University of South Carolina
October 25, 2012
A publication for faculty, staff and friends of the university
Aiken
Beaufort
USC Times
Columbia
Lancaster
Salkehatchie
T
By
Steven
Powell
I
n case you haven’t heard, USC is overhauling its advisement system.
Improvements under way include the implementation of a common email system, advisement checklist and
scheduling system. USC will also replace its outmoded
IMS registration system with an academic planning
software system called Banner and a graduation planning
service called Degree Works by the fall of 2013.
Face-to-face…even overseas
Student advisement 2.0
“By having standardized practices for advising, students can spend the time with their adviser talking about
more things than a checklist of classes,” said Vice Provost
Helen Doerpinghaus, who serves as co-chair of the new
University Advisers Network, “We can start to talk about
beyond the classroom experiences”
Major changes and second opinions
By
Craig
Brandhorst
Upstate
expertise in designing and optimizing composite materials, Gürdal has mentored nearly 50 master’s and doctoral
students, helping shepherd them into leadership roles in
government, academia and industry.
In a second major announcement, Pastides said that
Gürdal and the McNair Center will benefit from the generosity of South Carolina businesswoman Anita Zucker. Her
$5 million donation will establish the Zucker Institute for
Aerospace Innovation. The gift will endow Gürdal’s McNair
Chair and the Zucker Institute, both in support of the
center’s mission.
Zucker and her family are leaders in philanthropic support of education and communities in South Carolina. As a
former elementary school teacher, she knows the importance of an educated world.
In his role, Gürdal will help oversee USC’s two new master’s programs, including the state’s first master’s degree in
aerospace engineering, coming online this spring. He will
also foster the development of two more degree programs
anticipated to come online in the fall.
Gürdal most recently spearheaded a highly successful 8-year effort at Delft University of Technology in the
Netherlands, leading the aerospace engineering faculty in
an effort to better align the program with what students
needed to succeed, both inside and outside the academy.
“It took time and some hard work early on at Delft, but
we really got our educational program headed in the right
direction,” Gürdal said. “The position at USC is very attractive – there’s so much opportunity here.”
USC EXPANDS ITS AEROSPACE REACH
— Ronald E. McNair, South Carolina native and NASA
astronaut from his 1984 commencement address to the
University of South Carolina
Union
he next big thing in aerospace may just originate
from USC – at least if Zafer Gürdal has anything to
do with it.
Gürdal is an engineer
with a lifelong interest
in pushing boundaries.
Growing up in Turkey,
he crafted a model rocket
out of the hollow tube of a
mechanical pencil, using
shavings from match heads
as the fuel that carried his
creation airborne.
Today, Oct. 25, President Harris Pastides announced
Gürdal will be joining USC as the technical director of the
McNair Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research.
“Dr. Gürdal is a brilliant addition to USC’s stellar team
of scientists,” Pastides said in a presentation in the IToLogy Theater.
Aerospace research was a natural fit for someone
always wanting to be on the cutting edge. After earning a
bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in his native
Turkey, he took his first trip on a plane to come to America
to study aerospace engineering.
As the McNair Chair, Gürdal will unify aerospace
research, teaching and outreach efforts at USC, cementing the university’s leadership in the state and setting the
course to develop a world-class facility.
An internationally renowned researcher with particular
taking off
“The road between South Carolina and
space flight is not a very simple one,
nor one filled with guarantees. In fact,
the only guarantees to be found are
those that reside in the unchallenged
depths of one’s own determination.”
Sumter
Standardization notwithstanding, students changing
majors have distinct needs. Enter the Cross Campus
Advising program at USC’s Student Success Center,
which provides supplemental counseling to more than
1,500 students.
“A business adviser is an expert on everything to do
with the business curriculum—the coursework, the policies and so on,” said Dawn Traynor, coordinator of crosscampus advising. “But if a student comes in and says, ‘I’m
thinking of switching to journalism,’ that business adviser may not know all of the requirements for that other
major. “We want students to know their options and spend
time thinking about their own strengths and values.”
School of Journalism and Mass Communications adviser
Art Farlowe doesn’t know whose idea it was for his office
to use Skype instead of email when advising study abroad
students. He only knows it works.
“One email question leads to 20 more, especially when
someone’s in the Czech Republic,” said Farlowe, who also
sits on the new University Advisers Network. “Meeting
with one student would take more time than seeing five.”
Now Farlowe sends out one email the second week of
the semester containing his Skype name and a reminder
to make an appointment online. It’s hardly a technological revolution, Farlowe said, but that doesn’t diminish
the results.
“We’ve gone from 10 emails to one, maybe two,” said
Farlowe. “And they get that face-to-face time to tell us
what they’re doing. They’re excited to share their experiences—‘this is where I’ve been,’ ‘this is what I’ve done,’
‘this is what I’m taking.’ It makes it much more personal,
and it makes it easier, too.”
All systems go: new software, new possibilities
Of all the coming changes, the move from IMS to Banner
and Degree Works may have the biggest impact, according
to Loren Knapp, assistant dean in the College of Arts and
Sciences and co-chair of the University Advisers Network.
“Students should have very little trouble with the
new system,” said Knapp. “The adviser, no matter
which college he’s in, will be able to get online and see
very similar if not identical sets of information to what
students are seeing.”
University of South Carolina
2
arts beat
MUSIC
Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama
“Pierrot Lunaire”
The performance stars Metropolitan opera mezzo-soprano
Janet Hopkins, and professor J. Daniel Jenkins, a noted
Schoenberg scholar, starts the show with a multimedia
presentation about Pierrot and its fascinating history.
Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m., School of Music Recital Hall, free
USC Wind Ensemble
USC’s premier wind ensemble presents J.S. Bach’s
Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor.
Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m., Koger Center for the Arts, free
Left Bank Big Band
Jazz professor Kevin Jones directs USC’s premier jazz
ensemble.
Oct. 31, 7:30 p.m., School of Music Recital Hall, free
Now that midterms have come and gone, USC’s arts scene is ready for its spotlight.
Carolina has various cultural events around campus this month, showcasing student,
faculty and staff talent on the stage and the page – many of them free.
Opera at USC - Don Giovanni by W.A. Mozart
(sung in Italian)
The legendary Don gets his comeuppance in this classic of
the opera stage, directed by USC’s Ellen Douglas Schlaefer.
Nov. 2-3, 7:30 p.m., Nov. 4, 3 p.m., Drayton Hall
Tickets: $20 general admission; $15 for seniors and USC faculty/
staff, military; $5 students. Season tickets are available.
USC Gospel Choir
Nov. 11, 7:30 p.m., Second Calvary Baptist Church
(1110 Mason Rd., Columbia), free
USC Symphony Orchestra
USC’s symphony orchestra, directed by Maestro Donald
Portnoy, is joined by Marina Lomazov, for a program of
Beethoven, Strauss and Grieg.
Nov. 13, Koger Center for the Arts, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25 for adults; $20 for senior citizens, USC faculty and staff;
$8 for students. Season tickets are available.
Eduardus Halim, Guest Artist Piano Recital
THEATER
ART
Mechanicals to Megapixels:
A Retrospective of Gil Shuler
Graphic Design, Inc.
McMaster Gallery presents an exhibition that considers noted
graphic designer Gil Shuler’s design legacy.
Oct. 23 – Nov. 23, McMaster Gallery
DANCE
The Shark’s Parlor
Fall Literary Festival
Emily St. John Mandel, will read from and talk about her novel, “The Lola Quartet,” as the last event in the literary festival.
Nov. 1, 6 p.m., Hollings Special Collection Library
Pam Durban reading
The Institute of Southern
Studies presents noted
author Pam Durban who will
be reading from and talking
about her most recent novel
“The Tree of Forgetfulness.”
The novel recovers the largely untold story of a brutal Jim
Crow-era triple lynching in
Aiken County, S.C.
Oct. 29, 7 p.m., Carolina Room in
the Inn at USC, free
Charles Dickens exhibit
Kathryn Chittick, author of “Dickens in the 1830’s,” will give
a public lecture to open the Irvin Department’s Dickens exhibit. The exhibit, “Charles Dickens at 200: A Bicentennial
Exhibition,” will run until January.
Nov. 2, 5 p.m., Hollings Special Collections Library
Palmetto Pans Steel Drums Concert &
CD Release Party
Nov. 15, 7:30 p.m., School of Music Recital Hall
Tickets: $5 for the concert and the reception.
LITERATURE
Nov. 2, 5:30 p.m., back room of Delaney’s Music Pub
Nov. 19, 7:30 p.m., Koger Center for the Arts, free
Palmetto Pans performs the music of Trinidad and
Tobago, as well as island classics and popular music. Nov. 2, School of Music Recital Hall, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $15 for general admission; $5 for students; free for SC
Music Teachers Association Conference Attendees
The creative writing master of fine arts program continues
its reading series that showcases MFA student and faculty
writing. The Shark’s Parlor will take place the first Friday
of every month, 5:30 to 7 p.m.
USC Symphonic Winds and University Band
USC Dance
Company: Voices of
Choreography
The Dance Company
fall concert displays the
technical and artistic
bravado of its dancers as they conquer a
Photo: Nick Applebee
variety of diverse genres
from the classics to the contemporary. Assistant professor Thaddeus Davis will present a contemporary work in
the program.
Nov. 2-3,7:30 p.m., Koger Center for the Arts
Student Choreography Showcase:
Fragments of Light
Under the direction of master faculty, USC students
display their talents as both performers and creators
of outstanding choreography.
Nov. 27-30, 6 p.m., Drayton Hall
Wideman/Davis Dance Company presents
“Based on Images” Professors Tanya Wideman Davis and Thaddeus Davis,
along with other guest artists, will present their original
interpretative work, “Based on Images,” a piece inspired
by national media images of Hurricane Katrina. Nov. 27-30, 8 p.m., Drayton Hall
Tickets: $12 for students; $16 for university faculty/staff, military
and seniors; $18 for general public
Theatre SC: “Compleat Female Stage Beauty”
Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Compleat Female Stage Beauty” is a
darkly comedic exploration of a celebrity’s fall into obscurity. The 17th century social world seems to orbit around
the actor Kynaston, a glittering star famous for his portrayals of female characters, when King Charles II signs a
law allowing real women to take the stage. Challenged to
his very core, Kynaston’s domain of privilege is shattered,
and he must confront his own sense of self-worth as an
actor and as a man. Nov. 9-17, 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 7 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday,
Longstreet Theatre
Tickets: $12 for students; $16 for university faculty/staff, military and
seniors; $18 for general public
Lab Theatre: “The Rose Tattoo”
Winner of the 1951 Tony Award for Best Play, Tennessee
Williams’ classic “The Rose Tattoo” still soars with delicious
melodrama and Williams’ signature gift for language. Serafina is a Sicilian seamstress living in the American South,
who has withdrawn from society (and forced her daughter
to do the same) after the tragic death of her husband. Only a
stranger with an odd resemblance to her husband can bring
her out of her despair and back to life and love.
Nov. 15-18, 8 p.m. all performances, Lab Theatre (1400 Wheat St.)
Tickets: $5 for general admission; available only at the door.
USC Times
October 25, 2012
3
By
USC Salkehatchie
professors find teaching
inspiration on football field
Friday
night
lights
J
Liz White
ohn Peek and Larry Saunders are no strangers to law
enforcement. But the two USC Salkehatchie criminal
justice professors have found an unusual place to practice their professional craft – on the football field.
“Being out on the football field, you’ve got to make quick
calls using your judgment and that’s the same thing I did
out on the street as a field officer,” Peek said. “I like to talk
to students about the games because I can use that as a
teaching moment.”
Peek began refereeing football games 30 years ago. Now
he continues to spend several nights a week on the field
with young players and several days in the classroom with
his students. He said his experience as a field officer for the
South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon
prepared him for making calls on the street, the classroom
and now on the football field.
Saunders, who also worked as a field officer before
teaching, took to the football field following Peek. He
found that play on the field can be a lot like law and order.
His role as a referee means he is making sure the players
are staying within the rules. He likes to pass on lessons he
has learned beneath the Friday night lights to his students
at Salkehatchie.
“When you’re a football official,
50 percent of the people are
mad at you all the time,”
“When you’re a football official, 50 percent of the people
are mad at you all the time,” Saunders said. “Interpersonal
skills, how to deal with angry people – I’m able to pass
those skills that I learned on to students who have futures
in law enforcement.”
Peek loves the excitement. Referees, like players, want
a packed stadium, a lot of energy from fans and to see a
good game, said Peek, who works junior varsity and varsity
games. By the end of the season, Peek will have worked
more than 30 games across the state.
Saunders said he loved officiating so much he moved up
the ladder from little league games and now spends
his Saturdays on the field for Division I-AA college football in the Southern Conference with teams like Wofford,
Furman and The Citadel. He has been working toward
refereeing for the Southeastern Conference. This year
More than
a number
By
Peggy
Binette
Phil Bartlett lives classroom lessons
U
SC professor Phil Bartlett, ’82, can remember standing at
the wall of Gambrell Hall in August 1978 as a freshman,
looking at the roof of McKissick Museum and feeling
overwhelmed by his newly found freedom and the prospect
of navigating campus.
That year Bartlett, a Columbia, S.C. native, was thrown out
of the University of South Carolina on academic suspension.
After spending the next year getting up at 3:30 a.m. to work
two jobs at a loading dock and a grocery store, he returned to
students,” said Bartlett, who teaches a U101 class and has
taught a senior capstone course in strategic management at
the Moore School of Business since 1999.
Bartlett never stopped learning. He went on to night
school to earn a master’s in organizational management and
an MBA, while putting his criminal justice degree to work by
day as a law enforcement officer, and as an active
and reserve duty officer in the U.S. Army.
His degrees led him to teach at Southern
Wesleyan University, Limestone College and USC.
“I found that I loved teaching so much that I’ve
always taught after that,” said Bartlett, “We have a
duty and an obligation to our students. Education
is about someone taking the time to say that you
are not just a number on my roster, and I want to
know who you are, what you want to do and how
I can help you get there.”
Herbert Dongell, a classics professor at Southern
Wesleyan, had that kind of impact on Bartlett. He challenged
Bartlett to immerse himself in a variety of subjects as a challenge of personal growth.
“Education is about someone taking the time to
say that you are not just a number on my roster
and I want to know who you are, what you
want to do and how I can help you get there.”
Carolina with a lust for learning and call to duty.
“It’s a typical story in that a lot of freshmen arrive here
wide open with so much freedom. There was no one asking
me whether I was OK or what was going on. That’s why I
like teaching U101. It’s about building a relationship with
his 18-year-old son followed his lead and began officiating
as well.
“I blinked and I’ve been doing this for 20 years of high
school football and 13 years of college football,” Saunders
said. “It’s a great feeling of accomplishment.”
Saunders and Peek like working together, both on the
field and off, and on Monday mornings like to recap the
excitement from the games that weekend, Peek said.
Refereeing isn’t their only side obligation. Peek, who sits
on the Regional Campus Faculty Senate, serves in the Coast
Guard Reserve while Saunders, who works as director of
criminal justice program at Midlands Technical College, is
in the Army National Guard.
But they enjoy their time beneath the bright football lights
too much to give it up.
“I enjoy doing it all too much. If it ever starts to feel like
work, that’s when I’d probably drop something, but if they
told me tomorrow my knees were shot and I couldn’t work
the game of football any longer, it would really kill me,”
Peek said.
When the stadium lights go out, the two men return to
their day jobs, teaching their students how to play by the
rules and, of course, how to enforce them.
Bartlett started with a summer devoted
to reading everything on the French
Revolution. Ever since, he has immersed
himself in monthlong, intense studies.
There was Dante’s trilogy, Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato, and the works
of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner,
and Albert Camus.
He was still thirsty and turned his attention to language. Working through the
USC Career Center he found and hired
student and faculty tutors. Eight years
and nearly a dozen tutors later, Bartlett is
fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese.
“I remember miserably failing Spanish
at Carolina that first year. I wanted to get rid of that failure
and learn Spanish,” he said. “After two years, Spanish was
getting easy so I added Portuguese.”
With the help of his latest tutor, Carol Yumi de Carvalho,
an international business student from Brazil, Bartlett is preparing for an immersion experience he never imagined. Next
fall, he will teach his strategic management course and an
international development course in Portuguese and English
at Brazil’s University of Federal of Santa Catarina, one of
South America’s top universities.
“We often limit ourselves by our age. You can learn to do
anything you choose to as long as you’re not afraid to do it,”
he said. “I tell students that at USC there are so many things
to get involved in and so many things to do. You just have to
decide to do it. A line will be drawn in the end; it is all going
to sum up to something.”
Bartlett retired from USC in June but continues to teach.
When he returns to Columbia in 2014, he plans to begin his
next immersion -- learning Mandarin and maybe American
Sign Language.
USC Times
October 25, 2012
4
MOVING
MEDS
SAFELY
By
Steven
Powell
A
n interdisciplinary team with a broad range of expertise
– in nursing, civil engineering, computer science, and
biostatistics – is working together to confront a serious
problem in modern health care: unsafe medication practices.
Some 7,000 people are estimated to die and 1.5 million are injured by medication errors, according to a recent
report in the Journal of Healthcare Engineering. Research
clearly indicates that flawed medication systems and complex delivery processes are at the heart of problem.
Rita Snyder, a health care systems expert in the College
of Nursing who holds the SmartState Endowed Chair in
Health Informatics Quality and Safety Evaluation, has been
studying clinical care processes for a number of years. The
administration process is a critical component of medication
management systems, she said, yet little is understood about
its complexity and risks.
A connection between transportation and medication
delivery might not be obvious, but Snyder and Nathan
Huynh, a civil engineer in the College of Engineering and
Computing, see it clearly.
Q&A
developed a web application to collect data for how the
nurses treated the “patients” on an iPod Touch.
“The data were then used to create a computer simulation
– a gaming model, really – of the process,” he said.
Snyder and Huynh are working with José M. Vidal, a
computer scientist and agent-based modeling expert in
the College of Engineering and Computing, and Bo Cai, a
biostatistician and statistical modeling expert in the Arnold
School of Public Health, to develop computer simulation
and statistical models for how the medication administration
process works in hospitals.
In more recent studies, live observations at a local medical
center are being used to refine the model.
“We haven’t used tools like computer simulation much in
health care,” Snyder said. “To me, computer simulation gives
us an opportunity to model clinical processes in a low-risk
way, and then have experienced clinicians look at them and
come up with feasible redesign options.”
With a working model in hand, the team hopes to address current problems and anticipate others that arise
with the inevitable changes that come on an almost daily
basis in hospitals.
Computer simulation offers a real opportunity for improv-
“Both of us look at our practice worlds in a similar way. [Huynh]
happens to be looking at cars and traffic lights, and in this case, I
happen to look at nurses and how they move around when they give
medications,” Snyder said. “But the concepts are generally the same.”
Medication administration is very much a traffic-flow
process. A medicine slated for patient delivery has to proceed
through a highly complex tagging, sorting and transportation procedure involving many moving parts along the way,
including the nurses who administer the drugs.
“I’m a transportation and logistics person,” Huynh said,
“and I saw that what I do was very applicable to this sort
of work.”
A 2010 pilot study involved real nurses working with
manikins in a College of Nursing simulation laboratory.
The nurses treated the manikins as patients while Huynh
With
CRAIG
KRIDEL
ing the medication administration process, particularly by
identifying critical points where interruptions to the workflow might create a higher probability of error, Huynh said.
“This is one of the high-risk procedures in hospitals,” he
said. “When nurses are busy and bombarded by the number
of patients and the number of medications to provide, they
can make mistakes.”
Decreasing the complexity of high-risk processes like
medication administration will, ultimately, make the health
care system safer, said Snyder.
What is the museum’s mission?
The museum deals primarily with programming and exhibitions as an experimental unit of the College of Education.
Our focus is to help the undergraduate and graduate preservice/in-service teacher education programs by designing
exhibits that portray beliefs and values about education in
South Carolina.
What kinds of activities and exhibits does
the museum sponsor?
The museum presents the Chester C. Travelstead Award for
Courage in Education in honor of a former dean of the college who stood up to racial discrimination. We also sponsor
the Charles and Margaret Witten Lecture Series (honoring
the former USC dean of students), which brings to the campus distinguished academics from the fields of education
and the humanities.
What are the museum’s current archival holdings?
When we shifted to becoming exclusively a museum, we
placed our archival holdings in other local and national
repositories. The William Savage Textbook Collection, one
of the finest K-12 textbook collections in the U.S., is now
part of Thomas Cooper Library. Our national collection of
progressive education archives has been sent to university
collections around the country.
USC TIMES
Vol. 23, No. 15 | October 25, 2012
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 White
Designer: Linda Dodge
Contributors: Peggy Binette, Craig
Brandhorst, Frenché Brewer, Glenn
Hare, Thom Harman, Chris Horn,
Page Ivey, Steven Powell, Megan
Sexton and Marshall Swanson
Photographers: Michael Brown
and Kim Truett
To reach us: 803-777-2848
or lwhite@mailbox.sc.edu
Campus correspondents:
Patti McGrath, Aiken
Candace Brasseur, Beaufort
Shana Dry, Lancaster
Jane Brewer, Salkehatchie
Becky Bean, Sumter
Tammy Whaley, Upstate
Annie Houston, Union
What do you like about being curator of the museum?
Visitors to USC may not know about the university’s Museum
of Education, tucked into the College of Education’s building.
The museum offers a look at educational issues and history
in South Carolina. Craig Kridel, the museum’s curator, talked
with USC Times about the museum’s mission and exhibits.
Tell us about the museum’s history.
It was started by retired education Dean William W. Savage
in 1977. The facility originally functioned as a museum and
archive, but in 2005 we became a museum that focuses
exclusively on exhibitions and programming.
The museum not only “preserves the past,” but also expands and rectifies our beliefs and values about education
in South Carolina. We are part of the International Coalition
of Sites of Conscience, a museum network that deals in
thoughtful ways with political and cultural tension. We
spotlight the struggles of white and black educators in trying
to bring about an educational system that is more humane,
thoughtful, caring and understanding. In South Carolina,
educational reform is a quest for civil rights, and educators
working here are fighting for social justice. We deal with
perennial issues that confront the field of education, which
contemporary educators must be aware of and address.
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.