Convilles Continuing Legacy of Service to USM, Hattiesburg Area

Thu, 01/05/2023 - 12:37pm | By: Van Arnold

Richard “Dick” and Mo Conville are well known in the Hattiesburg community for their commitment to humanitarian causes and local initiatives. In recent years, this legacy of service has become even more deeply realized with the Convilles’ ongoing support of the Richard L. and Mozella P. Conville Center for Community Engagement Fund for Excellence at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM).

The fund, which was established in 2015 by a $100,000 donation through the USM Foundation, provides students and faculty with the opportunity to learn, teach, and research through service. 

The Conville Fund for Excellence supports the efforts of the Center for Community Engagement (CCE), whose mission on campus is to provide community engagement experiences that mutually benefit the university and community. The Convilles recently made an additional contribution to the fund, which also receives support from other individuals who believe in the outreach mission of the University.

The CCE continues to develop new programs with the assistance of the Conville Fund for Excellence. During 2022, the Center announced the Citizen Scholars Program to award students for completing 100 hours of service and a significant community engaged learning experience. Another initiative which the Conville Award will support is the Interdisciplinary Investigations Research Series, an opportunity for students and faculty to conduct research or creative activities in collaboration with community organizations.

Another initiative is the Conville Service-Learning Development Award, which provides annual grants for faculty to conduct community-engaged research or develop new service-learning initiatives. Since 2016, these grants have supported initiatives that benefit the public good while supporting learning and teaching.

In 2017, the award funded a mobile produce market, through which USM graduate and undergraduate students studying Public Health helped to distribute fresh food in rural and low-income areas while providing education about nutrition. In 2019, funding was used by library and information science students to develop resources for public libraries working with marginalized populations.

Architecture students during the 2019-2020 academic year partnered with Earl Travillion Attendance Center and Hattiesburg Art Council’s SmART space to design an interactive, outdoor sculpture; the winning student design was a large musical note that played music on demand. Another awarded project used proceeds from the Conville Award to purchase multiethnic books for local elementary schools to ensure children had access to books with characters from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The Conville Award has also supported several research projects centered on community engagement and service-learning.  

• Associate Professor Carmen Carracalas-Juncal received the Conville Award in 2017-18 to serve as a visiting service-learning scholar in residence at Universidad de Navarra in Spain. The research she conducted while in Spain was published in a 2020 book chapter called “Service-Learning and Social Networks in Study Abroad Contexts: Engaging International Students in the Host Communities.”
• Christopher Foley and Ann Marie Kinnell received the award in 2021-22 to study how service-learning has evolved at USM over 20 years. They are currently finalizing a publishable case study and their research will provide insight into the need for new resources, supports, and initiatives for community-engaged work at USM.
• The most recent Conville Award recipient, Vickie Reed, will study the experience of Black faculty conducting service-learning at predominantly White institutions and how these experiences correlate to belonging and a commitment to community-engaged service and research.

Dick Conville was a Communication Studies professor at USM for more than three decades. Before his retirement in 2013, he was involved extensively on and off campus and has received recognition for his tireless efforts to champion service-learning and volunteerism as a way for individuals to learn and contribute to their communities. Mo Conville worked as a special education teacher with Hattiesburg Public Schools for 25 years and served as director of Student Services and administrator of special and gifted education.

If you’d like to contributions to the Richard L. and Mozella P. Conville Center for Community Engagement Fund for Excellence, you can do so online or by contacting the USM Foundation at foundationFREEMississippi  or 601-266-5210. 

The Center for Community Engagement promotes service and service-learning on The University of Southern Mississippi campus and throughout the Hattiesburg community. To learn more about the CCE at Southern Miss, call 601.266.6467 or visit https://www.usm.edu/center-community-engagement.