OXFORD, Miss. — Robert Khayat, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Mississippi, has added another feather to his cap with the announcement that his memoir The Education of a Lifetime (Nautilus Publishing) won a 2014 Independent Publishers Association of America award for best memoir in the nation by a small press.
The New York Times ranked The Education of a Lifetime among the top selling educational books in the country in 2013, and the Silver IPPY Award is added evidence of its broad appeal. The IPPY Awards are bestowed each year by the IPAA, and this year more than 4,000 total entries and more than 100 entries in the memoir category. Khayat spoke about writing the memoir earlier this year and said the book grew out of his desire to “communicate to as broad an audience as possible the value of respect and the benefits of team membership, whether it be with an athletics team, choral music group, prayer group, political group or whatever.”
“When a group of people come together and are united and focused on some kind of objective, they have a far better chance of reaching that objective,” he said. (See the full article here.)
The book’s stories recount how Khayat assembled a leadership team that helped the university attract big-dollar donors, launch a renowned honors college, undertake a massive building program, swell its enrollment and host its biggest event ever, the 2008 presidential debate. Readers learn the “back stories” of how he became the Rebels’ kicker, why an eccentric potential donor called him “Canoe,” how he reassured a U.S. president about his necktie choice and how a late-night bowl of cereal led a renowned scholar to speak on behalf of the university before the national council of Phi Beta Kappa.
“We’re honored to have been recognized by the IPPY judges, but my greatest hope for this story was to let the world know that Ole Miss and Mississippi are no longer stuck in 1963. The reality of today’s Mississippi has very little to do with how we’re perceived by others. Our goal, in writing this book, was to shift that perception,” Khayat said in a release from his publisher.