Posts

McElveen Named Alumni Master Teacher

Alumni master teacher presentation at ClemsonStudents have chosen Carter McElveen ’03, senior lecturer in the marketing department, as the Alumni Master Teacher for 2017. The Alumni Master Teacher award for outstanding undergraduate classroom instruction is presented to a faculty member who is nominated by the student body and selected by the Student Alumni Council.
Student Alumni Council member and Master Teacher award co-chair Margeaux Laschanzky was a student in one of McElveen’s classes. “Carter truly embodies what it means to be a master teacher because she puts her whole heart into her students and into Clemson,” said Laschanzky. “I thought it was the most special ceremony so far because she has so many friends and family show up and because she was on Student Alumni Council.”
McElveen received her bachelor’s degree in marketing from Clemson in 2003 and her MBA from the University of South Carolina in 2010. She has been a professor at Clemson since 2011. Beyond her teaching duties, McElveen is a master adviser to undergraduate marketing students, on the Delta Sigma Pi faculty, an honorary Blue Key Member and faculty adviser to the Clemson chapter of CUMA, the student marketing association. She also received the Dean’s Award for Student Engagement in 2015.
“When I started as an undergrad, I had several teachers who were impactful on me and my experience, one being Dr. Mary Anne Raymond, who won the Master Teacher award,” McElveen said. “She hired me and mentored me, and it came full circle because she was there when I received this award.”

Lifelong Tigers

Yandle named Honorary Alumnus

 

Bruce Yandle, dean emeritus of the College of Business and Behavioral Science and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of economics, was named an Honorary Alumnus in May by the Alumni Association.

Bruce Yandle, dean emeritus of the College of Business and Behavioral Science and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of economics, was named an Honorary Alumnus in May by the Alumni Association.


Bruce Yandle, dean emeritus of the College of Business and Behavioral Science and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of economics, was named an Honorary Alumnus in May by the Alumni Association.
“I join the ranks of my favorite people: my former students and others who came to Clemson,” he said. “Having the opportunity — the privilege — of being in the classroom at Clemson is the high point in my professional life.”
An economics professor from 1969 until his retirement in 2000, Yandle returned as dean of CBBS from 2004 to 2007. Honorary alumni are selected by the Alumni Council for outstanding service, lifelong devotion and loyalty to the University or the Alumni Association.

Clemson Day at the Statehouse

Clemson Day at StatehouseClemson at the State HouseClemson boards, alumni, students and supporters turned Columbia orange May 13. Events included an update on current legislation and the impact of state funding on Clemson, as well as the impact Clemson has on the state of South Carolina. Attendees heard an update on the state of Clemson from President Clements, then walked over to the statehouse where the Smith-Lever Act (which authorized the Cooperative Extension Service) was read and the Lever family was recognized. The Senate and House both declared May 13, 2014, as Clemson Day in South Carolina.
At the evening social, Trustee David Wilkins and President Clements addressed the group and thanked them for making “a significant statement” with their attendance.

Alumni Association names new board members

Pictured, front: Sandy Edge, Ron Taylor. Back: Josh Bell, Bud Hicklin, Mark Derrick.

Pictured, front: Sandy Edge, Ron Taylor. Back: Josh Bell, Bud Hicklin, Mark Derrick.


The Alumni Association board of directors elected five new members who took office July 1:
JOSH BELL ’08 of Charleston is executive director of Teach for America-South Carolina. He has been a member of the Clemson Alumni National Council (as student government representative), the Alumni Association Council and the committee to restructure the alumni board and council. At Clemson, he was student body president, Sigma Nu fraternity president and treasurer, vice president of Blue Key Honor Society and Tiger Brotherhood.
MARY KATHRYN DEMPSEY ’08 (not pictured) of Charleston is a fundraising consultant for Blackbaud. She is a former president of the Clemson Young Alumni Council and helped establish the inaugural Roaring 10 award in 2012. At Clemson, she was the Student Alumni Council vice president, secretary of the Blue Key Honor Society and a member of the Mortar Board Order of Athena.
MARK DERRICK ’91 of Gaithersburg, Md., is the regional director, government and transportation sector, at Xerox. As a founding member of the D.C./Baltimore regional campaign, Derrick helped raise $15.3 million for Clemson. He also has hosted the annual Crab Feast of the Clemson Club of Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and served as a member of the Clemson Alumni Council since 2008.
SANDY EDGE ’72 (president-elect) of Clemson is a retired Air Force colonel and director of the College of Business and Behavioral Science Advising Center. He has served as president of both the Clemson Rotary Club and the Clemson Corps and as a member of the Clemson Alumni Council. As a student, Edge was a member of the Air Force ROTC, Arnold Air Society and Alpha Zeta Honorary Society.
BUD HICKLIN III ’85 of Clemson is a radiologist at Mountainview Medical Imaging. He has been president and vice president of the Oconee County Medical Association, a member of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and a member of the Clemson Alumni National Council. At Clemson, he was a member of the Clemson Escort Service and Tiger Brotherhood.
RON TAYLOR ’65 of Midland, Mich., is the former director of marketing and sales for Dow Chemical, where he spearheaded an initiative to raise funds from employees and retirees to benefit students and faculty in the Clemson College of Engineering and Science. He created two endowments: the Dow Chemical Engineering Alumni Endowment, which has surpassed $250,000 in value, and the Dow Chemical Alumni Endowment, which is approaching $100,000 in value. As a student, he was inducted into Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society.
With 23 members, the board of directors is the governing body for the Alumni Association. Primary responsibilities include general oversight of the programs and initiatives of the association, financial audit and review, creation of governing policies and strategic planning.
Call for nominations
We need your help in selecting outstanding alumni for the Alumni Association board of directors. We’re looking for candidates with exceptional judgment, a strong work ethic, leadership qualities and the vision to advance the goals and objectives of the Alumni Association. Deadline for nominations is Dec. 1. To nominate a candidate, go to cualumni.clemson.edu/boardnominations.
 

D.C./Baltimore Club Holds Six Degrees of Clemson event

Clemson Club of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Clemson Club of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.


High above the Washington, D.C., skyline with stunning views of the Washington Monument, Capitol Dome and Ellipse, members of the Clemson Club of Baltimore and Washington, D.C., enjoyed mingling at Six Degrees of Clemson, the professional networking series designed by the club to bring alumni, parents and students together. Held in the spring and fall each year, the series promotes opportunities for guests to meet with top-level industry leaders, network with fellow Tigers and strengthen their skill sets for navigating the professional world.
Hosted by Stephen Burch ’06 at his PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC office in downtown D.C., the May event highlighted four alumni: Brian Sykes ’99, Michael Newman ’78, Stephen Burch ’06 and Angie Howard ’69; and two parents: Glenn Roland and Gregg Blanchard. According to Elizabeth Jackson ’06, the “Six Degrees of Clemson” refers to the degrees of the six speakers as well as the “small world” feel in D.C. when fellow Tigers gather.
More than 30 members of the club’s regional board of directors also met in May for their spring meeting, hosted by Stephen ’06 and Kristin David ’06 Burch. IPTAY CEO Davis Babb highlighted current athletic initiatives and funding opportunities to shape the future of Clemson athletics. Board members John Lynn ’85 and Todd Ray ’90 shared their vision for a brand-new Clemson/ D.C. Internship and Housing Opportunities Program, a two-part initiative with an immediate focus on matching alumni and parents with students seeking internships and a long-term goal of establishing a central building in D.C. to serve as Clemson’s hub for intern housing, classroom and event space.
Visit clemsonclub.org to learn about D.C. and Baltimore regional events.

Tigers celebrate Reunion Weekend

Class of 1964

Class of 1964


The Class of 1964 celebrated their 50th anniversary reunion, and 64 members of the class were inducted as Golden Tigers during Reunion Weekend in May. The class also presented a gift of $1.046 million to the University, bringing the total of gifts by class members over the last 50 years to almost $16 million.
Two members of the Class of 1939, Ralph Boys (standing) and Tee Senn (pictured at right), were presented with Diamond Tiger medallions by Alumni Association president Ann Hunter.

Ralph Boys (standing) and Tee Senn  (right), with Alumni Association president Ann Hunter.


The reunion gift will be divided between an endowment for scholarships and support for the Class of 1956 Academic Success Center. According to Class of 1964 Golden Anniversary Project committee chair Walter Cox, “The Class of 1964 wanted to make a difference in student lives.”
During the weekend, reunion guests heard Professor Jerry Reel speak about life in 1964 and enjoyed entertainment by the Jungaleers. Individual classes gathered for reunion dinners Friday night.
Two members of the Class of 1939, Ralph Boys (standing) and Tee Senn (pictured at right), were presented with Diamond Tiger medallions by Alumni Association president Ann Hunter.

Students choose Madray as Alumni Master Teacher

Students chose accounting senior lecturer J. Russell Madray ’86, M ’88 as this year’s Alumni Master Teacher

J. Russell Madray ’86, M ’88


Students chose accounting senior lecturer J. Russell Madray ’86, M ’88 as this year’s Alumni Master Teacher for outstanding undergraduate classroom instruction. The annual award is presented to a faculty member nominated by the student body and selected by the Student Alumni Council.
In addition to teaching intermediate accounting, Madray is president of The Madray Group Inc. and is scholar-in-residence at Elliott Davis in Greenville.
 

Clemson Crew alumni celebrate 25 years

Clemson University Rowing Association (CURA) at the boathouse on Hartwell Lake for the annual Clemson Sprints Regatta.

Clemson University Rowing Association (CURA) Alumni Association


Past and present members of the Clemson University Rowing Association (CURA) gathered April 5 at the boathouse on Hartwell Lake for the annual Clemson Sprints Regatta, at which the organization hosted 30 other junior and collegiate clubs. It was an especially momentous event for the club as it celebrated the 25-year anniversary of the club’s establishment in 1989. More than 60 members of the CURA’s Alumni Association (CURAA) were in attendance, traveling from as far as Oklahoma, Colorado and California. Nine members of the 1992 team, some who had not rowed since graduating, even hopped back into one of their original boats for a race and earned a gold medal in their heat, proving they still have what it takes to row with the best. Gathering downtown afterward, it was time for fun, drinks and swapping stories of Clemson Crew.

13_williams

Williams receives Modern-Day Technology Leader Award

Willie J. “W.J.” Williams Jr. ’04 (COMPSC) of Alexandria, Va., received the Modern-Day Technology Leader Award at the 28th Annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards STEM Global Competitiveness Conference. The conference recognizes successful black inventors, technical innovators, gifted scientists, budding engineers, and high-level managers and executives. He’s a senior lead software engineer for BAE Systems, a defense, security and aerospace company and supplier to the U.S. Department of Defense. Williams is pictured receiving the award from Robin N. Coger, dean of the College of Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University, and Kendall T. Harris, dean of engineering at Prairie View A&M University.
 

Lifelong Tigers

iphoneTOTMscreenIntroducing Tigers on the Move

Ever want an easy way to find out what an old classmate is doing now? Or a quick way to send a message to the Clemson Family about your newest job, impending nuptials or move to a new location?
“Tigers on the Move,” a new interactive Web portal, will allow you to do just that. A complement to the alumni news found in Clemson World magazine, this site will allow for real-time, immediate updates and searchability.
Check it out at TigersOnTheMove.com and submit your latest Tiger news today!

RINGsepiaGetting (more) social

Are you a ring-wearing Clemson alum? We have recently launched a Twitter feed and Instagram page dedicated to the Clemson Ring. Share pictures of you and your ring, indicating your class year and location by tweeting @ClemsonRing and tagging ClemsonRing on Instagram.

Students have chosen Ashby B. Bodine as the 2013 Alumni Master Teacher.

MasterTeacher2013Bodine is professor emeritus/visiting professor in the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences in the College of Agriculture, Forestry and Life Sciences.
Bodine’s research has been on the biochemistry and immunology of archaic vertebrates, in particular, sharks, rays and skates. Since 2006 an interdisciplinary Creative Inquiry team mentored by Bodine has been researching an anti-tumor protein from the bonnethead shark that has great potential for use in anti-cancer treatments.
Bodine has received the Godley-Snell Outstanding Agricultural Research Award, the Class of ’39 Faculty Award for Excellence, the Gamma Sigma Delta Outstanding Teacher Award, the National Scholars Program Award of Distinction and the Outstanding Teacher Award from the National Association for Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture.
The Alumni Master Teacher Award for outstanding undergraduate classroom instruction is presented to a faculty member nominated by the student body and selected by the Student Alumni Council.

Class of 1963Class of ’63 celebrates golden anniversary

This year marked the Golden Tiger Reunion for the Class of 1963. Bobby Kemp ’63 drove the same car to reunion that he drove off campus on graduation day. The car even had its original Clemson College parking decal. See page 46 for news on the Class of 1963’s reunion gift.
More than 450 attendees returned to campus for Reunion Weekend, and alums from the Classes of 1939
through 1963 gathered to reminisce and reconnect with the Clemson Family.

Alumni Association names new board members

The Clemson Alumni Association Board of Directors has elected four new members to take office July 1.
Gary E. Clary ’70 of Central, a retired circuit judge and certified mediator and arbitrator, will serve a two-year term. An IPTAY representative emeritus, he has served as a member of the Alumni Association National Council and is a past president of the Cherokee County Clemson Club and now a member of the Fort Hill Clemson Club.
Mike Dowling ’93 of Greenville, chief financial officer of Southern First Bancshares will serve a three-year term. He served on the Student Alumni Council and is a past-president of the Clemson University Young Alumni Council. He has also served as an Alumni National Council representative and Board of Visitors representative.
Patsy Siebert DuPre ’80 of Hendersonville, N.C., will serve a three-year term. An independent contractor in Washington, D.C., she was on the board of the Washington-Baltimore Clemson Club before moving to N.C. Members of the President’s Leadership Circle, she and her husband have a son at Clemson.
Heather Simmons Jones ’97, M ’12 of Columbia, founder and CEO of Opus 3, a firm specializing in economic development, human resources and labor relations, was re-elected to a two-year term. She was a charter member and officer for both the Coosawhatchie and Anderson Area Clemson clubs and is a board member of the Columbia Clemson Club.
The alumni board has 23 members and is the governing body for the Alumni Association. Primary responsibilities include general oversight of programs and initiatives of the Alumni Association, financial audit and review, creation of governing policies and strategic planning.

DOING IT RIGHT, DOING IT BETTER

SeniorPlatoon2013Marching into history

This spring, members of the Clemson Senior Platoon once again gathered on campus to celebrate their Clemson history. The first drill team ever established at Clemson, the platoon was founded in 1930 by Gator Farr as a way to reward senior cadets for three years of hard work. The group remained active from 1930 through 1960, when Clemson became a civilian school.
The platoon has performed at home football games, bowl games and even once at Yankee Stadium. Through the years, the Clemson Senior Platoon has contributed more than $25 million back to Clemson, making it one of the most generous groups in the University’s history. Under the leadership of Sanford Smith ’55, the platoon still performs at events such as the First Friday Parade and Military Appreciation Day.

Alumni and students mark National Week of Service

For the fifth year in a row, alumni clubs and groups celebrated a National Week of Service. The first week of April, 20 alumni groups, from Montana to New England, joined together in community service projects that ranged from packaging, cooking or delivering meals to working with Habitat for Humanity and other nonprofits.
This year, the event was coordinated with the annual University week of service, and through Clemson Sweep and the Unity Project, students participated in on- and off-campus service projects.


[AFG_gallery id=’5′]

FlagSCBecome a Clemson advocate!

The Enterprise Act, a bill that would allow Clemson to operate some of its non-academic functions more like a business, was passed by the S.C. Senate this spring, but didn’t make it through the House before the legislative session ended. The bill would give the University’s Board of Trustees the authority to move such functions as athletics, research and economic development into a new “enterprise division” that would be able to do such things as buy and sell property without going through the process required for state agencies.
It’s needed, Clemson officials say, because the bureaucracy of state government frequently inhibits the institution’s ability to undertake projects with private business and industry in a timely manner to respond to market conditions. You can be an advocate for Clemson at the state level. For more information, or to sign up, go to clemson.edu/governmentalaffairs.

Always in the details

Louis Henry
I have always felt blessed and unabashedly proud that my academic career brought me to Clemson University — and doubly so that my greatest influence there was Louis Henry. He was, after all, a native son: Born in 1931 to parents who were employed by the University, he would graduate from Clemson in 1953 and some two decades later be named the first Alumni Master Teacher. I’d known nothing of the award until I picked up a 1974 Homecoming program a few years ago on eBay and started thumbing through in a fit of nostalgia. There he was, featured in a two-page article, younger than I’d ever seen him, but much the same man I’d come to know during my college years in the 1980s.
“Yes, that was quite an honor,” he chuckled when I called down a few days later, then promptly shifted conversation in another direction, a classic Henry maneuver. Of all the subjects on which he’d freely converse — and there were many — he was least inclined to discuss himself, always more interested in the person who’d taken up a seat in his office, living room, wherever.
[pullquote align=’left’ font=’oswald’ color=’#685C53′]Louis Henry was a gifted educator, and a good deal more, in part due to his belief that teachers did their greatest work outside of the classroom.[/pullquote] It was a mantra he’d adopted early on in his career and practiced daily in his first-floor Strode Tower office. Like so many other Clemson students, I spent my share of time there. First as an undergraduate, then a graduate student and finally, for two years, as an instructor, I took any and all questions — many of them grammar related — and mooched coffee that might have been poured from a crank case. I always felt welcome there, its book-lined shelves punctuated with photographs, the manual typewriter and potted plants. It was a comfortable, easy-going space that seemed in those days Louis Henry’s natural domain.
Equal parts inspiration and common sense, that’s how I remember him and that’s what I took from two of the most valuable lessons I ever received. The first he seemed to embody: Find your passion and pursue it. His work with students over the years spoke to the depth of his commitment. The same might be said of his friendships, now that I think about it, since there was scarcely ever a conversation that didn’t involve the latest on half a dozen other folks of our shared acquaintance. A lot of those lives crossed paths through Louis Henry. Then there was lesson number two, a tough one in this high-tech, fast-paced age that holds everything at the fingertips except time. “Life is in the details,” he said, and said it over and over in the way he lived.
For the past 22 years, our conversations were split between the telephone and the occasional visit in his living room out in Central. The last decade or so saw his health compromised and his activities pared down so that eventually he had to give up his Clemson baseball tickets. Years ago we’d discovered a mutual passion for baseball in general, Clemson baseball in particular, and this near obsession became a recurring theme.
Dr. Henry’s birthday was in February, the same month the Tigers fire off the first pitch, appropriately enough. He knew all the players by name and position, could detail their respective strengths, and preferred “watching games on the radio.” And his trip out to the College World Series in 1996 stayed always fresh in his mind. Indelible, really.
“You have to go. That’s a trip you just have to make,” he kept saying until there was no missing the opportunity and I found myself on a plane out to Omaha with my 9-year-old son in 2010. Life in the details, I remember thinking then, as my traveling companion, who carries the Henry middle name, settled back and tried to rein in his excitement. Always in the details … though it may be years before we fully grasp their meaning.
There are two memorial funds for Dr. Henry set up with the Clemson Foundation: the Dr. Louis Henry ’53 Endowment, supporting The Tiger newspaper, and the Clemson Baseball/Louis Henry Memorial supporting the baseball team.
Clif Collins ’84, M ’88, largely due to the influence of Dr. Henry, is now teaching college English in Laurel, Md.