Fresh, new start for the iSchool

One of the university’s youngest majors is on the map thanks to iSchool Interim Director Karen Gavigan. Gavigan’s big goal for her two-year appointment is to grow the information science major with a “boots on the ground” game plan. Her team has promoted awareness by tabling on Greene Street, distributing informational brochures, attending undergraduate admissions sessions and planning events like Tacos and T-shirts.

Then-professor Gavigan retired in 2020, but when David Lankes stepped down as director in July 2021, she was happy to “flunk retirement” and come back to help.  

- Marley Boyea

School of Information Science 50th Anniversary 

Four name changes and x alumni later, the iSchool is celebrating 50 years since its first graduating class.

On Saturday, April 30, the school will host an event paying homage to its successes. From 2-5 p.m., alumni can reconnect in person at the school.

“We would love to see our alumni back at Davis College,” says Interim Director Karen Gavigan. “We’re getting it all spiffffed up for them.”

The planning committee of alumni, staffff and faculty collected historical iSchool artifacts, created T-shirts and coordinated a fundraiser for the celebration. 

- Camryn McLellan 

A Pandemic-Proof Program 

The sheer amount of information available today can be daunting. As technology advances, the need for information interpreters increases. The University of South Carolina School of Information Science seeks to fill this job market gap with its Bachelor of Science in Information Science program.

Having secured more than $650,000 in external funding, researcher and program lead Vanessa Kitzie is one of the best at what she does in the country. She is determined to equip students with the technical and soft skills necessary to become the ethical information communicators needed tomorrow.

“We teach you the soft skills how to communicate what it is you found to CEOs, high-level stakeholders and the general public who don’t get the technical side of things,” Kitzie says.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 11.5 million new jobs in data science and analytics by 2026. “That’s another reason why we’re sticking around,” Kitzie says. 

- Johnathan Davis

Abroad on a Budget 

CIC undergraduate students have the chance to take their education to Barcelona, Spain, this summer with a new low cost study abroad program. This initiative will help students advance their studies and gain a global perspective in their industry. This four-week experience waives program fees, saving students around $2,000. 

“I’m trying to make a way where the fees are nowhere near what it normally takes for a study abroad trip,” says CIC study away coordinator Scott Farrand. “That’s a game changer to me.”

 - Story and illustration by Lily VinCola

On (Creative) Cloud Nine

A new initiative by the College of Information and Communications is helping students learn skills while keeping money in their pockets. This past August, CIC Dean Tom Reichert announced the college will give all undergraduate students free access to Adobe’s Creative Cloud software. The subscription costs an average of $300 a year.

“I think it’s a game changer,” says Jeff Williams, an instructor who teaches creative services classes for advertising.

Though many people are familiar with Photoshop, Williams’ classes sometimes require Illustrator, InDesign or lesser known programs such as Audition, Lightroom and Bridge.

Williams sees this initiative as a way for students to stay up to date even outside the classroom. “I think we’re all here for the students,” he says. “The more we can give to the students, the more productive they’re going to be.” 

- Story and illustration by Hayden Uzelac

Signs of Success

In Breland Foster’s job search, two things were nonnegotiable – an advertising position and New York City. After months of searching and dozens of job applications, Foster, ’21, landed a job as a digital account coordinator for Zero-In, a signage company in the city of her dreams.

In spring 2019, Foster took a digital signage class with retired J-school instructor Doug Fisher. Students in the course worked in teams and learned how audiences read signs, the differences between print and digital and the psychology behind it all.  

“Whether I was leading the project or designing the actual sign, I feel like I learned a lot,” she said. 

A recruiter from Zero-In reached out in January of her senior year and described an account manager position that checked all of Foster’s boxes.

“The recruiter told me about the job, and it was almost everything I wanted to do,” she said. “The company was a dream company.”

During the interview process, Foster shared that she had taken a digital signage class and even sent them a portion of the syllabus. She credits her diverse J-school education with preparing her for where she is today. 

“The J-school gives you a good taste of everything, where you can come into an interview with a prospective employer and be like, ‘I’ve done that,’” Foster said. “I think it’s a really well-rounded education.” 

- Grace Farrar

A librarian’s inspiration

Is it ever too late to try new things? Not for Jason Broughton, director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled for the Library of Congress. He didn’t know he was destined for librarianship until fellow iSchool alumna Cynthia Hurd pushed him in that direction. 

Fresh out of college with a master’s degree in public administration from the University of South Florida, Broughton found himself working in Charleston as a workforce development trainer. One day, Hurd sat him down and applauded the presentations he’d been giving at her branch. “I really think if somebody had gotten to you before, you would not be in education,” she said. “I really think you’re a librarian — you’re just amazing with what you dole out, with your information.”

Hurd was a victim of the horrific Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in 2015. Following her death, the Cynthia Graham Hurd Foundation was created, and her library branch was renamed in her honor. 

Her legacy also lived on through the advice she gave Broughton. He earned an MLIS from South Carolina in 2014, and within just a few years, he was named the first Black state librarian of Vermont. In 2021, he joined the Library of Congress. In his new role, he hopes to make a difference by providing services to as many people as possible. “This allows me to begin thinking about how to make sure people who are differently-abled have library services just like anyone else,” he said.

- Makayla Hill

Through Their Eyes

Dwayne Sutton noticed a problem. At predominately white institutions, Black students’ stories weren’t being told – and that needed to change.

“When you become an alum at an HBCU, there are a lot of resources specifically for you, and your story gets told quite a bit,” Sutton said. 

His realization inspired Black Alumni Report, a website designed to acknowledge the remarkable achievements of Black alumni from all over the world, regardless of their alma mater. 

“If you’re an alum and you’re making a contribution, let’s tell your story,” Sutton said.

He and his daughter, Lauren Sutton – a 2021 SJMC alumna – connect with black alumni online and through social media. The report has featured prominent University of South Carolina alumni, including Columbia mayor Steve Benjamin.

BAR will soon launch Urban Campus Report, which will put the stories of Black undergraduate students in front of potential employers.  

 - Taylor Houston

Fusing Media and Politics

While other students were at the beach relaxing in the sun for spring break, Tara Vales was in Washington D.C. crystallizing her future career.  

Vales came to the University of South Carolina in 2010 as a political science major and public relations minor. She knew that media and politics were her passions but didn’t quite know how to fuse them.

During sophomore year spring break, she attended a trip to Washington, D.C., led by former CIC Dean Charles Bierbauer. The class focused on media and politics, and the intense itinerary kept Vales busy. From meeting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to being on the newsroom floors of CNN, Politico and C-SPAN, Vales saw how politics and media interacted in real time.

While at C-SPAN, Vales met the organization’s former president, Brian Lamb, who helped her score a media relations internship in D.C. “I never would have had that internship if it wasn’t for that class,” she says.

Vales now works as the vice president of media and executive positioning at Edelman, the largest public relations firm in the world. Her current role compliments her past experiences well. From working on Capitol Hill to the CNN newsroom, she’s always been a champion for public relations. And after more than five years in D.C., she’s still using the skills she learned at South Carolina more than a decade ago.

“That class in itself was the definition of what I wanted my career to be,” Vales says. 

 - Cat Harris

The Tweet that turned their case upside down

Imagine receiving a call from your college roommate, only to hear that she has stabbed you in the back. And the skull. And — oh yeah — there’s evidence of manual strangulation. That was the reality for Stephanie Durso Mullin’s roommate, after Mullin wrote her into her latest true crime novel as one of her serial killer’s victims.

Inspired by co-author and friend Nicole Mabry’s first book, the 2012 visual communications alumna decided to get into the action. She and Mabry co-wrote The Family Tree, a novel loosely based on the real case of the Golden State Killer, a ‘70s era serial murderer from California who was convicted in 2020 using DNA genealogy testing. With help from an FBI homicide detective and a genealogist, Mullin and Mabry pieced together the timeline for their fictional Tri-State Killer’s spree.

“We’re probably flagged by the FBI from all of our crime research,” Mullin says.

After writing and editing the novel in just three months, the duo pitched their novel, but many publishing agents were worried true crime content would be too dark during the pandemic.

“We felt like we were banging our heads against the wall,” Mullin says. “There were so many roadblocks that we couldn’t control.”

Just before pausing the project, Mullin heard about Pitmad, an annual Twitter pitch contest. Two tweets later, an editor from HarperCollinsUK in London reached out to Mullin and Mabry. The authors debuted with an international two-book deal.

They weren’t done just yet — since Mullin and Mabry came from visual backgrounds, they put faces to character names with an interactive case file website for their victims, complete with pictures, descriptions, a synopsis of facts and evidence.

“What this process has shown me is that there’s always going to be rejection or doors being slammed in your face,” Mullin says. “But knowing that all writers go through the same thing and it’s the ones who push through and don’t give up despite how heartbreaking it can be — that’s how you get to success at the end.”

- Parker Blackburn,