2024 State of the University

September 11, 2024

Introduction by Student Body President Patton Byars:

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to the 2024 State of the University address.

My name is Patton Byars. I am a senior majoring in political science at Carolina, and I serve as president of the USC Student Government Association.

Before we begin today’s event, we would like to take a moment to remember this day as the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our country, and to honor the lives that were lost. Would you please join me in a moment of silence in their memory?

Thank you.

It is my honor today to introduce President Michael Amiridis to deliver his 2024 State of the University address at USC.

Michael Amiridis became the University of South Carolina’s 30th president on July 1, 2022. He shared his first State of the University address one year ago.

Today, the president will reflect on some of the highlights of the past year and share insights about the future of our university.

Please join me in welcoming President Michael Amiridis to the podium for this special occasion.

2024 State of the University Address by USC President Michael Amiridis:

Thank you, Patton, for your kind introduction, and thank you for leading us in memory of the victims of 9/11. I know you were not born at that time, which means that a lot of us have grown up, actually, but a lot of us that experienced that day remember exactly what we were doing, and we will never forget.

Thank you for joining us today. I’m glad we have this time to come together once a year to reflect on how far we have come and what we hope to accomplish next.

I want to welcome the students, faculty, staff, Trustees, community leaders, friends and supporters who are here today, as well as those who are watching and listening online. You are all members of our community, and you are all important for the success and the future of the University of South Carolina. Thank you for your steadfast commitment to our mission: to educate the next generations, to advance knowledge and to serve the Palmetto State.

For the past year, you have probably heard me talk a lot about momentum at USC. This was the headline that I chose for my State of the University address last September. During the past year, we have invested our energy in taking our momentum to an even higher level. And this morning, I will remind you of some of our many accomplishments from the past year, and we will look ahead to where we go next.

Across the country, higher education is experiencing a time of turmoil. Institutions are facing challenges in enrollment, in finances and in public trust. But in the midst of all this, USC is thriving. Our strengths are evident across the board – in student applications and enrollment, in research, in legislative and donor support, and in our $7.4 billion impact across the entire state. This is why, wherever I am asked about the University of South Carolina, you will hear me saying that I am confident that we are moving toward a stronger future, and we are increasing our forward momentum with purpose-driven energy.

Since last year’s State of the University, we have added new faces in key leadership roles.

Brice Bible came to USC as Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer in March, and he is already transforming our approach to technology. Along with continuing upgrades across campus, Brice and his team are working on an Artificial Intelligence Initiative to develop a roadmap for this exciting new technology and to identify best practices in instructional, research and administrative uses across USC, and he is working with many other vice presidents for this.

We also announced new leadership for our Office of Economic Engagement, with Steve Cutler – a familiar face in a new role. While Steve continues to serve as the Dean of the College of Pharmacy, he was also named Vice President for Economic Development, leading statewide economic strategies on behalf of the university.

In August, Tara Sabo-Attwood came back to USC as the new dean of the Arnold School of Public Health. Tara was a faculty member at the Arnold School earlier in her career, and she returns to us with a wealth of experience.

Robynn Pease joined the university in January as USC’s first Staff Ombuds, to lead a newly created office. This position was envisioned and implemented with the help of our Staff Senate to ensure that USC is providing a resource to hear staff concerns and to identify and solve problems.

Some of the changes happening on our campus are a continuing response to the Imagine Carolina sessions we held two years ago, exactly to the date. We are committed to bringing student ideas to life and creating a better student experience.

Let’s start with the most difficult one: parking. Parking is always a challenge on an urban campus, and USC has been hearing this concern from students for at least five decades! This fall, a few changes will offer some help. The new ParkUSC app helps users locate available parking spaces in campus surface lots, find their parked car and get real-time navigation guidance. Also in progress is a new automated parking navigation system in Bull Street Garage that will guide drivers to available spaces. As you can see, we are finally moving into the 21st century!

Advising has been another priority for Student Government, and we have made significant progress. A new four-year advising model is now fully implemented in all of our colleges and schools, and the early feedback is very positive: 98 percent of students reported that they were prepared for course registration, and 97 percent said their advisors had explained their degree requirements. We are also seeing high satisfaction rates among students who say they are getting the guidance they need about career goals, academic requirements and experiential learning opportunities. This is such a significant success that we are becoming a national model very quickly, with other universities sending teams here to learn how we implemented this advising program.

Dining options continue to expand and improve, including the newly opened full-service restaurant at Campus Village. And we know there is a problem with transportation; for this reason, we launched a Lunchtime Express shuttle that can carry students efficiently between stops at Russell House and Campus Village, so they have access to more choices in different locations. And keep an eye out for our Starship food-delivery robots! I know they were celebrities when we first put them on campus, but now they look familiar. But they are back this fall, crisscrossing the Horseshoe to deliver food to residence halls and offices.

And we are making other smaller, but equally important, improvements. To offer a couple of examples, we changed the fall academic calendar to accommodate student travel schedules during Thanksgiving week, and we have added convenient water bottle-filling stations around campus.

We work very closely with USC’s Student Government to develop and implement these solutions. I want to thank our Student Government leaders and Student Body President Patton Byars for their commitment to making our university better for the students.

A clear sign of USC’s strong momentum can be seen in our enrollment numbers. This fall, we welcomed approximately 7,250 students in our freshman class, and we set a new record with overall enrollment topping 38,000 students for the first time in our history. We are also educating the highest number of South Carolinians in our history, and they come from every county in our state. At the same time, USC is a national university. Of the 52,000 applications for admission we received this year, approximately 40,000 came from students from other states.

As we continue to replace the smaller class sizes we had during Covid, our enrollment may exceed 40,000 students within the next two years. These numbers represent a strong vote of confidence in USC by students and their families. On move-in days in August, you see these families voting with their cars when they arrive in Columbia with their students!

This growth also reflects the excellent work we are doing to support and retain our students. The freshman-to-sophomore retention rate has reached a new high this year – increasing from 91 percent to 92 percent. This is the percentage of students that come back for a second year. This may sound like a small increase. But it becomes very difficult to move the needle on these numbers as we continue to improve and get closer to perfection. Provost Donna Arnett and the entire Provost’s Office have done excellent work raising our retention and graduation rates, improving advising, and addressing challenges like financial issues, first-generation student concerns, and the drop/fail/withdrawal rates for students in key introductory courses. By doing so, they are removing obstacles and increasing the success of our students.

Last year, we announced two new initiatives designed to open the doors wider for South Carolina students who want to attend USC. Both of these were implemented with this fall’s incoming freshman class. First is our new admissions initiative, which guarantees admission to USC for South Carolinians who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class. And along with this, we launched the USC Commitment Grant, again for South Carolina students, which guarantees that we will cover tuition and academic fees for top 10 percent students whose family income is below $80,000. In the first year of these initiatives, we increased the number of freshmen from South Carolina who are ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school class, as well as the number of freshmen from rural counties in our state. This is part of our ongoing commitment to access and affordability for all South Carolinians.

At the same time, we are continuing our efforts to minimize the cost of a college education for in-state students. Thanks to the most substantial funding support in recent memory from the state’s General Assembly, we are able to hold in-state tuition at the same level for a sixth consecutive year. Given the inflation we have experienced during this period, in essence we have reduced the cost of tuition – in the real value of the dollar amount – by approximately 25 percent during this period.

The success of our mission as a university is ultimately measured by one essential metric: the success of our students. For this reason, everything we do is driven by our commitment to preparing them not only for graduation, but also for what lies beyond their graduation day. Last year, with financial support from the state, we launched the South Carolina Internship Program, and this has been a resounding success. This program provides $3,000 supplements to students who complete internships in high-demand industries in our state, where they gain valuable workplace experience and a head start on their careers. It also prepares them for landing their first jobs, because usually these people are ones who hire them. To date, the program has awarded over $2.5 million, and 840 students have completed their internships. Nearly 75 percent of the participants have been South Carolina residents, and 20 percent of them have been first-generation students. This program is also helping our state’s key industries to retain our graduates in the state of South Carolina.

During the last academic year, we fully launched four innovative interdisciplinary certificate programs to complement our students’ degrees and make them more marketable with future employers. The very early numbers for this initiative are also strong. In the first cohort of participants, 460 students enrolled in these certificate programs to gain highly valued skills in four areas: digital studies; data analytics; project leadership and management; and strategic thinking and communications. And 100 students have already graduated with one of these certificates, enhancing their readiness for the job market.

We are very proud of our nationally recognized First-Year Experience at USC. This year, Student Affairs and Academic Support launched the Carolina Experience to build on the excellent foundation USC offers first-year students. Through the Carolina Experience, we will ensure our students maximize the opportunities USC offers during their entire four-year period – we hope four, maybe five; but hopefully not 6! These include greater engagement with community and peer mentorship, customized resources that focus on academic success and life readiness, and career development. I want to commend Student Affairs Vice President Rex Tolliver and his team for all they do to enhance the student experience at USC. They know more about the students than the students know about themselves!

At the same time, we have also increased the number of undergraduates engaging with new experiences, such as student-led organizations, peer tutoring, residential life programs, wellness and fitness programs, student leadership and student media. Through our Beyond The Classroom Matters initiative, we can provide these students with a comprehensive transcript of their experiential learning outside the classroom, which they can use in career planning and in communication with prospective employers.

As always, USC students give us many reasons to be proud of what they are achieving.

We celebrated another year with Goldwater Scholars, and we had three of them this year. This makes 32 consecutive years that USC has had at least one Goldwater Scholar, and we have celebrated 70 of them since the awards were established in 1986. Caroline Rucker, Jeremiah Tobit and Katelyn Wyandt were recognized nationally this year with scholarships to pursue research careers in natural sciences, engineering and mathematics.

At the same time, Reese Lycan, who is a senior majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology, was selected as one of 60 nationwide recipients to earn a Truman Scholarship, which is awarded to students planning a career in public service. Reese is USC’s 11th Truman Scholar, and the first one that we’ve had since 2019.

In total this year, USC had 61 students and recent alumni who won national fellowships that totaled more than $2 million. USC students who are pursuing these very competitive learning opportunities benefit from great support from our office of National Fellowships and Scholars Programs, which celebrated 30 years at USC this year. On a personal level: This office started at the same time I started as an assistant professor here, and they look younger than me!

Once again this year, we also celebrated the successes of our student-athletes.

You may have heard that our Women’s Basketball team went undefeated – 38 and 0 – winning the third national championship in the last eight years! If you have not heard this, welcome to the United States. This is only the 10th time in NCAA history that an undefeated season has been accomplished in women’s basketball. And Dawn Staley became the fifth head coach in history to win at least three Women’s Basketball national titles.

Our Men’s Basketball team also generated a lot of excitement and finished the season with a 26-8 record and a spot in the NCAA tournament.

Combined, our Women’s and Men’s Basketball programs had a 64-8 overall record and the highest combined winning percentage among Division 1 NCAA schools.

Despite all the national changes in college athletics, we should never forget that our student-athletes are students first. In addition to the time and commitment they bring to their sports, they continue to achieve academically as well. For 35 consecutive semesters, USC’s student-athletes have posted a departmental GPA above 3.0. During the last nine years, South Carolina has led all SEC schools in having the most student-athletes on the SEC Academic Honor Roll.

I would like to recognize and thank Athletics Director Ray Tanner and his entire team in Athletics for another great year.

And since 2024 is an Olympic year, I think it’s important to also mention two of our Gamecock alumni who achieved greatness, while the entire world was watching. Track and field athlete Quincy Hall, who competed at USC in 2019 and 2020, won the gold medal in the 400 meters in an amazing come-from-behind victory. And A’ja Wilson won her second gold medal with the USA Women’s Basketball team. Our Gamecocks really look great on the Olympic podium!

The 2023-24 academic year was also a record-setting year in research. For the first time, USC passed the $300 million milestone in sponsored awards. The all-time high record we broke was $309 million, a 27 percent increase over the previous year – which was also a record year. We are confident this is a trend, not an outlier. These awards reflect the quality and hard work of our faculty and their great strides in critical areas, such as health, cutting-edge technologies and energy innovation.

These numbers include over $100 million in research awards from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services, with projects focusing on artificial intelligence and bioinformatics, Alzheimer’s and stroke, among other areas of study.

Additional significant federal awards came from the National Science Foundation and the Departments of Defense and Commerce, focusing on areas such as biodegradable polymers, advanced manufacturing, energy systems for ships, semiconductor chips, and South Carolina’s marine systems.

Among the largest awards were:

A $3.5 million project, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, focusing on “Emergence, Stability and Predictors of Anxiety in Fragile X Syndrome” and led by Professor Abigail Hogan in the Arnold School of Public Health. This award will continue a long-term developmental study that is investigating early predictors and features of anxiety in children with Fragile X Syndrome. From what I understand, this syndrome can contribute to serious, long-term depression and substance abuse. By better understanding the early signs of anxiety in these children, we could improve early identification, facilitate early intervention and mitigate long-term impacts.

A second example is a $2.4 million award from the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium/NOAA for a project led by William Strosnider at the Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences. South Carolina’s robust coastal economy relies on natural resource health to sustain water-quality protection, shoreline restoration and aquaculture. These services often rely on inexpensive plastic products to provide protection. The location of such materials in ecologically sensitive coastal environments creates a significant concern, so this grant will allow researchers to test the use of natural materials instead of these plastics, in order to protect the coast.

One more example is a $1.3 million award from NASA for a project led by engineering professor Paul Ziehl, focused on developing new thermoplastic composite materials that can be produced at a high rate for use in advanced aircraft. The next generation of aerospace systems requires materials and structures that are characterized by both high performance and also use in frequent, short missions. Thermoplastic composite materials hold promise to provide this combination, at a low cost, and this is what we are studying here. The results could lead to a greater partnership with NASA to develop space-based manufacturing of composite structures for lunar base development. This is no longer some kind of science fiction – we are talking about potential solutions for having a lunar base.

These awards – and I wish we would have the time to highlight many more today – reflect the innovative and impactful work being done by our faculty and the excellent support initiatives from the Office of the Vice President for Research, led by Julius Fridriksson. New support programs from the VPR’s office include the Carolina Grant Innovation Hub, which helps our faculty to sharpen their competitive edge in obtaining funding, and the centralization of some research core facilities to support the work of our faculty.

Another strong step forward in research was the announcement in July that USC was awarded $10.2 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration for our work in the SC Nexus technology and innovation hub. SC Nexus is a regional consortium led by USC, the state Department of Commerce, Clemson, S.C. State University, Savannah River National Laboratory, the state’s technical colleges, and more than 50 corporate partners. This federal funding will support the creation of the Carolina Institute for Battery Innovation to develop next-generation, grid-scale batteries essential for transition to low-carbon electricity. We became eligible to apply for this type of funding last year when SC Nexus received a federal designation as a Regional Innovation and Technology Hub – 400 applications, only 30 got this designation, and only three of these hubs were in the Southeast; we were one of them.

We have also made great progress with the new USC Brain Health Network, which has now launched three clinics in underserved and rural areas across the state. These clinics are providing streamlined diagnoses and treatment plans for South Carolinians who are experiencing symptoms of memory loss disorders, including Alzheimer’s. We started this network in the fall of 2023 – taking this project from concept to implementation in just a few months – and we now have clinics operating in Sumter, Winnsboro and Seneca, with more to come in Florence, Darlington and Orangeburg. South Carolinians are at a great risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias as compared to other states, due to our higher rates of heart disease and stroke, as well as an aging population here. And if the University of South Carolina is not going to deal with this problem, who is going to do it? It is our obligation to do it.

During last year’s State of the University, I explained how this network was part of a hub-and-spoke model. These clinics are the first spokes, and the plan is to open the central hub – which will be the Brain Health Center here in Columbia – in 2026. Once this center is opened, USC can provide expanded resources to support these patients and their caregivers. And it has a very strong research component.

We could not list so many accomplishments in education and research without the great work done every day by our USC faculty and staff members. Our community is as strong as it has ever been, and it is our responsibility – mine and the entire administration’s – to support the faculty and staff and invest in your success, which is also the success of the university.

I’m very excited about our new faculty hiring initiative, which started last year. We have already approved searches for 49 new tenure-track or tenured faculty members, and we are in the process of adding another 50 new tenure-track positions in the coming year. And these are on top of replacement positions. In a period that other institutions are shutting down programs and laying off faculty, we are adding tenure-track faculty here.

We have also implemented extensive changes to our Faculty Manual in the area of titles and promotion for professional-track faculty, which ensure that we are providing clear pathways for further development and recognition.

The Provost’s Office also conducted a faculty compression analysis – the first one to be done since I was the provost in that office – and we funded compression raises for approximately 200 of our faculty members.

And to ensure competitive pay for staff members, Human Resources implemented 1,935 raises for staff employees in the final phase of its comprehensive classification and compensation study. This effort was designed to ensure that our salary structure is competitive, so that we can continue to attract and retain top talent.

Many of our faculty members also earned recognition in their fields during the past year, and a few of these prestigious honors should be noted here:

Geography professor Susan Cutter was elected to both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
Chemistry professor Susan Richardson was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
History professor Carol Harrison won a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.
English professor Claire Jimenez won the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez.
And engineering professor Austin Downey and epidemiology professor Anwar Merchant are USC’s two newest faculty to receive Fulbright Scholar Awards.

Congratulations to each of these individuals for their outstanding achievements.

To celebrate the great contributions of our staff members, our Staff Senate led the way in creating our first-ever Staff Appreciation Day in May. Approximately 1,400 staff members enjoyed free food, music and prizes at Russell House, and 98 individuals who had been nominated by their peers were honored for their work. Special recognition was given to the top three winners. The top prize went to Jan Smoak, assistant dean for awards and enrollment management in the Office of Fellowships and Scholar Programs. And the two runners-up were Lindsay Arave in the Department of African American Studies and Claire Miller-Sword in the Department of Psychology. This day of appreciation will be an annual tradition, to recognize the dedication and great work our staff members demonstrate on a daily basis.

A strong indicator of our momentum across the entire university is our success in inspiring others to invest in what we are doing. In this area, two couples have risen to prominence during the past year – Joe and Lisa Rice and Alex and Kristin Molinaroli.

Last November, we had a great celebration for the naming of the Joseph F. Rice School of Law, following a $30 million gift to the law school. And in June of this year, we announced the naming of the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing, recognizing another $30 million gift.

Together, these two gifts have given me the unusual opportunity to observe that we doubled the number of our named colleges in one year. It has been more than 20 years since our last naming of the Arnold School of Public Health and, of course, the Darla Moore School of Business even before that. I complimented Vice President for Development Michelle Dodenhoff for this achievement – and then I let her know that we expect the same doubling result next year!

Each of these gifts will lift their respective programs to national prominence and drive the forward momentum we are targeting in scholarships, research, business and industry partnerships, and community engagement. Keep watching these two colleges, because great innovations are ahead for them. And, of course, we are grateful for the powerful vote of confidence from both Joe Rice and Alex Molinaroli and their dedication to their alma mater. I want to thank Dean William Hubbard of the USC Rice School of Law and Dean Hossein Haj-Hariri of the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing for their efforts and also to congratulate both colleges.

Across the board in Development, we are attracting investments at new levels, and this is positioning us very well for the capital campaign that is coming very soon. Development closed the fiscal year with $131 million in gifts. Over the last two years, we increased fundraising by 63 percent, and we returned to the strong numbers the university was delivering before 2018. The number of alumni donors also increased significantly. I want to thank Vice President Dodenhoff and her entire team for their tireless efforts, which brought us to this point.

I also want to thank and congratulate Jason Caskey, along with his staff and the board members of the USC Foundations, for managing our funds and properties. For the first time in our history, we exceeded the $1 billion endowment mark at the end of the last fiscal year.

What has become obvious to me during the last two years is that, in order to maintain our momentum, we also need to ensure that our facilities and infrastructure can keep pace with our growth and the expectations of our students and our faculty and staff.

Early in 2025, we expect to break ground for the long-awaited Health Sciences Campus in the BullStreet District of Columbia. The designs are complete, and the next step is the sitework to prepare for construction. The centerpiece for this 16-acre, state-of-the-art campus will be our new building for the School of Medicine. We are grateful to the General Assembly for the allocation of $200 million for this comprehensive project that will serve the state of South Carolina by educating new generations of much-needed physicians and by leading the way in health research.

Last month, we celebrated a momentous event in partnership with the Lexington Medical Center at their West Columbia campus. Together, we cut the ribbon on a brand-new, 52,000-square-foot clinical education building that is dedicated to training USC’s growing population of nursing students, in a quest to address the projected shortage of nurses in South Carolina. With the help of this new facility and the partnership with Lexington Medical Center, within the next five years, USC will have the capacity to almost double the number of nurses graduating from USC.

In August, our Board of Trustees approved a new master plan. This plan builds on two previous master plans over the past 20 years, and it includes a far-reaching and ambitious set of projects. It is filled with big ideas that are aspirational and that aim to address a dynamic future over the next 10 years, aligned with our strategic priorities and the needs of our community. It is also expensive. Today, we do not have the funding in hand to address everything in the plan. But this plan – USC Next, as we call it – will be the roadmap to what we should achieve in the next several years, when we do secure the additional finances needed.

Some projects that you can see in the USC Next plan are already under way or proceeding through the various stages of approval. Priority is given to the needs of our students, including modern and additional housing, study areas, dining extension, and additional meeting and recreational spaces. Priority is also given to educational and research facilities, including both new construction and renovations – and, in some cases, repurposing existing buildings.

Much of what you will see in motion in the next 2 to 3 years addresses these needs:

The McBryde residence hall, which was built in 1955, is long overdue for redevelopment. This new construction project will replace McBryde and will provide more beds and much-needed undergraduate housing near the heart of our campus.
In addition, we will complete a long-envisioned third wing on the Honors College residential hall. We will be able to accommodate approximately 150 additional students – once again, close to the center of our campus.
We are renovating the Thomas Cooper Library to make way for more study areas. The way our students use the library throughout the semester demonstrates that there is a much larger need for open and shared academic spaces than for accessing bookshelves. So, we are redesigning the square footage to meet today’s needs, but without compromising the access of our scholars to the books housed in the library.
We are finalizing the renovation of the East Tower of the Science and Technology Building – this was formerly the home of our law school. This project will provide three additional floors of state-of-the-art classrooms, instructional labs and study areas.
We will renovate the remaining areas in the Jones Physical Science Center on Main Street with additional labs.
And, we will extend the dining capacity of the Russell House as a first step toward creating a new student center facility.
And, we will initiate the process for construction of a new research-focused building for the STEM research groups.

All of these projects, along with a few smaller ones, are what I call Phase Zero of the USC Next plan, because they are already in motion, with much more to follow.

I want to recognize Ed Walton, Executive Vice President for Administration and Chief Financial Officer, along with his excellent team, including our campus architect, Derek Gruner. They have done detailed work to bring this updated plan to fruition, and they are making sure we will not spend money that we don’t have.

Before we close this chapter, which is focusing on the future, I also want to highlight two important projects on our campus during the past year. Last October, we reopened the renovated South Caroliniana Library, which was built in 1840 and is one of the most recognizable features on our Horseshoe. The Caroliniana holds the distinction of being the nation’s oldest free-standing academic library. It preserves unique documents and artifacts related not only to the history of our university, but also the history of our state. And now, it is ready again to serve both the university and the public for many years to come.

In April, at the other end of the Horseshoe, near the front steps of the McKissick Museum, we unveiled a visually stunning and historically significant monument to the university’s 1963 desegregation. Conceived and commissioned by our Board of Trustees, this 12-foot bronze sculpture pays tribute to the three courageous students who were the first Black students at USC since Reconstruction – Henrie Monteith Treadwell, James Solomon Jr., and Robert Anderson. The ceremony for that unveiling was an unforgettable moment in the life of our university, and it was another step forward in making peace with our challenging past.

As the flagship university of South Carolina, we continue to prioritize our connection to the university’s stakeholders within and beyond the borders of our campus. Across the university, you will find integrated programs that are focusing on community engagement and public education, in service to our Midlands neighbors, our state and our nation.

A few examples of these include:

Our College of Education programs, funded by the General Assembly, to assist school districts across the state and address two critical problems in K-12 schools: first, how to retain recent university graduates in the teaching profession, which is a big challenge right now; and second, how to prepare non-teaching professionals who are interested in teaching in K through 12 – especially in rural areas. And they are doing a fantastic job.
The Anne Frank Center is another example – a leader in outreach that brings Holocaust education not only to students and high schools in South Carolina, but also across the country.
USC law clinics provide services to a variety of groups in the community, including veterans and their families, low-income taxpayers in need of counsel, and individuals seeking protection from domestic violence.
And the Arnold School of Public Health programs interact with community members all over the state to assist with a range of health-related needs.

The USC Division of Access, Civil Rights and Community Engagement, under the leadership of Vice President Julian Williams, has established a new Office for Community Engagement to support and create more opportunities that enable USC to improve the quality of life in our surrounding communities. This division also partnered with our Facilities Department last year to ensure we are providing the accessibility accommodations needed for members of our community. We still have work to do in this area, and more campus facilities can be improved, but we are making great progress in terms of accessibility.

Our Communications and Marketing team successfully completed our Remarkable We marketing campaign, which generated more than 540 million social media impressions and drove more than 780,000 directed visits to our website. Our social media also caught the attention of the nation and the world, with nearly 12 million views with the video of this year’s Cocky (also known as graduating student Tramont Miles) with his yellow Cocky feet and a cap and gown! And by the way, our Social Media team was ranked as No. 1 among Division 1 schools for social media engagement! Congratulations to interim vice president Jeff Stensland and the entire team for their excellent work in elevating the university’s public profile.

As USC grows, so do the numbers of young alumni, and maintaining ties with them, as well as our more mature alumni, is essential to our growing impact. The USC Alumni Association under CEO Tiffany Foxworth took a new approach to its Commencement activities last year, improving its outreach to new graduates and their families and encouraging our newest alumni to stay connected to USC as they launch their careers. The Alumni Association is also working with Admissions and Student Affairs to build strong connections early by hosting events for incoming freshmen, especially in our growth areas – Greenville, Charleston and Charlotte. As the Alumni Association slogan says, they are students for a short time, but Gamecocks for a lifetime – and we are proud of a global Gamecock community of more than 360,000 alumni.

Let me take a breath and a moment to thank our Carolina Band for providing the energizing music we have enjoyed this morning. This is an exciting year for our School of Music, which kicks off its 100th anniversary celebration with a concert on Friday. And in November, we are sending the Carolina Band – the Mighty Sound of the Southeast – to the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving Day. Let’s congratulate Dean Tayloe Harding and the School of Music and wish them another 100 very successful years.

In the last 45 minutes, I have covered a lot of ground, which should give you an idea of how much we have accomplished together over the past year. And these are just a few of the highlights!

As I close these remarks, I will remind you of what I shared in my opening comments, and what I have been telling internal and external audiences in recent weeks. Yes, we are experiencing difficult times in the world of higher education. This is evident wherever you look. But I hope you can see also, that even in challenging times, the University of South Carolina is thriving and is building greater momentum. We are operating from a position of strength, and we are moving forward with confidence.

It is true that, in no small measure, all of this is because of you. I may be the one standing at the podium, but I’m just presiding. Every one of you is doing the essential work of supporting this university that we all love. We share a belief in its mission and commitment to what we can achieve next.

Public universities were an experiment when this university was established in 1801. And this experiment, despite many difficulties, has changed forever – and for better – our state and our country. And we will continue to do this.

I want to thank you for being here today, but even more so, thank you for being a devoted member of the University of South Carolina community. Together, we are creating greater opportunities for our students, for our state and for our world. Together, we are building the future.

Go, Gamecocks!