Archive for year: 2016
Clemson featured in Google college expeditions virtual reality project
Clemson is one of the featured participants in Google’s Expeditions Pioneer Program, a virtual reality project that will enable children in schools across the world to visit colleges and universities without ever stepping foot on the campuses. One of the locations the Google virtual campus tour will take students is Clemson’s historic Bowman Field.
Clemson is the first university in South Carolina invited to participate. Schools in the program represent a wide variety of institutions, from community colleges to internationally recognizable universities.
The virtual reality experience can be accessed with a smartphone and Google Cardboard — a simple cardboard viewer that can be ordered or built with downloadable plans through the Google Cardboard website: https://www.google.com/get/cardboard.
Clemson’s Creative Services and Digital Marketing teams worked together to create text and imagery to feature in the virtual tour experience. Viewers of Clemson content in the program will be able to experience more than 30 points of interest on campus via panoramic photography, including the Watt Family Innovation Center, R.M. Cooper Library, the Outdoor Amphitheater, Bowman Field, Howard’s Rock and many others.
Google hopes to release the app to the public by the end of the 2015-2016 school year. Until then anyone can request access by going to https://goo.gl/fuQb6c.
Comporium Inc. partners with Watt Family Innovation Center
The Watt Family Innovation Center
An innovative South Carolina-based telecommunications company is partnering with the new Watt Family Innovation Center to transform student lives and campus academics. Comporium Inc. has pledged $3 million in financial support and in-kind products and services to the Watt Center and will be a Founding Innovation Partner in the new facility that fosters collaborative research activities, product use and demonstration, and philanthropic support.
“It is wonderful to have another South Carolina-based company on board as a Founding Innovation Partner for this incredible facility,” said President Clements. “Comporium is a world-class leader in telecommunications, and I am grateful for their support.”
Headquartered in Rock Hill, Comporium Inc. is a diversified telecommunications company that embraces innovation to provide voice, video, data, wireless and security products and services. Clemson’s faculty, staff and students historically have collaborated and partnered with Comporium in academic and research areas related to a wide spectrum of interest and business operations. This new relationship centers on a multi-faceted engagement that includes philanthropic support of students, faculty, equipment and operations in the new center.
“Comporium sees a great value in educating students in real-world collaboration to take a technologically advanced idea to the development of a practical application,” said Comporium President and CEO Bryant Barnes ’76. “We believe that the center’s role in fostering entrepreneurship and leadership with an emphasis in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) will serve the citizens of South Carolina. The Watt Center enables the connectivity of the Technology Incubator at Knowledge Park in Rock Hill and others to this network.”
Charles Watt, executive director of the Watt Center, said, “We are excited that Comporium has joined our elite level of Founding Innovation Partners. It is an outstanding family-owned company with corporate operations in Rock Hill.
“Since its original chartering in 1894, it has embraced delivery of innovative products and services that are provided in its telephones, data centers and connected security systems. The company has received numerous national, state, county and local awards for excellence in the telecommunications industry and for its contributions to academic and community activities in South Carolina.”
The Comporium gift is part of the $1 billion Will to Lead for Clemson capital campaign.
For more about the Watt Family Innovation Center, see the feature story in this CW Spring 2016.
A Plan Designed to Build Futures
Bowl games bring out the Orange
The Orange Bowl and the National Championship this season put the spotlight on Clemson Clubs in the Miami and Phoenix areas. Both cities turned orange as Clemson fans showed up in mass for the games.
Orange-bedecked fans also visited the Grand Canyon in droves, making it look like it should be a Clemson attraction, rather than a national park.
Clubs in both cities, with the help of the Alumni Association, organized an array of activities that included service projects, tailgates, pep rallies and other pre-game events. Clemson alumni and fans so impressed the chair of the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority that he sent a letter to South Carolina newspapers.
“Clemson may not have won the title, but the Tigers and their followers left a lasting and positive impression in the Valley of the Sun this week,” he wrote. “Local residents, business owners and dignitaries were so impressed with the way Clemson fans conducted themselves during the team’s first trip to the desert.”
Clemson fans are confident that it won’t be the last.
Giving a hand up, not a hand out: Caroline Tyler Robertson ’97
From an early age, Caroline Robertson was a wallflower — so shy that even a teacher calling on her in high school riddled her with immediate panic. But these days, “no” isn’t even an option. A personal challenge she made to herself while at Clemson shaped Robertson into a strong-willed, determined nonprofit executive who fights tooth and nail for her clients to succeed and have the same opportunities she’s been afforded.
Since 2007, Robertson has headed up Greer Relief and Resources, making sure every can of corn feeds a hungry tummy and every monetary donation helps a family’s financial crisis.
“The legacy I’m leaving is one of fearlessness. I don’t say no to anything especially when it comes to outreach and publicity. Because I’m not just talking to someone who might just help us donor wise, but also need wise.
I want anyone who needs us to know they can get to us. In that respect we’re not afraid. We’re not afraid to ask for help. We’re not afraid to give help. We’re not afraid to say we need to give more and do more. It doesn’t take much,” she said.
In 2015, Greer Relief assisted 3,927 individuals in 1,564 households. In addition, 10+ days of food was given to 4,991 people in 1,906 households. Having the gumption to be an advocate for others started in college with a promise to no longer let shyness dominate the determined will that truly existed within her.
Each week Robertson made herself sit in the front of the class and raise her hand at least once. She also made herself take speech as a first-semester freshman. After freshman year she joined the national service sorority Gamma Sigma Sigma and became the sorority’s public relations officer. She was a founding member and vice president of membership for Kappa Kappa Psi, a national honorary band fraternity.
By mid-college she was house manager for Tiger Paw Productions and organizing shows for James Taylor, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, and Hootie and the Blowfish.
[pullquote]“I love Clemson,” she said. “Any other place, I don’t think would have created the Caroline I am today. I have been solid orange since I stepped on that campus on Aug. 23 of 1991 and I have not looked back.”[/pullquote]
“There were times where it was questionable if I could even afford to go to school, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer and did whatever needed to be done. Now, I take that same attitude into Greer Relief,” she said.
“We do whatever we can do to help.”
Runnin’ Wild: Christy Belcher ’03
Christy Belcher wrapped her arms around the newborn giraffe much like she did a foal during her field training at Clemson. Belcher had arrived at the Greenville Zoo early Feb. 2 after receiving a 5 a.m. phone call. Initially, she ignored the call, thinking she was hitting snooze on her alarm. The phone rang again. She sprang awake, now realizing what was happening. The zoo’s female giraffe, Autumn, was giving birth to her third calf.
Adrenaline racing, Belcher hurried through the dark and fog to the downtown Greenville Zoo. When she arrived, Autumn was standing in her stall, in the early stages of labor. Tatu, a boy, was born at 6:16 a.m.
“Those few moments of watching for the baby to take its first breath seemed like an eternity to me,” Belcher said. “Once I saw it breathing I felt much better about it.”
Tatu was standing within an hour.
“We’ve had a lot of sleepless nights, but it’s well worth it,” Belcher said.
A 2003 graduate of Clemson’s Animal and Veterinary Sciences program, Belcher has been a veterinarian at the Greenville Zoo since 2009. An Easley native, she was always fond of animals. As a child, she would sneak turtles and snakes into her home against her mother’s wishes.
Belcher’s training with livestock on the research farms at Clemson would serve her well as she transitioned to a career working with the 350 exotic animals at the Greenville Zoo.
“The giraffes receive the same vaccines that we use in horses and cows,” she said. “The vaccine that my cat at home gets is the same rabies vaccine that our leopards and lions get.”
After Clemson, Belcher studied in the Caribbean and at North Carolina State University and Texas A&M University. At the Greenville Zoo, Belcher helped design the first Winter Zoo Vet Camp and collaborated with Clemson’s Animal and Veterinary Science department to design a pre-veterinary science summer internship eligible for college credit.
“Everyone asks me, ‘How do you know how to work on a giraffe?’ It really did start with my training and education at Clemson, just being out on the farms with the horses, with the cows, with the goats and the sheep,” Belcher said. “I like to tell people to always embrace the education [you] are getting at Clemson because you never know what that’s going to prepare you for.”
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXwUMquS9Yo
Construction begins on football operations facility
Ground was broken in November for a new football complex that is expected to open in early 2017. The new 140,000 square foot, $55 million project, located next to the indoor practice facility and existing practice fields, will be financed completely by the athletic department
and IPTAY, including $19.5 million of athletic revenue bonds, along with private support.
“We are very excited and appreciative about this new day-to-day home of our program,” said Coach Dabo Swinney. “This complex will be one of the best in the nation and will allow us to continue our pursuit to be among the best programs in the country. We look forward to it being the home of Clemson football for a very long time.”
Coach Swinney describes the new complex as the “epitome of Clemson: fun, special and the best in the country.” To that end, one of the goals of the facility is to provide members of the football program and visitors with a unique Clemson experience. In addition to an indoor replica of the Hill and Howard’s Rock, the facility will include a career development and leadership center, a players’ lounge, locker rooms, training/rehab facility, weight room, nutrition center and dining facility, meeting rooms, coaches’ offices and a first-of-its-kind recruiting war room.
“This project will be a huge step forward not only for our football program but for each of our sports,” Director of Athletics Dan Radakovich said. “We’ve begun studies on how best to utilize the WestZone to most effectively impact each of our student-athletes, and we sincerely appreciate the support of IPTAY and all of our donors who will make this new complex a reality.”
