Creative writing professor James Barilla had his property declared a "certified wildlife habitat" by the National Wildlife Federation. The story of his journey to create a hospitable environment for creatures of the wild is told in "My Backyard Jungle," published in 2013.
Coy Gibson, a senior political science major at USC, credits Kirk Randazzo's leadership class for his successful run for Student Government treasurer in 2012.
USC professor of Southern letters David Shields talks about the classic Christmas dinner - 19th century style. Many of today's dishes may have the same names, but they rarely have the same flavor. Shields works to help rediscover lost or forgotten Southern foodways.
Beth Watson, USC director of the Washington Semester Program, leads in her career in education and public service to do what is best for the greater good.
USC alumnus Stephen Brown is the managing director of the Atlanta office of Cohn & Wolf, a leading global communications agency. His client list includes consumer brands and retail, technology and health care companies. It's a full plate, but the 1995 graduate of the South Carolina Honors College and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications learned plenty about juggling at Carolina.
Carolina had a hand in the discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson, the final elementary particle that completed the Standard Model of particle physics. Milind Purohit, the new chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, was part of ATLAS, an international team that published evidence of the elusive particle last year.
Catherine Buddin didn't know that her spontaneous decision to travel to Honduras last winter break would change her life. But this year, she's hoping to have the same impact on a group of USC students.
Commencement speaker Marva Smalls offered 10 axioms for navigating life's journey at USC's December ceremony.
Cocky, Carolina's fine-feathered friend and inimitable mascot, is going for the bronze. Sculptor and USC alumnus Robert Allison has created a one-third scale maquette (or artist's proof) in clay that will serve as the model for what eventually will be a life-sized Cocky cast in bronze.
Deeonna Farr was on her way to becoming a medical doctor when she traveled to Ecuador as an undergraduate to work with a community clinician. What she saw there changed her mind.
When Leah McClimans was a 20-something professional working in hospitals in Canada, she was terrified of being a leader. But now, she's teaching her students how to become leaders and why leadership is important.
Payal Shah's research isn't conducted in a lab or by looking at statistics. For two years, Shah lived her research -- eating, sleeping, talking and studying alongside her young subjects in rural India.
USC archaeologist Chester Depratter has just four months to figure out where to dig on the grounds of the former state asylum in Columbia and then to excavate the site of a Civil War prison located there.
Courtney Dunbaker has just made the leap from apprentice to professional, a process commonly celebrated but rarely described. Dunbaker, who graduated in 2011 with a bachelor's in psychology and earlier this year with a master's in counselor education, started her first job in November as a licensed professional counselor.
Andrew Allen knew in middle school he wanted to teach music. It's a goal he's been working toward ever since, climbing through undergraduate and graduate education without a break. It's a goal he realized with the help of USC's School of Music and Carolina's Presidential Fellow program.
Travis Edwards is part of an effort that helps keep America's soldiers safe and its military helicopters ready for action. And his contribution hasn't gone unnoticed: Aviation Week recently named the master's candidate working in the Condition-Based Maintenance Laboratory one of 20 promising young engineers in aerospace.
For 33 years, USC's Moore School of Business has helped leaders navigate uncertain economic times with its annual forecast and outlook conference. For most of that time, USC's top research economist Doug Woodward has helped South Carolina business leaders and the news media get an unvarnished look at how the state and U.S. economies are doing and what they can expect in the coming year.
Eveie Robinson, a third-year history and English student at the University of Leeds, decided to study abroad at Carolina to help differentiate herself on her resume and increase her career options. When she leaves USC, though, she'll be taking home much more.
The School of Music's Wind Ensemble was considered for a Grammy nomination for its recording "Bernstein Transcriptions for Wind Band." The album recorded at the Koger Center for the Arts was being considered for Best Orchestra Performance.
Landscaping services recently planted a live oak on the Historic Horseshoe to replace a one hundred and thirty year old tree that was struck by lightning. The replacement comes as Arbor Day is commemorated in South Carolina.
USC students went to Africa as part of service-learning class offered by the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. They used their storytelling skills to spotlight the lives of people who rarely are in the spotlight. They were led by visual communications professor Van Kornegay.
When people think of Scottish literature, they might not automatically think of the University of South Carolina, but they should. Scholars in the field certainly do -- and have for decades.
N.C. State is now saving 5 million gallons of water and $30,000 a year thanks to USC student Blake Henard's engineering design. Not bad for a summer internship.
For months Larry Bennett was nervous. A heavy equipment operator, Bennett took matters into his own hands and entered a bachelor's program at USC Lancaster. With the help of knowledgeable advisers and professors, his wife and family, and the flexibility of USC's Palmetto College, he is on the fast track toward graduation, a new career and a better future.
It might have seemed a foregone conclusion that Kirkland Smith would become an artist. She drew her first portrait as a preschooler and grew up with the encouragement of a mom, Martha Thomas, who was and still is one of South Carolina's premier portrait artists.
A trio of student ventures won $50,000 in prizes and startup support in the 2013 Proving Ground entrepreneurship competition.
The Parker Quartet will perform a free concert. with School of Music professor Bob Jesselson. The performance is part of a week of activities that the Grammy Award-winning group is holding as the School of Music's Quartet-in-Residence.
Today's history students can listen at the door of past presidents through secret White House recordings. USC history professor Kent Germany spent six years transcribing and researching those recordings before joining USC.
For Justin King, the man behind popular YouTube videos about Carolina, the Gamecock videos started as a hobby shortly after he graduated in 2010 with a degree in media arts. But those videos soon landed King a job working with ESPN cutting highlights.
Filmmaker Steve Daniels started making home movies as a teenager and studied media arts and film theory at the University of South Carolina. Now, years later, his absurdist horror shorts are racking up awards at film festivals around the world.
As a political affairs officer for the United Nations mission in Kosovo, political science Ph.D. candidate Joe Chen serves as an advocate for ethnic Serbs, the war torn region's minority population. He's also spreading the word about how his time at Carolina prepared him for the job and made him who he is today.
November is Native American Heritage Month and the Carolina community is excited to celebrate the rich and diverse culture of our native people. Stephen Criswell, director of Native American Studies at USC Lancaster, heads the program that uncovers and preserves the traditions of South Carolina's Indian tribes.
You have an engraving and you know the artist and that it's from the 19th century. Your job is to describe what is in the picture, when and where it was published and log it all into an international database. Now do that 14,999 more times and you have an idea of the task facing cataloguing librarian Kathleen McCallister and her assistants working on the W. Graham Arader III Collection of natural history watercolors, woodcuts, engravings lithographs and maps.
Chris Rorden's education as an experimental psychologist came at a time when a powerful new tool, magnetic resonance imaging, was just beginning to be harnessed to study the brain. His advice is highly sought after in the brain research community in part because of the nuts-and-bolts understanding of the technology he developed in those early years.
With some 7,000 trees scattered across campus, USC arborist Kevin Curtis has his hands full every day removing hazardous limbs and keeping close watch on the university's urban forest.
Taking on community service while also being responsible for educating future doctors, lawyers and leaders can seem overwhelming. But for members of the USC community who have received the Martin Luther King Social Justice Award, it is second nature.
Jessica Parker is trying hard not to have an impact--and all week she's been doing less and less. In fact, on Thursday she barely even turned on the lights or booted up her computer. But make no mistake. The sophomore isn't some hopeless slacker who can't be bothered to get out of bed.
Human resource problems can be some of the biggest headaches for the smallest of companies. So, PMBA student Sean Rankin and his business partner Aaron Traub came up with a solution. Their fix was so promising that it won the University of South Carolina's entrepreneurial competition, the Proving Ground. Now a year later, Rankin and Traub's company, Huddle HR, is poised to start accepting clients.
From peering under a mummy's wrap to examining a 148-million-year-old Apatosaurus fossil, alumna Stephanie Pappas found a career that feeds a wide-ranging curiosity.
It's the $64,000 question for those in the business of promoting good health: how do you make the right choice the easy choice? Justin Moore ponders that every day in his quest to increase physical activity among children.
When Binda Niati first came to America from Africa, she lived in a diverse world of cultures with friends from all over the globe. Now Niati hopes to introduce more USC students to that same intercultural awareness as USC's international student population grows.
When Christy Friend taught her first class as a 24-year-old graduate student she had no idea how tough the job could be. Years later, as the director of USC's Center for Teaching Excellence, she helps a new generation of teachers find their footing in the classroom.
Sometimes the hardest part of a research project is knowing where to start. And a USC program teaches undergraduate students the ins and outs of starting a project and how to approach faculty members who can be mentors.
Joe Quattro led a team that recently described a new species of hammerhead shark. His discovery is the result of years of study of the rivers and coastal waters of South Carolina.
Lingling Zhang came to USC because it has a sterling reputation in fuel cell research, her chosen field. But she's found other qualities that make Carolina a fond home away from her hometown in northeastern China's Inner Mongolia.
"Revelation," one of Alvin Ailey's signature dances, will be performed at the Koger Center by the Ailey II dance company. The performance is part of the USC's yearlong commemoration of the 50th anniversary of desegregation at Carolina.
Beyond merely thinking about big ideas, Robert Greene's ability to articulate his thoughts in an engaging fashion has earned him a prestigious forum -- a regular spot on the Society for U.S. Intellectual History's blog site.
When Jordan Dick first came to Carolina he knew he wanted to make the most of his time as a Gamecock and studying abroad was a natural choice. Instead he found Carolina's Washington Semester Internship Program.
Nearly 170 years after its establishment, the University of South Carolina's alumni association will have a new home. Officials of the My Carolina Alumni Association and the university gathered Friday (Nov. 1) to break ground on an Alumni Center, located at Lincoln and Senate streets.
Starting Thursday, Oct. 31 the USC student shuttle will be running to and from Five Points. The shuttle will pick up and drop off students at various locations across campus
Four College of Arts and Sciences professors have been named the inaugural McCausland Faculty Fellows. An alumni gift of $10 million will ultimately support 20 fellowships and create a visiting scholars program to encourage and reward excellence in teaching and research.
Beth Brink, with the Leadership and Service Center, is passionate about the opportunities for service and involvement at Carolina through the "Carolina Cares" initiative.
Todd Crump spends his free time at the Free Clinic. It's that devotion to others, which prompted the My Carolina Alumni Association to name him the recipient of this year's Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award.
Brian Dolphin and Kathy Keenan are bringing history to the public. With an independent project, the master's students are helping educate kids at A.C. Moore Elementary about the life of the former USC president for whom the school was named.
When Robert McAlpine and Vernon Sumwalt graduated from Carolina in 1943, they weren't thinking about coming back to campus for class reunions. They just hoped to make it back, preferably in one piece, from the war in the Pacific.
For Katherine Adams, haunted stories aren't just meant to be scary. Stories that give readers chills can also help students learn the fundamentals of English literature.
For the second year in a row, the University of South Carolina is recognized by INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine as one of the nation's top universities for diversity and inclusivity. The Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award is given to schools that demonstrate a commitment to a diverse campus experience.
Comics are simply another form of storytelling and their imagery speaks volumes about how their characters are perceived. English professors Qiana Whitted tells us a little about her study of comics and what they can teach us.
USC President Harris Pastides updates students on Five Points safety initiative and the university's plans to provide late-night shuttle service and safe, fun alternatives to the city's restaurant and entertainment district.
This month marks National Cyber Security Awareness Month. With the many possible pitfalls of online information, USC's University Information Security Office (UISO) keeps the university on track. Chief Information Security Officer Marcos Vierya details how the office is helping Carolina.
Whiskey red velvet cupcakes. Bacon chocolate chip cookies. Apple bakes. Blackberry jam brownies. These and other unique and scrumptious creations are all in a day's work for USC student Alexandra Martindale, who started her own business, Hott Noms Bakery.
Many of the university's most recognizable buildings, from the Coliseum and Koger Center to the Booker T. Washington School and the Honors College residence hall, sit on top of the old Ward One community. A USC Honors College student has curated an exhibit of images of the former residents of this neighborhood.
Jewish studies faculty member Federica Clementi presents stories of mothers and daughters of the Holocaust and points to the persistent anti-Semitism and patriarchal structures in society as enduring problems in the Holocaust's aftermath.
Will Bryan has long been trying to find a way to make the world a prettier place through art and charity, and his most recent project does just that with a little bit of Gamecock spirit.
Can information set us free? Undergraduates in Michael Gavin's Enlightenment class are attempting to answer exactly that question via a new online forum. The Laissez-Fact Project goes live Oct. 16.
Many people on campus may recognize Tommy Preston. As a student he was student body president. As a law student, he helped start Cocky's Reading Express. And he's still involved as an alumnus. Now, Preston is the chair of the Board of Visitors.
USC is launching a new minor in applied computing. Its part of a city-wide initiative to increase graduates with in-demand computer skills.
Senior Carl Brzorad's family history and academic interests found a perfect research outlet at Carolina. Using competitive grants available to USC undergrads, he's been able to travel to the Czech Republic and interview a number of the dissident leaders who endured Soviet occupation and helped lead the nation to freedom.
The law diploma earned by Richard T. Greener, the University of South Carolina's first African-American faculty member who taught philosophy and worked as the university's librarian during Reconstruction, is back at USC. Greener's diploma, along with his license to practice law in South Carolina, was discovered in an abandoned Chicago home scheduled for demolition.
Graphic design alumna Maria Fabrizio captures each day's news with an original illustration or watercolor -- wordlessly.
A University of South Carolina student was struck by a stray bullet in Five Points early Sunday morning. She was taken to Palmetto Richland Hospital where she remains in critical condition. The person who fired the weapon was arrested by the Columbia Police and is in custody. The shooter is not affiliated with USC.
Kira Koppel decided to use USC's National Student Exchange program to get out of her comfort zone, see the West Coast and learn about a new part of the country by trekking to California for a semester at a new university.
A team of about two dozen USC computing students will help Columbia residents put their ailing computers back in working order.
USC welcomed its inaugural class of Stamps Carolina Scholars this fall. Launched in 2000 by philanthropists Penny and Roe Stamps, the Stamps program funds merit-based scholarships at 37 universities across the country.
Some people spend a lifetime searching for something that makes their faces light up the way Ben Peele's does when he talks about Cockappella, USC's coed singing group. Peele, now a senior psychology major, had been involved in marching band and church choirs since elementary school, but the idea of performing a cappella came later.
After surviving a bout with cancer, Columbia native Kevin General comes to USC to study public health. His undergraduate research could lead to better ways of communicating with residents about the health risks of living in an area with environmental contamination.
Patti Smith wrote "A Letter to a Friend -- The Story of Abuse in America" for victims of domestic violence and those who want to help them. A USC graduate, Smith was in an abusive relationship before seeking help. She has started a counseling program in her Surfside Beach, S.C., church.
Hundreds of high school students will come to Carolina this week to participate in the South Carolina Scholastic Press Association conference. Several USC journalism students who participated in this conference while they were in high school will be there to help guide their younger peers.
Fewer greenhouse gas emissions and cleaner wastewater from fracking operations are possible uses for a new membrane created by USC engineers. The key to the membrane, made of graphene oxide, is its thinness.
USC's Kayla Lisenby is helping to create a welcoming campus and offering support to Carolina's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.
Donna J. Walker '79 has agreed to create and endow the Walker Pharmacy Leadership Scholarship Endowment Fund for $525,000, launching a student leadership initiative that will identify, educate and recognize top pharmacy student leaders at the University of South Carolina.
USC faculty members continue to fill bookshelves with new volumes this fall. Here are just a few new releases to add to your to-read list.
In 2007, Parents Weekend drew about 3,000 people with five events on the schedule. This year, nearly 10,000 people have registered for dozens of special events, and another 10,000 are expected to come on their own and simply visit with their students.
MVS Chandrashekhar faces one of the most difficult tasks in teaching: guiding freshman engineering majors through their first college-level engineering course. It's a pathway fraught with attrition, but Chandrashekhar is keeping his electrical engineering class engaged with an innovative project - and its beneficiaries will be Columbia kids visiting the EdVenture Children's Museum.
Sally Boyd, the recently retired assistant vice provost of extended university, dedicated 43 years to USC and gained unlimited opportunities to pioneer initiatives for non-traditional students and become a leader at the university.
Television executive and USC alumna Marva Smalls wants to ensure the story of late astronaut Ron McNair continues to inspire by establishing a $1 million scholarship endowment for minority students from the Pee Dee to study aerospace technology.
When Stephanie Clough was an undergraduate at USC several years ago, she spent countless hours doing two things she dearly loved: reading articles and books in Russian, German and French and listening to Web newscasts from each of those countries. All of that language training landed Clough in the perfect job.
The Carolina Theatre in Allendale is now owned by USC Salkehatchie, and the feelings and memories of a bygone era are recaptured in a book titled "The Carolina Theatre." The book is written by USC art students Sara McGregor and Mari Humphries.
From earthquake mapping to family obesity prevention, USC graduate students who received the SPARC Graduate Research Fellowship embarked on innovative research journeys this past summer.
In years past, students returning to campus for their sophomore year at Carolina faced many challenges - new housing off campus, tougher classes, career development, just to name a few. And they mostly dealt with these issues on their own. But USC's Office of Student Engagement is changing how the university treats its second-year students.
Senior Leila Heidari started an after-school gardening program for Columbia-area elementary school kids as an undergraduate research project.
Margaret Bounds leads USC Housing's recycling efforts on campus. It's her job to be sure students living on-campus learn the importance of sustainability - and put it into practice.
USC pharmacy professor Jun Zhu is working to help those with HIV by exploring how the brain reacts to addictive drugs.
It's a chilly, rainy afternoon in April, but it's going to take more than cold drizzle to stop Earl Baker from getting up at 0-dark-thirty the next morning to go turkey hunting. That Baker is able to focus once again on his beloved pastime might seem an ordinary thing. But it required extraordinary skill on the part of Ben McIntyre, M.D., one of the Department of Surgery's newest physicians, to restore a measure of normalcy to the 86-year-old man's life.
Eight students participated in the study abroad program in Ufa, the capital city of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, over the summer. For the students on the trip, it was a life-changing experience that inspired several of them to return to Russia.
University President Harris Pastides wants higher education to be more accessible and affordable for South Carolinians. He plans to ask state lawmakers to work with the higher education community to find a fair funding strategy, he said during his annual State of the University address.
Admittedly obsessed as much with calculus as she is with the style.com fashion website, Sophie Kerr-Dineen would not deny the left and right sides of her brain, so in her sophomore year at USC she changed her major from economics to the business of fashion.
Venkat Lakshmi recently assumed chairmanship of the American Geophysical Union's Chapman Conference program, and in that capacity he plans to continue what he's spent his professional career doing: bringing people together to create solutions.
Financial, academic and social support for members of the military and veterans helped earn USC a place on the 2014 Military Friendly Schools list. Carolina's Student Veterans Association is one of the organizations on campus designed to help veterans adjust to life at USC.
USC sociology student Anna Rogers turned her interest and background with country music into an undergraduate research project examining sexism in the popular genre.
When Henrie Monteith, James L. Solomon and Robert G. Anderson walked up the steps to USC's Osborne Administration Building on Sept. 11, 1963, to register for classes, they were not greeted with applause or warm wishes from community dignitaries. The main goal then was to keep the occasion decidedly low-key.
Helen Fellers was honored with a Literacy Leaders Award from USC's School of Library and Information Science for a career that started as the Richland County Public Library's Bookmobile driver in the 1950s. Today, she is known as the "Story Lady" and the "Reading Rooster," the name of a popular monthly book review and recommendation program on You Tube and S.C. ETV.
More than 140 American students at UofSC have agreed to be a buddy with 160 international students. This is the second semester the Office of International Student Services has paired American and international students in a formal buddy program.
Growing up, the conversations in my family always involved civil rights. My mother, Rachel Rebecca Monteith, worked to achieve equal pay for teachers in South Carolina, and my aunt, Modjeska Simkins, was involved with many issues, as was my uncle Henry Monteith. So we didn't really carve out this one issue, the desegregation of USC, as something uniquely and significantly important, though certainly it was.
The South Carolina Honors College and the University of South Carolina Press are sponsoring a writing contest for the state's high school juniors and seniors, asking them to answer this question: How should we improve the state of South Carolina? Their work will be judged by Pat Conroy, New York Times-bestselling author of "The Water Is Wide," "The Great Santini" and "The Prince of Tides."
Poet and National Book Award winner Nikky Finney will deliver the University of South Carolina's annual Adrenee Glover Freeman Memorial Lecture Thursday, Sept. 26.
The University of South Carolina's undergraduate international business program retained its title as the best in the nation according to U.S. News and World Report's 2014 "America's Best Colleges" released Tuesday, making it 15 years in a row that the program has come in at No. 1.
University of South Carolina Parking Services will operate the Gameday Shuttle once again during the Gamecocks' 2013 home football games.
In high school Sarah Ferraro didn't imagine herself at USC. A few years later, she says she can't picture herself anywhere else. Carolina is her home. And she is sharing her love for USC with potential Gamecocks.
Chernobyl research led by biology professor Tim Mousseau is showing that radiation damage to wildlife is significant and long lasting.
Statistics professor Don Edwards works extensively with Carolina alumni in the battle against health care fraud.
Opera student Kate McKinney is following in Orson Welles' footsteps by directing selections from Aaron Copland's "The Second Hurricane."
The Proving Ground -- the University of South Carolina's startup competition for students - is back for 2013 and bigger than ever, this year boasting more than $50,000 in cash prizes and startup support.
Spanish moss, pinching blue crabs and resort villages distinguish Josh Eagle's passion for the law. As a University of South Carolina law professor, he is knee-deep in the rising tide of coastal law, a new field of knowledge that combines environmental sciences, land development and public policy. Through his research, Josh seeks to understand the relationship of economic development and nature preservation.
May 3, 1999, is a day Kevin Ash can't forget. Considered by many plains-state residents as the worst weather outbreak in generations, the 70-plus tornadoes hit parts of Kansas as well as the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. How members of his family and neighbors reacted to the storm warnings that day is a key reason Ash is at the University of South Carolina today.
Distorted images. Uneven exposures. Blurred edges. The photographs taken by Taylor Singmaster, aren't perfect, but that's on purpose. Her pictures serve as metaphors for the lives of children with Down syndrome, whose worlds aren't perfect either. But they are still beautiful, genuine, pure. Using a plastic toy camera the images may not be sharp, Taylor's focus is clear.