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Southern Miss Chooses Director of New Student and Retention Programs
Dr. Shea Kidd Houze was recently named The University of Southern Mississippi’s Director of New Student and Retention Programs. This new department will provide a structure for combining, reorganizing, and growing existing University initiatives under a new umbrella.
Reporting to the Associate Provost for Academic Excellence, Dr. Amy Miller, Houze’s leadership will provide oversight to programs geared toward facilitating a seamless transition to the University and developing opportunities to enhance student success.
“Dr. Houze is an exceptional leader who brings the creativity, vision, and range of experience we need to coordinate and grow our retention and orientation programming,” stated Miller.
Over the past 10 years, Houze has gained experience at a number of different institutions in the areas of new student orientation, student success and retention programming, leadership development, multicultural affairs, career services and student activities.
In her prior role at the University, Houze served as the Southern Miss Alumni Association’s Associate Director for External Affairs where her responsibilities involved membership recruitment, tracking and evaluation, as well as managing the Association’s development efforts. She also managed the Association’s field operations, programming initiatives and managed affinity partner relationships and other revenue-generating programs.
Under Houze’s direction, an array of retention and orientation programs will be brought together, according to Miller, and “new programs will be developed for the engagement and retention of students from high schools or other institutions to Southern Miss.”
While Houze will focus primarily on the Hattiesburg campus, collaborative efforts are underway with staff and leadership on the Gulf Park campus in Long Beach to incorporate similar programs.
Houze earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in speech communication from the University in 2002. Subsequently, she completed a Master of Education degree in college student affairs administration from the University of Georgia in 2006, and a Ph.D. in educational psychology and research from the University of Memphis in 2014. At Memphis, she also earned a graduate certificate in qualitative research methodology.
