USC Times November 2014

USCTIMES

NOVEMBER 2014 / VOL. 25, NO.10

THE SPORTING LIFE Playing Smart

The Point After

The Writing Game

Student-athletes score big in the classroom and on the field, page 4

Faculty recall their glory days playing college sports, page 8

Spurrier biographer Ran Henry takes to the classroom, page 14

USC TIMES / STAFF

FROM THE EDITOR

USC Times is published 10 times a year for the faculty and staff of the University of South Carolina by the Office of Communications & Marketing.

Managing editor Craig Brandhorst Designers Philip Caoile Michelle Hindle Riley Contributors Glenn Hare Thom Harman Chris Horn Page Ivey Liz McCarthy Steven Powell Photographers Kim Truett Circulation Carolyn Parks Printer USC Printing Services Campus correspondents Patti McGrath, Aiken Candace Brasseur, Beaufort Cortney Easterling, Greenville Shana Dry, Lancaster Jane Brewer, Salkehatchie Misty Hatfield, Sumter Annie Smith, Union Tammy Whaley, Upstate Jay Darby, Palmetto College Submissions Did you know you can submit photos, stories or ideas for future issues of USC Times? Share your story by emailing or calling Craig Brandhorst at craigb1@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-3681.

GOOD SPORTS

When we redesigned USC Times earlier this year, one of our goals was to incorporate more faculty, staff and student voices. Personal essays, as-told-to narratives, Q&As, lively roundtable discussions — you may have noticed, we’ve been delivering all of these and more for months now.

This issue is no different, only more so. Yeah, that’s a joke. But guess what’s not: the voices themselves, which come to us this month from the high-impact world of college sports.

Mind you, we’re not abandoning our focus on higher education. On the contrary, we’ve zoned in on the intersection of athletics and academics, starting with a group of select student-athletes who compete at the highest level, both on the field and in the classroom. Meet a few of these agile intellectuals — and meantime learn how USC has managed to lead the SEC Honor Roll seven years running — in our feature “Playing Smart,” beginning on page 4.

Of course, as any former college athlete can tell you, the end of one career often signals the beginning of another. As proof that sports play a bigger role in personal development than we may realize — and that there is indeed life after college athletics — USC Times tracked down a handful of college athletes-turned-USC faculty and asked them to reflect on their lives on and off the field. “The Point After” starts on page 8.

Thanks to a few other good sports, the rest of this month’s lineup is equally impressive. Steve Spurrier biographer and S.C. Honors College adjunct Ran Henry let us sit in on his “Football Writing” class for our latest installment of Get Smart (page 14) and exercise science professor Troy Herter shared his team’s cutting edge research on concussion treatment in this month’s Breakthrough Breakout (page 16).

No question, this issue has plenty of highlights, but let’s not break the huddle just yet. In addition to campus voices, we also raided one of our student interns’ camera memory card this month in search of a single image that would capture the true spirit of the sporting life on campus. We had a lot to choose from, but Chrissy Harper’s gorgeous photo of an evening flag football game (pages 2-3) proved the winning shot.

Go deep,

The University of South Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities or decisions for qualified persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation or veteran status.

Cover photo from the 1959 edition of Garnet and Black, courtesy of University Archives.

CRAIG BRANDHORST MANAGING EDITOR

VOL. 25, NO.10 1

TIMES FIVE

For the colleague who has everything.

Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like a gift subscription to USC Times!

Fill out this card, send it via campus mail to Carolyn Parks at the War Memorial and we’ll include it with the recipient’s first issue. Subscribe

INVEST IN YOUR FUTURE Faculty and staff can consult with a TIAA-CREF financial adviser to discuss issues such as planning for retirement, reaching financial goals and finding the right investment mix. Appointments are available on a first-come, first-served basis and will be held 9 a.m.- 5 p.m., Nov. 3-5.

All meetings will be at the Benefits Office, Suite 803, 1600 Hampton St. To make an appointment call the TIAA-CREF Servicing and Scheduling Group at 800-732-8353.

as many colleagues as you like. It’s easy, it’s fun…and it’s free!

To:__________________________________________________________ Bldg:________________________________________________________ Dept:________________________________________________________ From:________________________________________________________ Dept:________________________________________________________ Message (optional):____________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________

BE SMART, BE SAFE You now have a new way to check in with family, friends and the USC Police through your smartphone. The Rave Guardian app is available for free download and turns your smartphone into a personal safety device for use on or off campus. Among its features, the Guardian app allows you to set safety timers notifying people you trust of your whereabouts, deliver panic calls to police and anonymously report crimes. To learn more, visit ravemobilesafety.com/ rave-guardian/

GOOD FELLOWS…

RISE AND SHINE

Congratulations to the second class of McCausland Faculty Fellows: English professor Federica K. Clementi, biological anthropologist Sharon DeWitte, studio arts professor Sara Schneckloth and history professor Adam M. Schor. The fellowships reward young professors in the College of Arts and Sciences for excellence in teaching and research. They are funded by a $10 million endowment given to the college by alumnus Peter McCausland (’71), chairman and chief executive officer of Pennsylvania-based Airgas Inc., and his wife, Bonnie.

The deadline for 2015 Research Initiative for Summer Engagement proposals is Jan. 28, 2015.

The RISE program began in 2012 to support summer research for faculty members at senior and regional campuses. Using a competitive application process, RISE grants provide money for salary, supplies and travel related to research, as well as undergraduate student support. Find online applications by visiting sc.edu/research.

Contact Beth Herron for additional information: bherron@mailbox.sc.edu or 803-777-2885.

2 USCTIMES / NOVEMBER 2014

WEEKNIGHT LIGHTS USC students take the field for an evening game of flag football as the sun sets over west campus.

Almost any night of the week, USC’s recreational fields become a playground for students looking to get a little exercise, enjoy the thrill of competition or blow off a little steam.

VOL. 25, NO.10 3

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PLAYING

VOL. 25, NO.10 5

G SMART Did you know Gamecock athletic teams have led the Southeastern Conference Academic Honor Roll for the past seven years? Or that during Dawn Staley’s tenure as women’s basketball coach, every player who did not transfer has gone on to graduate? Or that nine current Gamecock football players are now working on a second degree or have started a master’s program while they play out their eligibility?

If all that doesn’t make you feel good about Gamecock sports, you’re not a true fan. If it does, and you want to learn more about what makes USC’s top student-athletes tick, how about a little one-on-one?

THIAGO PINHEIRO Sport: men’s tennis Academics: senior, business economics; global marketing intern for Anheuser-Busch InBev, summer 2014.

Playing a sport while going to school is tough because there’s not a lot of time between practice and classes, so we do go to class all sweaty and disgusting from practice, but that’s the price you pay for being a student-athlete. None of us would want to do it a different way.

It gives me confidence that I can overcome anything I have to. On the tennis court, a lot of times, we face adversity that we think we cannot overcome in matches or even practices and workouts, and we find that little bit of gas that we didn’t think we had in our tank that helps us get through it.

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Rucker

Arendas

Mitchell

D.C. ARENDAS Sport: Baseball, infielder; named to NCAA Regional All-Tournament Team, 2014.

VICTORIA MITCHELL Sport: Swimming, freestyle/backstroke/individual medley; broke school record in the 200 freestyle.

Academics: sophomore, sport and entertainment management; SEC Academic Honor Roll, 2013 and 2014.

Academics: senior, economics; plans to graduate in May 2015 and go to law school after taking a year off; named to 2013-14 SEC Academic Honor Roll.

Hometown: Greensboro, N.C.

Coming up with a daily routine has helped our team the most. We practice in the afternoon and have class in the morning, so after practice we get work done. From 6-9 we have tutors. Mostly, we finish up by 7:30 or 8, sometimes later depending on the workload. During the season, that changes because we have games during the week. It’s easier to get adjusted to during the season because you know ahead of time what you need to do. Being on the same page as the professor has really helped me.

Being a student-athlete helps you to be more focused. You realize in such a small window of time you have to get something done.

Hometown: Cary, N.C.; transfer from Louisville.

I really try to stay on top of things. I don’t let schoolwork come up on me all at once, so I make sure I stay as ahead as possible. I pay attention in class. I think it helps a lot so you don’t have to spend as much time out of class. A lot of people don’t really listen in class, and they’re trying to teach themselves. But if you listen in class, you have a better chance of understanding it. And if I am ever the least bit worried about a class, I’ll just get a tutor for it, because it can’t hurt. It can only help.

VOL. 25, NO.10 7 Thompson

Game Over? Game On! Athletes Work Overtime at the Dodie Many student-athletes come to college as ready to hit the books as they are ready to hit the playing field. Others need a little coaching to help them balance the sporting life and the academic. Enter USC’s Dodie Anderson Academic Enrichment Center — aka the Dodie.

Maria Hickman, associate athletics director for academics and student development at the Dodie, says the idea is to get students started with good habits from Day One. Accordingly, all freshman athletes attend mandatory study hall and meet with academic advisers once a week.

The Dodie offers additional academic advising as needed, plus tutoring, counseling, just about any sort of help students might need to perform better in the classroom. The facility also has a dining hall and study rooms, and serves as a

ERICKA RUCKER Sport: Track and Field, sprints; six-time All-American.

Academics: senior, nursing; SEC Academic Honor Roll, 2011-12, spring 2013, spring 2014.

Hometown: Flowery Branch, Ga.

The major challenge is knowing where to put my time. We have practice, weight room and training, and we’re still taking a full class load.

I have to use my free time to do coursework.

I can’t put anything off. I can’t procrastinate.

Being a student-athlete makes me more focused and disciplined. My major is nursing. A lot of people aren’t as focused with classwork because they can put it off, but for me, everything is urgent. I know that one day I have to go out there and be a nurse and know what I’m talking about. That keeps me motivated. Nursing is different. We go directly into our field of work.

DYLAN THOMPSON Sport: Football, quarterback.

community center for student-athletes.

Academics: graduated May 2014 with degree in sport and entertainment management, working on second degree in retailing; SEC Fall Academic Honor Roll, 2011-13.

But the real key to the center’s success,

Hometown: Boiling Springs, S.C.

sure students are attending class and on-track

The hardest part is the time management.

Every day is essentially packed full of things to do. The best thing that we have is study hall, which allows us to get our academic work done in a timely manner so we won't have to worry about missing assignments.

I believe being an athlete helps you learn how to earn everything and work for your rewards.

Hickman says, is the support from university administrators and from her own staff, which mans the Dodie from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays.

Advisers meet regularly with professors to make to complete their coursework successfully.

They also meet with coaches to help motivate students who might be falling behind.

Hickman, who played basketball at an NCAA Division II school before pursuing her master’s degree, wishes her school had offered a program similar to Carolina’s. Now, she says, she enjoys working most with those students who may need that extra help.

“I like the challenge of dealing with the more atrisk students,” she says. “We tell them ‘You need to do the right thing at all times.’ We keep them accountable.”

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THE POINT AFTER USC faculty excel in the classroom, the lab, the library, you name it. We see evidence of it in every discipline every day across every campus systemwide. But while you might not see it on their CVs, more than a few of our academic all-stars also boast another kind of accomplishment — on the gridiron, the pitch, the court, the diamond. That’s right — before they were college professors, these folks were college athletes. USC Times tracked down a few good sports and asked them to reflect on their playing days and how those experiences helped shape who they are today.

VOL. 25, NO.10 9

KHALID BALLOULI ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SPORT AND ENTERTAINMENT MANAGEMENT

You could say baseball was in my blood. My grandfather, Dick Fowler, pitched professionally for the Philadelphia A’s for more than 10 years, and though I never got to meet him, I know I owe him for a lot of my good fortune. After many years of playing competitive elite youth baseball across the country, I was recruited by Texas A&M University to join a talented roster. During my four years as a Division-I NCAA student-athlete, I was fortunate enough to pitch for teams that won the Big XII Conference and participated in the College World Series as the No. 1-ranked team in the country. I was also voted a captain my final two years and was twice awarded the team’s “Pitcher of the Year” award. Off the field, I was the team’s player representative for many student-athlete and outreach events.

on group projects with my classmates. In fact, I cannot recall a project on which I was not the group leader. I wanted to succeed in both walks of life, which is why during my professional baseball career I continued to reenroll at Texas A&M each fall to complete my undergraduate education and begin my master’s. For five straight years I enrolled in fall classes, even though some years I would wind up two weeks behind due to a playoff run late in the season.

It didn’t matter to me — there was nothing that proper communication and a strong work ethic could not handle.

In 2002, I was drafted in the sixth round by the Milwaukee Brewers and became part of a group of prospects that included Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Nelson Cruz, Tony Gwynn Jr., Rickie Weeks and many notable athletes currently playing in the majors. Five years later I would retire due to successive muscle tear injuries to my pitching arm.

While my professional career was a time I will never forget, it was my time as a student-athlete that really cleared the way to where I am now.

Like so many of the students I instruct every day at USC, I had to make daily conscious decisions to make the most of my time. Instead of letting either the “student” or the “athlete” cannibalize my time, I devoted equal hours to both. For every hour I spent on the diamond, I spent one in study hall. For every workout session in the weight room, I made time to work

After retirement, I knew I wanted to pursue my Ph.D. and become a professor. I missed being on the university campus, and I wanted to share my experiences with students who wanted to pursue a career in the field of sports. Moreover, I felt I could be an example to students of how you can simultaneously carry the weight of two dreams, as long as you leave room to pack your heart.

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ROGER SAWYER PROFESSOR, BIOLOGY EXECUTIVE DEAN, COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

My twin brother, Ray, and I played football for Deering High School in Portland, Maine. Our team won the state championship by beating archrival Portland High School at the traditional Thanksgiving Day Game in 1959, and several of us received scholarships (tuition only) to play football at the University of Maine. In our sophomore year, Ray, Phil Soule (another Deering High School player, who later coached at Bowdoin College) and I were the linebackers. Our team won the Yankee Conference in 1961 with an 8-0-1 record, beating the University of Connecticut 2-0 and the University of Massachusetts 10-7. Needless to say, we did not have a powerful offense.

In the ’60s we did not fly to away games, so we would be gone Thursday through Sunday. This meant that we would take the minimum number of courses in the fall semester. Fortunately, my comparative anatomy professor let me make up the laboratory one-on-one. Just as fortunately, he loved to talk about football as much as he loved to talk about anatomy.

Majoring in the sciences also meant that I had to delay some of my laboratory courses until the spring semester, but I had great professors who actually spent time in the labs with us. My professor in quantitative analysis, who we affectionately called “Mother” Bogan, would make us carry out our analyses until we got them right.

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LEAH McCLIMANS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, PHILOSOPHY

I went to the College of William & Mary to play field hockey. I knew very little about the place except that it had an AstroTurf field and was in Division I. These were my sole requirements in a university, so when they offered me some money to play for them, I said, “Yes, thank you” and started to pack my bags.

Looking back, this was probably a mistake.

When I arrived in early August for preseason I was sweaty and breathless with nerves.

Busch Field was huge and the other girls were scary. They were blond, beautiful and tough, the kind of private school girls who effortlessly charm adults, do a perfect keg stand over the weekend and wake up to score ferocious goals in practice.

I was not a private school girl. In the first weeks and, let’s be honest, months, I totally sucked.

Everything seemed faster. The girls were stronger. They had moves I had never seen. In high school I had been a forward, so my job was to score goals. Once I landed in Williamsburg, I couldn’t even get near the cage. My drives went wide and when I did have the ball, I didn’t know what to do with it (cringe).

I will never, ever forget my first scrimmage. It’s August, it’s hot and I’m in the middle of the field with the ball. I pass it to Mary Beth Noel — then, scary girl; now, mother of three living in San Francisco. It’s a terrible pass; she has to lunge to keep it in the field. She says to me, “What are you doing?” I had no idea. W&M dazzled me and the girls intimidated me. My brain was addled. These were dark days.

But — you knew there would be a “but” — things slowly got a bit better. I started to get ahold of myself. Forget the big turf field, for-

get the impeccable keg stands and forget the Main Line Philly private-school-girl-charm of my daunting teammates. Peel Hawthorne, our wonderful and long suffering head coach, put me on the traveling team for our conference tournament. In a moment of desperation, down 2-0, she pulled me off the bench and said, “Score a goal.” I scored three. A hat trick!

It was awesome. It was like THE MOVIES. And this moment made up for everything that came before and everything that was to come later, including a torn ACL nine months later.

Sometimes, one moment is enough.

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TONI TORRES-McGEHEE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, ATHLETIC TRAINING

I started playing basketball at the age of 7. It was my first love and something that still holds a big place in my heart. Without it, I would not be where I am today. But being a first-generation college student came with many challenges. I knew if I were going to leave Gallup, N.M., for school, I would need a basketball scholarship.

scholarship or take advantage of an opportunity to play basketball overseas. Over the years, I saw many athletes continue their basketball careers overseas and, unfortunately, they never finish their degrees. As much as I loved the game, there was a reality that it would not be a lifetime career. I sometimes think about the missed opportunity but have no regrets.

I received a full athletic scholarship at Cochise College in Douglas, Ariz., where I completed a two-year associates degree in science and met my first athletic trainer, who introduced me to the field of sports medicine. It was very difficult for student athletes to go through an accredited program to get certified as an athletic trainer; therefore, I chose the internship route. I continued my basketball career on full scholarship at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah, and majored in biology with a double minor in sports medicine and chemistry. With the time demands of being a student athlete and completing my 1,800 clinical hours, my options were to stay and finish my fifth year on full

Over the years I’ve been blessed to be part of many basketball teams and have provided athletic training services for high school, collegiate and professional athletes. Being a former student athlete and athletic trainer has allowed me to become a better educator and to strengthen my research, which focuses on the health and wellbeing of athletes. It has also taught me teamwork, leadership, time management, discipline, flexibility, commitment and work ethic.

It has likewise allowed me to embrace diversity and given me the ability and resilience to handle pressure. I try to instill these characteristics not only in my career but also in my life.

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NICOLE ZARRETT KIVITA ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, PSYCHOLOGY

The sweet fragrance of grass mixed with leather and dirt, tired muscles from long grueling practices, the pat on your helmet from the coach after a great hit, the strength of friendship with your teammates, the feeling of accomplishment that comes from working hard to achieve your goals and that drive to be the best we could be as individuals and as a team. It all comes flooding back as a full sensory experience every time a softball is placed into my hands.

It has been over 15 years since I played ball competitively at Clark University, but my experiences on the field remain integral to who I am today, continuing

to influence all facets of my life. Sports provide opportunities to develop an array of valuable skills (e.g., leadership, teamwork, sportsmanship, dependability). Winning was always the goal, but reflecting back I realize that losing a game or two was just as important — it taught us to pick ourselves back up again, dust off the dirt of defeat, work harder, grow stronger and push on.

Among all the accolades I received for playing ball (All-American, nominated for NCAA woman athlete of the year), the most valuable reward I take from my sport experience is this knowledge and confidence that with drive and persistence you can accomplish just

about anything. My research is centered on implementing afterschool and school-based interventions that increase access and motivation for physical activity among underserved children and adolescents. My goal is for all youth to have access to a sport/ physical activity setting and the valuable developmental resources it provides. As a mom, my mission is for my 4-year-old daughter and other girls her age to get on the field and play their hearts out and to see sports as just as much something for them as it is for the boys.

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GET SMART

VOL. 25, NO.10 15

The writing game

BY CHRIS HORN

When you sign up for a course called “Football Writing,” it’s hard to know what you’re in for.

Two-a-day punctuation drills? Body tackling poor syntax? Dropkicking a weak bit of dialogue? In a manner of speaking, yes. With adjunct instructor Ran Henry as their “head coach,” a dozen or so S.C. Honors College students are learning to write narrative nonfiction this semester in a course that can be as mentally intense as a gridiron practice session.

“Students must be willing to unlearn formulaic bromides, revisit elementary writing rules and befriend the delete key,” Henry warns participants in the course syllabus.

The required text for Football Writing is “Friday Night Lights,” H.G. Bissinger’s account of an Odessa, Texas, high school football team. But classroom sessions often start with Henry reading a selection from other authors such as Truman Capote or Sam Shepard.

“Is it OK to talk about a dream — something that’s not real — in a work of nonfiction?”

Henry queries the class after reading an excerpt from Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” After wrestling with that conundrum, they analyze Capote’s technique of presenting a scene, the quirky details that impart the sensation of being in a room with the detective or on a desert roadside with the killers in the book.

Henry, who earned an MFA from Florida International University and wrote for several Florida newspapers earlier in his career, has just completed “Spurrier: How the Ball Coach Taught the South to Play Football,” a biography of Carolina’s iconic head football coach to be released this month. He devoted years to the book, interviewing dozens of the coach’s friends, neighbors and family members.

His fascination with the drama of football and the psyche of the Head Ball Coach is evident, and he tries to impart a similar sense of purposeful curiosity to his students, who every week compose 900-word stories about some aspect of football.

“The class is forcing me to think about football, and life in general, in both the most detailed and broadest ways possible,” says Brian Rodgers, a sport and entertainment management major. “It has allowed me to experiment in first-, second- and third-person, allowed me to hone my voice as a writer and challenged me to find a compelling way to order my stories so that they better represent the scenes I attempt to capture.”

Another student in Henry’s class, Kris Hacker, never played organized football or had much connection to the game beyond watching from the bleachers. But that’s not holding him back.

“As a chemical engineering major who is versed in explaining in logical processes, it's sometimes difficult to show the scene rather than explain it to the reader,” says Hacker, who earned accolades from Henry for his vivid story about a high school student who missed a crucial field goal attempt. “But this class is a blast and has challenged me to think as a storyteller thinks and gets me out of such a closed-minded, logical train of thought.”

Surely, that is music to the ears of Henry, who also teaches writing at the University of Virginia and commutes to Columbia once a week. Ultimately, it’s not his students’ ability to write about football that matters so much to Henry.

“I’m not trying to make you a version of me,” he tells his students, “but a more intense version of you.”

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BREAKTHROUGH BREAKOUT

THE CONCUSSION GAME

BY STEVEN POWELL

For many people, crisp fall weather brings football to mind. Unfortunately, the gridiron is giving folks a lot of headaches these days, as concussions have become a prominent part of the news cycle.

But when it comes to head injuries, football is just one of a number of high-risk sports. Soccer, basketball, baseball, even cheering from the sideline can put an individual’s brain in harm’s way. And while prevention is a worthwhile goal, it can only go so far.

Troy Herter, an assistant professor of exercise science, is leading a group at Carolina that is collecting data in a pilot concussion study that builds on his years of research on stroke, an ailment that shares many similarities.

“With concussion, therapies just don’t exist other than rest,” says Herter. “We assume that rest will help, but compare that, say, to someone

who comes in after having a stroke. Both are brain damage. For stroke you want to get them out of bed, moving around, going to rehabilitation as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the worse the outcomes tend to be, but you take the complete and total opposite approach with concussion.”

Finding effective treatments requires better ways of determining which brain functions are affected and to what degree. Current assessments are subjective, making it difficult to measure gradations in severity. The Carolina research team takes a more objective approach, using what are essentially video games designed to put a user’s sensory, motor and cognitive systems to the test.

Through a robotic interface that tracks a subject’s hand and eye movements, researchers are able to measure an individual’s ability to complete complex tasks requiring skillful coordination.

At the same time, they also look at whether an

underlying problem seeing, moving or thinking might underlie a person’s inability to match their previous high scores.

Being able to measure gradual progress, or lack thereof, after an injury may help the development of proper concussion therapies down the line, says Herter.

“People will come in after a stroke and go through a battery of tests that say they’re fine.

Then they’ll fill out a questionnaire and it’s a different story,” Herter says. “A similar situation may exist with concussion, but athletes may lie in order to return to the playing field. By developing objective assessments that mimic complex activities we can hopefully improve our ability to determine whether an athlete is actually ready to return to play.”

VOL. 25, NO.10 17

SYSTEMWIDE

How did this idea come about?

On a daily basis I meet residents of this community who have amazing careers, or who are directly involved in globally critical work in national security or assisting with the cleanup of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. I’m a huge fan of the TED Talks, and one day it just dawned on me that we could create an electronic platform, similar to TED Talks, that could be used to archive and share some of these stories.

USC Aiken invited scientists from the Savannah River National Lab, URS Corporation, Savannah River Mediation LLC, Bridgestone, the Center for Hydrogen Research, the Savannah River Nuclear Site and other regional stakeholders to campus to present ideas.

What is the purpose of the project?

Q&A

WITH SANDRA JORDAN

USC Aiken Chancellor Sandra Jordan spoke with USC Times about The Archimedes Dialogue Project (archimedes.usca.edu), a new discussion forum and website dedicated to archiving groundbreaking ideas produced in the greater Aiken community.

Through the Archimedes Dialogue Project, USC Aiken has launched a platform dedicated to spreading great ideas. We are committed to archiving and sharing the discoveries and demonstrating that Aiken is a global nexus of innovation. Topics range from climate change and coral reefs to environmental remediation of land with high contamination.

When it comes to industrial and commercial innovation, what’s unique about the Aiken area?

We’re blessed with high performing industry, international companies and the Savannah River Site. Additionally, this is the home to a Department of Energy national laboratory.

There are 17 national labs in the U.S. and only three in the South. The high concentration of engineers, technologists, chemists and scientists in this region is an incredible resource.

How can people outside the USC Aiken community follow the dialogue?

Our production team uses high-definition digital technology to capture the talks and we archive all of the presentations on the Archimedes website. This ongoing project currently includes researchers from USC Aiken and experts from the companies and industries in our region. We have additional presentations in the production stage, and we’ll be adding new speakers monthly.

AROUND THE SYSTEM USC Aiken will have a TV commercial in the 2015 Super Bowl, airing Feb. 1.

USC Beaufort will be the latest system campus to officially go 100 percent tobacco-free beginning Jan. 1.

USC Lancaster BSN student Kelly Banholzer won an award for her resolution at the S.C. Student Nurses Association about raising awareness for carbon monoxide poisoning.

USC Salkehatchie’s Indians basketball season opens with the Salk Challenge Tournament Nov. 7-8.

Garnet and Gold Day in Walterboro will be Nov 6.

USC Sumter’s art galleries are offering a range of exhibits. “Laws of Variation,” new works by Fran Gardner, is on display in the University Gallery through November 24. John Cotner’s “Paintings and Work on Paper” is on view through Nov. 26 in the Upstairs Gallery, and a selection of watercolors

by Margaret van Bulck Smith is on view in the Umpteenth Gallery through Dec. 15.

USC Union honored Union native William Comer and distinguished professor emeritus Allan Charles during USC Union’s 19th annual Founder’s Day celebration.

USC Upstate’s Abraham Goldberg served as the keynote speaker at the Richland County Neighborhood Planning Conference at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

OVERHEARD @ UofSC

CAN YOU HEAR IT?