April 18, 2025 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu

The Arnold School was halfway into its second decade when Sara Corwin walked into its administrative headquarters in the old health sciences building at the corner of Sumter and Greene. After 10 years in the corporate world, Corwin was looking for a career change and, based on her experience with worksite wellness, she thought she might become a health teacher by applying to a graduate program offered by the Arnold School at the time – a Master of Arts in Teaching School Health.

“I was waiting to meet with the program coordinator, Marion Carr, when I was intercepted by Roger Sargent,” Corwin remembers of that fall day in 1990.

Sargent, who had been around since the 1970s when the School of Public Health was formed, was a health promotion and education faculty member when he came across Corwin and asked if he could help.

“I told him I was applying to the MAT program, and he invited me into his office to explain all of the reasons why I should pursue a Master of Public Health degree instead,” she says. “I left his office with a paper application on triplicate carbon paper, and I started classes that January. That was the first time Roger Sargent was at the right place and the right time, and every one of these key encounters with him has helped shape my career.”

Corwin loved her program and felt completely at home in the tight-knit culture of what would become the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior (HPEB), despite being a nontraditional student who was used to manual typewriters in a new world of computers and changing citations for scholarly papers. Winona Vernberg was in the midst of her 18-year tenure as dean, and Corwin recalls that she was very hands-on.

“She did management by walking around and was very involved in all aspects of the school,” Corwin says. “I had the privilege of working on a small project with her, and I don’t know any other way to describe her other than to say she was amazing.”  

After completing her degree in 1993, Corwin was ready to return to work, but Sargent – this time joined by one of her advisors, Murray Vincent – intervened for a second time. They encouraged her to remain at the Arnold School to continue her studies with the department’s Ph.D. program, and she eventually agreed.

As a doctoral student, Corwin’s research focus shifted from worksite wellness to sexual health, and she became involved in teen pregnancy prevention, which was Vincent’s area of expertise. She spent the first part of her program working with community partners and teachers to reduce adolescent sexual risk before realizing it wasn’t quite the right fit.

While mulling over her predicament at a holiday party, Corwin’s third serendipitous moment with Sargent occurred.  

“He was walking by and asked, what’s the matter with you?” Corwin laughs. “And he invited me to his office to discuss my options.”

Through Sargent’s connections, Corwin ended up working with the South Carolina Department of Education’s Division of Nutrition on a statewide survey for fourth graders to assess their dietary preferences. The results helped inform school breakfast and lunch menus and became the basis of Corwin’s dissertation project, which allowed her to complete her degree in 1996.

“Had I not met Dr. Sargent that first day in 1990, I would not be where I am today,” Corwin says simply. “All roads came back to Dr. Sargent. He was an incredible mentor and still a very close friend.”

After working with exercise science professor Russell Pate on a children’s physical activity study for nine months, Corwin accepted a faculty position in community health at Georgia Southern University. Though she loved her two-plus years there, she was happy to return to Columbia when she got married in 1999.

Donna Richter was the HPEB chair at the time, and she invited Corwin to teach adjunct classes before quickly becoming a full-time faculty member. Aside from a brief tenure at the School of Medicine from 2001-2003, Corwin would spend the remainder of her career at the Arnold School.

When Corwin returned to the HPEB department in 2003, Richter asked her if she would also help establish an Office of Public Health Practice. Corwin guided the Office as interim director for two years until fellow alumna Lillian Smith took over – freeing Corwin up to lead one of the Arnold School’s biggest endeavors in its 50-year history.

At that time, in the first decade of the new century, the three highest-ranking administrators of the university (President Andrew Sorensen, Provost Mark Becker, and Vice President for Research and Health Sciences Harris Pastides) were all public health experts, Corwin points out. Recognizing the need to train the next generation of public health professionals – as many peer-aspirant universities were beginning to do – Becker approached Richter, who had risen to the dean position, and Corwin about launching a bachelor’s program in the field.

Former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Greg Hand was charged with collecting data and information about other public health bachelor's programs across the country, which helped guide the Arnold School’s subsequent proposal submitted to the university, Board of Trustees and the SC Commission on Higher Education in 2007 to establish B.S. and B.A. programs.

By that fall, all of the approvals were in place, and Corwin created and taught the first undergraduate course, Introduction to Public Health, to 50 students in the spring of 2008.

“Kara Montgomery and I took paper flyers and posted them everywhere on campus,” Corwin says. “Then I recruited eight of those students from that first class to become our first public health majors.”

Fast forward to 2025, and the public health undergraduate programs are now home to approximately 1,400 students.

“The public health majors became so popular, so fast,” says Corwin, who was asked to become program director in 2009. “The growth was absolutely phenomenal.”

By 2012, Corwin had been appointed as an assistant dean and embarked on the gymnastics of establishing the school’s first Office of Undergraduate Student Services. The B.S. in Exercise Science program, which had been a part of the Arnold School since its inception, would also fall under this office – offering an opportunity to streamline advising and other services for the burgeoning undergraduate population and elevating the voices of the faculty and staff who represented them.

The office that began with a staff of one (Corwin) in 2008 has since grown to 13, with the team now led by Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs Bridget Miller and Barbara Cuevas, Director of Undergraduate Student Services. The Office provides a range of services including  advising 125 to 300 students per advisor, summer orientation, and campus recruitment events. Early on in the process, environmental health sciences chair Thomas Chandler had taken over as dean, proving to be an instrumental partner and advocate in building the program over the years. 

“It was a wonderful ride, and he was great to work with,” Corwin says. “Dr. Chandler gave us unwavering support for developing our program to help it become what it is today as a clear leader on the USC campus and a major contributor to our state’s public health workforce.”

Cheryl Addy, who was serving as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the time, was also a major supporter and important mentor. Corwin says she couldn’t have traveled that learning curve nearly as smoothly without Addy’s extensive knowledge about programs, curriculum and policy. Charlotte Galloway and Montgomery have also supported the curriculum and students by refining and teaching the required Introduction to Public Health course each semester.

Graduates of the public health bachelor’s programs will surpass 4,000 this year, with alumni going on to work at state and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, private health companies, research and evaluation entities, and clinical practice – often after completing professional degrees (e.g., medicine, physical therapy, speech-language pathology). 

“Establishing and growing the public health bachelor’s program was a great experience but working with the colleagues I first met as a student and then moving forward in support of my career as a faculty member and administrator has been the best part of the experience,” Corwin says. “That’s part of the excellence that our school is known for and will continue to be known for. The Arnold School is full of good people in good positions doing good things.”

Since returning to a faculty/advisor role in 2021, Corwin serves as a set of bookends for many of her students – teaching their first class (the introduction course she created 15 years ago) and the capstone seminar of their final semester, where soon-to-graduates complete 50 volunteer hours in one of more than 100 public health settings. 

“Not only am I teaching the beginning and final courses, but I can also see the progress for each student,” Corwin says. “It’s really exciting to witness that transformation, where they become passionate about particular issues and topics and find their way forward.”

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