William Carey

The Winters School of Music is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Music. The music therapy program is accredited by the American Music Therapy Association. In February 2018, William Carey University became the first All-Steinway School in the state of Mississippi.

In the 2017 edition of U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges, William Carey University was ranked No. 2 Best Value among regional universities in the South for the second consecutive year. In 2015, William Carey University was ranked No. 1 Best Value among regional universities in the South.

The William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine is the 29th osteopathic medical school in the United States. Upon the graduation of its inaugural class in 2014, the school was fully accredited by the American Osteopathic Association's Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation.

The university offers baccalaureate degrees in arts and letters, education, natural and behavioral sciences, business, religion, music, and nursing. It also offers M.B.A, M.Ed., M.S. in psychology, M.S. in Health Information Systems, and M.S.N. degrees, as well as a specialist degree in elementary education and a Ph.D. in education administration. William Carey opened the College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2009 and welcomed its first class of 110 students in 2010. In 2012, Carey added a Ph.D. program in nursing. The academic year comprises three trimesters of eleven weeks each. Two summer sessions, a January Term, and a May Term are also offered.

In January 2008, Michael K. Murphy, D.O., was employed to aid in accomplishing this goal. On March 3, 2008, the College was officially established. Press conferences were held in Jackson at the Mississippi Baptist Convention Building and on the Hattiesburg campus of WCU on March 7, 2008. The President announced the establishment of the College and introduced Dr. Murphy, the founding dean. William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine was awarded provisional accreditation by the American Osteopathic Association's Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation at its meeting September 12–13, 2009. On September 13, 2009, William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine was awarded provisional accreditation status by the Council on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA). In August 2010, the university welcomed its inaugural class of 110 medical students.

On October 23, 2007, the Board of Trustees at William Carey University (WCU) unanimously voted to authorize Dr. Tommy King, president, to employ a dean for the College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM). The rationale was to open the COM to address the severe shortage of physicians in Mississippi and surrounding states and to impact the healthcare of rural Mississippians.

On August 14, 2006, William Carey University celebrated its Centennial. This day also marked the transition of William Carey College to William Carey University.

In 1976, the college purchased the Gulf Coast Military Academy campus in Gulfport. The beachfront property was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and classes were held in other facilities until the William Carey University-Tradition Campus opened in August 2009. Located off Highway 67 in Biloxi, it is the center of the 4,800-acre Tradition Planned Community.

Carey Dinner Theatre began in 1974 as the "Carey Summer Showcase" under the management of Obra Quave. The longest-running dinner theatre in the state of Mississippi (30+ years), CDT brings professional summer theatre to WCU and the surrounding community. Two CDT alumni (Phillip Fortenberry and Keith Thompson) have gone onto professional Broadway music careers. CDT produces two shows per summer, normally light-hearted comedies or musicals.

In 1968 William Carey entered a new era when it announced a merger with the Mather School of Nursing in New Orleans.

He is known for his work on Il mondo di notte numero 3 (1963) and At Your Service (1930).

The university is served by a newspaper, The Cobbler, which publishes once a month and alternates between a print and online edition. The Cobbler has been in existence since the 1950s; prior to the name change to WCU, it was known as The Scissors and operated from the 1920s until the 1950s.

In 1939, the school, which was then called the Mississippi Woman's College, took third place in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and it remains the only women's college to ever place in that competition.

William Carey University is ranked as having one of the nation's most affordable online nursing programs. Best Degree Programs ranked William Carey University's online RN (Registered nurse) to BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) nursing program 6th on the list of the 30 most affordable programs at private universities.

William Carey was born on May 20, 1916 in Hollister, California, USA.

William Carey University's Department of Theatre & Communication began in 1915 by Kate Downs P'Pool, and has garnered a reputation for outstanding work. Since 1994, the department has become actively involved in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. In 2001, William Carey's production of And David Danced was selected for presentation at the National Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C. In the same year, the department was honored with the Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. The department has also twice taken faculty and students to Nairobi, Kenya to produce the musical Smoke on the Mountain. The department produces three productions per year, normally a drama, a children's theatre piece, and a comedy or musical. Their venue is the Joe and Virginia Tatum Theatre.

William Carey University was founded by W. I. Thames in 1892 as Pearl River Boarding School in Poplarville, Mississippi. A disastrous fire destroyed the school in 1905, and in 1906, with the backing of a group of New Orleans businessmen, Thames reopened the school in Hattiesburg as South Mississippi College. Another fire destroyed the young institution, forcing it to close. In 1911, W. S. F. Tatum acquired the property and offered it as a gift to the Baptists, and the school reopened as Mississippi Woman's College. In 1953, the Mississippi Baptist Convention voted to make the college coeducational, which necessitated a new name. In 1954, the board of trustees selected the name William Carey College in honor of William Carey, the 18th-century English cordwainer-linguist whose decades of missionary activity in India earned him international recognition as the "Father of Modern Missions." The gained official university status in 2006.