Claudia Limbert reclined sightly, relaxing her arms over a signature dark blazer.
”What more could you ask?” her expression seemed to imply, as she prepared to answer questions posed by The Dispatch editorial board.
“Birney”s added some more pieces,” she noted of Dispatch Publisher Birney Imes” studio. She also noticed a makeshift plate-glass table had been replaced with a wooden one.
It wasn”t her first time in this venue.
Still, Limbert was open to another question-and-answer session, Tuesday afternoon. And she answered questions without hesitation — her answers subtle and deliberate, like her reign at The W.
“I don”t think I have any regrets about anything,” the MUW president said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I don”t think it does much good looking in the rear-view mirror. We”re looking ahead,” she added of her time at the university.
For better or worse, pressing forward seems to have been the theme of Limbert”s presidency. Her first order of business was to help the university recover from a tornado that ravaged the campus just months after she began her tenure as 13th president of Mississippi University for Women.
The $13.5 million Pohl-Stark recreation complex opened its doors in 2007 — complete with indoor pool, racquetball/wallyball courts, cardio and weight equipment, a 5,000-square-foot strength and conditioning room, a student gathering area with pool tables and a 65-inch widescreen TV, an auxiliary gym and meeting rooms — replacing the Emma Ody Pohl gym destroyed by the November 2002 storm.
The Art and Design Building, damaged in the same storm, was dedicated in 2009, after $6 million in repairs and renovations.
Both buildings were part of a $45 million master plan for the campus.
Name unchanged … for now
Sometimes, despite Limbert”s forward-pressing, the college didn”t move with her. When she announced plans to change the school”s name, the effort was anticlimactic. After a year and a half of meetings and research to arrive at the proposed name, Reneau University, the issue never made it to a vote in the Legislature. And the College Board — who endorsed the name-change study — never took the matter up.
“I never had a clear sense that it would succeed or would not succeed,” Limbert said of the name change. But she knew it “needed to get done.”
She predicts the name will remain a challenge for the school.
“It will come back. And it will continue to come back until it is changed,” she said, noting lawmakers know the change is needed.
“Privately, they understand the need for a change; publicly, they need to do something about it,” she said.
The alumni rift
When Limbert found the school”s alumni association to be counterproductive, she again pressed forward, cutting the university”s ties with its more than century-old MUW Alumnae Association. The former MUWAA — now called Mississippi”s First Alumnae Association since they”re banned from using The W”s names and symbols — was undercutting the university”s fundraising efforts and trying to get her fired, she alleged.
Since the 2007 disaffiliation, the old group and the new Limbert-formed MUW Alumni Association have failed to unify under a joint set of bylaws. But they”ve come together recently as Friends of The W to support the school remaining an independent entity and to raise money to offset state budget cuts.
Limbert foresees the alumni reuniting. “And I think we”ll be the stronger for it,” she said.
Talks of merger
As proposals — from merger with State to consolidating programs with EMCC — have surfaced, Limbert has taken it in stride.
“You”ve got probably the best university in the Southeast sitting right here,” she said. “This needs to be a full-service, stand-alone university.”
And she expects it to stay that way: “I prefer to look at it as, we have 125 years history, and we have 125 years future. Because we”re not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Limbert will retire when her contract at MUW ends on June 30. The next president will need to be patient, with a head for business, an understanding of academics and good social skills, she said.
“A good sense of humor wouldn”t hurt either.”
When she retires at the end of June, Limbert will move to be closer to her family; she has children who live in Arizona, Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
She also plans to write; her writings have been published in Boston Globe Magazine.
But she will always have a place in her heart for MUW, she said, adding “no one in this town or in this state” loves The W or the people there more than she does.
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