An Economic Overview of Ukraine at a Critical Juncture

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Nationalism often has been a force of political deadlock and economic stagnation. In a place like Quebec, it is possible for voters to decide they are wearisome of separatism and it is time their elected officials focus on economic growth and job creation. In Ukraine, things are much more complicated. One third of Ukrainian exports go to Russia, and the country depends on Russian energy to produce most of its goods. Decades of dependence have nurtured a wasteful and tangled economy, and now Russia is doing everything in its power to undermine the new Ukrainian government.

Unnatural Natural Gas Wars

Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is inefficient and wasteful, making gas imports crucial to economic production. Half of these imports come from Russia. Ukraine’s economy has been built on subsidized gas, as Russia has been discounting sales by a third of market price. Putin claimed that “during the past four years, Russia has been subsidizing Ukraine’s economy by offering slashed natural gas prices worth 35.4 billion U.S. dollars.” Years of discounted gas prices have left its industry with a large and unquenchable thirst. In Ukraine’s current state, industrial production requires twice as much energy as an advanced industrial nation.
Furthermore, the subsidies have led to an energy sector riddled with debilitating corruption. Oligarchs have made billions as middlemen, buying up cheap gas intended for families and reselling it to industrial producers. The lack of industrial innovation, accountability and transparency has led to a ballooning energy debt, with no one willing to risk investment in a solution.
Problems in the energy sector have compounded, and the currency has spun downwards. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, was pegged against the dollar until February to control the cost of imports. The Central Bank of Ukraine decided to float the currency, making its goods cheaper to other countries, in an effort to boost exports. The value of the currency has fallen 27 percent this year, making it the worst performer globally. Cheap currency makes Ukrainian agricultural and industrial products more appealing abroad, but it makes debt obligations hard to stomach.
Ukraine has $35 billion in sovereign debt that will become due over the next two years, one billion of which is due on June 4. As a part of the International Monetary Fund reform program, the international community will contribute $27 billion over the next two years. Of that amount, the IMF will put forward $14-18 billion, depending on the amounts of bilateral and multilateral support.
The main contingency of the IMF loan is to eliminate subsidies and corruption. The IMF stated in a press release that “the program will focus also on improving the transparency of Naftogaz’s [Ukrainian state-owned gas supplier] accounts and restructuring of the company to reduce its costs and raise efficiency.” If history is any indication, this will be much easier said than done. The IMF has helped Ukraine twice before with similar loans, but both programs resulted in failure. Eliminating subsidies requires raising the cost of gas for families, a very unpopular move politically.
Even with the IMF bailout, Russia has been making it all but impossible for the Ukrainian economy to survive. Ukrainian Naftogaz owes Russian Gazprom $2.2 billion, and last month Russia aggressively raised its price 80 percent. Additionally, Putin issued a letter to European leaders stating, “Gazprom is compelled to switch over to advance payment for gas deliveries.” He added that in order to deter Ukraine from syphoning off gas intended for Europe, Russia would require Ukraine to pay $5 billion up front for 11.5 billion cubic meters to hold in reserve. Putin is setting Ukraine up for financial failure at every opportunity.
After news of the IMF package to loan up to $18 billion to Ukraine, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced a total energy debt of $16.6 billion. If Russian demands are not met, it may cut gas supplies to both Ukraine and Europe. Europe gets a quarter of its gas from Russia, half of which travels through pipes in the Ukraine. If Russia cuts off Ukraine, it would reduce the flow through Ukraine to ensure none goes missing along the way. It has been a mild spring, and gas reserves remain high, but Europe would face significant challenges if its energy supplies were suddenly cut.

On The Brink

Russia is demanding Ukrainian federalization. It wants Ukraine to adopt a new constitution that decentralizes the government, shifting power to each region. Each region would be able to choose its own economic policy, retain tax revenue and determine which foreign relations to strengthen. Federalization, assigning federal status to territories, could be successful, but it requires a strong central government to bind the regions together with political and economic purpose.
Federalization may sound like a small price to pay for peace, but granting more autonomy to regions would also exacerbate the already present instability and divisions. The government is in political shambles, the Ukrainian economy is on the verge of economic collapse, and Russian troops wait for an excuse to invade. Federalization would only encourage regions in Eastern Ukraine to gravitate to Russia’s larger and more stable economic body. Eastern Ukraine is already heavily dependent on Russia, and granting autonomy will only facilitate Russian annexation.
Kiev has scheduled presidential elections for May 25, and parliamentary elections will take place soon after. Participation by all regions in the elections is necessary to lend legitimacy to the fledgling government. Putin is expected to exert economic, military and political pressure to ensure failure for the Ukrainian government. Chaos will escalate during this next month leading up to the elections, but if a unified Ukraine stands under a central governing body, it could emerge from this crisis with a stronger national identity and the will to untangle economic dependencies.

Power Ahead

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Clemson is now home to one of the world’s largest and most capable electrical grid simulators. Thanks to the work of Clemson graduate and eGRID creator Curtiss Fox, one day, renewable energy sources like wind, solar and more will do even more to make things go.
When the lights flicker, we barely notice. Our homes stay warm. Our laptops switch to battery backup. Maybe an old clock radio needs a reset, but otherwise life goes on uninterrupted.
In the world of distributed-energy production, however, even a momentary disruption in power can be a big deal.
Whether it’s something as small as a voltage fluctuation (think: a squirrel in a transformer or a tree falling on a power line) or something as significant as a cyber attack on the power grid, knowing how the next generation of energy will respond to these disruptions matters — a lot.


That’s where Curtiss Fox of the Clemson University Restoration Institute (CURI) comes in. The work he and his team are doing today at the University’s Energy Innovation Center on its grid simulator will forever change the way we power our nation, and even our world.
The Duke Energy eGRID has been under construction at Clemson’s Charleston-based testing facility since the first of this year, shortly after Fox was named director of operations. Assembly wrapped up on the eGRID this spring, and the summer months will be spent essentially turning the equipment on in preparation for the center’s first customer: a private company affiliated with the energy industry. [pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#566127′]Although the proverbial switch has yet to be flipped, the eGRID project has been four years in the making, with Fox at the helm since the very beginning — first as a Ph.D. student and now as director of operations.[/pullquote] It’s no wonder the prospect of making the simulator come to life, likely sometime this fall, is so thrilling for Fox.
“This,” he offers enthusiastically, “is when you really start making the equipment perform.”
J. Curtiss Fox receiving his doctoral (2013) degree in electrical engineering from Clemson.

J. Curtiss Fox receiving his doctoral (2013) degree in electrical engineering from Clemson.


FOX RECEIVED HIS PH.D. IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING in December 2013, but his work on the eGRID project dates back to May 2010. At that time, the Department of Energy had just awarded a grant to the drivetrain facility so that it could conduct mechanical testing of wind turbines by constructing two wind turbine dynamometers: one 7.5 megawatts, one 15 megawatts.
The Department of Energy grant had a specific purpose: to allow Clemson to perform Highly Accelerated Life Tests on wind turbines — in layman’s terms, the tests are designed to simulate extreme events, those outside the turbine’s normal operating range, to see how they respond. These tests are important before the turbines are deployed to the field for obvious reasons, namely to prevent equipment failures and avoid expensive replacements on the highly technical equipment.
About the time the grant was awarded, Fox’s longtime Clemson adviser, Randy Collins, associate dean of the College of Engineering and Science and professor of electrical and computer engineering, attended a presentation about the then-proposed wind turbine drivetrain testing facility. Collins spoke with Energy Innovation Center facility director and senior scientist, Nick Rigas, and learned about an electrical diagram of the proposed facility. On that diagram, there was a box. But no one quite knew what type of equipment was going to go into the box.
Collins mentioned to Rigas that he had a grad student who could look into that for him. A few weeks later, Fox drove to Charleston. He met Rigas. He landed the job: grad assistant at CURI. Fox’s main objective was to figure out what kind of electrical equipment went into the box. He also was charged with designing power-flow studies and studying the transient response of the electrical equipment within the facility.
The rest is history, or the future — as the case may be.
THE BOX HAD A NAME, if not a specific function: LVRT equipment. It turns out it was actually an addition to the wind turbine facility’s electrical system. It wasn’t until after the grant was awarded that the Department of Energy came back to Clemson and asked if the University could also look at working an electrical test into what was otherwise mechanical testing of the wind turbine drivetrains.
The answer, thanks to Fox, was “yes.” That box was right in his wheelhouse. Low Voltage Ride-Through, or LVRT, is the ability of electrical equipment to keep working even when there are brief disturbances in the power system — something like lightning strikes, fallen trees or even animals on the power lines. When the lights flicker or short out, it’s because the flow of electricity has been disrupted. Fox had been pursuing a thesis on the subject, and now he had an opportunity to give it real-world application.
[pullquote align=’right’ font=’oswald’ color=’#566127′]So, Fox developed a grid simulator to troubleshoot these kinds of power interruptions and reduce the risks that those in the energy industry worry about as they try to integrate new technologies into the electrical grid.[/pullquote]
Since then, Fox’s work to bring this capability to the Energy Innovation Center has introduced a world-class, advanced testing platform capable of modeling grid conditions anywhere in the world.
The grid simulator is a center for innovation, where energy efficiency, energy storage and smart-grid technologies can be developed, tested and certified before they are rolled out for the mass marketplace. All the while, the project has been an opportunity to educate industry about power systems engineering and to show them how it could impact their future workforces.
“THE QUESTION THAT ARISES IS, ‘How do we go about integrating the renewable, distributed, new-generation storage energy equipment into the existing infrastructure, such that you can offset costs associated with upgrading the infrastructure?’” Fox explains of his work at CURI.
Think of it like this: Say you have a power line feeding a neighborhood, and then a developer decides to build again, and the neighborhood doubles in size. “They would either need to install another power line or rebuild it with bigger equipment,” Fox explains.
“But what if they could come in and install energy storage and not have to rebuild that power line?” Fox asks. “They could defer an upgrade, or avoid having to put in a whole new power line, by simply placing newer, more efficient equipment in existing locations.”
That’s exactly the kind of technology Fox’s grid simulator works to troubleshoot, something that is of great interest to utility companies, energy equipment manufacturers and national energy officials, among others. Specifically, the eGRID houses equipment that facilitates testing of the three key renewable energy technologies: energy storage, wind turbine energy and large, utility-scale solar energy.
It is this third and final component of the testing facility, a Photovoltaic (PV) Array Simulator, that is the most recent innovation moving Clemson to the forefront of the alternative energy field. Clemson’s PV Array Simulator — which essentially combines several acres of solar panels designed to capture energy from the sun into a small box — is scheduled to come online this fall, and when it does, it will be the largest such simulator in the world. [pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#566127′]It will also make Clemson’s grid simulator the only one in the world capable of testing all three of the key renewable-energy technologies.[/pullquote]
The $98 million testing facility has been funded by a $45 million Department of Energy grant, and matched with $53 million of public and private funds. The eGRID represents another $12 million on top of that. It’s truly pioneering technology, something officials at the highest levels of government have taken notice of, including U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman.
“Developing America’s vast renewable energy resources is an important part of the Energy Department’s ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future,” Poneman offers. “The Clemson testing facility represents a critical investment to ensure America leads in this fast-growing global industry — helping to make sure the best, most efficient wind energy technologies are developed and manufactured in the United States.”
J. Curtiss Fox (right) chats with U.S. Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman at the dedication of the SCE&G Energy Innovation Center.

J. Curtiss Fox (right) chats with U.S. Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman at the dedication of the SCE&G Energy Innovation Center.


LAST YEAR FOX AND HIS COLLEAGUES FILED A U.S. PATENT on the grid simulator while he also successfully defended his dissertation on Low Voltage Ride-Through technology. The grid simulator project is now a separate, Department of Energy-sponsored project supported in large measure by corporate partners including Duke Energy and SCANA.
“The energy industry is a growing and changing industry,” offers Kevin Marsh, chairman and chief executive officer of SCANA Corporation, the parent company of SCE&G, a key partner in the project. “It is important for the private sector to work with public partners such as the U.S. Department of Energy and Clemson University to address the opportunities and challenges that face our industry.”
It’s Fox’s past collaboration that bodes so well for the future of the electrical grid.
“As a student, I was allowed to collaborate directly with industry,” Fox says in retrospect. “These projects are only a steppingstone for the research and innovation that will be needed for the grid of the future. I hope to continue to contribute to those efforts.”

SCETV: World’s Most Advanced Energy Testing Facility Opens in South Carolina

Clemson University’s Drive Train Testing Facility: Economic Impact

Clemson and SCE&G partner on one-of-a-kind energy systems research & testing facility

Revolution in Ukraine

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When fellow Clemson alumnus Tom Kapp and I agreed to meet in Kiev on Thursday, February 20, we had no idea that the events of the coming days would consume the entire country and possibly the region at large.

Two days prior, police snipers had begun targeting protestors in downtown Kiev. Some 90 people were killed as the protest reached a fever pitch. I was covering the events for The Daily Beast and had been covering the situation in Ukraine since late November, when now-fugitive Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych caved to pressure from Russian President Vladimir Putin and walked away from a trade deal with the European Union that had come to signify Ukraine’s last chance for western European integration.
For months I had been writing about a new wave of pressure from Moscow, which also led to Armenia’s similar rejection of a EU trade deal. When we arrived in Ukraine, pro-EU demonstrators had been living out in the cold on Kiev’s Maidan Square — the name that would come to symbolize their EuroMaidan movement — for three months.

An Escalating Situation

On February 18, something changed:  Snipers — by most accounts, police snipers — began to target protestors. The shots were not intended simply to stop the protestors’ advance or protect the police on the ground. These were kill shots to the head, neck and upper torso. Simultaneously, police under Yanukovych’s command blitzed the Maidan Square from four directions in an attempt to forcibly remove the protestors.
The protestors, armed with Molotov cocktails, truncheons and riot shields taken from police, began to set fire to everything they could, notably the large stacks of tires they had amassed — tires burn for a remarkably long time — in one final effort to hold onto the square. Protestors tossed tents, tires and debris into the flames creating a ring of fire around the square as police moved in with tear gas and flash grenades with nails taped to the outside to make them more deadly. Both sides resorted to extreme measures of violence. Downtown Kiev became a warzone. When we arrived two days later, the fires still burned, but most of the shooting had ceased.
I can only hope that such gunfire will never resume, though 500 miles to the south, Ukraine’s Crimea is about to explode. By the time this goes to print, Ukraine may again be a war zone.  [pullquote align=’right’ font=’oswald’ color=’#685C53′]The longer we spent in Kiev, the more vigils, flowers and pictures of loved ones began to appear. The tiny glow from thousands of candles soon replaced the smoldering inferno of tires. Violence and mayhem were not the full story.[/pullquote]
We also witnessed a different side of the EuroMaidan, one that was not represented in the nightly apocalyptic news clips. Paradoxically, there was also a peaceful and generous side to the movement.
As Tom pointed out, the first thing he received upon arrival at one of Maidan’s improvised checkpoints — a passageway in the walls of debris manned by Maidan’s own border guards — was a free sandwich and a smile. EuroMaidan had its own hospital and medical team, its own kitchens and serving tables, and its own security force — a force that became increasingly ominous and more organized in their hourly patrols marching through the camp.
 

At the Tbilisi airport, Headed for Kiev

In Tbilisi, where I’ve been living for several years, I checked my bullet-proof vest and helmet. The check-in lady wasn’t surprised. The security guard was.
“You say this is some kind of battle armor?” the security guy with the radio asked. “Bullet proof?” The check-in lady assured him in Georgian that it was fine. She’d been down this road. Turns out Western journalists are rather crotchety about their flak jackets being taken away and messed with.
“We’ve had many similar passengers with this equipment,” she explained reassuringly. I wanted to tell her that this was probably not a good sign for the airline, but I didn’t because she was being sweet, and it was god-awful thirty in the morning, and the process was going oddly swimmingly, especially for a  Tbilisi airport.
When the shuttle bus got to the airplane, three Georgian police cars were parked on the tarmac beside the aircraft, their blue lights flashing. A twinge of reality — where I was headed — began to set in.

The Constant is Change

The biggest indicator that I was perhaps in over my head was the earth-shattering booms coming from “enhanced” fireworks which the protestors were testing out that morning in preparation for another possible night raid by riot police.  The front doors of the hotel were locked and barricaded. To get inside via the only functioning side door, I had to enter the Maidan checkpoint, guarded by extremely serious characters in full armor comprised of random equipment like knee pads, Kevlar, face masks, second-hand fireproof military jackets and orange construction hats. The coming days would reveal every possible random variation of these uniforms.
[pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#685C53′]I quickly learned that the only thing constant about EuroMaidan (and now it seems Ukraine at large) is change — change at an astonishing rate.[/pullquote] By Saturday, the country’s president had fled, wanted for the murder of almost 90 people. That night we watched the freshly released Yulia Tymoshenko roll her wheelchair onto the EuroMaidan stage and address the crowd after three years in prison. Tymoshenko, who also has a questionable past, wasted no time. Representatives from her party, which was one of the central three EuroMaidan opposition parties, now held the top two positions in the country. Yet this wasn’t the Orange Revolution part two. Tymoshenko’s “Fatherland” party had not taken over the government. EuroMaiden, the movement, had, and protestors were quick to tell me that Tymoshenko was not their leader. Many didn’t support her at all.
The future of Ukraine remains uncertain, and the fate of Crimea looks more ominous by the hour. It will take more than competent leadership to unite Ukraine and simultaneously save its economy. All parties involved, especially Putin — but also the United States and Ukraine — are going to have to swallow their pride, or we may have a conflict on our hands far larger than the one brooding in Crimea.


Will Cathcart is a former media adviser to the president of the republic of Georgia and former managing editor of the Charleston Mercury newspaper. A contributor to The Daily Beast, he works in media and business development in the Black Sea region.

 An Economic Overview of Ukraine at a Critical Juncture

ukraine-euro-maidainNationalism often has been a force of political deadlock and economic stagnation. In a place like Quebec, it is possible for voters to decide they are wearisome of separatism and it is time their elected officials focus on economic growth and job creation. In Ukraine, things are much more complicated. One third of Ukrainian exports go to Russia, and the country depends on Russian energy to produce most of its goods. Decades of dependence have nurtured a wasteful and tangled economy, and now Russia is doing everything in its power to undermine the new Ukrainian government.
Read more . . .

OPINION: The standoff in Crimea: A familiar story with no easy resolution for U.S. interests

steven-miller-e1394458796119Steven V. Miller, Assistant Professor of Political Science, tells why President Obama should not overreact to Russian/Ukraine crisis, offers solutions on what United States can do.
On Feb. 22, the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine resulted in a parliamentary vote to remove Viktor Yanukovych as President. The vote passed with 73 percent approval of Ukraine’s MPs. The Russian government responded three days later with a show of approximately 150,000 soldiers on Ukraine’s border. Within one week, the Russian military had put into motion a de facto occupation of Crimea that escalated in tone this past Monday, when Russia demanded the surrender of Ukraine’s defense forces in Crimea. The new government in Ukraine has not granted this wish from the Kremlin and it does not appear as if it will. This situation looks to only deteriorate within the coming days.
Read more . . .

The Family Man: An interview with Clemson's 15th president

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Jim Clements began his tenure as Clemson president at the Orange Bowl in Miami. It was clear then, as he shook hands, liberally gave out hugs and chatted with alumni, students and fans, what his personal style would be — casual, friendly and people-centered. He might be wearing a tie, but you’ll rarely see him with his suit coat. He may be running a few minutes late, but that’s usually because he’s trying to respond to one more question or comment, or hear a concern. He looks people in the eye, he asks their names. He listens. And he quotes his mother. You have to trust a man who quotes his mother.
Not to say that he isn’t intense or focused. But he’s listening as he begins his time here. Ten p.m. to midnight, you’ll usually find him on his computer, trying to keep up with the hundreds of emails that occupy the box of president@clemson.edu. “I’m running a few hundred behind right now, but I will get to them all,” he says.
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with President Clements and ask a few questions.


Coming home to Clemson

What you need to know first about Beth Clements

Read more


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CW: SO NOW THAT YOU’VE BEEN HERE A FEW MONTHS, WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CLEMSON? WERE THERE ANY SURPRISES?
JC: It’s a great place made up of incredible people and a beautiful campus, with a top-notch, high-quality education. Those weren’t surprises; that’s what we expected. That’s the reputation Clemson has.
And the family piece is special. For me, family is everything. We fit the Clemson Family, and we’re thrilled about the environment that is very family-oriented. We’re getting settled in, and we are thrilled to be here.
CW: YOU HAVE A BACKGROUND IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND OPERATIONS ANALYSIS. HOW HAS THAT PREPARED YOU FOR BEING A COLLEGE PRESIDENT?
JC: Computer science classes, operations analysis classes and engineering classes teach you how to think. And in this role you have to spend a lot of time analyzing situations, thinking about how you’re going to proceed, making decisions. It’s helped me. This is a technology-driven world, so for me to be on Twitter and to have students following me, all that stuff helps.
CW: ARE THERE ADVANTAGES OR DISADVANTAGES OF COMING FROM A HIGH-TECH BACKGROUND?
JC: I think there are wonderful leaders with all types of different backgrounds. When I was a kid, I could play football all day and be as happy as can be. Or I could sit around and do math problems all day and be equally happy. The technology has helped me in my role, and the project management has helped me to get projects done on time and on budget and to think about things strategically.
CW: WHAT’S YOUR PHILOSOPHY OF LEADERSHIP?
JC: As a leader I try to surround myself with the best people I can — people who I can look into their eyes, know that they are good people, know that they can collaborate, know that they’re here to make a difference. It’s not about us, it’s about what we can do for others, so I try to surround myself with great people and get them to think big. In life we have a chance to make a difference. I want people who want to make a difference. One of the things that good leaders do is to surround themselves with people who are better, faster, smarter, stronger. You want to build an all-star team. We have the opportunity here to hire a couple of new people, and we will try to get the best people we can. We already have great people here, but any opportunity when we hire, we will hire great people.
CW: HOW DO YOU BALANCE THE DEMANDS ON YOU AS PRESIDENT, PROFESSOR, FATHER, HUSBAND, COMMUNITY MEMBER?
JC: Honestly, it’s not easy. In these kinds of roles, if you’re really in it to make a difference, and you really give it your all, you give a lot of yourself. I really don’t get a chance to go to the movies, and I don’t have time to watch TV. It’s always the University and family. That’s how I try to do it. I’m blessed to have a great wife, and I have great kids. They understand my role. I’ve been in these kinds of roles for a long time, and they understand the time that it takes. I try to balance the best I can, but honestly, it’s not easy because there are a lot of evening and weekend events. I try to get to all of the kids’ things when I can, and they’re great kids, and it’s all worked out. Beth plays a critical role in that, and she deserves a lot of credit.
CW: AND ONE OF YOUR DAUGHTERS IS NOW A CLEMSON TIGER, CORRECT?
JC: Yes. We have four kids. Tyler is 21, and he’s at West Virginia. We have identical twin girls, Hannah and Maggie. Hannah and Maggie were in the honors program at WVU; Hannah transferred here and is studying special education. Maggie stayed back in West Virginia because she has a horse, a dog and a boyfriend, and really likes it there. She is studying elementary education. Then our youngest daughter, Grace, is here. Grace is 13 and has special needs. She, we hope one day, will be in the ClemsonLIFE program. Grace is a very social person and loves to play sports, especially basketball.
CW: WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE CLEMSON IN FIVE YEARS? IN 10 YEARS?
JC: One of the things my mother taught me when I was a kid that I really appreciate — and she taught me a lot of important things — was to be a good listener. She said, “God gave you two ears and one mouth, so listen.” So I’m really trying to listen to what others think. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I’m spending time listening to faculty, staff and students, people on the campus and in the community. So it’s more what we view Clemson as being in five to 10 years than it is what I view Clemson as being in five to 10 years. I will say this: We’re on a great path. It’s a great University with a great national reputation, high-quality academics, low student-faculty ratios, and those are things we need to continue to push. We need to enhance our research profile. We need to hire some more good people and keep things moving, but I hope to learn a lot over the next days and weeks about where we go together. We have a great 2020 strategic plan, but it’s probably time to revisit that and make sure it still lines up with where we want to go. But again, it won’t be Jim’s strategic plan; it will be our strategic plan.
CW: THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT THE GROWTH IN ONLINE EDUCATION MEANS THAT IT WILL REPLACE PLACE-BASED EDUCATION IN THE FUTURE. WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE FUTURE OF THE CAMPUS?
JC: It’s a great question, and nationally it’s a question that we’re all discussing in higher education.The ability for technology to enhance the educational process is clearly there; the technology is now probably where it needs to be. It’s being integrated into a lot of the curriculum, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. What we have to do is be a part of the discussion and not sit on the sidelines. We’re doing some really good things related to online education. But I don’t think the place-based educational format is going to go away. It’s just how you infuse technology and supplement what we’re already doing. So it’s not really an either/or: We’ll have place-based education, we’ll have technology-based education, and we’ll have integration of the two. And that’s what’s going to be exciting. The ability to reach more people with technology is important. So for access, affordability and outreach, technology becomes an important tool. Higher education has changed for decades and decades, and this is just the current stage that we’re in. But it will transform education in some ways.
CW: WHAT WOULD YOU IDENTIFY AS CLEMSON’S BIGGEST STRENGTH AS WELL AS OUR BIGGEST WEAKNESS AT THIS POINT?
JC: Great organizations are built on great people. This is a great University because we have great people; that’s the bottom line. Our greatest strength is based on the human capital that we have here. And what I have seen in my three months, we have really good people. They care, they want to make a difference, they are doing their best. They are overworked based on our level of resources, but they are making a difference.
What are our weaknesses? The one thing that jumps out at me is our facilities. We’ve got to improve our facilities. [pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#3A4958′]A third of our student housing is 25 years old, 25 percent of our student housing is 50 years old. We need some new facilities.[/pullquote] We need new academic facilities. We need some new research facilities. We need some new athletic facilities. So there’s where we have an opportunity to improve.
CW: DO YOU SEE THE TOP-20 AS A CONTINUING GOAL FOR US? AND WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO TO ACHIEVE THAT?
JC: The top 20 is still a goal. It’s been a great goal. And I’ve tracked Clemson’s progress over a decade and a half over other institutions. We’ve made incredible steps forward to the top 20. We are currently sitting at number 21, tied with some great institutions. The top 20 are great universities. So yes, we are going to keep pushing, but that doesn’t mean at the expense of other things. We still need to push research. We still need to push facilities. We still need to do other things, but that will still be a goal. Getting there is not going to be easy, right? Moving from 38 where we were before, to 21 — not easy. It’s trying to figure the steps to move forward. And again, that’s a collaborative discussion that will be taking place on the campus.
CW: WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE CLEMSON ALUMNI TO KNOW ABOUT YOU?
JC: I always want people to know me first as a person. So I always talk about my family. I always talk about my background. I always like to mention that I was a first-generation college student. I think it is important for people to know that my grandparents had a fourth-grade, a sixth-grade, an eighth-grade, and we think one had a twelfth-grade education, but we don’t have any real proof of that. One of my grandfathers was a coal miner and the other one was a firefighter.
What they tried to instill in me was hard work. Follow through on your word, be ethical, give it your all. But they also tried to instill in me, my two older sisters and older brother that education is the key. If you want a better life, here is your path. My parents didn’t go to college. They didn’t have that opportunity. My grandparents didn’t have that opportunity. So for me, I got in the business of higher ed to make a difference, ultimately, as a professor. When I was in second grade, my teacher used to call me “professor,” and, by the way, I always say that’s the best job in the world. It’s better than being a university president. [pullquote align=’right’ font=’oswald’ color=’#3A4958′]Being a professor is what I love. I love to teach. I love to do research. I love to work with students. But, I just wanted to make a difference.[/pullquote] Somehow I got into a leadership role. But one day I’ll go back to the classroom and teach and do research.
Between my two older sisters, older brother and me, we have 11 college degrees: four undergraduate degrees, five master’s, two Ph.Ds. My brother and I finished our Ph.Ds side by side on stage, which was one of the happiest days of my parents’ lives.
This has given me the opportunity for a better life. Let me help others have that same opportunity. Education is good for the individual but also for society. We want an educated society. That’s why I got into higher ed — I just wanted to make a difference.
I want people to know me as me, and then I want them to know about my family, my wife, who will be a great asset to the University and the community, and our four great kids. Those are things, I think from the personal side, that are important for people to know.

President Clement’s First 100 Days



Hope grows here

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You might not ever know it was there if you weren’t looking for it. A garden of five laser-straight rows nestled behind the pool at Clemson University’s Outdoor Lab, home to camps Hope and Sertoma.
The garden is called “Hope Grown,” and it’s the brainchild of Joseph Williams, a soils and sustainable crop systems major.
It’s an expression of Williams’ belief in the transformative nature of working with soil, a laboratory for the sustainable crop production techniques that he believes can change the world and the lives of the campers who visit each summer

A year-round effort

Camp Sertoma serves children ages 7-13 who are underprivileged or have speech or hearing impairments, while Camp Hope is for children and adults ages 7 and up with developmental disabilities.
“The garden is less about me having an impact and more about giving the campers a place where they can have an impact,” Williams said.
Williams began as a counselor at Camp Hope in 2005 while attending high school in Asheville. He’s worked at the camp every summer since, except for 2009 when he studied abroad in Costa Rica. When he became a Clemson student in 2010, he approached Outdoor Lab directors Norman McGee and Leslie Conrad about creating the garden.
“We are always looking for creative activities that our campers can enjoy and learn from,” Conrad said. “We want them to experience a caring adult who is all about them at that moment. We also want them to feel the pride of doing things for themselves. We had talked about starting a garden, but we didn’t have anyone with the skill or passion to take it on until Joe approached us.”
The Outdoor Lab gave Williams a $200 budget, and he turned to environmental horticulture professor David Bradshaw, now emeritus, for guidance.
“Dr. Bradshaw helped me conceptualize the garden. Talking with him sparked my imagination and set me on my way. He also provided heirloom seed, some of which is 10 generations old,” Williams said.
Although Hope and Sertoma campers are at the Outdoor Lab only in the summer, the garden is a year-round effort for Williams. He relies on help from the Clemson Agronomy Club, and he credits Pi Kappa Phi’s PUSH America national philanthropy outreach for providing much of the backbreaking labor involved with terracing the garden and building its structures.
“I want to have everything well established and growing by opening day so the campers aren’t disappointed when they arrive in summer. I apply techniques and ideas that I learn in my major to managing the garden,” Williams said.
One such technique is a soil preparation system called “double digging,” in which the top layer of soil is dug off with a spade, forming a shallow trench, and then the under-layer is dug with a fork. When breaking up the lower layer, organic matter such as compost is usually added to the soil. A second trench is then started, backfilling the first trench. This process is repeated until the whole bed has been treated.
“It’s a lot of work, but it strengthens the plant roots and allows for more densely planted rows,” Williams said.
in many ways, joe is the embodiment of clemson's land-grant heritage. he is taking what he learns at clemson and using it to better the lives of others.

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Growing vegetables and confidence

“Many of our agronomy students are passionate about sharing their love of soil and plants,” said Paula Agudelo, associate professor of plant nematology in Clemson’s School of Agricultural, Forest and Environmental Sciences (SAFES). “They learn to treat the soil as a living system and a life-giving substrate. But Joe has gone even further. He uses the soil-plant interaction as a therapeutic tool and a vehicle for experiential learning. He has mastered the art of helping people enjoy the beauty of growing plants.”
Once the campers arrive, Williams engages them in a variety of ways depending on their individual skills and abilities. He teaches some groups about the system of the garden. He forms weeding or harvesting teams. Some campers carry the harvest to the nearby kitchen where it is used to augment the daily meals. There is a viewing area with a bench and handrails where older campers can watch gardening activities and feel a part of things. He has had them make pickles and turn bottles into planters. Some of the activities are ancillary to gardening, such as decorating the nearby benches.
“In many ways, Joe is the embodiment of Clemson’s land-grant heritage. He is taking what he learns at Clemson and using it to better the lives of others.”
“Sometimes we’ll just stand quietly,” Williams said. “We’ll just experience how the garden co-exists with the environment. And I’ll ask them, ‘What do you see? What do you hear?’ With some of the older boys, I hope that working in the garden teaches them to be strong men of trust, respect and integrity.”
“One of the great things about the garden is that it doesn’t require a special skill set to participate,” Conrad said. “It’s completely unintimidating. Campers can make it whatever it is for them.”
The garden is also a teaching tool for people who sometimes do not share the same experiences as the rest of the world. The garden helps them conceptualize how food is created. Campers with sensory challenges can learn from touching the plants and tasting the produce.
Williams believes deeply in gardening’s transformative powers. He has witnessed camper confidence grow along with the corn, squash, snow peas, watermelons and variety of other fruits and vegetables. Some campers have started gardens of their own.
“Children are analogous to clay. Clay is something that the conventional farmer might think has little value because it’s hard to work with. But clay is waiting to have good things added to it. The campers here are like that clay. They have so much potential,” Williams said.
[pullquote align=’right’]It’s an expression of Williams’  belief in the transformative nature  of working with soil, a laboratory for  the sustainable crop production  techniques that he believes can change the world and the lives of the campers who visit each summer.[/pullquote]

Keeping hope growing

Williams will be graduating this year. It will be time for him to put into action the sustainable farming practices he has learned in his major. He will go out into the world and do his level best to help farmers farm better and more efficiently.
“In many ways, Joe is the embodiment of Clemson’s land-grant heritage. He is taking what he learns at Clemson and using it to better the lives of others,” Agudelo said.
For now he remains “Farmer Joe.” He takes the agronomy club to the garden where they practice all that they learn about agricultural biotechnology, soil and water science and sustainable crop systems. But he has a hidden agenda. He wants to keep Hope Grown going.
“I’ve been coming here for a long time. Many of these people are my friends. When they leave the garden, I hope that a flame has been lit in them.”
Conrad is committed to keeping the garden vibrant even after Williams leaves to begin a career in agronomy.
“Joe could have built this garden anywhere,” she said. “He could have built it in his backyard or at Calhoun Fields. But he built it here because he loves this place and these people. There will never be another Joe. But maybe I can find somebody to care about the garden the way he has.”
For more information about Camps Hope and Sertoma, go to http://www.clemson.edu/centers-institutes/outdoor-lab/camps/index.html.

Don't Judge a Facebook by its Cover

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judge-facebook

Using Facebook has been viewed as an easy way to screen applicants, but does it really have any value? Worse yet, does it adversely impact minority applicants?
A few years ago, after an interview with a potential employer, a student approached us with this question: “I walked into my interview at XYZ corporation, and my Facebook page was up on a big-screen TV. What’s up with that?”

We suspected many companies were beginning to use that approach to screen applicants, but the question spurred us to take a serious look at the role of using Facebook (and other social media) in the hiring process. Can surveying someone’s online persona and leisure-time activities really predict what kind of employee that person might be?
The results of our research were troubling. Not only did we find no correlation between predictions by recruiters using social media and actual job performance, but we also found the practice could result in hiring fewer minority applicants.

A misplaced faith in technology

We began our research by combing all the popular and scientific literature on this topic. We found articles in the popular media advising people to check social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter for reasons such as, “Nothing says more about who we are than our Facebook pages,” “Social media website screening tells you about an applicant’s judgment,” and “Checking social media sites is free and easy to do.” The conventional wisdom appears to be that organizations should check social media sites as a way of evaluating applicants.
Many organizations appear to be heeding the popular advice. Depending upon the survey, somewhere between 30 percent and 70 percent of organizations and recruiters report using social media to screen job applicants, and many report not hiring applicants as a result. It appears to be an easy way to determine an applicant’s “character,” and the amount of available information is just too alluring. Part of that allure may be a misplaced faith in the power of technology to provide better insights than previous less technical methods.
An examination of the literature in employee staffing and related fields turned up more questions than answers and raised concerns of adverse impact against minorities (even if unintentional). Our review of the literature left us wondering: How can an organization compare candidates when the available information is not parallel? Perhaps one applicant’s social media sites have information that allows an organization only to assess dependability, while another applicant’s information would allow the organization to assess social skills. Likewise, what if some applicants maintain social media websites and others do not?
How can this situation be handled in a way that is fair to both candidates, especially when some groups of applicants (e.g., older individuals) are less likely to maintain social media websites? Finally, how might organizations use (or try to ignore) job-irrelevant information available on websites such as one’s religion, political affiliation, gender or sexual orientation?

Testing the approach

These types of questions motivated us to conduct one of the first systematic empirical studies on the role of social media in hiring. We asked more than 400 graduating, job-seeking students to allow us to use screenshots of their Facebook Walls, info pages, photos and interests in the study.
We then asked recruiters who attended a career fair to rate the quality (e.g., knowledge, skills and abilities) of these students, using the Facebook information. A year later, we followed up with the employers to determine how the graduates were performing in their jobs.

The troubling results

[pullquote align=’right’ font=’oswald’]The results may surprise you: Facebook ratings were not good predictors of job performance. We couldn’t find any link between current job performance and the predictions of recruiters based on Facebook pages. That is, Facebook ratings were correlated essentially zero with job performance.[/pullquote]
Results also suggested that African-American and Hispanic applicants tended to be scored lower than white applicants, and males were scored lower than females. So, not only does it appear that Facebook assessments do not predict job performance, they might also negatively affect the diversity of individuals hired by organizations. In some cases, recruiters gave low ratings to applicants with odd profile pictures, sexual references, religious quotes and “non-white” names.

The takeaway

What can organizations learn from this study? One thing is clear: Organizations should be very cautious about using information drawn from social media as part of the hiring process. At best, it is unlikely to identify the best performers; at worst, it can result in adversely affecting ethnic minorities in hiring practices.
Until we know how to conduct more effective social media checks, organizations might rely on more traditional “tests” to hire individuals. For example, organizations might use interviews that focus on the behavior of job applicants in work settings or tests of important job skills (e.g., customer service skills, writing skills). If organizations want to use social media information, they should first determine whether recruiter or manager assessments of such information are related to valued outcomes such as job performance. For example, it might be possible to test out social media checks with current employees to see if their online information is related to their job performance.
Of course, more questions remain to be answered in the area of social media. How do applicants react to these checks, especially if they have to “friend” someone in the company to which they are applying? How does demographic information that was previously difficult to obtain (e.g., religion, political affiliation) affect hiring decisions? We are planning several future studies to explore those questions.
The results of our research are published in the Journal of Management.
Phil Roth is a professor in the Department of Management and has been studying employee selection for more than 20 years. Jason Thatcher is director of the Social Analytics Institute and professor of management information systems. Chad Van Iddekinge is an associate professor of management at Florida State University. He completed his Ph.D. at Clemson in industrial and organizational psychology and continues to work with Clemson faculty.
To access articles about this research in Forbes and TIME:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/03/facebook-isnt-a-good-way-to-judge-potential-employees-say-researchers/
http://business.time.com/2013/11/14/will-your-facebook-profile-sabotage-your-job-search/

Core Strength

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Martin

Disaster doctor knows what it takes to endure.

At 2:04 p.m. EST on October 17, 1989, the “World Series Earthquake” struck the San Francisco Bay Area. As the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants went through their warm-ups, viewers at home watched in amazement as the Loma Prieta became the first major earthquake in the United States to have its initial jolt broadcast live on television.

Heavy equipment cranes and backhoes probe and lift debris from the crushed Interstate 880 freeway in Oakland, Ca. on Friday, Oct. 20, 1989. The Bay area was hit with a 7.1 earthquake on Tuesday, causing the two-level freeway to collapse. Over 250 persons were killed. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Heavy equipment cranes and backhoes probe and lift debris from the crushed Interstate 880 freeway in Oakland, Ca. on Friday, Oct. 20, 1989. The Bay area was hit with a 7.1 earthquake on Tuesday, causing the two-level freeway to collapse. Over 250 persons were killed. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)


While instrumentation recorded the tremors, word went out among the civil engineering and geologic communities that a major event had taken place. Among those packing their bags was James R. Martin II, then a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Tech, now the chair of Clemson’s Glenn Department of Civil Engineering. This was to be his first major disaster assessment in the field, and he would be working with his doctoral adviser, Wayne Clough, an internationally known earthquake engineer who would eventually serve as president of Georgia Tech and secretary of the Smithsonian. As he traveled west, Martin had an opportunity to reflect on the winding road that had brought him to this particular place and time.

A firm foundation

As a kid growing up in Union, South Carolina, Martin’s family vacationed widely up and down the East Coast, traveling on the interstate system that took them south to Florida, north to New York and as far west as Ohio, visiting family and friends along the way. Martin was impressed with the vast ribbon of concrete and steel, with its smooth wide lanes and massive bridges. As impressive as the highway was, what impacted him just as much were the gigantic construction projects going on along the edge of the interstate, just outside the car windows. There were factories, shopping centers, dams and power plants — intricate and complex structures that fired Martin’s young imagination. “It was my mom who taught me to be present in the world,” Martin says. “She always said, ‘Pay attention to what’s going on around you; be a student of life.’ If I returned from a school field trip and couldn’t describe everything I’d seen that day in minute detail, she’d be very disappointed.”
His parents also taught (and illustrated by personal example) that a contributing citizen of the world had to move beyond observing to becoming involved. His father worked for the phone company, but also devoted a great deal of time to public service. James R. Martin Sr. was the first African-American elected to public office in Union County. He served 17 years on the Union County Council and the Catawba Regional Planning Council, and he worked closely with Sen. Strom Thurmond for many years to advance development of rural communities. His mother, Dora T. Martin, enjoyed a 38-year tenure as an educator and served 23 years on the Union County Council. A board member of the Catawba Regional Council of Governments, she was elected state president of the South Carolina Association of Regional Councils. [pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#685C53′]“I grew up in a household where it was easy to be inspired,” says Martin. “Both of my parents were living examples of how we are called to service — to try to make a positive difference in people’s lives.”[/pullquote]

Dora and James Martin, 1999

Dora and James Martin, 1999


It isn’t surprising, then, to know that it was the impact on people that Martin noticed during his first field experience following the Loma Prieta earthquake. “The human element is really first and foremost,” he observes. “An earthquake or flood is a human tragedy first before it is a case history.”

Looking beyond the build

Field reconnaissance must be performed early in the aftermath of a natural disaster before cleanup efforts remove vital evidence. Researchers like Martin are typically concerned with the performance of civil infrastructure such as bridges, buildings, dams, ports and power plants. And the empirical field evidence reveals what worked and what did not.
Over time, Martin developed the belief that civil engineering has to embrace an understanding of social policy, in addition to mastering infrastructure’s technical requirements. He and his colleagues realized the need for a more multidisciplinary approach, which was the foundation for establishing the Disaster Risk Management Institute at Virginia Tech. This National Science Foundation-funded effort has helped establish an education and research environment that includes social and economic perspectives in investigating disaster risk resilience.

James Martin in Japan

James Martin in Japan


Martin represents a new maturity in terms of the discipline itself. “Traditionally, civil engineering has been involved with just the technical aspects of a project, but if you want to be part of the big decisions, you have to go beyond that,” he says. “When we talk about sustainable infrastructure, civil engineering has to be part of the big decisions — where a bridge is going to be built, how it’s going to be financed and who will be served by it. Sustainable infrastructure goes beyond just the engineering parameters that govern the design.”

A personal quake

In 2000, tremors of a completely different sort rocked Martin’s world. He noticed numbness in his legs after a workout. Over the course of the next few days, the numbness got progressively worse, and in two weeks he had lost about 50 percent of the movement and feeling in his legs. He began to notice problems with his vision. His reasoning and short-term memory began to falter. After exhaustive testing, he was officially diagnosed in late February 2000 with multiple sclerosis (MS). His condition worsened, and he required care for everyday living until he began to slowly regain the use of his hands. Eighteen months after the initial attack, he was able to hold a pen and scribble his name. It took another four years to really be able to write legibly and 10 years to regain fine motor skills for things like buttoning a shirt — a task that still can be a challenge.
MS can be debilitating, and it was clear to Martin early on that the disease has to be fought from every angle — physically, mentally and spiritually. Martin was committed to fighting the disease with all he had. He learned about diet and exercise, and explored Eastern approaches to healing. “Healing is about hard work — it’s tremendously hard,” he says. “But the important thing I’ve discovered is that if you really make up your mind to do something, I mean REALLY make up your mind to do something, you can do it.” In the 13 years since he was diagnosed, he has never missed a single day of a planned workout. Even if he gets home at 3:00 a.m. and has been up for 48 hours, he works out. There are no exceptions, ever.
His message of determined resolve is one that he has shared as a motivational speaker and one he wants to introduce to an even broader audience. Martin has completed two manuscripts. It’s Raining details how he dealt with the spiritual and emotional aspects of struggling with a disability. In Buying Time, he outlines the steps one must take to extend the quality of real life. His ultimate goal is to establish a foundation to help people deal with disabilities. “[pullquote align=’right’ font=’oswald’ color=’#685C53′]Most of us at some point are going to have some difficult bridge to cross, and we are going to be tested,” he says. “At that point, you have to reach down inside and bring out that inner strength you need to cross that bridge.[/pullquote] And we can’t bring out what we didn’t put in, so we need to constantly nurture the really important things.”
Martin has been drawing on his inner strength since the day he enrolled in the Citadel for his undergraduate degree. Being from Union always meant that Clemson was a choice for college, but he felt that the Citadel experience would present opportunities for growth, especially in terms of leadership. “Beyond the academics, I knew that the environment there, with its lack of diversity at the time, would be a little uncomfortable, but [pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#685C53′]I’ve always felt that you have to be a little uncomfortable to grow, and if you are committed to growth you don’t care about going into places where you’re uncomfortable.[/pullquote]” At the time of his graduation, Martin was one of a handful of African-Americans in the class, and he was one of the first African-American engineering graduates at the Citadel. Diversity is important to Martin and as the first African-American department chair in the College of Engineering and Science, he sees his appointment as a milestone for the college and University.
“My welcome has been extremely warm and inviting, which I think illustrates Clemson’s commitment to a diverse faculty and staff, and by extension, a diverse student body,” he says. “It’s forward movement, and whether you are talking about personal challenges or academic advancement, what you look for is forward movement.”

Forward movement

Martin is working to achieve forward movement in Clemson’s Glenn Department of Civil Engineering as well. “We have a very good department,” he says. “And I am inviting faculty, students, staff and alumni to join me in an effort to establish a culture of greatness.” Martin points out that Clemson’s location along the I-85 corridor, coupled with its academic computing power, offers unique opportunities. “We live in the fastest growing area of the country right now,” he observes. “And Clemson’s cyber-infrastructure gives us the chance to put together big data for civil systems. We can make a positive global impact with the information and research we can develop.”
Had he stayed at Virginia Tech, the current academic year would have provided some sabbatical time for Martin, which he would have used to polish his manuscripts and refine his research. The opportunity here, though, was something he couldn’t pass up. Having an endowed department is one thing that attracted him to Clemson. Virginia Tech’s civil engineering department received an endowment when he was there, and it made a tremendous difference in what could be accomplished.
“Clemson’s civil engineering alumni are a passionate group,” he states. “From the first time I set foot on campus, I just had the feeling that this is where I am supposed to be, and they’ve reinforced that belief over and over. We have a chance to build something really solid, really special here. And we will.”

Backstage Pass

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The curtain rises on a production of “Mamma Mia” to a packed house at the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts. Three hours later, the three-song finale of “Mamma Mia!,” “Dancing Queen” and “Waterloo” has even the most staid patrons standing and singing along to the music of ABBA, silly grins plastered on their faces.
It was a production befitting the 20th anniversary of the Brooks Center. The acting was superb, the music almost magical. And the technical support for the production came off without a hitch. So much so, that it was an invisible part of the production. Just like it’s meant to be.
But that’s where you find, as Paul Harvey used to say, the “rest of the story.”

Putting it together

Clemson was the first stop on a series of one- and two-night shows for the cast and crew, led by executive producer Stephen Gabriel of Work Light Productions. But they didn’t just come to Clemson for the production itself. They spent the previous ten days “teching” the show — putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, as Gabriel says. It’s the time to make sure the light, sound and scenic details get ironed out and to figure out how the set will break down and set up in the cities they’ll travel to during their 10-month national tour.
This is Gabriel’s seventh time to bring a production to Clemson. The relationship began eight years ago when he met Mickey Harder, director of the Brooks Center, in New York at a meeting of the Association of Arts Presenters. Harder was on the hunt for theatrical bookings; Gabriel was looking for a venue to tech a family musical.
Gabriel offered a challenge: Could Harder provide eight of Clemson’s very best students to work with them from 8 a.m. until midnight for 10 days, free use of the theatre and lodging at a local motel for the crew in exchange for two productions at the Brooks Center?
Harder’s response? “We can do it.”
She laughs, thinking back. “I had no more idea if we could do it or not. Have you had those moments in your life when you knew that this is not going to come again? I knew this was a golden opportunity for what we are trying to do at Clemson, so I decided — I’m going to tell him ‘yes.’ And then I’m going to go back and tell these kids they’re going to have to work their buns off.”
That year, and six times since, Gabriel has “teched” his productions at the Brooks Center. And Clemson’s performing arts students have been right in the midst of it. [pullquote align=’left’ font=’chunk’ color=’#86898C’]For 10 very intense days — from 8 a.m. until midnight — students work in the costuming shop, problem-solve with the sound crew, set up and adjust lights, work on the set and learn what it takes to re-work a Broadway show for smaller venues and constant travel. It’s a chance to learn from professionals and find out what it takes to translate the knowledge they’ve learned into skills of the trade.[/pullquote]
What the students get out of these two weeks is more than just hands-on experience. Harder and David Hartmann, chair of the performing arts department, set up Q&A sessions with members of the company so that all the majors, not just those working with the show, can get answers to questions like, “What’s it like to travel with a show?” and “What does it do to relationships?” or “What do you look for in a technician?”
It gives students a chance, says Hartmann, to actually talk to the producer, designer and technicians, to help them make career decisions and answer the basic question: “Do I really want to go on the road?”
Joshua Carter, a senior from the Chicago area, spent the 10 days as a production assistant assigned to the resident director (Martha Banta) and the choreographer (Ryan Sander). “It was my job,” he says, “to make sure that they had everything they needed while here in Clemson.” That involved everything from arranging meals to coffee runs to serving as a tour guide and problem-solver. What it also involved, he says, was “direct access to these two amazing individuals. I could observe their process and really see how they worked. They were incredibly nice and approachable and encouraged me to ask questions.”

Alumni on the road

Almost 20 graduates of the program have gone on to work for Work Light Productions, a result of contacts made through this collaboration. Gabriel begins to tick off names: “Our head audio on this tour, Jeff Human, is a graduate. Our associate production supervisor, Mike East, is a graduate. This past year on the tour of ‘American Idiot,’ the head carpenter, Eric Stewart, was from Clemson. We have put so many grads on our tour, and our production supervisor has brought even more to Spoleto.”
Human, a 2007 graduate, knows the reality of being on the road. Based in Chicago, he travels the world and averages less than a week a month at home. For this production, he gets the opportunity to travel with his fiancé, also a member of the crew, but that doesn’t always happen. He and East were members of that first group of students who “worked their buns off” when Gabriel brought his first production, “Broadway Junior on Tour,” to Clemson.
Both cite the contacts they made as they talk about their professional journeys. Human interned with Work Light in 2005-06, then went on to work for Technical Theater Solutions (TTS) in Charleston, which partners with Work Light to manage the technical part of the production and also handles the technical aspects for Spoleto. East’s story is similar: He worked on the light board in Work Light’s first production at Clemson, then worked Spoleto in the summer with TTS. While he was in graduate school, he got a job offer from TTS and headed back to Charleston, where he is now vice president of operations. And that job brought him full circle: back to this production of “Mamma Mia,” overseeing the technical crew and the Clemson students.

Getting a foot in the door

It’s not an easy thing for these students to participate in this two-week merging of the professional with the academic, as Hartmann describes it. They’re responsible for contacting their other professors across campus, making provisions for getting notes, taking tests and keeping up with academic work that doesn’t stop just because they have this opportunity.
But the tradeoffs are tremendous, says Hartmann. “It has led to jobs,” he says, music to every parent’s ear. Hartmann describes the intense two-week experience as a professional internship, where the students get a sense of what it takes to work in the world of theater.
Gabriel explains it this way: “You learn at a certain curve when you’re in school, and then you learn exponentially in the first few months when you’re applying it professionally. [pullquote align=’right’ font=’chunk’ color=’#86898C’]The value to the students here is they get two weeks of the real world. Everything they’ve been learning — this is how it is applied. Hopefully, they walk away with an understanding of the level that they have to perform at and the speed of it.”[/pullquote]
But the students get more than just two weeks of experience; they get connections that are crucial to their future. “You have to have knowledge, but you have to have connections to get a foot in the door,” says Harder.

Youth and enthusiasm … and opportunity

That snap decision on Harder’s part eight years ago began a successful partnership. What Gabriel didn’t know was that the performing arts program at Clemson was very young, having just graduated its first class of 12. What Harder didn’t realize was that Gabriel was in the midst of forming his company for the first time.
Both have grown and changed. Gabriel’s company has transitioned to taking Broadway musicals on the road; Clemson’s performing arts program, with concentrations in music, audio technology and theatre, has sent 134 graduates out into the world and currently enrolls 97.
Taking a Broadway show on the road is hard work, and it takes a lot of hands. With this particular production, it’s college students who round out the crew in preparing and teching the show. But for Gabriel, that’s not a compromise.
“We’ve found that the level of the training these students get makes it so that we don’t miss a beat,” he says. His experience with Clemson students has also taught him that “young and enthusiastic makes up for what might be lacking in experience.” He recalls a time during the production of “Frog and Toad,” when an audio problem had them all stumped. “This young, kind of geeky looking guy walked up and said, ‘If you do this, that and the other, it will work.’”
That young guy was Robert Allen ’08, who after a one-year internship with the Brooks Center, went on the road with Gabriel and Work Light Productions as part of the crew for “Avenue Q.” He’s recently finished up touring the U.S. and Canada for a year, running video for the show “American Idiot.” Now, Gabriel says, Allen “walks in the room and he’s very commanding. He knows how to solve problems.”
“We learned early on,” says Gabriel, “that you can find some young, very talented people, and if you give them opportunity, most of them rise to the occasion.”

From a Student Perspective

Mamma Mia
Kelsey Bailey
Year: Senior (graduating May 2014)
Hometown: Chamblee, Georgia
Major: Production Studies in Performing Arts: Theatre
“When I was a senior in high school, I had the experience to come see “Avenue Q” in its second national tour while it was in “tech” at the Brooks Center. Since my cousin, Mike East, was a recent graduate from the Production Studies program at Clemson and working as a part of Technical Theatre Solutions, I was able to get a backstage view of what a show of that magnitude looked like. Meeting members of the crew and seeing how all the technical elements fit together reinforced how much I wanted to go into technical theatre.
Mama MiaAfter the performance, I stood and watched the beginning of the “load out” from the front of the stage. Itching to be up there doing the same thing, I knew I wanted to work on a production like this. Clemson was the only place I could find where I could experience working with a national tour while I was still in school. I didn’t need to look at any other universities after that show; I knew Clemson would be the perfect fit for me.
While working with “Mamma Mia,” I was on the props crew. I spent most days organizing, cleaning, repairing, inventorying and maintaining the props. During rehearsals and shows I was backstage as an assistant to the show’s head of props. I was in charge of tracking props and making sure actors got them in time.
Being able to work on props crew for this show reinforced my love for what I do. I learned to come up with creative and out-of-the-box solutions for problems and saw how professionals had done things as well. Just being a part of the internship gave me the confidence to see myself touring when I graduate.
A lot of us refer to this internship as a two-week job interview, because you have to bring your best to work all day every day, but for me they are the best two weeks of my year.”

Why does the terrapin cross the runway?

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Laura Francoeur and her team balance wildlife protection and air safety.

To rescue a turtle on a roadway is one thing.
To rescue a turtle on a runway is quite another.
Look left. Look right. Look UP.

This is the mission on a New York afternoon, as the Diamondback terrapins poke their heads from their telltale geometrically patterned shells, plodding to cross the JFK International Airport runway jutting into Jamaica Bay.
The wildlife patrol team plucks them from danger and tucks hatchlings into a see-through plastic bag while adults go into the back of patrol pickups, the first step in relocating them to safety.
The loudspeaker atop a yellow-striped, white patrol SUV babbles airport tower chatter until, clear as a bell, comes “Four Left” — the two words you were warned about.
“Go, now,” commands Laura Francoeur. “Off the runway.”
We hightail it to the safety of the crew-cut coarse grass apron. The twin turbine engines roar as the jetliner whooshes by no more than 10 yards away, leaving you feeling out of scale on this landscape, oddly like some small animal beside a highway.
Awed by the din, I look at Francoeur, who smiles, then quips, “It’s just another day at work.”

Managing wildlife and protecting the public

Clemson alumna Laura Francoeur is chief wildlife biologist for New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, “Gateway to the World.”
But today, the world will have to wait, while Francoeur picks up Diamondback terrapins following their instincts.
[pullquote align=’right’ font=’oswald’ color=’#3A4958′]In 2012 more than 1,300 terrapins were picked up by runway patrols during summer nesting season. The critters became media darlings, even getting their own Twitter handle #JFKturtles.[/pullquote] “I did a Google search once for JFK and turtles and there were more than 900,000 hits,” Francoeur says.
To the public and media, Francoeur and wildlife patrol staffers are saving turtles. Actually they are protecting the airport by managing a wildlife problem. While the terrapins pose little hazard to the planes, they do cause a big headache for airport operations.
“Pilots on the taxiways will see a terrapin or a bunch of them, and will hold their positions and radio the tower to have someone from operations come out to pick them up,” Francoeur says. “During nesting season in the early summer, sometimes there are dozens of terrapins in the way. Delays are usually no more than 10 minutes, but they have gone on for nearly an hour.”
Why does the terrapin cross the runway? To get to the other side.

Terrapin crossing the runway.

Terrapin crossing the runway.


Runway 4L juts 400 feet into Jamaica Bay. On one side the terrapins live their lives and mate. On the other, females dig nests to lay their eggs. The biologists have had to figure ways to block the terrapins. Existing fences did not stop the turtles, which would look for gaps to slip under or trudge to the end and go around. The best solution so far is corrugated plastic pipe laid on the ground. The airport has installed more than 4,000 feet of it. “They can’t get a grip and slide back, and the pipe is staying on the ground,” Francoeur says. “The terrapins finally give up and lay their eggs outside the fence.”
Francoeur presented the JFK terrapin work during the 15th Wildlife Damage Management Conference held at Clemson last March. She had time to catch up with friends and colleagues, including her graduate program adviser, wildlife professor Greg Yarrow.
Wildlife-damage management, regardless of the problem species, has four basic components, according to Yarrow, now a division chair in the School of Agricultural, Forest and Environmental Sciences. It’s problem-solving that follows a process: You define the problem by identifying and assessing the damage. Next, study the behavior and ecology of the problem species. Then choose and apply controls, and finally evaluate the results.
Yarrow remembers Francoeur, who graduated in 1995 with a master’s in wildlife biology, and her thesis about deer damage to soybean fields.
Nicknamed “Spike” for her short-cropped gel-spiked blond hair, Francoeur was one of “the graduate students we had then who went all out all the time,” Yarrow says. “They were a group of great graduate students that put Clemson wildlife biology on the map.”
“Wildlife management was the right fit for me,” Francoeur says.

Arbitrating the conflicts of nature and development

Wildlife and airplanes have needed managing since the beginning of flight. Orville Wright wrote in his diary about a 1910 run-in with birds. In 2012, approximately 10,900 wildlife strikes to U.S. civilian aircraft were reported. Since 1988, more than 250 people have died because of wildlife strikes worldwide, according to the U.S. Bird Strike Committee. Damage to nonmilitary U.S. aircraft from wildlife strikes costs about $700 million a year.


A day with Francoeur and a colleague, wildlife biologist Jeff Kolodzinski, offers a glimpse of JFK from the outside in. The terminals, ticketing counters, TSA checkpoints, quick-bite joints, concourses and baggage carousels are out of sight, but not out of mind. “Our job is safety, looking for and controlling wildlife hazards,” said Francoeur.
It’s a deceptively simple statement, as complicated to achieve as is running an airport as big as a New York City borough. About 15 miles from downtown Manhattan, JFK borders the borough of Queens, Nassau County and Long Island.
In statistical description alone, JFK is a mind-boggling place, a city within a city. Some 49 million passengers buckle up for more than 400,000 takeoffs and landings a year on four runways linked by 25 miles of taxiways. Sited on 5,000 acres, the airport core is the 880-acre Central Terminal Area encompassing six airline terminals along with parking lots, hangars, administrative buildings and cargo facilities connected by 30 miles of road. More than 35,000 people work there. JFK’s economic impact in the region exceeds $30 billion a year.
[pullquote align=’right’ font=’oswald’ color=’#3A4958′]It is a microcosm of the world coping with economic and environmental factors, where nature runs into increasing conflicts with its human neighbors.[/pullquote]
Francoeur began her career in Newport News, Va., where she conducted wildlife-hazard assessments for airports and landfills for USDA Wildlife Services. Since 1999, she has been part of the wildlife management team dealing with animals that live or pass through the airports operated by Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — JFK, LaGuardia, Newark Liberty International, Teterboro and Stewart International outside of Newburgh, N.Y.
The work is challenging, even daunting. Animals don’t follow regulations and sometimes neither do people. [pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#3A4958′]The job requires a multi-tasker — part biologist, bureaucrat, trainer, forensic investigator and enforcer.[/pullquote]
On any given day, Francoeur may work on how to discourage hawks from using airports as hunting grounds or preventing deer from dashing across runways. There are meetings with Federal Aviation Agency officials who regulate airports, USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service professionals, as well as state and local leaders. Topics can involve everything from designing new parks (tree selection can affect bird roosting) to supervising taxicab sanitation (some cabbies were tossing their edible trash where animals could eat it).
JFK also has a unique stakeholder — the U.S. Park Service. The airport and the Gateway National Recreation Area Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge interlace in the marshes and upland scrublands that harbor more than 325 bird species.

A CSI for bird collisions

Birds, especially bigger ones like gulls, geese and brants, are an obsession.
“We were mostly in the background until 1549,” said Francoeur. On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 taking off from LaGuardia Airport collided with Canada geese, forcing Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger to land the plane in the Hudson River, saving all 155 passengers and crew.
“Collecting information on bird strikes — reporting them, when and where it happened, the species involved, the extent of damage and how long the plane was out of operation — helps us know how to prepare and respond,” Francoeur says. “We do a lot of training to help airport personnel to know what to do and who to call.”
Being a CSI for bird collisions is also a big part of the job. When a bird collision occurs or a bird carcass is found around the runways, the wildlife management team dons latex gloves and breaks out the evidence collection kits. Often the remains of a smashed bird or one sucked through a jet engine are not readily identifiable.
“It’s called ‘snarge,’” says Francoeur. Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution Feather Identification Lab made up the term for the mess of bird tissue, blood and feathers biologists bag and tag for identification. Tools ranging from DNA to microscopic feather analyses help researchers look for clues and narrow the search. The lab processes about 3,000 cases a year, adding to the FAA Wildlife Strike Database.
Set up in 1990, the database contains more than 133,000 reports. The actual number of strikes is far greater. Officials estimate that only 20 percent — one in five — wildlife strikes are reported.
Experts say hazards from wildlife conflicts are rising, as animal populations increase and adapt to living closer to humans. The number of Canada geese — the species that caused Flight 1549 to ditch in the Hudson River — has risen from 1 million birds in 1990 to more than 3.5 million in 2012, according to U.S. Bird Strike Committee data.
Meanwhile, the number of passengers getting on planes nationwide has soared from 310 million in 1980 to 715 million in 2011 on 25 million flights — a number expected to climb to 37 million by 2030.
The friendly skies have gotten a lot more crowded. It’s a serious concern, but for Francoeur and her colleagues it’s a manageable one for now.
More stories about wildlife management at JFK can be found at:
http://usfwsnortheast.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/why-does-the-terrapin-cross-the-runway/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/nyregion/03birds.html?_r=0

Clemson's Own Monster Garage

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If you go to the website for Clemson’s Machining & Technical Services, you can read about the many capabilities of this department in the College of Engineering and Science. Seven bullet points list everything from drafting and machining to plastic fabrication and welding.
They might consider trimming that page down to just six words:

We can make just about anything.

That’s what director of instructional and research support Phil Landreth ’84 will tell you, backed up by his staff of engineers, artisans and craftsmen who work in the basement of Freeman Hall, packed with high-powered equipment and projects. “It’s like walking into Monster Garage every morning,” Landreth says with a grin, referring to the Discovery Channel show. There are no chrome dashboards or classic interiors, but the challenges they meet each day and the solutions they create have life-changing implications.
Say hello to the four managers of the shop — Truman Nicholson, Jeff Holliday, Brad Poore and Charlie McDonald ’04. Get them talking about their many projects, and their faces light up as they begin to tick them off:


  • Joist hangers and hurricane clips for the Wind Load Test Facility
  • Heart valve bioreactor and part of an artificial knee for biomedical engineering
  • A component of the buoys in the Intelligent RiverTM project
  • Fullerene nanoparticle producers for chemistry, physics and COMSET
  • An etching press, larger than commercially available, for the art department

The list goes on and on — from turf cutter blade parts for athletics to a machine to make miniature bales of cotton for materials science and engineering and air handling shafts for Facilities Maintenance and Operations. They produce samples for undergraduate labs to use for stress testing. They’ve helped students develop easy-to-connect joints for the steel bridge competition. They’ve created a mechanism to dynamically compress artificial cartilage tissue as it is being grown. They even worked with emeritus professor Cecil Huey to replace the governor on a historic steam engine for the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico.



 

Etching Press

Etching Press
When art professor Sydney Cross wanted an etching press larger than she could find commercially, she went to the guys in Machining & Technical Services. The outcome? An etching press with a 5’x8′ bed.
“It is the largest etching press at a university on the East Coast,” says Cross, “and I don’t know of anyone commercially producing them at that size.” Her classes use the press on a regular basis. Pictured here is Claudia Dishon ’10, who completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in printmaking.

2012 SAE formula hub


The MTS shop produces a number of parts for the formula car teams that Clemson fields. Pictured here is the front hub being machined for the 2012 SAE formula car.

Heart valve bioreactor

Heart valve bioreactor
The MTS shop created parts for a heart valve bioreactor that was developed in Dan Simionescu’s Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine at the Clemson University Biomedical Engineering Innovation Campus (CUBEInC). CUBEInC, which opened in December 2011, is part of Greenville Hospital System’s Patewood campus.
Faculty at CUBEInC collaborate with cardiovascular and orthopedic surgeons across the hospital system and expose their students to the highest levels of research.

Stress testing samples

Stress testing samplesIn undergraduate engineering labs, students perform stress tests to determine how various materials respond and to see the relative strength of different metals. MTS produces samples like the ones pictured here.

Fullerene nanoparticle producers

Fullerene nanoparticle producersWhen chemistry professor Ya-Ping Sun needed to create a mechanism to produce fullerene nanoparticles, he came to MTS. They worked with him and others in chemistry, physics and COMSET (Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies) to create this mechanism that produces carbon molecules used in pharmaceuticals, lubricants, coatings and composite materials.

Hurricane clips

Hurricane clipsWhen civil engineers were developing hurricane-proof building techniques, they worked with MTS to create joist hangers and hurricane clips that were then tested in the Wind Load Test Facility. Pictured here is one of the hurricane clips developed to keep roofs from lifting off houses during storms.



 

From drawings to reality

On the walls of the shop you’ll see pictures of years and years of formula cars designed, built and raced by Clemson students for the annual Society of Automotive Engineers competition. The silent partners in the projects are the guys in MTS.
“The students are building a prototype,” says Nicholson, “and we create different parts for them, like the rotors and the throttle body and the axles.” He picks up a differential that has been crafted out of a solid block of aluminum. “We usually do the differential.”


The competition is early May. Like other projects, these might start with a drawing on a napkin, but Landreth and the others pride themselves on the ability to work with students and faculty to figure out solutions, then make those solutions a reality.
“We meet with the students and talk about what they want and need,” says Nicholson. The back-and-forth conversation elicits a much better product than just dropping off an order and picking it up when it’s finished.
“I can count on one hand the failures    we have had of not being able to give someone what they need,” says Landreth.


Clemson SAE Formula Team

Where the rubber meets the road

Across campus in another little-known building are two guys spending their Friday morning working on Clemson’s SAE formula car for the competition that is less than three weeks away. The frame is welded together and sits on a large worktable. The whiteboard on the door lists most of the tasks that need to be finished, with a countdown of days to go before competition (19 at this time).
“There are more things we need to do, but I’m afraid if I put everything up there, it will overwhelm some of the team,” says Kevin Carlson, one of the team leaders. He and team member TJ Theodore will be here most of the weekend.
The SAE formula team is made up of students from mechanical engineering, industrial engineering and business who average 10-15 hours a week beginning in the summer. No course credit, no compensation. The seniors on the team will even have to choose between attending the competition or walking at graduation. Some of the team members (including the other team leader, Perry Ellwood) are working co-op jobs and come back to Clemson to spend their weekends on the car. Two alumni team members return once or twice a week to help as well.
The team relies heavily on the guys from MTS, who have produced 14 parts for this year’s car.
“We have 125 hours of MTS time,” says Carlson. “We completely design the car in SolidWorks [software application] and then go to MTS with drawings. They do the steering gears, the wheel hubs, the trigger wheels, the throttle body.” The team mills some parts themselves by hand. And they wrangle others, both donated and sold, from outside vendors.


Working with MTS not only saves the team money, but it also provides them with technical expertise. “It saves us around $6,000 to have their help,” says Carlson. “Hour-wise, it saves us over 300 hours of machining if we had to do it ourselves. They’re a huge help, both with the parts and giving us knowledge on how to machine things better or more efficiently.”

An engine for the rest of campus

The crew in MTS are probably best known for their work with the SAE formula car, but there’s not a college or department on campus that has not been affected by their work. Bioengineer Karen Burg discovered their capabilities while she was still a graduate student. Now a prolific researcher and holder of an endowed chair in bioengineering, she shares some of the credit with them for Clemson research productivity.
“I’ve worked with the Machining & Technical Services staff since I was a graduate student,” she says, “and I’m grateful for all their assistance on numerous projects. They are enthusiastic and helpful, and they have significantly increased our ability to conduct cutting-edge research.”
The MTS crew has worked with Burg to create an instrumented container used for growing tissue for breast cancer research. Caught in a more casual moment, Burg remarks, “In short, Phil [Landreth] and the Machining & Technical Services personnel ROCK.”
The rest of the Clemson crew agrees.


Clemson's Monster Garage group
In addition to Phil Landreth and the four managers, the staff of Machining & Technical Services includes (L–R) David Kelley, Glen Rankin, Scott Kaufman, Brittney McCall, Bill Simmons, Dustin Gravley (kneeling), Dock Houston and Wendy Baldwin.