SC State University Celebrates Legacy During 117th Founders’ Day Celebration | Arts & Culture

SC State University will celebrate the 117th anniversary of its founding at the annual Founders’ Day Convocation on Sunday, March 3, 2013 at 4 p.m. in the Smith-Hammond-Middleton (SHM) Memorial Center. 

This year’s Founders’ Day celebration carries the theme: “Embracing Our Legacy While Transforming Our Communities.”

During the event, SC State University will announce the distinguished alumni and 10, 20 and 40-year faculty and staff service award recipients, as well as the 2013 inductees to the Quarter Century Club and Thomas E. Miller Society.

The Young Distinguished Alumnus Award will be presented to Maurice A. Lee, pharmacist at Walgreens in Orangeburg, S.C, while the Distinguished Alumna Award will be presented to Pamela J. Mazyck, clinical specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). 

The Distinguished community Service Award will be presented to Mr. Willie Van Brailey, warehouse manager at SC State University.

The Founders’ Day keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Frederick S. Humphries, regent professor at Florida A&M University. A renowned scholar and admired public servant, Humphries had a distinguished 30 year career as president of the National Association for Equal Opportunity (NAFEO), Florida A&M and Tennessee State Universities.

During his nearly 17 year tenure at Florida A&M University, where he created the Life Gets Better and Graduate School Feeder Programs (GSFB), he more than doubled enrollment while simultaneously raising academic standards. He increased the number of National Achievement Scholars at the school ranking first in the nation three times, out recruiting Harvard and Stanford, and made Florida A&M University the nation’s number one producer of African-Americans with baccalaureate degrees and third in the nation as the baccalaureate institution of origin for African-American doctoral degree recipients. His crowning achievement came when Florida A&M University was selected as the first ever TIME Magazine/Princeton Review “College of the Year” in 1997.

Humphries’ extraordinary leadership also led to the successful merger of the University of Tennessee, Nashville (a Traditional White Institution) and Tennessee State University (a Historically Black University - HBCU’s) in a landmark legal case that set the precedence for the first time a Historically Black College had successfully merged and/or acquired a Traditionally White Institution in the history of the United States.

From 1967–1974, Humphries provided leadership to a team of educators from thirteen institutions of higher education to create a curriculum for the development of the “Thirteen College Curriculum Program,” which was a comprehensive first year college academic program to enhance the learning achievements of and retention of African American Students in their freshman year. The program involved English, mathematics, social sciences, philosophy, the humanities and physical sciences. He also led the expansion of this program from the original thirteen colleges with an enrollment of thirteen hundred students to forty institutions of higher education and twenty thousand students in the program over a seven year period. This program is widely recognized as the first innovative and comprehensive effort to address the notion that African-Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds could not succeed in the traditional approach to the first academic year at American Institutions of Higher Education. Also Humphries led twenty-seven HBCU’s in the planning and establishment of institutional research offices dedicated to tracking key trends and data on the status and capabilities of each university.

Humphries has a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Florida A&M University (Magna Cum Laude) and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was the first African American to obtain a Ph.D. in this discipline.

SC State University’s 117th Founders’ Day Weekend also includes the following activities:

Friday, March 1, 2013

Uplifting the Legacy: Student Cabaret

I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium

7:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Embracing the Legacy: 1896 Birthday Bash Meltdown

K.W. Green Student Center Plaza

11 a.m.

Saturday, March. 2, 2013

The 2013 SC State University Foundation Scholarship Gala and Tribute

Smith-Hammond-Middleton (SHM) Memorial Center

7 p.m.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Honoring the Legacy: Student March

Benjamin E. Mays Hall to the Smith Hammond-Middleton Memorial Center

2 p.m.

The Founders’ Day Convocation will be broadcasted live on the University’s radio station WSSB, 90.3 FM and via the homepage of the University’s website (www.scsu.edu) for alumni and friends not able to attend the event.