with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Mississippi Baptist Convention. The main campus is in Hattiesburg and a second campus is in the Tradition community north of Biloxi. The school gained official university status in 2006.
The university offers baccalaureate degrees, Master's degrees, and doctoral degrees. William Carey opened the college of Osteopathic Medicine in 2009 and welcomed its first class of 110 students in 2010. Prior to the fall of 2025, the academic year consisted of three trimesters of eleven weeks each. Two summer sessions, a January Term, and a May Term are also offered. Since the fall of 2025, William Carey has switched to semesters fifteen weeks each: a fall and a spring semester along with a summer session.
== History ==
William Carey University was founded by W. I. Thames in 1892 as Pearl River Boarding School in Poplarville, Mississippi. A disastrous fire destroyed the school in 1905, and in 1906, with the backing of a group of New Orleans businessmen, Thames reopened the school …
