Fall 2006 -- Vol. 59, No. 4

Reflections on National Spotlight

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. …”

Charles Dickens opened his great novel, A Tale of Two Cities, with these lines, which could have been written in any era because they describe every age.

They certainly resonated with me on Sept. 1, 2006. In the span of a few hours, I attended the campus memorial service for Tiffany Marie Souers and the First Friday parade. We grieved the senseless murder of a promising student; then we celebrated the beginning of
a promising new football season.

It was a hard transition. Yet as a university community, we managed to do both because we knew Tiffany would have wanted it that way.

Earlier in the summer, we lost Walter Cox. I said at his memorial service, “No one ever loved Clemson more and demanded less in return than Walter Cox.”

Then, a few weeks later, we learned that Clemson is now a top-30 national public university, according to the U.S.News & World Report rankings. This is the most respected and most credible of the various higher education lists because it combines hard, statistical data with softer “reputation” scores. It’s more than a survey; they do their homework.

Last year, Clemson gained ground because of measures that matter most to students and parents — smaller classes, lower faculty-to-student ratios and higher graduation rates.

And so, the life of a university rolls on. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and we rose in national stature because of a lesson Walter Cox taught us long ago: “The students come first.”

Clemson was in the national spotlight — and in the New York Times — this fall because of two major stories.

Football student-athlete Ramon (Ray Ray) McElrathbey’s determination to raise his
11-year-old brother, Fahmarr, captured the nation’s imagination and inspired millions. With the help of the ACC and the NCAA, we were able to get a waiver of the strictest rules governing scholarship athletes so that we might provide him reasonable and appropriate help.

The other story spotlighted the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) and the unprecedented support we have received from automotive industry partners as well as the state of South Carolina.

The first class of seven Ph.D. students in automotive engineering began studying on campus this fall.
Next year, they will move to the new Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center, which is under construction now, and a new crop of master’s and doctoral degree candidates will join them.

This level of national attention, however, invites greater scrutiny, and the New York Times seemed to many to imply that our partnership with industry is a new and menacing threat to academic freedom and institutional integrity at Clemson.

In fact, Clemson has a 100-year history of working closely, with integrity, with industries ranging from agriculture to biomaterials to textiles. Economic development was a part of Thomas Green Clemson’s vision and has always been a part of our mission as a land-grant university.

Seeking partners, seeking collaborators or seeking input is one thing. However, ceding control is another thing altogether.

As alumni, you can be confident that Clemson has not and will not give up control over our core academic enterprise. We listen to many voices, but it’s the sole responsibility of the University and its faculty to determine such things as hiring, promotion, tenure, curriculum and content.

BMW, Michelin and Timken — known internationally for excellence in engineering — have chosen to partner with us because of this independence and strength, and because of the quality of our faculty, students and graduates.

The foundation of this quality is academic integrity — a core value at Clemson.