Keeping The Promise
PC’s strategic plan continues to unfold
Nearly two years have passed since President Staton delivered The Promise of PC speech on Nov. 20, 2017. If you’ve been to campus lately, you can easily notice the plan successfully unfolding: Neville has been completely restored, and there are new residential facilities behind Springs Student Center. While other aspects of the plan’s success are not as obvious, President Staton, the leadership team and PC faithful have been hard at work delivering on The Promise of PC.
Ensuring Student Success Over the last few months, the College was awarded two grants that help ensure student success, which is one of the four pillars of The Promise. This past spring, PC was selected to receive a $25,000 NetVUE Vocation Across the Academy Grant to strengthen the link between the liberal arts and career preparation. “The grant allows us to move forward with interventions to help our students be career-ready after graduation,” says grant co-coordinator Kim Lane, associate dean of students and director of career and professional development. “Employers across all industries want to hire college graduates who possess the liberal arts competencies, so we need to help our students develop and articulate them across the academy.” The award will fund project activities that are part of PC’s IDEA program. An acronym for “Inquire, Decide, Engage, Achieve,” IDEA provides opportunities for students, faculty and staff to explore the intellectual and theological dimensions of vocation.
The College was also awarded a grant to ensure student success in the classroom and the laboratory, too. Dr. Austin Shull ’11, assistant professor of biology, was one of 10 professors in South Carolina to receive a South Carolina IDEA Networks of Biomedical Research (SC INBRE) 2019 Developmental Research Project Program award. The award will help students like Emma Gray, Sarah Smith and Rylee White, who were among the many students conducting research this summer on campus. The trio developed their skill sets by joining Shull in breast cancer research. This $50,000 award from SC INBRE supports independent research and mentored career development. The award also provides research training to students and postdoctoral fellows in the biomedical sciences. The student researchers and Shull used bioinformatics and computational biology approaches, along with classic laboratory experiments, to better understand why certain breast cancers are more prone to metastasizing or spreading. “Part of what makes this research so meaningful is the direct connection between our work in the lab and the impact our work could have on lives,” said Gray, who was drawn to understanding and treating cancer in high school after a close family friend passed away due to ovarian cancer. She became interested in breast cancer from the work of her sorority, Zeta Tau Alpha, in breast cancer education and awareness. “Unfortunately, most people have or know someone who has been
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