PRCC President Dr. William Lewis retires

POPLARVILLE, Miss. - After 17 years of serving as Pearl River Community College (PRCC) President, and 50 years of public service in several Mississippi educational institutions, Dr. William Lewis is retiring.

“I’ve been thinking about it for obviously a couple of years. But, I think I got real serious about it after school started this year, and really started thinking about the future,” said Lewis.

Lewis said he has not spent as much time with his family throughout his career.

“I’ve missed a lot of events for my children and my grandchildren. So I’m looking forward to being able to have some flexibility of time to be able to do some of those kinds of things, and spend more time with the family,” said Lewis.

Although Lewis is retiring, he will never forget when Hurricane Katrina hit PRCC.

“We were the most heavily damaged of all community college’s in the state, and had a significant amount of damage, particularly here in Poplarville on this campus. We lost five buildings from the storm,” said Lewis.

Lewis said it took 11 years for PRCC to fully recover from Hurricane Katrina. But, the greatest joy Lewis experienced is seeing his students succeeding and going on to bigger and better things.