The Graduate School now has an Advisory Board

We are very happy to announce that The Graduate School of the College of Charleston now has an Advisory Board. Five out of the six members will come together for the first time this week to establish the the fundamental structure of the board. The Board will help to raise the visibility of the Graduate School, provide professional experiences for students and identify potential sources of financial support.

“We are very excited about the ideas this incredibly talented group can bring to the Graduate School,” says Amy McCandless, Dean of the Graduate School. “We are particularly pleased that the first meeting of the Advisory Board coincides with our fourth annual Graduate Student Research Poster Session on January 28; it will give the board members the opportunity to learn more about our students, faculty and programs.”

About the members of the Graduate School Advisory Board:

Diane Culhane was a member of The Coca-Cola Company’s Top 150 executives where she co-led the development of the mission and vision goals for the company’s 10-year sustainable growth plan.  Her efforts resulted in the company’s stock price increasing by 35%.  Prior to that, she served The Coca- Cola Company well as the director of Global Internal Communications and a founding member of the company’s Learning Consortium. This Consortium was an internal consulting group for developing leadership capability around collaboration, complexity and vision. . She is now in private practice, helping organizations and corporate clients improve their creative, collaborative, and sustainable leadership.

James Hawkes is the 1979 founder of what is now called Hawkes Learning Systems, a corporation which provides a complete system for teaching mathematics, including integrated textbooks, intelligent homeworking software, and testing assessment software. Dr. Hawkes also co-founded Automated Trading Desk in 1987, which was sold to Citigroup in 2007. These two companies employ over 200 highly educated people in the Charleston area. He also founded Quant Systems India in 1994. This offshore software development company is located is Visakhapatnam, India. Dr. Hawkes holds an M.B.A. from New York University and a Ph.D. from Clemson University. Prior to starting his own business, he taught at the College of Charleston for seventeen years and has subsequently mentored and employed many of our students and alumni.

Darlene Clark Hine is a Board of Trustees professor of African American Studies and professor of history at Northwestern University. She is past president of the Organization of American Historians and past president of the Southern Historical Association. Dr. Hine is a pioneering scholar in the field of African-American women’s history. She has written or edited 30 books and monographs and more than 50 journal articles and book chapters that examine the intricate workings of race, class and gender in the U.S. Her two-volume encyclopedia, Black Women in America, is the most frequently referenced compendium of black women’s history.

Katharine “Kitty” Robinson has been on the forefront of preservation on both the national and local levels for more than three decades, currently serving as executive director of the Historic Charleston Foundation, a not-for-profit education organization dedicated to preserving the architecture, history and culture of Charleston and the Lowcountry region of S.C. Robinson currently serves or has served in a leadership capacity on more than a dozen civic boards and organizations, as diverse as the Gibbes Museum of Art to the Charleston Hearing and Speech Center. From 1994-2000, she sat on the city’s Board of Architectural Review, the board that hears and approves requests for architectural changes and development in the city’s Old & Historic District.

Paul Sandifer is the senior scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS). As the NCCOS senior scientist, Dr. Sandifer is the principal researcher and scientific advisor on coastal issues to the NCCOS director. Before coming to NOAA, Dr. Sandifer was the director of the South Carolina Director of Natural Resources (SCDNR) from July 1997 until April 2003. Following his start at the SCDNR in 1972, Dr. Sandifer held various posts, including assistant, associate and senior marine scientist, and assistant director of the Marine Resources Research Institute. In 1984, he was named director of the Marine Resources Division. While at the Marine Resources Division, he was responsible for developing the agency’s aquaculture research and development program, and establishing the James M. Waddell, Jr. Mariculture Research and Development Center. Dr. Sandifer is a past president and honorary life member of the World Aquaculture Society, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the recipient of the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor. He has authored and co-authored more than 120 scientific and technical publications in the fields of marine biology, aquaculture and coastal ecology. He is also an alumnus of the College of Charleston.

James Gustave “Gus” Speth was the Carl W. Knobloch, Jr., Dean and Sara Shallenberger Brown professor in the practice of environmental policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University from 1999 to 2009. He holds degrees from Yale College, Balliol College, Oxford University and Yale Law School. At Oxford, he was a Rhodes Scholar and at Yale, he was a member of the Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, he became senior attorney and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He was a member and chair of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality under President Jimmy Carter and senior advisor for President-Elect William Clinton’s transition team on natural resources, energy, and the environment. From 1982 to 1992, he was president and founder of the World Resources Institute, a center for policy research and technical assistance on environmental and development issues. His recent book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, was selected as a Washington Post book of the year. Beginning in July 2010, he will be a professor of law at Vermont Law School.

The mission of the Graduate School Advisory Board is to expand the Graduate School’s capability and capacity to reach and influence exceptional professionals focused on contributing to the environmental, social, and economic wellbeing of the city, nation, and world.