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Clemson University Graduate School

Graduate School Development Board

The development board is an independent body of volunteers advocating for the mission and vision of the Graduate School with internal and external stakeholders, including the president’s office, the Board of Trustees campus administration, the business community and the public.

Supporting the Graduate School’s Mission

Board members donate their time, expertise and experience in support of GS priorities in collaboration with the graduate school leadership. The Board supports three main areas for the Graduate School:

  • Fundraising.
  • Advocacy.
  • Professional and personal development.

Members of the Board

  • Hanan Alnizami

    Hanan Alnizami is the digital human-machine interaction manager at Jaguar Land Rover, North America. She leads a team of designers, researchers and engineers responsible for setting Jaguar land Rover's global digital experience portfolio. She holds a Ph.D. in human-centered computing focusing on human factors and psychology from Clemson University and a bachelor's degree in information technology from Youngstown State University. Hanan has led research strategy and cross-functional engineering teams that produce product experience requirements and evaluations, interaction design testing and data analytics that drive end-to-end product quality and development throughout her professional career. Hanan currently serves on Clemson's Woman Alumni Council (WAC). She also serves on the scientific advisory board for the International Conference on Applied Human Factors (AHFE) for the Human Factors and Assistive Technology, Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things (IoT), Human Factors and Simulation and Usability and User Experience tracks. She is an active reviewer for AHFE, HFES and the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).

  • H. Mitch Blasko

    Mitch Blasko is a Clemson graduate and a CPA and corporate recruiter for American Credit Acceptance, LLC in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Nearly 25 years of matching candidates to job has given him a keen insight into what employers want and how to best match those needs with the career goals of job seekers, a skill that will no doubt be invaluable as the Development Board helps plan for student success in professional and personal development.

    He is a member of the American Institute of CPAs, the South Carolina Institute of CPAs and is a Tiger Ties Mentor for the College of Business.

  • Jeffrey D. Camm

    Jeffrey D. Camm is senior associate dean of business analytics, the Inmar Presidential Chair in Analytics and the executive director of the Center for Analytics Impact at the Wake Forest University School of Business. He received his Ph.D. in Management Science from Clemson University and a B.S in Mathematics from Xavier University (Ohio). Prior to joining Wake Forest, he held the Joseph S. Stern Chair in Business Analytics in the Lindner College of Business at the University of Cincinnati and he has been a visiting professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and the School of Engineering at Stanford University.

    Camm’s scholarship on applied optimization has appeared in the top journals in the field and he has coauthored ten textbooks, including the best-selling Business Analytics 4e with Cengage. A firm believer in practicing what he preaches, he has consulted for numerous corporations including among others, Procter and Gamble, Owens Corning, GE, Duke Energy, Tyco, Ace Hardware, Corning, Boar’s Head, Starbucks, Road Runner Sports, Brooks Running Shoes and Kroger. His work in supply chain optimization with Procter & Gamble was a 1996 Edelman Award Finalist and is credited with helping P&G save over $250,000,000 annually in their North American supply chain. In 1998, his joint work on nature reserve site selection for efficient conservation was published in the journal Science and appeared in a brief to President Clinton.

  • Nancy Kenyon Fairey

    Raised in Latta, South Carolina, Kenyon Fairey graduated with honors from Clemson with a B.S. in Recreation and Park Administration. She went on to earn her master’s in Recreation Administration from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and her doctorate in Recreation and Park Administration from Indiana University, Bloomington.

    A lifelong loyal Tiger alumna, she has supported Clemson in many ways, including the Dr. Kenyon Fairey ’71 Annual Doctoral Fellowship. The fellowship fund provides graduate fellowships for doctoral students whose scholarship and/or applied research focuses in the areas of resource management, conservation, outdoor education or health and wellness."

    Her career path has led through the professoriate, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) consulting, database analysis, software and network support and into information technology administration. Hence, she has a rare breadth of experience spanning multiple disciplines and is especially adept with the human dimensions of those disciplines.

  • Frankie O. Felder-Cargile

    In 1987, Frankie Felder became the first African American to be hired as a dean at Clemson University as well as the first woman to serve as a dean in the Graduate School.

    During her 30-year career at Clemson, she built the initial infrastructure for internationalization of the University, expanded opportunities for participation in national and regional programs to increase the domestic diversity of enrolled graduate students and counseled the graduate community of students, faculty and staff on policies and procedures of the graduate enterprise.

    Throughout her 43-year career in education, begun following receipt of a B.S. in elementary education from Virginia Commonwealth University, an M.Ed. in student personnel administration from the University of Vermont and an Ed.M. and Ed.D. in higher education policy analysis from Harvard University, she has applied principles and theories of both student and academic affairs administration to develop innovative approaches to facilitate student success and to work in the communities in which she has lived. Service on the GRE Board included four years of chairing the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.

    Over the years, she has created an array of innovative programs to address education and community housing problem. She created the McKnight Black History and Culture Brain Bowl (now a part of the Florida Education Fund), conceptualized and built a University-wide graduate research forum that changed the culture of research for undergraduate students; becoming the precursor of Creative Inquiry at Clemson; and culminated in a Governor's Proclamation, "Focus on Research and Graduate Education in South Carolina, (FORGE S.C.), 2006." Felder developed International Awareness Week at Clemson University, designed and led the Diversity Leaders' Initiative (DLI, Furman University) project, "Diversity Awareness Week," in Anderson County school districts five and two. Two programs she designed, the Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship Program at Clemson (1989) and the Upward Bound Program at Kansas State University (1979-1982), were selected as national models of superior program conceptualization.

    She engaged with the GRE Board for eight years, serving four years as chairperson of the board's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. Additionally, she has chaired and served on more than 40 community, University, state, regional and national committees, task forces, commissions and boards associated with graduate, international and minority higher education, K-12 education and community uplift. She was selected as the State of South Carolina Academic Affairs Administrator of the Year (1996), received the Council of Southern Graduate School's (CSGS) award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Education in the Southern Region in 2007 and the United Way of Anderson County's Kirk B. Oglesby Award for Excellence for conceptualizing and leading the "Imagine a Neighborhood" project in Belton in 2009.

    In 2017 the University created the Frankie O. Felder Graduate Student Award of Excellence to be presented annually to an outstanding graduate student who reflects the values of excellence and persistence reflected throughout her career. In 2017, she retired from Clemson University as Senior Associate Dean of the Graduate School and Associate Professor of Education, Emeritus. In retirement, Felder has provided consultation to the Graduate School and Provost at Miami University of Ohio, created the curriculum and worked with library staff to implement a supplementary reading program for children at Sentinel Primary and Kronendal Primary schools in Hout Bay, South Africa, self-published and is speaking to groups on the narrative of her family in its southern historical context, OURstory Unchained and Liberated from HIStory and will begin a three-year term this Fall on the Clemson University Emeriti College Advisory Board.

  • Harold Hughes

    Harold Hughes is a first-generation American, startup founder and angel investor who believes startup entrepreneurship is the vehicle that will most significantly impact generational wealth and positive outcomes in communities. After founding his first startup, Bandwagon, he has become a leader in the growing startup community in Greenville, South Carolina, by using his talent for connecting people to networks and resources to help them succeed. Hughes invests in women, people of color and Black founder-led companies. He is a graduate of Clemson University where he earned bachelor's degrees in economics and political science.

  • Louis B. Lynn

    Louis B. Lynn, President and Founder of ENVIRO Ag Science, grew up in Darlington County, South Carolina, before graduating from Clemson University with a bachelor's degree and master's degree in horticulture. He then earned a Ph.D. in horticulture from the University of Maryland. He has been a member of the Clemson University Board of Trustees since 1988 and takes pride in having attended almost all the 100+ Graduation Ceremonies that have occurred during his board tenure. He has also served as an adjunct professor of horticulture at Clemson.

    Lynn serves on the Board of Trustees of the NYC headquarters of the National Urban League and is a retired Corporate Bank Director of BB&T (now TRUIST Financial (NYSE – TFC)). He formerly served as a national board member of the American Horticulture Society; a national board member of the National Association of Minority Contractors, a two-term commissioner for the S.C. Commission on Higher Education; and a commissioner for the State Workforce Development Board.

  • Patricia Randall

    Patricia Randall earned her master's degree and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Clemson in 2002 and 2006, respectively. While at Clemson, she was a member of the Industrial Engineering Honor Society Alpha Pi Mu.

    Patricia is a director at Princeton Consultants, an information technology and management consulting firm, where she leads the design and development of custom software that helps businesses optimize their decision-making. Her background in engineering enables her to successfully translate complex mathematical models to the messy realities of business.

    Randall is a past president of the Women's Alumni Council and currently serves on the executive board. She also serves as the Women's Alumni Council's liaison with the Greenville Clemson Club.

  • Rob Randall

    Rob Randall is a senior optimization specialist at Princeton Consultants, an information technology and management consulting firm, where he creates custom optimization models based on mathematics and operations research combined with advanced data analytics and simulation techniques to provide the tools and software to create and implement optimal recommendations that save his clients time and money.

    He graduated from Clemson in 2002 with a master's degree in industrial engineering and with a Ph.D. in the same discipline in 2006. While at Clemson, he was a member of the industrial engineering honor society Alpha Pi Mu and currently serves on the industrial engineering department's advisory board (IEAB).

    In addition to serving on the IEAB, Rob serves as treasurer on the S.C. Chapter of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE).