UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

Academy for Lifelong Learning—USC Aiken

The Academy at USC Aiken promotes learning for mature men and women who look forward to a full life as they grow older. It is affiliated with the Elderhostel Institute Network and features lectures, demonstrations, field trips, short courses, and discussion groups. For more information, call 803-641-3587 or go to http://www.usca.edu/conted/academy.html.

CASA—Richland County Court Appointed Special Advocates

In the Richland County Court Appointed Special Advocates program or CASA (formerly the Guardian ad Litem Project), students in USC's School of Law volunteer as guardians ad litem for abused and neglected children. Created in 1977, CASA's mission is to provide safety and stability to abused and neglected children by advocating through quality volunteer legal representation. A volunteer guardian ad litem is a trained advocate appointed by the S.C. Family Court to be the voice of the child throughout the judicial process. Working with CASA, student volunteers act as unbiased representatives for the child to:

• conduct confidential investigations
• gather information related to the child's case
• meet with the child and relevant parties
• appear in court on the child's behalf with a detailed written report
• work with the child's lawyer to see that all pertinent information is heard by the court
• monitor court-ordered treatment
• help coordinate suitable social services

For more information, call CASA at (803) 576-1735 or visit www.rccasa.org/.

Child and Family Studies, The Center for

Based in the College of Social Work, The Center for Child and Family Studies, addresses issues related to children and families through curriculum development and training, research and program evaluation, conference planning, and social work education initiatives. The center's initiatives include:

• S.C. Citizen Review Panel, a community partnership that enlists professionals and advocates in Greenwood, Richland, and Charleston counties to oversee if the state Department of Social Services is effectively discharging its child protection responsibilities.
• Child Abuse and Neglect Interdisciplinary Training, a community outreach program that develops cooperative approaches to training staff at community service agencies.
• Dying Well, a community outreach project that provides information and support related to end-of-life issues and bereavement to African-American faith groups.
• HABLA, a Spanish interpretation and translation service staffed with bilingual USC students who field 600 calls for assistance every month from field office personnel at state DHEC and DSS offices.
• High School Equivalency Program, a community outreach program that helps migrant Spanish-speaking workers in Lexington, Lee, and Saluda counties in learning English and earning their high-school equivalency degrees.
• Assistance to the state Department of Social Services by evaluating the Primary Prevention Project, a parent education program for young families at risk for child abuse and neglect in six state counties.
• Evaluation of Family Friends, a community-based family intervention project in Oconee County that provides volunteer mentors and case management for low-income families to increase parenting skills.
• Collaboration with Richland School District One and several public agencies and community partners to evaluate the process, outcomes, and impact of initiatives promoting school safety and student performance.
• Consultation and evaluation services to the S.C. Department of Education's statewide character education initiative, which itself is supported by USC through graduate-level teacher training. Learn more about The Center for Child and Family Studies on the Web at http://www.sc.edu/ccfs/center.html.

Clinic at Epworth Children’s Home

The clinic provides pre-practicum training for graduate students in USC's counselor education program. The students gain experience in one-on-one counseling, play therapy, and family counseling by working with the children at Epworth and their families. About 100 children and their families have been served through this program. For more information, contact Joshua Gold from the Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education at 803-777-1936.

Continuing Education—USC Beaufort

USC Beaufort's partnerships with area business and historical and cultural groups are attempting to develop Beaufort County as an educational destination by providing continuing education credit for professional development and English as a second language courses. For more information, call 843-521-4147.

Creative Retirement Center—USC Beaufort

USC Beaufort's partnership with the senior community provides lifelong learning and other services to Beaufort County. The center is a forum for networking with others of retirement age who believe that learning is a lifetime pursuit and that expertise gained during the working years should be shared with peers and the community at large. For more information, call 843-521-4141.

Law School Community Programs

The School of Law sponsors many community service programs, including:

• VITA, a program that provides volunteer income tax assistance to low-income, elderly, illiterate, and non-English speaking people.
• Pro Bono Tutoring Program, in which law students tutor Logan Elementary School students in reading and math and help raise funds annually to restock Logan's Emergency Clothing Closet.
• As part of the S.C. Bar Pro Bono Legal Research Program, USC law students conduct research for South Carolina lawyers who are handling cases through the S.C. Bar Pro Bono Program.
• In the Lexington County Juvenile Arbitration Program, trained USC law student volunteers arbitrate non-serious juvenile offender cases allocated by the 11th-Judicial Circuit's Solicitor's Office.
• The law school also sponsors Project Ayuda, in which student volunteers respond to requests from members of the Hispanic community about issues involving South Carolina law, translate community brochures about South Carolina legal issues, and compile resource information for the Spanish-speaking community.
• The school's participation in the Harvest Hope Food Bank is a week-long food drive in which an average of six tons of food per year is collected, while the annual Habitat for Humanity Project enlists students in a house-building effort and fund raising for the Central South Carolina Habitat for Humanity program.

For more information, call the law school at 803-777-3405 or visit www.law.sc.edu/probono/projects.shtml.

Libraries

The University of South Carolina's libraries lend books and journal articles needed for research to other libraries, businesses, and law firms around the state. University Libraries received more than 34,000 lending requests in 2002 for materials that might otherwise be unavailable to patrons; they are provided to public libraries free of charge. University Libraries.

McKissick Museum

USC's McKissick Museum, located on the historic Horseshoe and part of the College of Arts and Sciences, is the University's multi-faceted community partnership and outreach agency that touches nearly all segments of the state's population. Its operations range from a diverse exhibition program reaching more than 100,000 people yearly to the sponsorship of workshops and training. Programs include:

• In partnership with the S.C. Arts Commission and the General Assembly, the museum presents awards of achievement to traditional artists of outstanding merit and sponsors four annual workshops highlighting the various skills, techniques, and history of Southeastern traditional crafts.
• Six public programs are sponsored by the museum on diverse topics each year, while McKissick's Folklife Program operates the Folklife Resource Center, providing advice, information, and documentation on traditional culture to interest groups and the general public.
• In partnership with University Libraries and several professional organizations, the museum provides preservation training for objects, artwork, paper items, and other materials to staff from small museums and libraries, and, working with teachers from Richland/Lexington school districts, provides supplemental humanities curriculum guides geared for middle-school students.
• Each summer, the museum offers seven camps for rising first- through eighth-graders in art, archaeology, geology, and nature. In spring and fall semesters, Story Hour is held twice weekly for three months relating to a particular museum exhibit followed by a craft activity. Audiences for these sessions are preschools, home school associations, and individual parents.
• The museum also offers its Hands-on History, Art, Geology, and Horseshoe and Highlights Tours, which are free with the exception of craft materials.
• McKissick Museum distributes for free any educational materials produced by the S.C. Arts Commission and has an informal partnership with the S.C. Traditional Arts Network to produce a series of music CDs for public distribution from the holdings of the museum's Folklife Resource Center.
• McKissick Museum is the regular meeting site of the S.C. Shell Club, and the Columbia Gem and Mineral Society. The museum also administers the loan of objects from the University's permanent collection to other museums and cultural centers throughout South Carolina and the United States.
• In partnership with other agencies, organizations and corporations, McKissick Museum has been involved in the production of three documentaries, including “Southern Stews: A Taste of the South,” a film on Southern food; “With God's Help: The Story of S.C. Camp Meetings,” a comparative study on the continuation of rituals and camp meetings with black and white religious communities; and “Home Cooking, Barbecue, and Roadside Stands: Food That Makes You Smile.”

To learn more, call 803-777-7251, or visit http://www.cas.sc.edu/mcks/.

MidNet

The School of Library and Information Science sponsors MidNet (www.midnet.sc.edu), which provides free Web sites to more than 200 Columbia and Midlands area non-profit organizations to help them disseminate commercial-free information to the public. For more information, call the School of Library & Information Science at 803-777-3858, or visit www.libsci.sc.edu/.

Newsplex

The College of Mass Communication and Information Studies' prototype newsroom of the future was donated to USC by Ifra, a German media and publishing organization. Newsplex is used for training students and journalists while also serving as a research base in new information-gathering and dissemination technologies and techniques. To learn more, call the school at 803-777-4102 or visit http://newsplex.sc.edu/.

Partnerships for Excellence Program

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication's Partnerships for Excellence Program works one-on-one with South Carolina newspapers to help them better visually communicate with their communities. It is similar to the Media and the Message program, in which the school works with churches to help them better communicate with their congregations, the community, and the press. To learn more, call the school at 803-777-4102 or visit www.jour.sc.edu.

Roy C. Henderson Child Care Center

County First Steps provides low-income residents with child-care services at the Roy C. Henderson Child Care Center. The center also serves as a practicum site for early child education students at USC Upstate and as a training site for students from Spartanburg Technical College. For more information, call 864-598-6078.

SIFE—Student in Free Enterprise Projects

The Department of Retailing in the College of Hospitality, Retail, and Sport Management conducts numerous projects designed to help both the community and USC students in the department. Projects include:

• Cell-phone Campaign for Women in Domestic Violence, Children in Abuse, and the Elderly in Rural Communities is a partnership with Radio Shack that gives reconditioned cell phones to those in need.
• Girl Scouts of the Congaree is an outreach to young women 10-18 to teach them marketing and promotional skills in the sale of Girl Scout cookies.
• Red Bank Elementary and Junior Achievement is a mentoring program that connects students in the college's Personal Financial Planning course with elementary students to teach them about international and global marketing and trade.
• Dueling in the Desert is a competition at the University of Arizona where USC SIFE students compete with 15 other universities in a case study on families and financial crisis. Contact Dr. John R. Carpenter at 803-777-6856.

South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC

The institute, part of the College of Liberal Arts, sponsors many outreach and public education programs annually throughout the state, including:

• S.C. Archaeology Month held every September. The observance features more than 100 events statewide in 50 locations with some 85 cooperating organizations. The institute also sends special mailings of upcoming archaeology events to more than 600 S.C. school teachers.
• In partnership with the National Audubon Society's Silver Bluff Audubon Center and Sanctuary on the banks of the Savannah River, researchers with the institute's Savannah River Archaeological Research Program in Aiken have been conducting excavations since 1996 with the help of volunteers at the George Galphin site. The site was once the location of a colonial trading post, frontier fort, and plantation bordering the banks of the Savannah River. Some 250 individuals visit or participate in the excavations each year, and more are reached through public lectures, visits to schools, and displays at local libraries, museums, and community events.
• Staff members of the institute's Savannah River Archaeological Research Project respond to requests from the community or local schools on subjects relating to archaeology.
• In the institute's S.C. Abandoned and Historic Cemetery Program, institute expertise is provided to the public and to state and local governments in the identification, preservation, and management of abandoned and historic cemeteries throughout the state. It also provides expert testimony for civil and criminal proceedings.
• The state underwater archaeologist supervises the state's Sport Diver Archaeology Management Program, which guides the state's sport scuba divers in the identification, protection, and preservation of the South Carolina's underwater archaeological assets. For more information, call 803-777-8170, or visit www.cas.sc.edu/sciaa/.

Team Gamecocks

Team Gamecocks represents a continuing commitment by Gamecock student-athletes, coaches, and staff to respond with both time and effort to the needs of their local communities. A few of the many ways Team Gamecocks has served the Midlands include reading to local elementary school children, collecting food for Harvest Hope Food Bank, visiting hospitalized veterans and children, and interacting with children in after-school programs. For more information, call 803-777-8704 or visit http://uscsports.collegesports.com/ot/team-gamecocks.html

TRIO Programs

For more than 40 years, TRIO Programs have promoted college access and educational opportunity. With discretionary grant funding from the federal government, and partnerships with Richland County schools and community agencies, TRIO Programs express USC's national commitment to provide our least advantaged citizens with educational support and information that lead to the completion of four-year degrees. TRIO programs help students overcome class, social, and cultural barriers to higher education. The TRIO designation comes from the three college access programs (Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services) the U.S. Congress funded in the late 1960s. These programs involve both outreach and on-campus services that provide a pipeline of support to thousands of students. As mandated by Congress, two-thirds of the students served must come from families with incomes less than $28,000 where neither parent graduated from college. Today, the University’s outreach efforts include two of the original TRIO Programs (Upward Bound and Talent Search) as well as a program of guidance and support for adults who wish to pursue college degrees (Educational Opportunity Center). All total, more than 3,500 individuals receive support each year from TRIO outreach services. For more information, call 803-777-5127 or go to http://www.sc.edu/trio/. For more information about the member programs:

• Upward Bound
• Talent Search
• Educational Opportunity Center