Released July 26, 2005

Hattiesburg- Edna Perkins of Lafayette, La., has been re-elected to serve a second term as secretary of The University of Southern Mississippi Foundation in Hattiesburg, Miss.

A 1952 music education graduate of Southern Miss, Perkins and husband Dave own Specs Unlimited, a word processing/architectural consulting firm. While she operates a word processing, secretarial and court legal service, her husband is a consulting architect.

In 1999 she established the Edna and Dave Perkins Endowed Scholarship in Strings and the Edna and Dave Perkins Endowed Fund for Music Faculty Enhancement at The Foundation. She is a past member of the Partners for the Arts at Southern Miss. Since 1963, Perkins has been a member of Sigma Alpha Iota, an International Music Fraternity for Women, where she has served as past president, secretary and board member. She served on the board and executive committee of the Acadiana Symphony Association and was a board member of the Acadiana Symphony Foundation.

The USM Foundation operates under the direction of a 39-member board of directors, who are all volunteers. Thirteen new board members are selected each year, while 13 end their three-year term. The USM Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation that serves as a fiduciary of private funds donated to Southern Miss, which is the only dual-campus university in the state, with an enrollment of more than 16,000 students.

They are the parents of two sons -- Layne, who lives in Birmingham, Ala., and Scott, who is an architect in Atlanta, Ga. -- and have two grandchildren.

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