified into their state law and leave decisions about programming up to individual districts, schools, or teachers.

We could say that Dr. Karnes’s work was ahead of its time, but that would be incorrect. What is more accurate to say is that other states are far behind when it comes to meeting the needs of their gifted students. And even here in Mississippi, we run the risk of losing what we have. Recent changes in licensing procedures for teachers of gifted students allow them to become licensed without having any practical experience or coursework regarding gifted children – they need only challenge the Praxis exam. That is why the mission of the Karnes Center for Gifted Studies is still vitally important. One of our goals is to train up the next generation of teachers who will provide quality educational opportunities for our gifted and twice-exceptional students. You can help us do that by encouraging teachers you know to get involved in the Center’s Educator Development Program where they will learn the skills they need to meet the specific needs of gifted students.

Dr. Karnes’s legacy could be measured in the number of students that have attended the Center’s programs over the years, or the number of teachers who earned their licenses in gifted education by attending her classes at USM, or by the plethora of books and articles she wrote and research she led at the Center, but that too would be an incorrect method of measurement. The best way to measure Dr. Karnes’s legacy, is not in the numbers, but in the stories of the lives she touched – the books she encouraged others to write, the meals she encouraged them to create, the business owners she advised, the artists whose work she supported, the teachers she inspired to think beyond the gradebook, the parents she encouraged to understand their children more deeply, and most importantly the students into whose hearts and minds she planted the seeds of their future accomplishments. It does not take long to find individuals that benefitted from Dr. Karnes’s firm direction.

If you are one of those who have known her generosity, drive, and purposeful prodding, please join us for a special celebration of her life on Wednesday, August 27, 2025. A visitation will be held on USM’s Hattiesburg Campus from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM in the Trent Lott Building.   A memorial service will begin at 1:00 PM.  We know that many of you living farther away will not be able to attend this service at short notice but encourage those of you who are able to come and share with us your memories of such a wonderful and encouraging woman.  Whether you are able to visit us on campus or not, we would love to gather your memories of Dr. Karnes and her impact on your lives to share with her family.  You may send any remembrances or words of encouragement to our general email address: giftedstudies@usm.edu with the subject line: Remembering Dr. Karnes.  You may read her full obituary by clicking here. An article written by David Tisdale, with USM’s communication department, shares information about Dr. Karnes’s life and impact on the Hattiesburg Community and can be found here.

Thank you for your continued support of the Center. We hope to see you soon and look forward to carrying on Dr. Karnes’s legacy as we host the Saturday and Summer Gifted Studies and Leadership Studies Programs in 2026.  

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Welcome to The Frances A. Karnes Center for Gifted Studies! We maintain updates on this site AND on our blog page for your convenience.    

The Center for Gifted Studies was established in 1979 through the efforts of Dr. Frances A. Karnes to bring the educational needs of gifted students in Mississippi to the forefront of educational policy development through advocacy, research, and provision of services for high-ability students. Twenty years later, Dr. Karnes’s “tireless, unwavering determination” had galvanized the Center’s reputation as a consistent frontrunner in the development of enrichment and talent development programs.  The Center was renamed in her honor in 1999.

Today the Center flourishes as it strives to reach its vision of becoming one of the Southeast’s most prominent and effective homes for Gifted Studies. This vision is paired with our mission to strengthen gifted education in Mississippi, throughout the nation, and globally by continuing to uphold four stringent performance standards:

• Outstanding programming for children and youth that enhances the opportunities available for hundreds of students and their families each year (Student Programs);
• Online programming that inspires innovation and ensures the continuation of a skilled cadre of teachers of the gifted throughout the state (Educator Programs);
• Ongoing research that encompasses the development of best practices for gifted planning, programming, teaching, and outreach (Center Staff and Educators' Ambassadors Program);
• Outreach to parents that builds support systems, offers guidance for the social-emotional and vocational needs of gifted students, and builds a network of families advocating for their children in their local community and beyond (Parent Programs).

Open Now: Registration for Student Programs for Grades PreK-11. 

Visit our Karnes Center Student Programs page to find out more about the programs being offered this summer and to apply.  Updates will continue throughout the summer.