Oct. 21 USC Times

University of South Carolina

September 20, 2012

uscTIMES

A publication for faculty, staff and friends of the university

USC Times

Stories, snippets & scenes from the

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PR alum opens the door

n September 2011, Donna Walker produced the first batch of PulidoWalker extra virgin olive oil. The results were just what those who know her have come to expect: magnificent.

But Walker didn’t start out in the

olive oil business. Since graduating

from USC’s College of Pharmacy in 1979, her career has taken her up the corporate ladder and beyond.

As a first-year student at USC, Walker attended an American Pharmacy Association meeting, which sparked a sustained interest.

She became a regional officer and after graduation moved to Washington, D.C., to take a job with the national organization.

Throughout her career, she served in a number of leadership roles in the field, taking after her father, Tony Walker, a 1957 graduate of the College of Pharmacy.

“Dad gave me advice,” she said. “He said to choose a degree that has a profession associated with it because when you graduate, there is a community of like-minded people to

meet. He got a great deal of satisfaction as a leader in the profession.”

Following stints in pharmaceutical sales, marketing and management with 3M, Walker’s career

As a young child, Stephen Brown sang advertising jingles and could recognize a company’s logo. A pop culture fanatic, he would memorize the HBO guide and recite movie reviews for kindergarten show-and-tell.

Now managing director of the Atlanta office of Cohn & Wolf, a global communications agency, Brown provides tactical public relations, media relations, strategic planning, crisis communications and media training for retail, technology and health care companies. He also serves on the boards of major theaters in Atlanta.

It’s a full plate, but the 1995 graduate of the South Carolina Honors College and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications learned plenty at USC about juggling. He wrote movie reviews for several publications, was involved in student organizations and completed multiple internships.

led into telecommunications sales and marketing, followed by the launch of a foundation to

“The biggest thing I learned in school

support youth entrepreneurship. That adaptability also helped her open a winery with pharmacist

was being able to balance a lot at once,”

husband Mark Pulido. This year, the Pulido-Walker cellars are producing their first batch of cabernet sauvignon.

The couple continues to be involved with the Pulido Walker Foundation, of which Donna Walker is president. Founded in 1997, the foundation funds organizations that teach entrepreneurship to high-risk, low-income kids.

Brown said. “It’s just the way I’m built.”

He remains involved with Carolina, helping plan the Atlanta stops on the annual public relations Maymester trip, which has led to jobs for several

“Our parents were encouraging and supportive,” she said. “We’ve worked hard for everything we’ve accomplished, but we didn’t have some of the fundamental obstacles many of these kids have. We want to support organizations that get them to the starting line and even the field.”

Walker has now established a leadership scholars program for students on the USC campus of the S.C. College of Pharmacy. Announced this semester, the program will support student leadership projects, travel to leadership events and partial tuition for leadership courses.

graduates.

“I like being able to show students how USC life translates to being in the real world,” he said.

— Megan Sexton

A place to call home Groundbreaking for the new USC Alumni Center is set for Nov. 1 as part of Homecoming weekend. The 65,000-square-foot center will be located at the corner of Senate and Lincoln streets in the Vista. Construction is expected to begin early in 2014 with occupancy scheduled for spring 2015. The privately funded $26.6 million center will include meeting space for business or personal gatherings as well as social space for weddings, parties and other occasions. New programming is being planned for the center, which will give the university’s 260,000-plus alumni and friends a central gathering place in Columbia.

Rendering

created

by LS3P

Architects

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USC Times 10/21/2013

University of south carolina

Telling the Gamecock story

Zoning out, zooming in

By Liz McCarthy

By Craig Brandhorst

Any Gamecock fan looking for highlight reels on the Internet is sure to have seen an inspiring video cut together by Justin King.

The popular Gamecock videos started as a hobby after King graduated in 2010 with a degree in media arts but soon landed him a job cutting highlights for ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

“Every time I sit down and begin a new video, my goal is

The frightful vision of filmmaker Steve Daniels

to go further and push harder than before,” he said. “I want each one to have a better flow, tell a stronger story and capture more emotion.”

King’s videos, some with more than 100,000 views, continue to push his career forward. He left ESPN to work as a marketing strategist with Rackspace, a San Antonio cloud-computing company, and on the side created his own video production and social marketing

“I learned so much from that class,” he says. “Film analysis

On a chilly winter morning when he was 11 years old, Steve Daniels

and theory, how to decipher media, how to be playful with your

wandered into an Arkansas forest and came out a filmmaker.

Now an editor for Columbia-based media production company

wouldn’t truly discover his inner Hitchcock until his folks gave him

company — Justin King Media.

“The more I made the videos with Justin King Media and the more they continued

message — it was a huge influence.”

OK, the transformation wasn’t quite so quick — in fact, Daniels

to grow, the more I learned different ways to promote them using social media,”

a camcorder two years later — but something strange did occur out

Mad Monkey, Daniels pursues his cinematic dreams at night and

he said. “I was just doing that on the side of my full-time job, but it landed me here

there in the woods, something that would literally and forever alter

on weekends. His 2005 short “The Gibbering Horror of Howard

in a field that I enjoy and get to be creative in.”

how he looked at the world.

Ghormley” was included on a DVD released by Fangoria magazine,

“I had this strange, almost out-of-body experience where I became

then, in 2009, another film, “Dirt Dauber,” won Best Short at the

Last year the athletics department asked King to produce a video honoring Ray Tanner.

aware of my subjective viewpoint,” says Daniels, ’95. “We were out

H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. In 2011 his macabre fantasy “Dirty

“They wanted something emotional, and that’s what I do,” King said.

looking for a Christmas tree, snow on the ground, and I just kind of

Silverware” — which just happens to feature a creepy walk through

His videos, no doubt, will give any die-hard fan chills — and that’s by design.

zoned out. I was walking around, looking at my feet, not knowing

an even creepier wood — tied for Best Short Film at Spain’s Sitges

where I was going. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was framing up

Film Festival.

shooting video and Super 8 films in high school, then majored in media

“There’s something about adults doing kids stuff that I always

arts at USC, where professor Harry Miller’s class on postmodernism in

come back to,” says Daniels. “I love horror, love to scare people, but

media broadened his vision.

I’m really drawn to humor and the absurd.”

The phrase “plastic surgery” means more than face-lifts and nose jobs.

Dr. Ben McIntyre’s patients will tell you it means much more.

S ystemwide

Changing the world one life at a time

By Jeff stensland

Most people don’t associate social work with the corporate world, but Thomas Carratto offers proof that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Carratto, a native New Yorker who earned a master’s degree in social work from

McIntyre is a 2003 graduate

USC in 1978, is president of Health Net Federal Services, whose parent company is

of USC’s School of Medicine

one of the largest managed

who returned to launch

health care delivery providers

a professional practice

in the country. Carratto’s role

in the school’s Division of

is to oversee contracts with

Plastic and Reconstructive

the Veterans Administration

Surgery following residencies

and the U.S. Department of

in Virginia and New Zealand. Using sophisticated surgical techniques, McIntyre is often able to undo the ravages of disease or physical trauma.

“I don’t know how Dr. McIntyre could figure out how to fix my face without knowing what I used to look like. But that’s what he did,” said Earl Baker, a retired veterinarian who had suffered a severed facial nerve in an earlier cancer surgery.

There isn’t any part of the body that McIntyre doesn’t operate on; facial fractures, hand surgeries, joint replacements and rebuilding of jaws and palates are all in his repertoire.

“It’s pretty easy to get your

Defense.

“It’s pretty easy to get your

head around a mission like this when it’s helping

head around a mission like this when it’s helping veterans and men and women in uniform,” he says.

In addition to providing basic health services, Health Net operates programs for the military, including a

veterans and men and women in uniform.”

behavioral health counseling program for service members and their families.

“It started as a small demonstration, but now we have an army of 3,000 behavioral health counselors that we can deploy,” he says. “There’s a huge demand for these services, and not just with the troops themselves. Some of these kids whose parents are serving have grown up not knowing anything but war.”

Before his current post, Carratto held several positions inside government, including deputy assistant secretary of defense for health plan administration and assistant

“It used to be that people with these medical problems

surgeon general and regional health administrator for the U.S. Department of Health

had to go to MUSC, Duke or Emory for help. Now they

and Human Services. But it was his time at USC, he says, that set his course for success.

don’t,” McIntyre said.

everyone is united, everyone is family.”

in which the bikers all ride Big Wheels.

A lover of monster movies and ghost stories, Daniels began

More than skin deep

“It’s about capturing memories,” he said. “It’s about the moment when 80,000 people throw their hands up in celebration and, even if it’s only for a brief moment,

Next up? A postmodern nod to George Miller’s “Road Warrior” —

and shooting a movie in my head.”

3

“I got into social work for the same reason as a lot of my peers at that time,” he says.

“I wanted to change the world.”

Q

&

A

USC Aiken USC Aiken has named Daniel Robb associate vice chancellor for enrollment management.

How did USC Sumter impact your career choice?

My time at USC Sumter taught me that I could accomplish much more if I worked with others on campus to get tasks done. As a health care provider you are never alone, so it is imperative that you learn to rely on your team members and have an openness to reciprocate that support within the team.

USC Beaufort USC Beaufort has named Mack Palmour associate vice chancellor for enrollment management.

USC Lancaster USC Lancaster wrapped up the Smithsonian Institute’s traveling exhibit “Indivisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas” at the Native American Studies

What’s your leadership philosophy?

Center.

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “Success,” one line

USC Salkehatchie

reads: “To know one life has breathed easier, because decision I make, every policy I write, every patient or

USC Salkehatchie hosted 500 current student athletes, athletic alumni, and family and friends at its first

family I touch, I try my very best to make sure that

alumni reunion.

you have lived, this is success.” In every employment

my actions create a ripple effect.

How do you see the role of alumni?

Instead of being called alumni, I think we should be referred to as ambassadors. We need to advocate

USC Sumter USC Sumter art galleries are alive with two new displays on view through the end of the year.

for additional funding, be willing to mentor students,

USC Union

and participate and support programs and activities

USC Union named Issaia Butler to coordinate

on campus.

Michelle Logan-Owens, USC Sumter alumna and vice president at Tuomey Healthcare Systems

its Palmetto College student services.

USC Upstate USC Upstate is joining more than 450 universities for a social media program that allows students to earn badges for their academic and extracurricular successes, and share them with friends and family.

Palmetto College The new Palmetto College online degree completion program yielded an initial enrollment of 500-plus students.

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University of south carolina

Carolina has inspired many musicians through the years, and USC’s alumni pull from their time on campus to create harmonies, write songs and pass on their passion.

The music man Marty Fort, ’08 master’s in guitar performance, may be a top-notch musician and teacher, but he’s also one heck of a businessman.

“I was an adjunct music instructor at USC Upstate for several years, and I always thought I was going to be a music professor like (USC guitar professor) Christopher Berg,” said Fort. “Then my music lesson business started to take off, and I needed to devote full attention to it.”

Fort’s Columbia Arts Academy is now the state’s biggest music lesson business, with two Midlands locations, more than 600 students and 35 instructors, most of whom are USC School of Music graduates.

“We give our students broccoli — learning to read music and the daily practice that’s part of playing an instrument,” said Fort. “But they have to have fun, too.”

Play it loud, play it proud Add up the School of Music graduates serving in elite U.S. military bands, and you’ll quickly have a platoon.

Robert Aughtry, ’90, plays flute in the U.S. Army Band; Cynthia K. Wolverton, ’92, plays

My Carolina Alumni Association’s 2013 alumni award recipients: Algernon Sydney

bass clarinet in the U.S. Navy Band; Joel Baroody, ’08, plays trumpet in the U.S. Coast Guard

Sullivan Award

Band — and the beat goes on.

Dr. Todd Crump, ’92 master’s

And then, of course, there are musicians-turned-teachers like Ken Ebo, ’00 master’s, who is now a trombone instructor in the Navy School of Music.

“The quality of the education I received at USC was great,” said Ebo. “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.”

The man in garnet and black Patrick Davis left Carolina with a history degree in 2000. These days he’s crafting songs for famous artists and making music.

Davis, a singer-songwriter in Nashville, Tenn.,

in education, ’98 medicine Distinguished Alumni Award William P. Kennedy, ’66, and Lou W. Kennedy, ’84 Outstanding Black Alumni Award Toby S. Jenkins, ’97 Outstanding Young Alumni Award

has written songs for Lady Antebellum, Jewel and

Dr. Williams R. Jennings, ’03

Darius Rucker (USC’s own Dr. Hootie), just to name

medicine

a few.

He also brought his love for his alma mater to fans across the country with songs about Gamecock sports and recently finished a project with USC’s athletics department for football season. With a growing fan base, tours across the Southeast and an album in the works, Davis is an alumnus worth knowing.

“When I write songs, I definitely draw from past experience and a lot of what happened in college will forever be with me,” Davis said. “Anytime I

The Honorary Life Member Award John Bachmann The award recipients will be honored throughout My Carolina Homecoming, presented by Lowe’s Nov. 1-2.

write a song there’s always a piece of South Carolina in there somewhere.”

uscTIMES “ The University of South Carolina instilled a values-based, entrepreneurial leadership approach that has influenced each aspect of the Maker’s Mark business and culture, including how we interact with our customers and employee-family community.”

— Rob

Samuels, president and CEO of Maker’s Mark, on how his USC degree guides his approach to leadership (’96, sociology)

S CIENCE CORNER Left-brain writing?

Vol. 24, No.16 Oct. 21, 2013 USC Times is published 20 times a year for the faculty and staff of the University of South Carolina by the Division of Communications.

Managing editor: Liz McCarthy Designer: Philip Caoile Contributors: Peggy Binette, Craig Brandhorst, Frenché Brewer, Glenn Hare, Thom Harman, Chris Horn, Page Ivey, Steven Powell, Megan Sexton and Jeff Stensland Photographer: Kim Truett To reach us: 803-777-2848 or lizmccarthy@sc.edu Campus correspondents: Patti McGrath, Aiken Candace Brasseur, Beaufort Shana Dry, Lancaster Jane Brewer, Salkehatchie Misty Hatfield, Sumter Tammy Whaley, Upstate Jay Darby, Palmetto College

If it’s interesting science, Stephanie Pappas gets to write about it. A 2006 Honors College graduate, she writes for LiveScience, a news website with international reach.

“It’s all over the map, what we cover — the environment, health, ecology, psychology,” she said. “I love that.”

Emerging in fall 2008 from the science communication program at the University

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.

of California, Santa Cruz, Pappas immediately found freelance work with LiveScience.

That turned into a full-time position within the year.

“The classes I took in the Honors College and the lab work I was able to do in the psychology department really bolstered my credentials,” she said. “It worked out well.”

— Steven Powell

Submissions: Did you know you can submit photos, stories or ideas for future issues of USC Times? Share your story by emailing or calling Liz McCarthy at lizmccarthy@sc.edu, 803-777-2848