Established in 1984, the program admitted as many as 350 freshmen per year whose SAT scores or high school GPAs were not sufficient for regular admission to the University. Provisional admission through the TY Program gave the students a year-long opportunity to prove whether they had the academic mettle for college success.

USC’s Strategic Directions and Initiatives Committee last year recommended the program’s closure because it no longer fit the University’s vision of becoming a top research university. Two of the program’s faculty members will retire; the remaining four tenured faculty members will move to other academic departments for the fall semester.

“The University has a new vision, and I respect that,” said Jim Burns, director of the TY Program and a 23-year teaching veteran at USC. “Not all of our students were successful; some were not ready for college. But the students who successfully completed the Transition Year Program graduated at a comparable rate to regularly admitted students.”

Students in the TY Program benefited from one-on-one attention by a coterie of TY Program faculty who concentrated their efforts on teaching and advising.

“We gave the students a strong foundation on which to grow,” said Harriet S. Williams, an associate professor who has taught English and composition at USC since 1981. “We had so many excellent students whose potential just wasn’t evident from straight numbers.”

After a summer of teaching in the National Writing Project, Williams will join USC’s Department of English and will teach an Honors College freshman English course and concentrate on teaching English majors who plan to become teachers.

Burns has been named assistant dean of the Honors College, effective June 1, and will continue to teach American literature and a history of Motown course for Honors College students.

“It’s a comfortable transition for me because I’ve been teaching in the Honors College for the past 10 years or so,” Burns said, adding that he will advise and help recruit students to the college. “I’ve been in this [Coliseum] office for 23 years; I’m looking forward to an office with a window.”

Two other long-time TY Program faculty—Don Jordan and Ken Peters—will transfer their tenure to the mathematics and history departments, respectively. Instructor Debra Geddings is completing her dissertation in secondary mathematics education and is seeking a teaching position in Columbia.
Two more faculty members, Churchill Curtis and Libby Bernardin, are retiring from University service.

“I absolutely loved teaching,” said Curtis, who began his USC teaching career in 1960 as a graduate assistant in the history department. He taught history, political science, and economics in the TY program from its inception and earlier was a faculty member and administrator at USC Salkehatchie. “It’s been gratifying to see how many of our graduates have been successful. I can only say that it’s been a good run.”

Bernardin, a 17-year teaching veteran, plans to renew her fiction and poetry writing projects and perhaps lead poetry workshops for adults. Teaching in the TY Program was challenging and important, she said.

“I was told in high school that I wasn’t college material and ended up attending USC as an adult,” she said. “Working with these students, I always had the attitude that they were bright and could succeed from the beginning. They ended up as students in every college in the University, including the Honors College.”

04/03