Major Gift From Alumnus Promotes Excellence in STEM Teaching

With $1.5 million, the couple established the F. Douglas and Cora Beal Shields Chair in Physics Education Endowment, honoring Ashford's former physics professor. The gift claimed a match by the UM Foundation of $500,000, elevating it to the chair level.

"Dr. Shields was an excellent physics teacher, my favorite teacher during my time at Ole Miss," said Ashford, who grew up in Lambert. "He was always very well prepared with a demonstration illustrating the subject of the day, which made class very interesting.

"He involved the students in the learning process and had lots of interesting stories about the people who made the big advances in physics."

The Ashfords also gave $500,000 to establish the Dr. William and Leslie Ashford Endowment in the College of Liberal Arts.

"Our family has had ties to this university a very long time" Ashford said. "My grandfather graduated from law school here in 1898. My father attended Ole Miss in the 1920s. I enrolled in 1968 and finished medical school in 1975.

"My son graduated from the university in 1999, and we have had two granddaughters attend, one of whom is a freshman now.

Ashford practiced ophthalmology in Jackson, beginning in 1980, and established the Eye Group of Mississippi there. He also was surgical director of the Ursic/Ashford Eye Institute in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for 28 years before retiring in 2023.

The donor said said he hopes both endowments will support the same quality of instruction he experienced as an Ole Miss medical student.

"A lot of college departments are interested in their research projects, publishing and such, and teaching undergraduates is often an afterthought," he said. "But I want a serious enhancement of undergraduate physics education at Ole Miss, so the students will have the opportunities I had."

Chancellor Glenn Boyce expressed gratitude for the gift.

"Dr. Ashford's incredible generosity demonstrates the profound impact an educator can have on a student's life long after they leave the classroom," Boyce said. "We are incredibly grateful for his ​extraordinary gift that will advance physics education at Ole Miss for generations to come."

Throughout his career, Ashford has applied the principles of physics he learned from Shields. He especially liked the way Shields taught by having students learn through experimentation – a practice the university is increasingly revisiting through its new Jim and Thomas Duff Center for Science and Technology Innovation.

"I appreciate the opportunities that Ole Miss gave me, and professors like Dr. Shields who blessed and encouraged my life more than I can say," he said. "I'm so grateful to Ole Miss and its faculty and I think they need to be highlighted and thoroughly thanked."

Shields' son, Doug, is a consulting hydraulic engineer, freelance engineer and on-call senior consultant for Verdantas Ecoengineering.

"I am sure Daddy would feel humbled, honored and a little embarrassed by the attention Dr. Ashford's most generous gift would draw to him, but my mother would encourage him to take it all in stride," he said. "He came to Ole Miss to teach in 1959 with two great ideas in mind: one, universities were the greatest place to impact the world for good because they are marketplaces for great ideas and, two, at Ole Miss he found an opportunity to live out his Christian faith by influencing students who were interested in following Christ.

"Dr. Ashford said my father's tough but fair teaching style made a difference for him in gaining entrance to medical school and eventually building an incredible ophthalmology practice that blessed thousands of patients with better eyesight. I think Daddy would hope the gift would bless future students like Bill Ashford."

When Ashford came to Ole Miss in 1968, Shields impressed him immediately, he said.

"He quickly seated us alphabetically and then moved right on to teach force-equals-mass-times-acceleration, which I still remember 55 years later," Ashford said.

As the year progressed, Shields taught his students about optics, quantum mechanics, lasers and more – almost always accompanied by an interactive experiment.

"It never occurred to me that I'd be an ophthalmologist and use the laws of light physics every day," Ashford said. "I learned so many things from Dr. Shields that I used all day in helping my patients."

To make a gift to the College of Liberal Arts, click here or contact Delia Childers at dgchilde@olemiss.edu or 662-915-3086.

Top: Physics instructor Bin Xiao uses balloon animals and liquid nitrogen to help students in his Physics 107 class understand the relationships between matter and temperature. Alumnus Dr. Bill Ashford has established two endowments to boost STEM teaching at the university. Photo by Hunt Mercier/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services