Aiken Standard's Person of the Year: Dr. Sandra Jordan Advancing USC Aiken Locally, Nationally, Globally

Story courtesy of the Aiken Standard. This story first appeared in the Aiken Standard Sunday, Dec. 29, 2019.

by Larry Wood

Aiken, SC (01/14/2020) — If she had not gone into teaching and administration in higher education, USC Aiken Chancellor Dr. Sandra Jordan might have become Tom Hanks.

Well, not Tom Hanks, exactly, but Professor Robert Langdon, the character he played from the popular "The Da Vinci Code" books and movies.

An art historian by discipline, Jordan is a 17th- and 18th-century iconographer, a person who studies the imagery or symbolism of a work of art or an artist.

"I think it's one of the most interesting humanities fields because it encompasses art, history, social history, religious history, philosophy, and that's kind of who I was going through college," Jordan said recently. "I was a double major in art and English. Then I got a teaching certificate on top of that."

But as in all good literary and movie thrillers, there was a twist: early in her academic career, Jordan shifted her focus from teaching and research to administration.

She held positions as department chair; dean; and provost, an institution's chief academic officer, at several universities in the Southeast. Then Jordan, who was born in Alabama and raised in Virginia in suburban Washington, D.C., became the chancellor of USCA eight years ago to do "the most exciting work of my life," she said.

And 2019 might have been Jordan's most exciting year yet. For her dedicated efforts to advance USCA to the benefit of students and the economic vitality of Aiken County, Jordan is the Aiken Standard's 2019 Person of the Year.

In January, Jordan was appointed to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Board of Governors, the highest governance body in the NCAA, which oversees association-wide policies and guidelines. She has been nominated to be the vice chairman of the board.

"Which will be amazing if it happens," Jordan said.

The Board of Governors invited Jordan to serve on a commission to determine how to prevent sexual violence among student athletes across the United States in the NCAA's Divisions I, II and III. The chairman of that committee was Bob Caslen, who was the superintendent of West Point at the time and now is the new president of the University of South Carolina.

"We made recommendations I'm very proud of to make sure we could curb this issue that's not just with students athletes. It's any form of sexual harassment or sexual violence," Jordan said.

Jordan said the position allows her to continue to make a difference, just as she did as a department chair.

"It's that making-a-difference thing again that I felt when I was helping lighten the load for my faculty, she said. "Now, I feel like in this role we can make a difference in college athletics across the United States."

In November, Jordan was elected the chairman of the NCAA Division II Presidents Council, the division's highest governing body. Members of the council set the strategic direction for every aspect of Division II athletics, including finances and the administration of championships.

Also this year, "U.S. News & World Report" ranked USCA second in the South as being a most innovative college.

"It's a brand new ranking," Jordan said. "I'm very proud of it. We're living in a time when there is a lot of turmoil in higher ed. We're trying to grapple with that and find new ways of doing what we do and new ways of delivering for different generations of students. So having someone recognize our innovation means we're doing a good job finding ways to reach out to our populations."

Jordan cited USCA's online degree programs as an example of innovation.

"The largest number of individuals in South Carolina who are seeking higher education are nontraditional students," she said "They're over the age of 25. They're working. They have families. They have debts. They have complicated and busy lives, and finding a way to reach out to them and offer a high-quality education at a reasonable cost is something we're very proud of."

In 2019, "U.S. News & World Report" again ranked USCA as one of the top Public Schools in the Regional College-South category. In the last 22 years, the university has been No. 1 14 times and in the top three the other years.

"We wouldn't need rankings if we were super well-known like Harvard, but when you are a comprehensive university and your name is not on everyone's mind and lips, then you've got to demonstrate beyond what the chancellor says about how wonderful we are through these ranking," Jordan said. "So we're very proud of them and what it does for bringing in students from 36 different states in the U.S. and 38 countries."

During her tenure, Jordan enhanced USCA's commitment to veterans, military students and their families, creating the Office of Veteran and Military Student Success. In November, USCA once again was named a Best for Vets school by "Military Times."

While Jordan has been chancellor, USCA became a College of Distinction, "a very coveted title," Jordan said. All of USCA's professional schools earned the title, too.

"It's based on how the faculty interacts with the students, so it's all about the quality of the education," she said. "You cannot be considered if the majority of your courses are not experiential-learning based. It means the faculty are keeping the students engaged in their work by having them be part of the learning process. In other words, they're not just sitting at a desk and letting information flow over them. They're asked to be part of the learning."

USCA also became the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges institution in South Carolina. The College of Charleston was the COPLAC institution before.

"That means that we have a very strong foundational program that teaches students how to think the way a scientist would think or how to think like someone does in the humanities and how to do research like someone in the social sciences," Jordan said. "That is so important because the issues we are facing as a nation are so complex. We need graduates who can toggle back and forth and use different ways of solving problems, so we're teaching students to think in all of these different domains."

Jordan also has helped create new majors that support the business, educational and industrial needs of the region and state, adding that USCA pumps $281 million into Aiken County's economy and most of that money remains local. Those majors include bachelor's degrees in industrial process engineering, creative and professional writing, clinical health care, cyber security and applied gaming. USCA also added a Master of Business Administration degree.

"There are just a plethora of new programs that are designed to help strengthen the pipeline of employees and the needs of business and industry in our area," Jordan said. "I'm really proud that we're helping support this whole region, and we're doing that by producing graduates who have incredible skills and abilities and knowledge base. That's been something the whole faculty has bought into. They wanted to see a closer connection between our region and our university."

Jordan said public universities "cannot survive without good partners now."

"The Savannah River Site and the Savannah River National Laboratory partner with us. The community government partners with us. We have a new school on our campus, the Aiken Scholars Academy, so K-12 is partnering with us. And all of this helps us not only to serve better but also to strengthen everything we do," Jordan said.

In late December, USCA received $25 million in federal funds to begin initial planning for the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, or AMC, to be built on the university's campus. Through a partnership with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and the Savannah River National Laboratory, the facility would interact with private industry, higher education and government to create and implement new technology.

"Being located directly across the street from the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center and the Scholars Academy on USC Aiken's campus, the AMC will become an exciting place where students of all ages can see scientists at work," Jordan said when the funding was announced.

Jordan has helped develop international partnerships, too. USCA has an agreement with Ajeenkya DY Patil University that allows its students to study the same curriculum as USCA while they're in India and ultimately earn a degree from the university. ADYPU students interested in a study abroad can successfully transfer all their credits to USCA.

Jordan said she is proud that USCA is "much more financially stable than we were eight years ago."

"Our local delegation works very closely with us to advance the institution by helping us find the revenues we need from state appropriations," Jordan said. "My first year, our state appropriations made up only 9% of our institutional budget. There are private schools in our state that get more than 9%.

"That means we had to put a lot of effort toward working with our statehouse and working through our local delegates to make sure we're telling a compelling story about why 9% was not going to allow us to offer the kind of quality education we wanted to.

Jordan said when she applied for the chancellor's position eight years ago she believed she had the skill set to advance USCA.

"And at this point in my career, that's all I really want to do: use what I've learned in the past 30-some years in higher ed to advance the institution and, I hope, make it stronger," Jordan said. "I think we're on a great trajectory right now. There are a lot of things I'm very proud of, but I want to quickly add it's not just the chancellor. I have an amazing team, and I have faculty and staff who care deeply about the kind of education we're offering and what we're doing for our students."

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