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MY CLEMSON<\/b><\/p>\n
George Askew \u201976<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> By\u00a0Steven Bradley<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> In a decades-long career, Askew has helped shape Clemson\u2019s research and Extension presence in South Carolina<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> Vi<\/span>sits by President <\/span>Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, to the Carolina coast inspired their son, Elliott, to pen the 1986 novel Murder at Hobcaw Barony, <\/i>in which the first lady discovers a mysterious death during a trip to <\/span>financier Bernard Baruch\u2019s Lowcountry estate.<\/p>\n The Baruch Mansion graces the cover, a second-floor window encircled where the titular murder occurs. But for the vice president of Public Service and Agriculture (PSA), George Askew, the window wasn\u2019t the scene of a crime \u2014 just the window to his office.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPresident Roosevelt spent a good bit of time there, so that\u2019s where Elliott set his book,\u201d Askew says. \u201cIt was my office they circled on the cover.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time the book was published, Hobcaw Barony \u2014 located in Georgetown, South Carolina \u2014 was a privately owned research reserve and home to what is now the Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science, where Askew worked for 28 years before returning to Clemson\u2019s main campus and taking his current role in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n This year, Askew will celebrate his 50th anniversary at Clemson, across stints as a student, faculty member and administrator \u2014 a milestone he\u2019d never envisioned when he arrived on campus as a freshman from South Jersey.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy goal was to get an undergraduate degree, go out into the world and practice commercial forestry,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, Askew graduated on a Friday, married his wife, Jean \u2014 whom he met at Clemson \u2014 and on Saturday, moved out of Johnstone Hall and into married student housing to start his graduate work. Four years later, Askew moved to Hobcaw and into the aforementioned second-floor office.<\/span><\/p>\n As the Baruch Institute grew, so did Askew\u2019s responsibilities. He became director of the institute along with Clemson\u2019s Pee Dee Research and Education Center in Florence, South Carolina. In 2008, he moved back to campus and eventually was named director of the Clemson Experiment Station, the collective of the University\u2019s six research and education centers strategically located throughout the state.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI owe all that to [former vice president] John Kelly, who gave me those opportunities,\u201d Askew says. \u201cAnd when Dr. Kelly left in 2014 and President Clements came on board, I had the experience necessary for the president to have some confidence to say, \u2018Move into the vice presidency.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Askew\u2019s experience running a natural resource institute in Georgetown and an agricultural center in Florence, as well as overseeing 13 counties as a district Extension director, gave him a broad knowledge of PSA, which comprises four units: the Clemson Experiment Station, Clemson Cooperative Extension, Livestock Poultry Health and Regulatory Services \u2014 and led him to ultimately taking the reins.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn addition to traditional university output of publications or scientific journals, this is actual layperson\u2019s transfer of practical knowledge to people who put it into practice on a day-to-day basis,\u201d Askew says. \u201cI say this all the time, and people don\u2019t really believe me: Clemson touches every single person\u2019s life in South Carolina. It\u2019s a big responsibility for the University because the health, welfare and economy of the state rest on what we do.\u201d
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This year, Askew will celebrate his 50th anniversary at Clemson, across stints as a student, faculty member and administrator \u2014 a milestone he\u2019d never envisioned when he arrived on campus as a freshman from South Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":25218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[159,1211,1220],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","category-my-clemson","tag-alumni","tag-fall-2022","tag-fall-2022-my-clemson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/10\/George-Askew.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25217"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=25217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}