Magic Comes to Men of Color

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

Magic Johnson comes to Men of ColorFOR FOUR YEARS, Clemson’s Men of Color National Summit has featured an impressive lineup of speakers. Leaders from business, government, athletics and academics have spoken to students about their potential and pathways to success. This year, NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson joined the all-star lineup of speakers March 3-4 in Greenville.
Johnson brought his inspiring story of athletic and entrepreneurial success to the high school students in attendance, including members of Clemson’s college readiness program, the Tiger Alliance. He joined keynote speakers and entertainment, including Alberto Gonzales, 82nd U.S. attorney general; Jim Murren, chair and CEO of MGM Resorts International; Akbar Gbaja-Biamila, host of American Ninja Warrior and former NFL player; Robert E. Johnson, chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth; Johnathan Holifield, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ Domestic Policy Council; Peter Villegas, vice president and head of Coca-Cola’s Office of Latin Affairs; and Victor Robertson of Three Mo’ Tenors.
Lee Gill, chief inclusion officer and special assistant to the president for inclusion and equity at Clemson, sees the lineup of speakers as the embodiment of the summit’s goal: “Our keynote and breakout speakers are testaments of what happens when the opportunity gap is overcome and organizations commit themselves to diversity and inclusion.”
Tiger Alliance students are part of a college readiness experience that includes relationships with mentors, college visits, college-prep workshops and attendance at the Men of Color Summit. The Tiger Alliance program kicked off at the summit in 2017 and has already shown what is possible when African American and Latino students are empowered and engaged in their education; seniors from the 2019 Tiger Alliance cohort had a 98 percent graduation rate.

Honoring the Best

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

 Mary Beth Kurz receives Class of ’39 Award for Excellence

Clements and KurzCLEMSON FACULTY have recognized associate professor of industrial engineering Mary Beth Kurz as one of the very best among them by awarding her the Class of ’39 Award for Excellence.
The award, endowed by the class of 1939 to commemorate its 50th anniversary in 1989, is presented annually to a faculty member whose outstanding contributions for a five-year period have been judged by fellow faculty to represent the highest achievement of service to the student body, University, and community, state or nation. The recipient also becomes an honorary member of the class of 1939.
Calling Kurz a “complete professor” with a heart for service in nominating her for the award, William Ferrell, Fluor International Supply Chain Professor and associate dean of the Graduate School, wrote Kurz is “an excellent faculty member who has balanced success across teaching, research and securing funding.”
Kurz said she was humbled to learn she would receive the award: “Many of my campus heroes are in the class of 1939, and I am honored that my colleagues have elected to have me join this class. I feel the weight of the deeds of the original members of the class of 1939 and hope to live up to their reputation.”
Kurz, who came to Clemson in 2001, said she believes that being a faculty member is a long-term commitment between her and the University. “Being a faculty member who stays at an institution and grows with the institution requires engagement on both sides,” she said. “Some people are very happy and successful having a career focused on their labs, their students, their research. I like to engage with people in lots of ways, and so I have developed relationships with people through various activities, like college-level computing or curriculum committees, or University-level activities, like curriculum committees or Faculty Senate.”
“Students — both undergraduates and graduates — indicate she is an excellent classroom teacher,” Ferrell wrote. “Her approach is always to lead by example where the students know that she is working alongside them, not telling them what to do.”
Kurz’s research, for which she has garnered more than $4.8 million in funding, focuses on tactical decision-making in assembly systems.

The Clemson Medallion

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

Clemson awarded its highest honor to two distinguished alumni

THE CLEMSON MEDALLION is presented to individuals who have rendered notable and significant service and support to the University and who exemplify the dedication and foresight of founder Thomas Green Clemson. Professor Emeritus Beverly “Ben” Skardon ’38 and Trustee Emeritus Allen Price Wood ’75 were honored with the Medallion at a presentation ceremony in February.
“Both of these men have helped shape the University in important ways,” said President James P. Clements. “Col. Skardon made a lasting impact by teaching countless students during his career, and students are being educated every day in buildings that Allen Wood designed. It is safe to say that our University would not be what it is today without these two outstanding leaders.”
Ben SkardonBEVERLY “BEN” SKARDON ’38 Ben Skardon, a U.S. Army veteran, fought in the Philippines in World War II, earning two Silver Stars and a Bronze Star for valor before becoming a prisoner of war when American troops were forced to surrender to the Japanese on April 9, 1942. Skardon survived the Bataan Death March and more than three years in Japanese prison camps, despite becoming deathly ill. Two fellow Clemson alumni, Henry Leitner and Otis Morgan, kept him alive by spoon-feeding him and eventually trading his gold Clemson ring — which he had managed to keep hidden — for food. It is a story now told at every Clemson ring ceremony, when Clemson seniors receive their class rings.
Leitner and Morgan did not survive the war. Skardon honors them every year by walking in the Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
After retiring from the Army at the rank of colonel in 1962, Skardon earned a master’s degree from the University of Georgia, then joined the Clemson faculty in the English department in 1964. He taught at Clemson until his retire-ment in 1983. Skardon has received several honors from the University, including the Alumni Distinguished Service Award. In 2013, the University established the Skardon Clemson Ring Endowment, which helps fund the ring ceremony, and in 2016 the Memorial Stadium flagpole was dedicated in his honor. On Skardon’s 100th birthday, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster presented him with the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest honor. In March 2018, Skardon received the Congressional Gold Medal honoring Filipino and American veterans of World War II.
Allen WoodALLEN PRICE WOOD ’75 Allen Wood, who lives in Florence, South Carolina, and graduated from Clemson in 1975 with a degree in architecture, served on the University’s board of trustees from 1988 to 2003. He served as vice chair of the board from 1995 to 1997.
An architect by profession, Wood was chair of Moseley, Wilkins and Wood Architects of Florence before retiring in 2004. He designed and/or was the architect of record for several University buildings, including Lehotsky Hall, the CCIT Information Technology Center, and the Pee Dee Research and Education Center in Florence. Wood was an early proponent and supporter of the Charles E. Daniel Center for Building Research and Urban Studies, which opened in 1972 in Genoa, Italy.
He and his wife, Josie, endowed a fellowship to support architecture graduate students to spend a semester in Genoa or at the architectural program in Barcelona, Spain. He has been an active supporter of the Emerging Scholars program and played an important role in the creation of Clemson’s Wood Utilization + Design Institute.
He was honored for his service to the state with the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest honor, in 1995, and Wood also received the University’s Alumni Distinguished Service Award in 1996.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Good House

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

Student athletes completed a Habitat for Humanity home build project

Athletes build Habitat for Humanity house
Clemson Athletics and Pickens County Habitat for Humanity teamed up to construct a home build project in the city of Clemson. Three hundred and thirty student athletes logged over 1200 hours to build the home from scratch and were present from day one to the day of the house’s dedication on January 16th. The project took over a year to complete.
Funded in part by IPTAY and the Nieri Family Student-Athletics Enrichment Center, the home build was completed by student athletes representing all of Clemson’s athletic programs, making this the first time Clemson athletes have built a Habitat house from start to finish.
Weather conditions posed the most serious challenge for the group. Some days it was freezing; other days it rained and turned the ground to mud, forcing the volunteers to lay down tarps before they could continue to work on the foundation. Their tireless efforts resulted in a three-bedroom house — where Tabitha Good and her family now live.
Many student athletes had the opportunity to work alongside the Good family, including former men’s track and field runner Darron Coley.
“I knew they were coming from a rough situation, I knew about the time and energy they put in, and I knew that they worked hard to get their house,” said Coley. [pullquote]“Knowing that I made an impact, no matter how small, was really great.”[/pullquote]
The student athletes who participated appreciated the chance to not only bond with their fellow classmates but also pitch in for the greater community. The project provided ample time to reflect.
“The little things we do can actually be a lot bigger than us,” said Maura Chozick, a senior on the women’s rowing team. “Putting in a couple nails, having fun with my friends, hammering some things turned into a house.”
Several coaches and faculty members were also able to work on the build with their students. Women’s soccer coach Eddie Radwanski was thankful for the opportunity to contribute meaningful work alongside his students.
“All of our student athletes, they all come from different backgrounds; they have different stories. I think these moments provide great perspective,” he said. “Obviously there are things that you can talk about as a coach: You can try to educate or give a life lesson to somebody. But in moments like these, no words are really needed.”

Softball Opens at Clemson

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

 Team experiences abbreviated first season in new stadium

New Clemson Softball team takes fieldCLEMSON KICKED OFF ITS INAUGURAL SOFTBALL season this spring, with a 6-2 win in its opening game against St. John’s at UCF’s Black & Gold tournament in Orlando, Florida. Freshman righthanded pitcher Logan Caymol earned the program’s first-ever win in the circle and posted a game-high eight strikeouts. Freshman shortstop Hannah Goodwin belted an opposite-field three-run home run over the right-field wall to break a 1-1 tie in the fifth inning, which gave Clemson a 4-1 lead.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Clemson Head Coach John Rittman after the game. “As coaches, we’ve been here since late 2017. It’s all coming to reality. Today was a great effort by our team. I felt that we had some great performances today, starting in the circle with Logan Caymol. The battery with [her] and JoJo Hyatt was terrific. We had some clutch hits — Hannah Goodwin breaking the game open with a big home run [and] Cammy Pereira providing a lot of spark offensively.”
A sold-out crowd cheered on the team in its home opener on Feb. 12 against Western Carolina. Clemson dropped the first game of the double header 0-2 but roared back in the second game. Caymol did not allow a single hit and struck out 11 batters as the Tigers defeated Western Carolina 8-0 in five innings. Valerie Cagle hit a 252-foot home run to left-center in the first inning of the nightcap, and Clemson never looked back.
The new stadium was completed in January and features 1,000 fixed chairback seats, in addition to berm seating. The facility also includes a team clubhouse with over 12,000 square feet of conditioned space that houses a team lounge, locker room, sports medicine room, equipment room and coaches’ offices. The facility also features locker rooms for the coaches, umpires and visiting team.
With the shutdown of NCAA sports in March due to the novel coronavirus, the team experienced an abbreviated first season, finishing 19-8 overall and 5-1 in the ACC.
 

 

Summer Clemson Fun

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

Summer ScholarsAre you exploring summer possibilities for your children or grandchildren? Do you have a high school student interested in attending Clemson? Clemson University Summer Scholars offers weeklong sessions May 31-August 1 for high-achieving middle and high school students on topics that range from architecture and engineering to packaging science and professional golf management. The early bird registration deadline is April 1.

 | Clemson sponsors numerous other overnight camps and day camps for elementary, middle and high school students. Go to clemson.edu/summer/camps for more information.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

Regret illustrationHow many times have you wished you could give your younger self a piece of advice? Clemson psychology professor Robin Kowalski is willing to bet there’s not a single person who hasn’t thought about this at least once in the last year. According to her research, the odds are pretty good that she’s right.

Her latest article in the Journal of Social Psychology, “If I knew then what I know now: Advice to my younger self,” analyzes the results of two studies of more than 400 individuals 30 years of age or older. Kowalski said the results have been truly revealing about the nature of regret, how people can use it to self-actualize and what areas people tend to fixate on in their later years.

Q | You shouldn’t dwell on the past, right?

A | “My findings would suggest otherwise as long as you’re not obsessing about it,” Kowalski said. One-third of the participants in the study spontaneously thought about advice they would offer their younger selves at least once a week.

Thinking about the past can help people conceptualize and even realize their “ideal self,” which reflects who the person thinks they would like to be. “Following the advice helped participants overcome regret,” Kowalski said. “When participants followed their advice in the present, they were much more likely to say that their younger selves would be proud of the person they are now.”

Q | What areas do people tend to focus on when it comes to advice to the younger self?

A | Kowalski said the top three areas are education, self-worth and relationships.

Advice tied to education often involved individuals urging themselves to return to or finish school, and many participants offered a timeline, such as “get master’s while in your 20s” or “finish college in four years.”

Advice related to self-worth, such as “be yourself” or “think through all options before making a decision,” tended to be more inspirational and corrective than the more temporal advice about education.

“My favorite piece of advice in the whole paper,” Kowalski said, “came from a guy who said ‘Do. Not. Marry. Her.’ That’s valuable for the person that he is now because he can reflect and have a better idea of what he’s looking for in an ideal mate, plus he can offer advice to others.”

Q | Will this research make it more likely that children will follow their parents’ advice?

A | “No,” Kowalski laughed, “but that’s an interesting way of looking at things because I think children between 10 and 30 tend to deny how similar they are to their parents. If they embraced it, they might be more likely to listen to the advice their parents would have given to their younger selves, and the closest thing to that younger self is their children.”

Q | What could a young Robin Kowalski learn from today’s Robin Kowalski?

A | “I would do high school totally differently. I was so academically focused, so I think I would tell myself to have a little bit more fun and enjoy high school a little more.”

Advancing Biomedical Research in South Carolina

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

Statewide team lands funding to explore solutions to biomedical challenges

Naren Vyavahare

Naren Vyavahare

In its first decade, SC BioCRAFT matched seasoned mentors with 23 early-career researchers. They went on to generate $35 million for research into spinal cord injuries, new ways of growing vascular tissue for grafts and a wide range of other biomedical challenges.

Now the South Carolina Bioengineering Center for Regeneration and Formation of Tissues has received $5.7 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to fund the next five years of research on treatments for illnesses ranging from diabetes to heart disease.

Researchers involved in the center have been awarded 24 patents, spun off four start-up companies and generated 304 articles in peer-reviewed publications.

SC BioCRAFT began operating in 2009 under the direction of Naren Vyavahare, the Hunter Endowed Chair of Bioengineering at Clemson. “It feels good to know that we have junior faculty who have been so successful and have their own independent labs because of this center,” Vyavahare said. “SC BioCRAFT is playing a key role in building the biomedical research infrastructure in South Carolina.”

The center’s primary mission is to increase the number of South Carolina biomedical researchers who receive funding for their work from the National Institutes of Health. The research theme revolves around regenerative medicine, a fast-growing field that offers the promise of repairing and regenerating diseased tissues.

The center brings together researchers, clinicians and other health care professionals from across the state to advance biomedical research. Clemson researchers collaborate closely with colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina and Prisma Health.

Clemson is now home to three Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, including the South Carolina Center for Translational Research Improving Musculoskeletal Health and the Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center.

Tanju Karanfil, Clemson’s vice president for research, said that the success of SC BioCRAFT is helping fuel a trend toward collaboration among institutions. “Each institution brings its own strengths and ways of looking at the various health care challenges we face,” he said. “Bringing them together leads to innovative solutions that might have eluded us if we were to work on our own. SC BioCRAFT and our other Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence are great examples of that concept in action.”

Blenner Receives Presidential Award

/ in / 0 Comments / by:

Six other early-career faculty also recognized

An associate professor whose research could help enable long-term space missions and search for some of the globe’s most destructive weapons has received the U.S. government’s highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers.

Mark Blenner, the McQueen-Quattlebaum Associate Professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Blenner was among 311 researchers nationwide, including two from South Carolina, honored with the award, according to the White House. Blenner is the fifth Clemson researcher to win the award since it was commissioned in 1996 by the cabinet-level National Science and Technology Council. The nominating agency for Blenner’s award was NASA, and he was one of 18 from the administration to win.

Blenner and his team are working to engineer yeast to convert respiration carbon dioxide, algae biomass and urine into 3D printable plastics and nutritional omega-3 fats. Astronauts on missions to Mars, for example, could use the plastics to make new tools and use the omega-3 fatty acids for maintaining health.

Six other Clemson researchers are bringing home some of the nation’s other top awards for junior faculty members — honors that come with new opportunities to advance technology that could lead to a more sustainable environment, safer water supplies, robotic cars and a faster, more secure internet.

1 | Eric Davis, chemical and biomolecular engineering (National Science Foundation). Davis and his team are researching new materials aimed at reducing the cost of large-scale energy storage technologies. Their success could mean that utilities would be able to introduce more renewable energy to the electrical grid and reduce the amount of fossil fuels that need to be burned.

2 | Ben Jaye, mathematical and statistical sciences (National Science Foundation). Jaye is working to understand the structure of high-dimensional sets through the analysis of geometric wavelets. He also is seeking to increase undergraduate student participation in mathematical research with the introduction of an annual research symposium, and to advance educational activities at the graduate and postdoctoral levels.

3 | Hongxin Hu, computer science (National Science Foundation). Hu and his team are developing new security functions to protect computer networks from attacks, including a virtual intrusion detection system that would detect attacks and a virtual firewall system that would repel them.

4 | Yunyi Jia, automotive engineering (National Science Foundation). Jia and his team are studying what it will take to make people more comfortable with robots, like autonomous vehicles and collaborative robots involved in advanced manufacturing.

5 | Judson Ryckman, electrical and computer engineering (U.S. Air Force). Ryckman’s team is working to create smaller and more efficient photonic devices. The research could lead to improvements in a wide range of industries and products, including faster internet downloads and self-driving cars better equipped to navigate city streets.

6 | Ezra Cates, environmental engineering (Environmental Protection Agency). Cates and his team are studying how to break down and remove toxic chemicals from water. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are man-made chemicals that have contaminated drinking water supplies and groundwater at several sites around the country.