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| 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
It so happened too that the Citadel never lost money during the
economic downturn. It got 96 percent of its formula, far more
than the tech system, which at the time got 54 cents out of every
dollar.
“I started telling what our needs are, and about five minutes
in, a senator fromCharleston interrupted me. ‘Wait a minute, Dr.
Hudgins, I don’t understand. Why can’t you run your system like
the general runs the Citadel? He doesn’t come down here whin-
ing with all of these needs.’”
“Thank you, Senator,” said Hudgins, who did his best to fin-
ish. “That was one of those times I went home and said, ‘They
just don’t get it. They don’t understand.’ It was very disappointing
that they knew nothing about their funding formula and had the
president of Clemson been following the Citadel, he would have
never been told ‘Why can’t you run your program like the Cita-
del?’”
Dr. Jim Morris relied on a funding strategy with the General
Assembly that depended on a favorable public image. “Part of
the responsibility of the president of the system is to get as much
public exposure as you can, and you typically do that, inmy judg-
ment, through the chief executive. They have to be involved in
the community. They have to be involved in manufacturing, in
medical services. They just have to be everywhere and create the
kind of image that makes it easy for the General Assembly to pro-
vide money for the system.” He adds that the system president’s
role is “to develop the kind of relationship with the legislature, so
they will be responsive not only to budgets, but other needs the
system might have.”
Hudgins had a memorable fiscal experience that made up a
bit for the Charleston senator’s rude treatment. “The first week I
walked into the system office I had a visit from the director of the
South Carolina Audit Council who was here to audit the BMW
project.”
Hudgins recalls, “a Representative from Anderson called for
an audit, and we spent endless hours producing documents.
When the audit council got through they did not have a single
audit exception or anything we’d done wrong in that $20 million
project with BMW. I hated every minute of being under scru-
tiny, but you do the right thing for the right reason, and it pays
off.”
Before coming to the system office, Hudgins served as pres-
ident of Midlands Technical College for thirteen years. “I didn’t
want to be the executive director. I didn’t apply for it, but I did
have colleagues—TomBarton, Don Garrison, and LexWalters—
call and say, ‘Jim, get your !!! over to the system office. You live
in town. You don’t have to move and you know what we need.’”
Barton, Walters, and Garrison knew what the system need-
ed. Garrison, for instance, had served as Tri-County Technical
College’s president since 1971. So far, he had devoted his life to
educating people and many acknowledged his unceasing advo-
cacy of technical education. Awards and accolades came his way
for his leadership, and he knew, as did Barton and Walters, that
the person at the top makes all the difference. In what would be
his last commencement speech, he would tell graduates “Suc-
cess in life is attaching yourself to a cause that is greater than
yourself.”
Garrison, for certain, was attached to a cause. He was leading
Tri-County Technical College through a boom in student enroll-
The 1990s
A H I G H E R R O L E I N E D U C A T I O N
1996 1999
1996:
SC Commission on Higher Education approved a
statewide agreement on transfer and articulation with a list
of 74 courses transferable to four-year institutions.
Act 359 created one of the nation’s most comprehensive
performance funding systems using nine critical success
factors with 37 performance indicators.
1999:
After serving as president of Midlands Technical College
for 13 years, James Hudgins was named System President.
