S C T E CHN I CA L CO L L E G E S Y S T EM ’ S
F I R S T 5 0 Y EAR S
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through a process and came up with this awful name—Center
for Accelerated Technology Training—it got called CATT and
people didn’t like that.”
“The biggest wrestling match I had in changing that name
was with program managers,” said Hudgins. “They liked to run
me out of town. They hated the change. This was the goose that
laid the golden egg, and you’re messing with it.”
Center for Accelerated Technology Training died, and this
CATT didn’t have nine lives. The system launched readySC™ as
the new brand for the nationally-renowned recruiting and train-
ing program.
Special Schools had earned a lot of brand equity, “especially at
the General Assembly,” said former board chair Cathy Novinger,
and the equity transferred to readySC™. Novinger, however, tells
a cautionary tale of her own. “The only time they (legislators)
thought about tech was as it related to what we used to call ‘Spe-
cial Schools.’ When you go to the General Assembly for funding,
they’ll give you all the money you want for readySC™. If you’ve
got a manufacturing company coming in, and they’re going to
hire 800 people, you can get all the money you need to get that
up and running.”
Balance she says is needed. “It’s the monies you need day to
day to keep the doors open to train ten workers to go here and
five workers to go there.”
The pizzazz, she adds, is with readySC™. “readySC™ is that
program that would support a BMW or Boeing, getting people,
screening them, getting them ready, putting them on the assem-
bly line, teaching them the skills, teaching the teachers—that’s
readySC™, but we have the hardest time selling public policy peo-
ple that our doors need to be open every day for these three jobs,
these two jobs, these five jobs.”
The name change notwithstanding accolades continued. On
June 1, 2008, readySC™ trained its 250,000
th
South Carolinian
and the erstwhile Special Schools program ranked among the
top five state economic development workforce-training pro-
grams for the 25th consecutive year.
As South Carolina’s industries diversified, the healthcare in-
dustry arrived. In the early 1990s, Horry-Georgetown Technical
College took over Coastal Carolina’s mission of offering an asso-
ciate degree in nursing. The need was there. The nursing short-
age, however, wasn’t limited to the coast.
July 1, 2006. The system launches its Allied Health initiative.
A former system president, Dr. JimMorris, remembers the fruits
of this labor, but not as you may think. The day arrived when he
needed a pacemaker. Remembering all the system had done to
train allied health workers, he asked every health professional
he met, physicians excepted, a question: “Where did you train?”
“A lot of them either trained at Orangeburg, Midlands, and in
some cases, Spartanburg. I was on the coronary care floor. And
I did a lot of respiratory therapy ... Almost all those people were
trained at Midlands ... I don’t know what the state would be like
without it.”
As he talked his eyes moistened. He paused ....
“I don’t understand it. Since I had the defibrillator pacemaker
put in I’m a little emotional ...”
2002 2003
2002:
Palmetto Institute issued
South Carolina
Challenge: Regional Economic Analysis
, identifying the
state’s industry clusters.
2003:
SC Council on Competitiveness and Harvard Professor
Michael Porter embarked on a study of South Carolina’s
economy, creating objectives for each industry cluster.
The 2000s
F L Y I N G H I G H
