USCTIMES
SEPTEMBER 2016 / VOL. 27, NO.7
THE NEW ISSUE
Now Trending
Who Knew?
Can't Hack This
If it's making headlines in 2016, USC's got somebody on it, page 18
Six new professors, two deans, one surgeon, one director and one coach, page 4
SC Cyber links statewide cybersecurity efforts, builds on cyber research, page 14
USC TIMES / STAFF
FROM THE EDITOR USC Times is published 10 times a year for the faculty and staff of the University of South Carolina by the Office of Communications & Public Affairs, Wes Hickman, director. Managing Editor Craig Brandhorst Creative Director Bob Wertz Designer Brinnan Wimberly Contributors Dan Cook Chris Horn Page Ivey Steven Powell Erin Bluvas Thom Harman Laura Kammerer Photographers Kim Truett Ambyr Goff Adrieene Cooper Printer USC Printing Services Campus correspondents James Raby, Aiken Cortney Easterling, Greenville Shana Dry, Lancaster Jane Brewer, Salkehatchie Misty Hatfield, Sumter Annie Smith, Union Tammy Whaley, Upstate Jay Darby, Palmetto College Submissions Did you know you can submit ideas for future issues of USC Times? Share your story by emailing or calling Craig Brandhorst at craigb1@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-3681.
IT HAPPENS EVERY FALL ... Novelty is nothing new — not on a college campus, certainly not at USC. For all the history and tradition that surround us as we stroll the Horseshoe or gaze on the reflecting pool in front of Thomas Cooper or lay down the tailgate at Williams-Brice, this place changes all the time, starting with the people. Sure, Dr. X is still teaching Y in Building A and researching Z in Building B, but he’s got a brand-new colleague across the hall, a brand-new standing desk and a brand-new parking decal. And then, when he stepped up to the lectern Aug. 18 and looked out at the first few rows of his T-TH, there wasn’t a familiar face in the bunch. It happens every fall. To wit, this fall we welcomed more than 8,000 new undergraduates to the Columbia campus, pushing our overall student body over 31,000. If you find those figures hard to fathom, flip to page 12 and read them again in 48-point type. While you’re there, check out some of the other figures — then ponder them as you stroll the Horseshoe, gaze on the reflecting pool or lay down the tailgate before the first home football game, which kicks off Sept. 17. Speaking of football, we talked to new head football coach Will Muschamp this month about effort, toughness and discipline — the three principle attributes he hopes to instill in his student-athletes this year. We also caught up with two new deans, one new director, one new chair and a slew of new faculty. What’s that? The new assistant professor of economics also plays Spanish guitar? The new education dean attended a one-room school in rural Nebraska? The new director at the School of Library and Information Science originally wanted to be an illustrator? “Who Knew?” begins on page 4. Another new hire suffered a serious concussion practicing judo in college — and now studies concussions — but we opted not to put assistant professor of exercise science R. Davis Moore in our fresh faces feature. Instead, we worked his experiences into another feature, “Now Trending,” which provides a glimpse at a few USC faculty whose work engages directly with some of the hot topics of 2016. We’re talking about the major newsmakers, globally, nationally, locally. We’re talking Zika, water safety, flood prevention. We’re also talking cybersecurity, page 14. Long story short, if it’s dominated the headlines this year, somebody on campus is talking about it. They’re also studying it, writing about it, doing something to fix it. That’s nothing new either, of course — not on a college campus, certainly not at USC. What’s new are the people, starting with the ones you’ll meet in this new issue of USC Times.
The University of South Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities or decisions for qualified persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation or veteran status.
Enjoy the new issue,
CRAIG BRANDHORST MANAGING EDITOR
VOL. 27, NO.7 3
ON CAMPUS, ON BASE The Student Veterans Association has been awarded an $8,500 grant from the Home
SPEECH! SPEECH! It’s not every day you get to hear the marching band, watch the batons twirl, photobomb Cocky and hang with the president — all before lunch. That’s right, it’s State of the University time again, and everyone’s invited. Come hear President Harris Pastides reflect on the year to-date and lay out his vision for Carolina’s future, then catch up
Depot Foundation and Student Veterans of America. Funds will be used for the construction of a center for student veterans and affiliates in USC’s Student Success Center. Once complete, the center will provide study, meeting and special event space for veterans on campus.
with your colleagues outside the office. When? Sept. 14, 10 a.m. Where? The Horseshoe. Why? We’ve already been over that, please review.
OVERTIME RULES! New Labor Department regulations reclassify some employees previously classified as exempt for overtime purposes as non-exempt. At the university, that means employees with salaries of less than $47,476 ($913 per week) will now be eligible for overtime pay. That threshold is up from $23,600 per year ($455 per week). About 1,000 university employees will now be required to report their hours in the university’s timekeeping system. The new rules, which do not apply to teachers, physicians and attorneys, take effect Oct. 16. For more information, visit the New
JUNIORS HELPING SENIORS
Overtime Rules section of the Human Resources website on sc.edu.
Caring for an aging adult requires a variety of duties like food shopping, transportation, grooming, housekeeping and bill paying.
GATEWAYS FOR: STUDENTS FACULTY & STAFF PARENTS ALUMNI
The university’s Employee Assistance Program has several resources to help your family care for an aging adult, including an online seminar
GATEWAY TO EVERYTHING
that can be accessed anytime. No registration is necessary
— just log into the EAP website
Email, iTams, VIP. Announcements, stories, targeted tweets. USC faculty,
(www.deeroakseap.com), click on the member
staff, students, alumni and parents: get where you're going in a couple of
login tab and use the username and password
clicks. Find your Gateway at the top of the university's homepage at sc.edu.
“USC.” Click the plus sign below “Online Seminars.” Specific questions are answered within five business days.
4 USCTIMES / SEPTEMBER 2016
WHO KNEW? Every year, USC welcomes a slew of new faculty and staff to campus. For obvious reasons, we can’t profile all of them, but USC Times tracked down a representative sample and asked them to share a bit about their backgrounds, their research and their plans for the future — now that they’ve joined the Carolina community.
JON PEDERSEN
Dean, College of Education
FARM TO PERIODIC TABLE By Craig Brandhorst When Jon Pedersen was five years old, he walked up a dirt road to meet his first teacher — in front of the one-room Nebraska schoolhouse where he would spend the next nine years. Later, his high school class would comprise approximately 500 students, but the first chapter of his education was about as intimate as it gets, with a single-digit student body and a faculty of one. “We had a single teacher, we had a single room,” says Pedersen, who became the new dean of USC’s College of Education July 1. “We had five kids, and you would be called up for a lesson. The first-grader goes up, and then the third-grader, and then the fifth-grader — so it really was individualized education.”
After faculty positions at East Carolina University, University of Oklahoma and, most recently, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (where he was science director at the Center for Science, Math and Computer Education as well as associate dean for research), Pedersen brings plenty of higher education perspective to USC. The first-generation college graduate has also taught high school chemistry and, before entering the field of education, worked in agriculture as a feed representative for Land-O-Lakes. But it was that early classroom experience that shaped his philosophy. It’s also given him a deep appreciation for rural education. “That’s not to say I’m not concerned about urban and suburban education — I’ve taught
in a suburban school and I’ve lived in urban areas,” he says. “But I think sometimes we overlook our rural schools. Many of the problems we face in urban poor areas we also face in the rural poor areas.” In either case, he says, the key is to engage students’ curiosity. “Certainly experiential learning had an effect on me,” he says. “Being in the countryside, we had so many things to explore. If we were studying plants, for example, we had corn and soybeans right outside our door.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pedersen’s research has focused heavily on applied science. In recent years, though, he and a colleague have been exploring how students process visual images, particularly in textbooks. “Science is a very visual subject. Open a textbook and there are models and charts, pictures,” he says. “We wanted to know more about how to better develop visual data to use in books or with children. Now we’re transitioning into looking at brain function and visual images.” Before coming to Carolina, he completed a study using eye-tracking equipment, and, time permitting, he’d love to continue his exploration of visual learning. It’s a long way from the one-room schoolhouse at the end of a dirt road. “Ultimately, if I have the time as a new dean, I’d like to look at fMRI and mind mapping to see how students use visual imaging,” he says. “It’s fascinating what we know, but it’s also quite fascinating what we don’t know.”
VOL. 27, NO.7 5
DANIEL CLAIR
Chair of Surgery, School of Medicine
BETTER AT THE START By Page Ivey When Daniel Clair arrived at USC’s School of Medicine in April to take over as chair of surgery, he didn’t know so many of his first patients would be co-workers at the Palmetto HealthUSC Medical Group. “Probably the first 15 to 20 percent of my patients were employees at the hospital here who had chronic venous occlusal problems that could not be treated otherwise,” says Clair, who specializes in minimally invasive vascular procedures. “Treatment used to be a big open surgery to reposition the vein. Now it is done with stents as an outpatient procedure, and people can resume normal activity pretty quickly.” Clair completed an internship, residency and chief residency in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, then pursued a fellowship in clinical oncology at the American Cancer Society, a fellowship in vascular surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a research fellowship as a research scientist at VazoRx Inc., in Woburn, Mass. He was also chief of vascular surgery at Andrews Air Force Base Hospital. Most recently, Clair was at the Cleveland Clinic, where he was chair of vascular surgery for a decade. During his tenure, the department expanded to more than 20 surgeons and now performs more than 8,000 procedures a year. Clair has also contributed to the patenting and development of several surgical devices, including a single-use catheter-based system that delivers fluid into the space surrounding a vein in preparation for a laser or radiofrequency vein procedure. He’s also developing a device to treat aneurysms. “The neat thing about vascular surgery is that advances are coming extremely rapidly,” he says. “I am able to say to some patients, ‘If you wait a year or two, we have a technology that is in trial that might be available for you.’” In addition to treating patients, Clair will also teach surgical residents as well as students on surgical rotations and will act as an adviser for students interested in surgery. “We all, as clinicians, stand upon the shoulders of those we trained with,” he says. “They pointed out problems to avoid, and it is our responsibility to carry those messages and what we’ve learned forward to provide the public with physicians who are better at their start than I was at mine and who will ultimately be better doctors at the end of their training than I was at the end of mine.”
6 USCTIMES / SEPTEMBER 2016
STEPHEN CUTLER
Dean, College of Pharmacy
What’s your area of study? I’ll be teaching violin here, and part of my position is teaching violin pedagogy — so, teaching the history, philosophy and theory behind teaching the violin, and also string instruments in general. I’ll also be running a new master’s degree program in violin pedagogy, which is just starting out. The way the degree program is in place right now, it is really geared toward someone who wants a career teaching violin. Eventually, I think it should have an important performance base, too. Why did you choose Carolina? I’ve been playing in the JACK Quartet for 11 years; I just played my last concert a week ago. It’s what got me to where I am now in terms of my career. It certainly helped in my application for all of the positions I applied for, but in particular this one. But New York City is a really difficult place to live; it’s a tough place to raise a child. So about a year ago we decided we needed a change. The lifestyle in New York just wasn’t working for us anymore. This is the job I wanted. This is the one I was most interested in — not only because I knew the school and
ARI STREISFELD Assistant professor of violin and violin pedagogy School of Music Hometown: Philadelphia, Pa.
had been here. I knew the level was very high, the faculty was very forward thinking and really exciting. I knew several people on the faculty already, Mike Harley being one. I’ve known him for years. Also, the position itself was really intriguing. What are your goals as a musician? I want to establish myself as more of a soloist and chamber musician outside of JACK. People in the field know me as a performer in the JACK Quartet, as a contemporary music player. I hope to establish myself as a soloist in contemporary music — the recital I am giving in February will probably be three big contemporary violin works from the last 30 years. I want to present myself in that light, beyond chamber music, but also in standard repertoire, which is something I haven’t had as many opportunities to do in the past 11 years. My idea of myself as a performer is, I want to be known as someone who can do it all — who can play really avant-garde contemporary music and has a great understanding of extended techniques, but who can also play Brahms.
VOL. 27, NO.7 7
PRESCRIPTION FOR TRANSITION By Laura Kammerer
After operating for more than a decade under a joint program with the Medical University of South Carolina, the College of Pharmacy is in the midst of re-establishing its independent legacy program. This year also marks 150 years since the university began to educate pharmacists, an anniversary the college will celebrate throughout the academic year. Dean Stephen J. Cutler, who arrived in July, is poised to navigate this transition. Cutler comes to USC from the University of Mississippi, where he served as professor of medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and pharmacognosy. He also served as inaugural chairman of the Department of BioMolecular Sciences, which comprised three academic departments and a fourth academic unit. In addition to a decade of departmental leadership at Ole Miss, Cutler directed and served as the principal investigator for the Center of Research Excellence of Natural
Products in Neuroscience (CORE-NPN), a National Institutes of Health Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE that was awarded $21 million in grant funding to study the neurobiological effects of natural products. His experience as both an academic administrator and a prominent researcher, coupled with his passion for pharmacy education, make Cutler a natural fit for the college as it enters a new era. The college’s Kennedy Pharmacy Innovation Center has the potential to transform care practice by developing new business models that could be replicated elsewhere. The department of drug discovery and biomedical sciences, meanwhile, has the potential to generate game-changing drug therapies, and the Walker Pharmacy Leadership Initiative is designed to facilitate the development of future pharmacy leaders.
“Leading the college through the transition from a joint program to our legacy program affords me the opportunity to call upon a wealth of experiences I’ve had over the past 10 years,” Cutler says. Cutler plans to engage faculty members in the development of the college’s vision, mission statement and strategic plan. In addition, he plans to ramp up efforts to connect with the college’s alumni. For the Georgia native, coming to USC has felt like returning home. “My family and I have been overwhelmed by the hospitality of people in the university community and the city of Columbia,” he says. “Everyone has made us feel so welcome.”
How did you become interested in your field? I’m interested in applied linguistics, how to teach English as a second language. When I was a child in China, my dream was to be a teacher, and I followed my heart. After I got my BA in English language and literature, I started teaching in my hometown, Xi’an. I taught first- and second-year English. It was comprehensive: reading, writing, listening, speaking, all together. I taught there for eight years, and lots of questions arose through my teaching. I’m very reflective. I was trying to find answers. I talked to my colleagues about the latest research, but I wanted to answer my own questions. That’s why I started my graduate studies in China, but I still had so many questions, so I said, “The best researchers are in the States. Let me go there.” What was your dissertation? Teachers often use codes when they’re grading papers, like “WF” for “what form?” I wanted to see how effective these codes are if we are teaching writing. If we code different errors, I wanted to see how well they revise their drafts, whether that editing and revision transfers to another essay. Some students improve faster. Others seem to reject the edits.
QIANDI LIU
What was your own experience learning English in China like?
Assistant professor Department of English Language and Literature Hometown: Xi'an, China
Growing up in the 1980s, we started learning English when we were 12 or 13. Nowadays they start much earlier, like in kindergarten. But it’s mainly grammar, translation, lots of drills. You memorized grammar, you memorized words, you memorized sentence patterns, but out of the classroom you didn’t have many opportunities to use English. It becomes very abstract, like a knowledge, not a skill. It’s frustrating for us. And actually when I was teaching English in China, I didn’t have much chance to speak English out of class. The university where I taught in China was representative of the bigger universities. In the English course for freshmen and sophomores, you had large classes with over 70 students, so the curriculum was very fixed. I wasn’t very happy with that. That’s one of the reason why I left — you don’t have much freedom with your teaching methods. It’s pretty much grammar translation, and it’s more test-driven.
8 USCTIMES / SEPTEMBER 2016
DAVID LANKES
Director, School of Library Science
What’s your area of study? My two main areas are Latino literature and American poetry. Part of what’s exciting about Latino literature for undergraduate students is that it offers unique perspectives on the American Dream, particularly in terms of migration and immigration. Latino literature is central to American literary history and to the future of American literature. The debates we’re having now about migration and borders and so on — even the intensity of the rhetoric — is nothing new for Latinos. What are you most looking forward to about being at USC? I taught in New York City for the past 10 years at a large public institution with a very diverse student population. This is a big move here because the major demographic growth of the U.S. Latino population is in the South. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the U.S., and in the coming decades Latinos will likely be the majority population. With that in mind, my primary goal is to introduce USC students to writers and texts they wouldn’t otherwise encounter. The way I like to teach is a discussion-based course — getting all of the students involved — which can
MICHAEL DOWDY Associate professor Department of English Language and Literature Hometown: Blacksburg, Va.
range from listening well and asking questions, even those of clarification, to discussion in breakout groups. I like to do mini-lectures to historicize and provide context for the texts we’re studying and to promote critical thinking. That often means a lot of short brainstorming exercises and short writing exercises. I also like to incorporate audio and video clips of poets reading, which reminds students that poetry is a living and oral art form, and that poets sweat and stutter, too. How did you become interested in your work? My interest in Latino literature started in graduate school at Chapel Hill. I was studying political poetry — the ways in which poets might address their social and civil lives, the messy entanglements of society — and discovered in Latino poetry a brilliant and nuanced engagement with struggles over work, social justice, citizenship and belonging.
VOL. 27, NO.7 9
THE INFLECTION POINT By Dan Cook
David Lankes went to college to become an illustrator; he ended up working on websites in the early days of the Internet. Now director of the School of Library and Information Science and associate dean in the College of Information and Communications, Lankes has been at the forefront of his field ever since. “What I love about the field of library and information science is the impact of what we do, the lives that we make better,” Lankes says. Lankes laughs as he tells the story of how he moved from illustration to information. While an undergraduate at Syracuse University, a professor told his class, “‘Someday, you’ll be able to rip off someone’s style so well that you can get your first commission, quit your job at the mall and move out from your parents’ house.’” That was all the dissuasion Lankes needed; he pivoted into a special
studies art major that allowed him to move to tech-world design. “This was in the late ’80s, early ’90s; at the time, computers and technology were coming onto campus,” he says. “I had worked a lot in technology, and so my degree really was, ironically, in virtual reality and multimedia — way ahead of the curve. Then it died, now it’s back again.” Lankes went on to pursue a master’s in telecommunications and a doctorate in information transfer, also at Syracuse University. His early interest in the Internet made him a valuable asset; his first project as a doctoral student was helping his adviser create an online reference service for teachers. Eventually, Lankes joined the Syracuse faculty. Altogether, he spent 28 years there. He’s proud of his time at a school that was an early leader in the field, but he’s ready to write the next chapter at USC.
“We have outstanding faculty that are committed to education and are really ready to take on a national and international stage in the research they do,” Lankes says. Between the exponential growth of data and the ever-increasing importance of the Internet, Lankes sees an exciting time ahead for libraries in general and for USC in particular. “The reason we have libraries today is not because over 4,000 years they didn’t change — it’s because they changed pretty dramatically at regular times. We are at that inflection point now,” he says. “Part of the reason I came down here is to be part of a team that truly wants to set an agenda and not simply sit back and see where we are going to be tomorrow. "My goal is not to think small but to think big — and to really produce the world’s best librarians and the world’s best information scientists, and the next generation of faculty to train them.”
What's your area of research? My research has focused on health care systems research — so, what works, what doesn’t and how we can make improvements. My graduate work was in health policy and health services research at Johns Hopkins University and School of Public Health. In my years working with the federal government, I became very passionate about improving disparities for vulnerable populations. Disparities bother me — I don’t think I should have better or worse care because of where I live or the color of my skin or my knowledge base. What made you decide to go into academia? While working at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — which was like a postdoc on steroids — I had numerous opportunities to work with top researchers throughout the country. But as a federal employee, I couldn’t do some of the research I wanted to do, especially involving primary data collection and using non-federally funded databases. I went to Marquette University in 2011 to transition from the federal government to academia, and I have been enjoying my academic journey ever since. To me, academia offers the best venue to make a difference.
RONDA HUGHES
What do you hope to accomplish over the next five years?
Director of the Center for Nursing Leadership; Director for the Executive Doctorate of Nursing Practice Program; associate professor College of Nursing Hometown: Oxon Hill, Md.
My goal is to grow and expand the Center for Nursing Leadership to be the regional center for nursing leadership — and then a national center for leadership. One of the things we have learned is that we can train you with the best knowledge possible, but then you get into your workplace and they say, “Well, we do it this way.” People in leadership positions encounter the same thing, but they are kind of left on their own — they don’t necessarily have the opportunities they need for skill building. When you are in leadership management positions, it’s a lifelong learning process. There is a lot of trial and error. So, we are also looking at expanding the center in the years to come so that it will become an intra-professional center for leadership housed in the College of Nursing. We are going to collaborate and bring folks together. If you don’t have good leadership, you are going to have poor patient outcomes. If you don’t have good teams, you are going to have poor patient outcomes. It’s not just my opinion; it’s been proven time and time again in the research.
10 USCTIMES / SEPTEMBER 2016
WILL MUSCHAMP
Head Football Coach
What’s your area of research? The short answer is the physiological control of stem cells. More specifically, we are looking at how stem cells are modulated by nutrient sensing. Stem cells are important for generating multiple types of tissues for damage repair, such as in spinal cord injuries, but they also are very similar to cancer cells in that they proliferate rapidly. And a lot of the signaling pathways that are important for maintaining stem cells and stem cell activity and their behavior — and whether they stay a stem cell or whether they make another cell type — those pathways are often misregulated in cancer cells. So we can use stem cells and how changes in diet or nutrient sensing might affect stem cell activity as a proxy for how changing diet and nutrient sensing might affect cancer cell behavior. What made you decide to go into academia? People always ask when you are a bio major, “Oh are you pre-med?” and I always said, “No.” I was never pre-med. I was always just interested in how you go from sperm and egg to whatever type of organism: a human, a frog, a mouse, a fish. I have always been on this research track, and it wasn’t until I was at William
ALISSA RICHMOND ARMSTRONG Associate professor Department of Biological Sciences Hometown: Newport News, Va.
& Mary that I thought, “Oh, I could be a PI and lead a lab and teach.” So I have been focused on that since graduate school. Why did you choose Carolina? I wanted to get back to a place that was similar to William & Mary, where there was more interaction with undergraduates, where there were undergraduates involved with research, because I got my spark as an undergraduate.
VOL. 27, NO.7 11
EFFORT. TOUGHNESS. DISCIPLINE By Thom Harman
Will Muschamp isn’t the kind of man who’ll back down from a challenge. In high school, he overcame a devastating leg injury. He then walked on at the University of Georgia, only to become a defensive team captain. Since tackling his newest challenge — head football coach for the Gamecocks — Muschamp has been determined to instill his mantra of “effort, toughness and discipline” in the football program. “In this early stage of our program, we talk to our guys about the importance of effort on and off the field,” Muschamp says. “In my experience, guys who have been good players have handled themselves the right way off the field. To me, the accountability and responsibility of being a student-athlete at the University of South Carolina is very important.” Fortunately, Carolina’s program doesn’t feel like a complete rebuild. “We inherited an
outstanding culture, and I credit the previous staff for that,” he says. “These guys have a huge amount of buy-in and positive attitudes.” For a new coach, though, there’s another issue: how will a team largely recruited by another staff, with a different approach, adapt to a new system? Sometimes there’s an adjustment period. In other cases the transition can be relatively painless. “We’re very similar schematically on the offensive side to what Coach Spurrier had here, so it’ll be a smooth transition, but we’ll play with a little more tempo,” Muschamp says. “That’s one of the things I thought about when I brought in (co-offensive coordinator) Kurt Roper. And, obviously, retaining Shawn Elliott was important. He’s done a tremendous job with the offensive line.” Defensively, Muschamp’s teams are known for being aggressive, stingy and tough, and he’ll look to do the same here. Fans can look for the
Gamecocks to be a bit different this season. “To me, your job as a coach always comes back to doing what your players do well,” he says. “We may not be exactly what we want to be in our first year, but at the end of the day you have to do what you can to be successful.” Off the field, Muschamp is enjoying his new life at Carolina. “There’s a balance on a good college campus that I think is really neat,” he explains. “That’s what it’s all about to me. We’re all in this together, we’re all coming together in the same direction, and this can be a very powerful place when it happens.” Muschamp has worked through difficult times before, and he’s looking forward to running out to “2001” and showing the Gamecock faithful a hard-working, disciplined team. “I’ve been on the other sideline in Williams-Brice,” he says. “I’m looking forward to being on the home side.” T
What’s your area of research? I’m a development economist, and within development, I’m working on mostly corruption topics, the economics of corruption — and more recently on the impact of information communications technologies in improving transparency and governance. For example, cell phone technology has been a very successful story in the developing world. A lot of people in the developing world, even though they are very poor, have access to cell phones, and I’m looking at how that very rapid expansion over the past decade or so has actually improved not only economic development, but also things like transparency and governance. What was the title of your dissertation? “Social Monitoring and Electoral Fraud.” I looked at Afghanistan in the first elections after the toppling of the Taliban regime. There were obvious concerns about fraud, so the United Nations created a project that provided cell phone hotlines for individuals to call if they saw instances of electoral fraud, for example. The cell phone is a very simple tool that is widely available, even in Afghanistan, which is very poor. The interesting thing was to see if this very simple, widely available tool can have an impact in improving transparency
ROBERT GONZALEZ Assistant professor Darla Moore School of Business Hometown: Miami, Fla. (born in Havana, Cuba)
via having this deterring effect on electoral fraud. What do you hope to accomplish over the next five years? The main goal is to get out a number of publications, but I also want to create a new course that hasn’t been taught before here in the Darla Moore School of Business. I wouldn’t say it’s controversial, but it’s a unique course in the sense that I will talk about the economics of terrorism. We’ll look at channels of support for terrorism, what measures of counterterrorism are effective, the characteristics of terrorist organizations. What’s a talent you have that people might find surprising? Well, I like to play the guitar. I have a Spanish guitar, but just play it within the family. I also really like to play baseball. It’s a very big sport in Cuba, you sort of grow up with that. So I look forward to somehow getting involved in that here.
T
12 USCTIMES / SEPTEMBER 2016
A NUMBER OF KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE — SOME THINGS ARE HARD TO QUANTIFY, ESPECIALLY IN THE WORLD OF HIGHER EDUCATION. OTHER THINGS, HOWEVER, CAN BE COUNTED.*
4
2
3
1
5
Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland
10,000
and Georgia. Overall, the freshman class
to be held Sept. 16-18. There are 31,225 parents registered with the
includes students from 44 states, plus
university's Parents Association.
The top five states (in order) where out-of-state freshmen hail from are North
the District of Columbia, and from 35 countries worldwide.
Number of participants expected for Parents Weekend 2016,
VOL. 27, NO.7  13
NEW NUMBERS
8,000 & 31,000 The university welcomed more than 8,000 new undergraduates to the Columbia campus this fall. That brings the total student body, including graduate students, to more than 31,000.
7,557
Number of students who will live on campus this year in University Housing and the Greek Village. Included in that figure are the residents of Legare-Pinckney, which came back online this semester after extensive renovations.
900 Number of students who live in the 650 Lincoln complex. Phase 2 of the
121
Estimated number of student-athletes in the freshman class. Thirty-six of those student-athletes will suit up with the Gamecock football team, which plays its first home game under new head coach Will Muschamp
97%
west campus public-private housing complex opened this summer.
54% Estimated percentage
of females in this year's freshman class, which
Estimated percentage of freshmen who will live on campus.
reflects a nationwide
Research shows new students who live on campus are more
trend as more women
involved in campus life and develop stronger social networks.
enroll in college.
Saturday, Sept. 17. * Editor's note: Numbers relating to the incoming freshman class are preliminary.
14 USCTIMES / SEPTEMBER 2016
CAN'T HACK THIS By Dan Cook
SC Cyber links statewide cybersecurity efforts, builds on cyber research.
“Let’s face it: Cyberdefense is not glorious. Some of the most popular sites related to cyber are the ones that talk about offensive capabilities — about how exciting it is to hack into a system. It’s much easier to hack into a system than to secure all components of that system. Defense is boring. It’s tedious. Nobody rewards someone because their system deflected 10 million attacks — everybody remembers the one that actually succeeded.” - Csilla Farkas
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I
f you’ve ever received a call from your bank about suspicious activity, you know that hacking can hit close to home. It’s not just your credit card and checking account that are vulnerable, however. Cybersecurity issues spill into every aspect of life: 64 percent of Americans own a smartphone, according to the Pew Center, a proportion that has more than doubled in five years. Add the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) — a network that includes appliances, vehicles, even buildings, all collecting and transmitting data — and the need for cybersecurity becomes exponentially larger. Research firm Gartner estimates there are now 6.4 billion connected IoT devices in the world, necessitating $348 million in annual cybersecurity spending. Every one of those devices — everything from your car to your refrigerator, plus every desktop and tablet — is susceptible to hacking. But cybersecurity is about more than protecting personal finances and identities. It’s also about protecting key infrastructure such as ports, dams, railway systems or nuclear plants. Governments spend billions of dollars to protect these assets. SC Cyber, a new consortium housed at USC’s Office of Economic Engagement, is dedicated to improving cybersecurity in South Carolina. Building on a strong academic foundation, the consortium brings cybersecurity experts together with partners in industry, government and beyond to protect South Carolina’s critical infrastructure, promote public awareness of cybersecurity issues and help build the workforce needed to build the state’s cybersecurity industry.
CSILLA FARK AS has been an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering since 2000. She serves as director of the univeristy's Center for Information Assurance Engineering.
In August, USC Times spoke with three key participants in the new initiative about the increasing importance of cybersecurity and the overall mission of SC Cyber.
TOM SCOTT is SC Cyber's first executive director and a veteran of cybersecurity efforts for the state of South Carolina.
LES EISNER is deputy director of USC's Office of Economic Engagement and the founder of SC Cyber.
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SPRINGBOARD FOR RESEARCH It’s not SC Cyber’s size that gives it strength. The power of SC Cyber lies in its ability to make connections between people and organizations that might not be made otherwise. The consortium includes Clemson University, the College of Charleston, The Citadel and Trident Technical College, and is “academically agnostic” even though it is housed at USC, according to Eisner. Operating as it does out of the Office of Economic Engagement, SC Cyber is well positioned to link researchers to companies — connections that will help both compete for research grants. Combine that with Eisner’s background as deputy adjutant general for the S.C. National Guard and Scott’s decades of experience with state government (his last position was as the state’s deputy chief information security officer), and SC Cyber is poised to bring researchers together with government, too. EISNER: One of the things we are proud of is that we have now built some level of trust among academia, industry and
government in the state of South Carolina. FARKAS: One of the biggest contributions that SC Cyber will do for research is connecting the partners — to have academic
researchers meeting with appropriate government agencies, meeting with developing industry technology, meeting with end users. There is a lot of money out there for cybersecurity research. However, so far what we have seen has been initiated by individual researchers, bringing in what I would call small- or medium-scope research projects. What SC Cyber will do in the future is really promote large-scale research projects.
BEYOND IT: LAW & INSURANCE Outside the technical work of protecting data moving back and forth on billions of devices lies a vast web of societal implications in such fields as law and insurance. With input from SC Cyber, the School of Law is working to address this murky, emerging area. The Law School has brought in experts on autonomous driving and IoT, for example. In February, the South Carolina Law Review held a symposium called “Cyber Attacks and Civil Liability,” with talks on the science behind cyber-attacks as well as the legal framework surrounding them. Meanwhile, questions of liability lead immediately to the insurance industry. As Scott explains, the insurance industry is a key one to watch as it relates to cybersecurity, because its need to mitigate risk has the potential to force both business and government to adapt their practices. FARKAS: It’s about understanding the non-technical aspects of cybersecurity — the human aspects coming from business and
economics, the human psychology. It’s about really providing a comprehensive defensive capability against malicious users. EISNER: If you got seriously hacked and someone stole your private information, where are you going to find a lawyer that
understands anything about cyber? SCOTT: Let’s say you bought a car that will drive itself, and I’m old school, so I am still driving my car. If your car happens to
run into mine, what does my insurance company do? Normally they sue you or your insurance company because you were at fault. So now, who is at fault? The societal implications of cyber being interwoven through everything are pretty pronounced.
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"The strength is in education and partnerships across all levels. That’s part of why we have this flexible bag of consortium partners, so we can expand over time and not just myopically focus on one area." - Les Eisner
FARKAS: [on the Internet of Things] How are they going to use this information — not only in cyberspace, but in your reg-
ular life? There are new ways for stalking somebody: I know what time you run in the morning. I know when you are going on vacation. SCOTT: Go back to the 1970s when they put seat belts in cars. They put seat belts in cars because the insurance companies
didn’t want to keep paying for people’s injuries and deaths. In the 1980s we have airbags. So, you have the industry driving societal change for the better for all of us.
THE 15 PERCENT BOOGEYMAN As with a lot of things in life, money is the driving force in the world of cybersecurity. It’s not just the money required to protect critical infrastructure, however. Ultimately, it’s about maintaining both our physical security and our sense of security — our confidence in the broad web of technology and commerce that surrounds us. As the need for cybersecurity grows, so too does the need for cybersecurity workers. SC Cyber aims to not only meet the state’s cybersecurity needs, but also to help South Carolina become a hub for economic activity in the cybersecurity sector. SCOTT: It all comes down to business. It all comes down to making a secure transaction so I make sure that if I am buying
something from you, it is a fair trade. As soon as that stops, business stops, the economy stops — because I no longer have that confidence that I can make that transaction in a safe and secure manner. EISNER: The cyber world is a world of convenience: It’s 85 percent efficiency and goodness, and we couldn’t go back to the
1960s. But we tend to focus on the 15 percent boogeyman. So, SC Cyber is not only about how we protect ourselves from the boogeyman, it’s also about how we turn the region and the state of South Carolina into an economic powerhouse. All these things equal economic growth. So, that is really the construct of what SC Cyber does: It’s the power of partnerships. FARKAS: It’s really connecting the pieces to talk to the right experts and talk to the right leaders to make things happen.
Somebody needs to be the champion. SCOTT: I’m the new evangelist. Coordinate, communicate, collaborate.
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THE USC COMMUNITY MAKE HEADLINES ALL THE TIME. WE ALSO RESPOND TO THEM — DIRECTLY AND INDIRECTLY — THROUGH RESEARCH, OUTREACH, TEACHING AND EXPERTISE. USC TIMES PICKED A HANDFUL OF HOT BUTTON ISSUES FOR 2016 AND SOUGHT OUT FACULTY, STAFF AND ALUMNI WHO ARE PART OF THE LARGER CONVERSATION.
NOW CONCUSSIONS BY ERIN BLUVAS
For R. Davis Moore, assistant professor of exercise science at the Arnold School for Public Health, concussions are personal. Moore experienced one during a wrestling match in middle school, and then suffered a second, more serious one while practicing judo as a college student at the University of Georgia. “It took a really long time to recover, and the entire experience was very poorly managed,” Moore says. “It had a profound effect on me, and I thought that maybe I could improve the recovery process for others.” Moore, who arrived at the University of South Carolina this semester following a postdoctoral fellowship at the NeuroDEV Lab and the Center for Neuropsychology and Cognition Research at the University of Montreal, studies concussions and other brain injuries as well as the effects of exercise on brain and behavioral health. He looks at every stage of concussion, from the initial diagnosis to emergency treatment, all the way through rehabilitation. But while great strides have been made, he says, there are no effective, evidence-based protocols for identifying and providing care to those who experience concussions, particularly for those who experience persisting symptoms and psychological deficits. “For example, physical activity is recommended as part of the rehabilitation for athletes, but most people exercise too soon or too intensely after injury, which can worsen the underlying brain injury and its associated psychological perturbations — whereas we’ve had a lot of success through our research and clinical practice in easing athletes back into exercise in a systematic way, based on known physiological parameters and psychological phenomenon.” Moore is expanding his research to include other populations (e.g., non-athletes, military personnel, car accident survivors). He is also particularly interested in filling the knowledge gaps for children ages 6-16 to better understand outcomes and concussion effects on cognition development, such as math skills and impulse control. “There are currently only a handful of studies on children younger than high school age, and this group often experiences outcomes that are worse than older age groups,” says Moore. “If we can learn more about how this group is affected, then we can better understand when and how to intervene, to steer them toward better outcomes.” He sees a lot of opportunity and value to be added to the field by advancing the knowledge and care of individuals who get injured but don’t have the benefit of a team of sports medicine professionals coordinating their recovery. That’s where the University of South Carolina comes in. “Everything really came together for me at Carolina,” says Moore. “It’s a research-intensive atmosphere with high-caliber faculty who have high standards and productivity, but everyone is down to earth.”
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TRENDING ZIKA BY CRAIG BRANDHORST
Think you’ve heard a lot about the Zika virus this summer? You’ve got nothing on Helmut Albrecht. As chair of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the USC School of Medicine in Columbia, Albrecht hears about the virus almost daily. But it’s not his colleagues at Palmetto Health-USC Medical Group who are bending his ear. It’s the general public. “I’m playing golf, and someone will say, ‘Oh, you work with Zika?’” he says. “It was the same thing with the Ebola outbreak a few years ago. A few people were infected in the U.S., and it blew the Google search engine out of the water for the year. It’s interesting to journalists and the general public more than it is to people in the medical field, I think.” Indeed, as Albrecht pointed out in a Charleston Post & Courier op-ed this summer, Zika had logged 23 million searches on Google by late June — compared to just 2 million searches for influenza, a disease that kills upwards of 49,000 people a year in the U.S. Transmitted primarily by the Aedes mosquito, and sometimes between humans via sex, the virus can be devastating for pregnant women, as it can cause microcephaly in babies. In rare cases, it can also cause Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a severe nervous system disease. But even in South America and the Caribbean, Guillain-Barre Syndrome is extraordinarily rare as it requires a genetic predisposition and what Albrecht calls "some bad luck." “I don’t want to diminish the seriousness for pregnant women, but the likelihood that there would be an apocalyptic Zika outbreak here is nil because it doesn’t do much of anything to non-pregnant people,” he says.
Indeed, two other illnesses carried by the same mosquito, dengue and chikungunya, pose a greater risk to more people. And while the Aedes mosquito is present in South Carolina — Albrecht has spotted them in his own backyard — they don’t appear to be carriers of Zika (or dengue, or chikungunya), and Albrecht doesn’t expect them to become carriers anytime soon. “If the past has taught us anything about how this works, we shouldn’t expect an outbreak with Zika, either,” he says. “Dengue and chikungunya did not make any significant inroads in the United States, so while we had a historic mosquito summer due to the floods last year, and the warm winter which didn’t kill last year’s mosquito population, that doesn’t mean we would have a terrible Zika year.” As Albrecht told USC Times in mid-August, 32 of the 33 of the documented cases of Zika in the Palmetto State at that point were travel cases; the other case was sexually transmitted. And while the jury is out as to whether an individual can contract Zika more than once, the prevailing theory is that you become immune once it has passed through your system. “The caveat is that there may be more than one type,” he says. “Right now, what we’re seeing in South America and the Caribbean is all one virus type.” And if you do contract the virus while traveling to an afflicted region? And you’re not pregnant? “Ninety percent people will never know they have it, and of the other 10 percent, 90 percent of those will not miss a day of school or work,” Albrecht says. “They would need at most a Tylenol.”
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WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE BY CHRIS HORN
When the water quality crisis in Flint, Mich., came to light this past January, a lot of people took a second look at the water from their kitchen faucets. It appears clear enough, but is it really safe to drink? Alumna Catherine Heigel doesn’t take anything for granted. She heads South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, the regulatory agency responsible for ensuring federal drinking water standards across the state. “After the Flint crisis came to the forefront, we took a hard look at our water regulatory programs and looked to see if that scenario could play out here,” says Heigel, a 1992 USC Honors College graduate. “That’s part of our agency culture, conducting systematic reviews of our processes.” The internal review didn’t reveal major problems, and, in fact, brought into focus one of the agency’s strengths: its twin objectives of promoting public health and enforcing environmental standards make for a more holistic approach to ensuring water safety. DHEC’s internal review did point to steps the agency could take to improve its oversight of water quality assurance. As a result, an Office of Rural Water was established in February to assist the state’s most challenged water systems — most of them in small towns or rural communities — in complying with EPA standards. Ensuring safe waters for recreation throughout South Carolina is also an important part of DHEC’s role in protecting both public health and the environment.
“If you get a reading from a river, and it’s slightly high in terms of the E. coli standard, and you’re not thinking about public health but regulations only, you might reason, ‘Well, we’ve had heavy rains lately and that’s why the E. coli levels are high,’ and leave it at that,” Heigel says. “If you’re only managing to a standard, you lose that fundamental understanding of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. “But if you’re also thinking about public health issues, you might say, ‘This high E. coli reading is in a public waterway where recreational activities such as swimming and boating are taking place. Let’s do more investigation to know more.’” The agency is also launching an Adopt-a-Stream program and has convened a Saluda River Advisory Council. The idea is to create a citizen water quality monitoring program to supplement the statemonitored data-gathering points on public waterways across the state. Water quality data gathered by trained members of the public can serve as a sort of canary-in-the-coal-mine, alerting regulatory officials more broadly about variations in water quality metrics. “More data is better,” Heigel says. “It will be useful in identifying spikes and helping us focus our efforts. The more engagement we can get with communities, the better our efforts will be.”
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TOMORROW’S FLOODGATES BY STEVEN POWELL
The widespread flooding that struck South Carolina last October cost lives and swept livelihoods down swollen creeks. That destruction was exacerbated by dam and levee breaches across Lexington and Richland counties. Hanif Chaudhry, a civil engineering professor and associate dean, has been leading an effort to learn about those breaches — and his team of researchers have been at it since the rain stopped falling. “It was very time-sensitive,” Chaudhry says. “When there is a failure, if they want to rebuild, they will start right away with construction. Or if the dam is gone, the flow of water will change the characteristics of the site. Or if some of the structure is left, it might present a hazard that the owner will move in quickly to remove.” Fortunately, Chaudhry and his colleagues in the College of Engineering and Computing were already in the midst of two similar studies of dam breaches, including a $3 million project funded by the National Science Foundation. They had the manpower, training and laboratory equipment to quickly collect and analyze field samples. As part of the S.C. Floods initiative from Prakash Nagarkatti’s Office of the Vice President for Research, Chaudhry’s team visited 14 sites with major damage to earthen levees, nine of which involved total failures of the embankment. Their data collection included geometric measurements and samples of the materials present in the remnants of the structures. The full analysis is still in progress, but the consequence of overwhelming a dam’s spillway is clear. The result in the Midlands, Chaudhry says, was “overtopping. That’s why most of the dams failed.” He hopes that a complete analysis of the dam materials and the failure conditions might lead to design recommendations that will mitigate damage in future floods. Moreover, hydrological modeling of levee capacities at the point of failure should provide leaders with the capacity to better manage dams and levees that are highly connected. “Some of these dams were in series,” Chaudhry says. “So even if a given dam is in good shape, if an upper dam fails, it comes down as a major wave, and if that cannot be handled, it overtops, and then the next one. So it can become a cascade. The dams are a system that we need to properly manage.” T
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CAROLINA SYSTEM EFFECT ROAD TRIP
USC UPSTATE: MISSION EXPRESSED BY CHRIS HORN
USC Upstate’s community-impact programs give weight to its metropolitan mission.
For years, USC Upstate has made its mark as a metropolitan university, an institution whose educational mission is woven into the economic and social fabric of the surrounding region. Soon to celebrate its 50th year, USC Upstate has grown from a single-building institution whose primary purpose was to educate nurses, to a thriving residential campus with an array of academic offerings and serving 6,000 students. In addition to its main campus in Spartanburg, USC Upstate’s downtown business school and metropolitan Greenville campus provide the only access to public higher education along the I-85 corridor from Cherokee County to Anderson County. Some of the strongest expressions of USC Upstate’s metropolitan mission are found in its community impact programs. These include the Metropolitan Studies Institute, the Child Advocacy Training Center and the Office of Service-Learning and Community Engagement.
“The extensive and significant engagement of our faculty and students connects the university with the community and the community with our students in ways that are mutually beneficial,” says Clif Flyn, interim senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. “These collaborative opportunities provide students with invaluable experiences to learn about and contribute to the very areas where many of them live. And that produces involved and concerned citizens who can positively impact their communities for years to come.” DATA-INFORMED DECISIONS
The Metropolitan Studies Institute was established in 2007 to promote engagement with the community through research and strategic use of USC Upstate’s resources. Partnering with municipal and county government and the United Way, the institute provides research, data analysis and reporting for the Spartanburg Community Indicators Project and has become the recognized data repository for Spartanburg County.
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The institute collaborates on several other community-wide projects as well, including Way to Wellville, Bridging for Health and the Spartanburg Academic Movement, as well as projects aimed at better understanding incarceration statistics and improving health policies. “In addition to data collection, we’ve done food desert studies, infant mortality studies, deep-dive poverty studies,” says Kathleen Brady, director of the institute and a doctoral graduate of the Arnold School of Public Health. “We’ve been commissioned to do housing studies and economic impact reports. Any time there is an issue of metrics, our community calls us to be at the table.” In addition to its work in the Upstate, the institute has been commissioned to gather data and conduct similar studies in other counties, including Greenville, Greenwood, Union, Cherokee and Georgetown. GIVING VOICE
The Upstate region’s need for training for professional child advocates and a pipeline for the child advocacy workforce is being addressed every day by USC Upstate’s Center for Child Advocacy Studies and Child Protection Training Center. The latter provides training for law enforcement and other child welfare professionals with simulated courtroom testimony and forensic investigations in the center’s mock house. “Most professionals never get experiential training and end up learning on the job and have high rates of burnout,” says Jennifer Parker, director of the Center for Child Advocacy Studies and program director of the training center. “Our first goal was to educate students, so we launched that aspect in 2010; the training center began operations last fall.” Child Advocacy Studies has become USC Upstate’s most popular and fastest growing academic minor, requiring 21 credit hours and drawing on coursework from several disciplines. About 100 students from psychology, nursing, education, criminal justice and other disciplines are enrolled in the minor. One of the center’s newest initiatives is Compassionate Schools, modeled after a program that began in the state of Washington. Center staff held two summits this summer for Spartanburg’s seven school districts, both of them focused on adverse childhood experiences and involving the mock house. “A study from the 1990s showed that adversity in childhood is related to obesity, heart disease and other serious health conditions,” Parker says. “Our goal is to improve awareness of the impact of child abuse. We want to change how school personnel view children’s behavior, so that the first course of action isn’t punitive but a more appropriate consequence that takes into account a child’s background.”
About 300 educators and a similar number of law enforcement staff have participated in training sessions at the center. A post-baccalaureate certificate in child advocacy is now offered for any professional whose work involves children. CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
It’s only a year old, but Upstate’s service-learning and community engagement office is already exceeding expectations and finding an enthusiastic reception on campus and in the community. Faculty who teach courses from the sciences, business and humanities partner with nonprofit and public agencies, providing students with valuable community service opportunities connected to their academic disciplines. “Reciprocity is the word I use,” says Abe Goldberg, an associate professor of political science and director of the Office of Service-Learning and Community Engagement. “The community partner wins because they need help and they get it; faculty members win because their students learn the applicability of the course content to the real world; and the students win because they get the opportunity to make a meaningful impact in the community that is related to their professional interests.” This past spring, students in a criminal justice class tutored detention center inmates planning to take the high school equivalency exam. Inmates who pass the exam will become more competitive for jobs, Goldberg says, and the student tutors will have had transformational learning opportunities, while also gaining a unique perspective on the criminal justice system. A sociology of aging course this semester will pair students with residents in an assisted living center where the students will interview their new acquaintances, then produce memoirs for the residents to keep. The memoirs also will be incorporated into the readings for the class. Microbiology students have taught kindergarten students how to kill germs by washing their hands effectively, while a communications class this spring led personal and professional development workshops in an underserved neighborhood. “So many of our students are from this region, and by participating in these service-learning activities, many are giving back to their own communities while pursuing their undergraduate degrees,” Goldberg says. “We want our students to have a sense of civic responsibility; they’re gaining knowledge and skills that will prepare them for fulltime employment and a life of active and engaged citizenship.” T
ENDNOTES
When you’re focused on your work, it’s easy to lose track of time. It’s also easy to succumb to clutter. If you’re strategic in your mess-making, however, the one can help you with the other. The fall semester at a glance:
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1: The Healthy Carolina Farmers Market will be held on Greene Street in front of Preston, 9:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. on the following Tuesdays: September 6, 13, 20 and 27; October 4, 11, 18 and 25; November 1 and 15. 2: Come hear President Harris Pastides deliver the annual State of the University address Sept. 14 at 10 a.m. on the Horseshoe. 3: The first home football game under head coach Will Muschamp is Saturday Sept. 17 against East Carolina. Cocky is on it. 4: The 23rd annual First-Year Reading Experience book is "The Measure of Our Success," by civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman. Approximately 5,500 students, faculty and staff will attend events Sept. 19-23. 5: The papers are piling up, but you've covered half the syllabus. Monday, Oct. 10, marks the midpoint of the semester. Have another cup of coffee. 6: Wearing a wool scarf seems absurd when everybody is still wearing soccer shorts, but summer doesn't last forever. Fall break is Oct. 13-14. 7: Be advised: undergraduate time tickets for registration begin Nov. 14. South Carolina Honors College adviser registration begins Sept. 29. 8: Daylight Savings Time ends Nov. 6, at 2 a.m. Either set your clock back before you leave the office on Friday or show up an hour early for your classes and meetings Monday morning. 9: It's none of our business how you vote, but just so you know, Election Day is Nov. 8. On a related note, look for the USC Times special "political issue" in October. 10: Yes, it's early September and there's a piece of pumpkin pie on the desk; no, it won't still be good in November. Just play along. Thanksgiving break is Nov. 23-27. 11: Like sands through the hourglass, Dec. 2 is the last day of classes. 12: Final exams are Dec. 5-12. Add it to your calendar, jot it in your daybook, scribble it on a sticky. We repeat: final exams are Dec. 5-12. 13: Commencement is Dec. 12. 14: The university will be closed for winter break Dec. 22-30. Sweet!