Adam R. McFarlane ’03, PhD ’14

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Take Note

Adam McFarlane has worked behind the camera and performed notably in front of it. He’s taken on some of the biggest stages in America (Conan O’Brien’s, for one), and he recently collected his Ph.D. in educational leadership from Clemson’s stage. His career and talents have carried him from the West Coast to the East Coast to overseas, for months and even years at a time.
But McFarlane’s dream realized has not meant commanding a national audience. It has been coming home to Clemson and earning an opportunity to help other young learners pursue their educational aspirations.
A native of Greenville, his musical training began in elementary school when he mimicked, by ear, his older sister’s piano playing. Later, he took lessons but mostly honed his talent by playing along with the radio.
[pullquote align=’right’]By the time he arrived at Clemson in 1999 through Clemson’s STEP program (Science and Technology Entrance Program, now the Early Success Program), he realized music was a great way to meet new people and relax.[/pullquote]
McFarlane quickly earned a reputation as a keyboard player while he earned his bachelor’s degree with an emphasis in sport management. A couple of years overseas as a videographer for NFL Europe was followed by a master’s degree in human relations from the University of Oklahoma. He moved to the West Coast working with athletic video by day and exploring the Seattle music scene at night.
McFarlane had moved back to Clemson to pursue his Ph.D. when he and comedian Rory Scovel (in the cast of the TBS comedy series, “Ground Floor”) reconnected. Years earlier, when the two Greenville natives were living in Seattle, they performed a musical-comedy act to much acclaim.
Scovel was already scheduled for the spot on “Conan.” He asked if he could bring McFarlane along, wear tuxedos, use a Liberace-style grand piano and create a comedy experience that was kind of classy and truly unique.
The show agreed, and the result was, in a word, hilarious.
For all the experiences music has made possible, it’s not McFarlane’s professional ambition. He’s seeking out a career in higher ed, working with young athletes and coaches to help college students find success, academically and socially.
“I don’t want to be a full-time musician,” McFarlane says. “That to some degree would take the fun out of it. I’ll always play because of the joy it brings me, but for my career, I want to make an impact on students’ lives. I’m excited about what comes next.”
See the “Conan” video at www.teamcoco.com/video/rory-scovel-stand-up-09-03-13.

Elizabeth  C. Hutchison ’08

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Writer for a lifestyle — Southern

elizabeth-hutchinsonTo Elizabeth Hutchison, There’s certainly no place like the South. It’s a special place with a rich culture and colorful characters. As an assistant editor with the popular lifestyle magazine, Garden & Gun, Hutchison — or Hutch, as she likes to be called — is responsible for helping give a voice to the place she calls home.
Until her junior year, Hutchison was a marketing major before switching and graduating with a degree in English. She found herself feeling far more at home among the works of Jane Austen and J.K. Rowling than the numbers and lists of accounting. After taking a fiction- writing course, Hutchison knew that she belonged in a world of letters. There was also her creative inquiry class where she was part of the groundbreaking group that organized the University’s first Literary Festival. The festival has remained one of the biggest events of the year for the English department as well as for the arts community in Clemson.
It was in working with the Literary Festival that she recognized a gift for crafting a community through literary culture. When she interned in the summer of 2008 with Garden & Gun, Hutchison fell in love with the magazine industry, deciding that was what she would pursue after graduation.
Having grown up in Mount Pleasant, the opportunity with Garden & Gun meant a sort of homecoming. Inspiration still struck her at every corner; it seems to her that people have a story to tell and it’s up to her to help them tell it. Her columns such as “Good Eats” and “Belle Décor” cultivate a uniquely Southern focus that speaks to tens of thousands of readers.
Go to gardenandgun.com/blog/elizabeth-hutchison to peruse Hutchison’s writing for Garden & Gun.

Donnie A. Dinch ’08

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Passion for music inspires technology

donnie-dinchDonnie Dinch is forecast to take the billion-dollar music industry mobile. He’s listed in Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30” and as one of the magazine’s “Hottest Startups of 2013.” And who’s to argue with Forbes?
Dinch is the packaging science-graduate-package designer-turned-CEO of WillCall. After graduating in 2008 with a degree in packaging science, Dinch moved to Seattle where it wasn’t long before he and two friends picked up on discussions around plans for developing an app during a startup weekend.
Dinch saw that streaming services were — and still are — altering the face of consumerism in the music business. A larger number of artists are being brought to people’s attention, but they’re playing toward smaller venues at the club level. The mobile app facilitates an environment where people can find out about live performances and can go see more of the music they love, but that they just might not have the right information to find. WillCall’s features include curated events, a “Tip” button that sends tips directly to the artist, in-app merchandise, friend activity feed and custom packages, and Bartab, a means to charge drinks to their WillCall account. With more than $2.1 million in seed funding from billionaire Sean Parker, music mogul Coran Capshaw and Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, Dinch’s app is currently curating shows in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The goal is to facilitate people seeing a show as often and as easily as going to a coffee shop. Dinch’s passion for music led him to create the business. A resident of San Francisco, he works with the city on a panel series called Nightlife & New Tech. Their mission is to harness the brainpower of those in the city’s tech and music industries to improve the future of nightlife in San Francisco. He also works with a nonprofit dedicated to using the power of technology for civic action.

Pam Buffington Redmon ’85

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“It’s Personal”

pam-buffington-redmonWhen it comes to Pam Buffington Redmon’s passion to control tobacco, it’s personal.
Two weeks before her 1985 graduation from Clemson’s School of Nursing, Redmon received a call that no daughter wants to receive. Her father, a longtime smoker, was being rushed to the hospital and would need open heart surgery. He survived, but struggled with heart issues throughout his life.
After graduating from Clemson, Redmon began work as a critical and coronary care nurse in Greenwood then continued her career as a cardiac rehab specialist and clinical research nurse in Ohio. In many of her cases, she saw her father’s health story — smoking that led to health struggles — replicated in the lives of her patients.
So when she decided to enter the next phase of her career, she earned a master’s degree in public health from Emory University and embarked on a mission to impact health by working to control the use of tobacco.
Redmon first served as a staff member, then later executive director,
of Emory’s Tobacco Technical Assistance Consortium, which provided tobacco-control training and technical support to national, state and local organizations and foundations.
She then became executive director of the Global Health Institute– China Tobacco Control Program, a Gates Foundation initiative at Emory that is developing tobacco control and prevention initiatives, including smoke-free policies and mobile health interventions, in 17 Chinese cities with populations equivalent to U.S. states.
She also serves as administrative director for the Tobacco Centers for Regulatory Science at the Georgia State University School of Public Health. The center focuses on understanding the human and economic factors that contribute to decision-making regarding the use of tobacco products.
“Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death in the U.S. and around the world, and decreasing tobacco use reduces the health, social, environmental and economic burdens it creates for individuals and communities,” she said.
Redmon and her husband, Kevin, a 1985 Clemson computer engineering graduate, are also playing an important role in the life of their alma mater by joining together to fund the Kevin and Pam Redmon Class of 1985 Annual Scholarships. Both first-generation college students themselves, the scholarship will be given to first-generation students in the School of Nursing or College of Engineering and Science.

Helen Legare Floyd ’81

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Keeping the family farm

helen-legare-floydHelen Legare-Floyd has a farm. Not just any farm, but a 288-year-old family farm on John’s Island. She, along with her brother and sister, are ninth-generation descendants of 18th-century planter Solomon Legare, and together they work to make it profitable.
To be able to hold on to a family farm in modern times is a challenge, but the Legares have been able to use creativity and practicality to keep their legacy in place. They have combined agriculture with agritourism. Raising livestock and growing produce are still a large part of their work, but by using the 300-acre tract and its resources for events from gourmet harvest dinners to summer day camps for grade school children to Civil War reenactments to Easter chick rentals, they are involving the community and making a living.
Legare-Floyd has found ways to make their farming business expand into all parts of the Charleston area. She organized a Community Supported Agriculture program where families pay a fee for a weekly box of produce. This business has grown to 140 deliveries. The farm also runs a butcher’s club. She drives her pick-up to deliver to a food co-op on Sullivan’s Island and to a gourmet sandwich shop in Charleston. Using leftover grain from five local breweries to feed livestock and old milk from a dairy plant to feed pigs, Legare-Floyd has demonstrated resourcefulness.
Legare-Floyd says that graduating from Clemson is one of the biggest accomplishments of her life. She wanted to say she graduated from Clemson, so she left the farm to study agronomy and horticulture.
“I get to do something I enjoy, something I love, every day,” she says. Solomon Legare would be proud.

My Clemson: Diana Ivankovic

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Diana Ivankovic PhD ’95


DIANA-IVANKOVIC


My husband and I were high school sweethearts when we came to the U.S. from Croatia in 1986 to pursue college degrees. In 1989, with a B.S. in biology and postgraduate training at Greenwood Genetic Center, I joined Miren at Clemson to pursue a graduate degree in microbiology. With a 3-year-old (Sven) and another on the way (Andre), we both walked across the stage of Littlejohn in 1995 to receive our Ph.Ds.
Since then, I have worked as a laboratory coordinator and visiting lecturer at Clemson, become a full professor at Anderson University, had two more children, established the Center for Cancer Research and survived breast cancer. I still teach in Clemson’s summer science program and collaborate with Clemson researchers.
Because of my experience with breast cancer, as well as my mother’s, I have a passion for finding a cure. That’s why I counsel newly diagnosed patients. It’s why I served for many years on the board of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It’s why I travel abroad with students, even working with shamans in the Peruvian Amazon, searching for new anti-carcinogenic plant extracts. It’s why I work with students at the Center for Cancer Research, trying to inspire my students and fellow researchers to collaborate, share, work together and aim for the stars.
Ivankovic is a professor of biology and the James Henderson director of the Center for Cancer Research at Anderson University, which recently was the recipient of a grant from Coach Dabo Swinney’s All In Team Foundation in support of its breast cancer research.

Susan Echols ’97, M ’04 and Jason Smith

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Smith Twins

Life-changing to lifesaving

We’ve all experienced moments when we were inspired to make a difference in others’ lives or pass on kindnesses experienced. Few have embraced a life-changing moment as Susan and Jason Smith of Clemson.
In April 2011, the Smiths’ daughter, Emerson Rose, was born at the Medical University of South Carolina with a heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. A mid-pregnancy ultrasound had detected a heart abnormality, so the Smiths made arrangements for her delivery at MUSC, where she could have open heart surgery shortly after birth. The surgery went well, but little Emerson Rose passed away of complications at only 76 days old.
Out of the sadness and pain of this experience, Susan and Jason founded the Emerson Rose Heart Foundation™. They say their faith is helping them turn a devastating loss into a lifesaver. The mission of the foundation is to help babies born with congenital heart defects through supporting research efforts focused on innovative methods of treatment, prevention and diagnosis. It also lends support to parents while they are preparing for and caring for a child with a congenital heart defect. With these combined efforts, they hope to make a difference in the awareness of heart defects.
The foundation is now working on several quality improvement projects at MUSC ranging from a $2,000 project to reduce infection rates to an $80,000 information sharing collaborative with 20 other pediatric heart centers across the U.S. The foundation also has funded pulse oximeter equipment to 17 hospitals across the state to begin screening newborns for potential heart defects.
Probably the most lasting legacy is the Emerson Rose Act, a new S.C. law requiring hospitals to test every newborn for heart defects before they are discharged from the hospital. The Smiths and the Emerson Rose Heart Foundation worked alongside Sen. Thomas Alexander ’78 to help the act receive unanimous approval in the legislature.
“The foundation’s goals continue to be helping babies affected by heart defects in South Carolina and expand to other states. We are beginning to bring children with heart defects to the U.S. from Third World countries to have lifesaving heart surgery,” shares Susan.
The foundation receives funds from golf tournaments, fundraisers and even Dabo’s All In Foundation, an organization started by Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney and his wife, Kathleen.
After Emerson Rose died, the couple decided to go through the adoption process, and then Susan became pregnant. Along with foundation activities, the Smiths stay busy with two baby girls, Rowan Sarah, one year, and Campbell Jane, seven months.
For information on the Emerson Rose Heart Foundation visit www.emersonroseheartfoundation.org.

Alumni writers in ‘State of the Heart’

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SOTH Cover1
An abandoned farm near Edgefield. An ancient bald cypress in Congaree National Park. A wildlife “enchantment” spot in Calhoun Falls State Park. Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. Clemson’s own Class of ’39 Caboose Garden in the S.C. Botanical Garden.
All are vivid places lodged in the minds of Clemson alumni writers.
They’re among an album of mental snapshots — places, people, history — in a collection by 36 S.C. writers on the places they love. The newly published State of the Heart is edited by author Aïda Rogers with foreword by novelist Pat Conroy.
Clemson wildlife ecology professor J. Drew Lanham ’88, M ’90, PhD ’97 revisits the Edgefield farm of his youth and its decaying beauty, the place where he learned to value and respect the sometimes harsh patterns of nature. He’s author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature published by Milkweed Editions.
Former S.C. Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist John Cely ’69, M ’80 describes his first encounter with the great bald cypress in the Congaree National Park and the park’s hardwood forest he’d thought existed only in history books. He’s a former land-protection director for the Congaree Land Trust and author of Cowassee Basin: the Green Heart of South Carolina.
Director of Erskine’s Quality Enhancement Program and writing center, Shane Bradley M ’07 remembers a no-frills camping trip with his four-year-old daughter in Calhoun Falls State Park, an experience that opened his eyes to nature’s enchantment and began a priceless family tradition. He’s author of Mourning Light and The Power and the Glory.
Award-winning novelist, poet, biographer and historian William Baldwin ’66, M ’68 recounts a project on the history of the great Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, a conflicted effort as significant for its failures as for its successes. Among his many works is Unpainted South, in collaboration with photographer Seldon B. Hill, a tribute to South Carolina’s rural past.
Former Clemson World editor Liz Newall ’70 revisits the S.C. Botanical Garden at Clemson, a living preserve illustrated by nature and cultivated by countless faithful gardeners — where each visitor finds a bit of his or her own personal history. She’s author of Why Sarah Ran Away with the Veterinarian and other fiction and nonfiction.
Clemson legends Frank Howard and Ben Robertson also make cameo appearances. State of the Heart is available through bookstores and online at www.sc.edu/uscpress.

Helen Turner Hill ’85

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Hill_Helen_Turner

Charleston’s goodwill ambassador

Two weeks after Helen Turner Hill became executive director of the Charleston Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), Hurricane Hugo hit north of Charleston. How could anyone imagine a bigger challenge to a new position?
Twenty-four years later, Hill has proven she was more than up for the challenge. Under her leadership, Charleston is world renowned with back-to-back No. 1 rankings from readers of Condé Nast Traveler magazine as the nation’s best tourist destination and, last year, best-in-the-world.
The Charleston native earned her degree in parks, recreation and tourism management and returned home to put her education to work. She was concierge at Wild Dunes Resort before moving to the Charleston CVB to sell ads for the visitors’ guide and later was sales manager for meetings and conventions. Her hard work and natural fit to developing tourism moved her into the executive director position.
When Hill came to Clemson, she wanted to join her father, the late Robert M. Turner ’61, working for his mortgage company.
“In my second semester at Clemson, I knew accounting wasn’t my thing, and I thought about doing something else,” she said. “I asked myself, ‘What else could I major in and transfer all of my credits?’ I looked around, and tourism was it.”
Hill says that working with the College of Charleston’s Office of Tourism Analysis guides their purchase of advertising and marketing programs to help contribute to economic development. Statistics have shown that 4.83 million visitors brought in $3.58 billion to the Charleston-area economy in 2012. That’s about one-fourth of all tourism dollars in South Carolina.
“It’s the history that makes us special,” Hill said. “There is not another place like this in the United States of America. This is not Anywhere, USA.

James D. “Jim” Martin ’86

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Martin

A relationship with the land

“Choose a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
For Jim Martin, Charleston Parks Conservancy program director and James Island farmer, no saying could be more apropos.
“I’ve always known I wanted to garden. Even as a tiny child, my parents always let me have a little garden plot of whatever I wanted. And I knew I wanted to study horticulture at Clemson when I was in the tenth grade,” Martin said.
Martin has spent his entire working life acting on his childhood impulse to make things grow. He has worked in public horticulture throughout South Carolina for more than 25 years. At Riverbanks Zoo, he played a pivotal role in conceptualizing and developing the zoo’s 90-acre botanical garden. He was instrumental in master plan development for the Mepkin Abbey Botanical Garden. He has also been vice-president of horticulture for Brookgreen Gardens on Pawleys Island.
In 2007, S.C. businesswoman Darla Moore invited Martin to help launch the nonprofit Charleston Parks Conservancy, which partners with the City of Charleston and local communities to renovate and maintain the city’s parks and greenspaces through its Charleston Park Angels program.
“The Park Angels program is founded on the concept that if you give people the opportunity to help with their parks and greenspaces, they will make it happen,” Martin said. The group is currently filling bare patches of dirt with lush plantings and replacing decades-old playground equipment with the latest and safest at 27 sites.
But Martin’s life wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t also grow vegetables as he did when he was a child, so in 2012, he started a small boutique farm on Johns Island where he leases 1.25 acres through Lowcountry Local First’s incubator farm program. Martin sells his seasonal vegetables and herbs to local restaurants by focusing on what each restaurant’s specific needs might be and what he as a small farmer can grow for them. Martin says that the evolving “foodie culture” in Charleston has resulted in the understanding that buying fresh, locally grown, high-quality produce results in a better product.
“I’ve had a great career. I love what I’m doing. And what I did at Clemson helped get me here,” Martin said.