Scholarship fund to memorialize former employee

A former Mississippi State University instructor who died last year is being remembered by colleagues and former students with a scholarship fund in his honor.

The Robert A. Callaway Endowed Scholarship Fund will support students enrolled in Mississippi State's landscape contracting and management program. Callaway of Starkville died in June 1995.

Callaway, who worked at Mississippi State from 1970-86, organized the first four-year program in landscape contracting in the U.S. He is credited with beginning the first American Landscape Contracting Association Career Days in 1975, a nationwide competition for landscape contracting students. Today, the trophy given to the top school in the competition bears his name.

In addition to teaching in the Landscape Architecture Department, Callaway also served as head of campus landscape and the Floral Shop. He was a founder of Callaway Yard and Garden in Jackson, and owned and operated Southern Landscape in Starkville at the time of his death.

Callaway received his bachelor's degree in horticulture from Mississippi State in 1970.

Charles Weatherly, director of development for the Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State, said that colleagues and friends of Callaway are seeking to raise $25,000 for the scholarship fund.

Alumni and friends may contribute to the Robert A. Callaway Endowed Scholarship Fund, which is an open fund in the Mississippi State University Foundation. For more information, contact the Office of Development at 662-325-3410.