Blog Author: Jonathan

Lauren Rhoads is a high-performing business student at the College of Charleston, the kind who color-codes her to-do list and does the lion’s share of the work in group assignments. This senior business major was cruising through her college career with internships lined up and jobs awaiting until Covid hit.

Unlike its former location, the Lowcountry Graduate Center now resides on a campus with a full-fledged library. The main library on the Thornley Campus – i.e., the main campus off Rivers Ave. in North Charleston – is now open and available for use to all graduate center students and faculty. The library is located in building 510 directly across campus, southeast from Relish, the restaurant in the 920 building that houses the LGC.

These kinds of stories are legion at companies that have joined the Charleston Healthy Business Challenge, a collaborative program of MUSC, and the City of Charleston, sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina and offered for free to businesses throughout the Lowcountry.

“The driving question isn’t, ‘When will the jobs come back?’ But rather, ‘Where will the jobs be and what skills will they require?’”

The grant process reflects the LGC’s commitment to growing workforce talent for economic development in the Lowcountry. According to the Talent 2020 and Beyond report produced by the Charleston Regional Development Alliance and the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, the talent gap is most acute in the areas listed above and is hampering growth in these industries.

As you might imagine, moving an entire graduate center across town for geographic centralization is a mammoth undertaking under any circumstances. In the midst of a pandemic that is revolutionizing the way educational services are delivered, it was a prescription for chaos.

With the sixth-worst response rate in the nation, South Carolina is endangering some of the billions of dollars it receives in federal payouts dependent on once-in-a-decade Census counts.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned during this extraordinary and unprecedented time of virus-hiding it is that children don’t learn as well electronically, or for as long, as they do at school.

Like all regional economies around the nation, the Charleston metro’s robust economy has skidded nearly to a halt. As one example, pending home sales dropped 11% in April, and listings fell 26% compared to the year before, following a torrid start to the year.

$500 AAUW Scholarships Available for K-8 STEAM Teachers Attention K-8 STEAM teachers: what would you do with $500? Would you pay for supplies, take a course, purchase a piece of equipment for the classroom or treat your class to a pizza party? The American Association for University Women (AAUW) is offering a pair of grants…

And so, we are cooped up in our homes, many of us with young children who must be kept engaged in activities lest their brains shrivel and our nerves fray. The good news is, we have never been better positioned to conduct our lives from our living rooms. We are connected to the entire world via electronic devices, and that world is intent on providing us with all the information and entertainment we could possibly want.

Research has found that 60% of university students have math anxiety, even accounting for the math and physics departments. But math is practical to daily life and fun to think and talk about. You just have to know how to pose the question.

While many jobs in advanced manufacturing, IT, healthcare and other high-demand positions offer premium pay and benefits, many other jobs in high demand, like construction trades and hospitality, offer low pay.

Did you know that Charleston’s burgeoning tech sector now comprises 600 companies, with jobs paying more than twice the regional average? In a community known for tourism and manufacturing, the area is increasingly becoming a tech hub.

Today, South Carolina is no longer worst in the nation for domestic violence (on last accounting, we’re fifth worst) but it is still a major issue. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence says our state still needs to toughen its laws…

In 38 years, textbook prices skyrocketed three times the rate of inflation. For years, students were a captive audience for booksellers. The College Board estimates that the average student will spend more than $1,200 on textbooks this years.

At the turn of the 21st century, 17 tech firms dotted the Charleston business community. Now, there are two tech centers and hundreds of startups within the Charleston Digital Corridor.

In Fall 2019, The Citadel will establish a Tri-County cohort of the Specialist in Educational Leadership program. The course can be completed in two years, and it will be offered the Lowcountry Graduate Center in North Charleston.

The U.S. is the most expensive country in which to deliver and raise a baby. A 2013 study estimated that it cost a minimum of $30,000 to give birth in a hospital and $10,000 for a family with modest means to raise a child in their first year. Moreover, an infant mortality rate in South…

Being a school principal is like being the president of a small nation, except it’s more important because the futures of children are at stake.

Have you ever found yourself falling down a rabbit hole of research, searching in vain for the information you desperately need for a paper or homework assignment? Are your search terms unspooling your efforts, taking you far afield from the information you need? There’s an app for that! Well, not an app, exactly, an actual…

Generally speaking, today’s college classrooms are pretty tricked-out with technology. The days of blackboards and overhead projectors are gone, replaced by “smart” boards and screens, and computers to play videos and surf the Internet. It makes teaching and learning easier, but as with any new technology, if anything goes wrong, it can really hamstring the…

Many summer classes are hybrid in-person/online or feature small class sizes. For those taking courses outside their core competencies, that can be extremely helpful. At the Lowcountry Graduate Center, classes generally contain no more than 20 students and many are much smaller.

A panel studying the crisis of student loan debt led by Ivanka Trump announced recently that it would recommend borrowing limits to help prevent students from drowning in debt upon graduation. Student loan debt has tripled since 2003 to about $1.5 trillion nationally. An average college graduate leaves school with $42,000 in debt, with payments…

As of 2015, 91 percent of American adults and 60 percent of teens owned a cell phone. The average person spends two-and-a-half hours a day using their phone and 80% of us check our phones within 15 minutes of waking.

A new program is coming to the Lowcountry Graduate Center in the fall and it would be fair to say it has never been needed more.

In the fluid learning economy in which we operate today, more people than ever are seeking to update, or acquire new skills. The last 20 years have completely disrupted the fields of journalism, marketing, music, publishing, travel, retail and many others. The shift from a knowledge economy to a learning economy – i.e. one where…

A Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) is the single most common graduate degree in America. If so many people have earned this degree, how much value can it have? And is it worth the cost of going to graduate school? Fortunately, the MBA may be the most studied degree in America too, and it…

Are you visiting the Lowcountry Graduate Center to finish that master’s degree in engineering, because you know it will open career opportunities for you? Here is one opportunity you might not have considered: the U.S. Air Force or U.S. Air Force Reserve. Like many businesses in the private sector, the Air Force is recruiting heavily in a…

The start of another semester is upon us. If you’ve been struggling with the school (-work) – life balance, perhaps it’s time for a new plan. The key to a new plan is … planning. So get ready to do a little advance legwork to get your semester on the right foot. We asked around…

  Although policy makers lament the growing slice of the economic pie being consumed by healthcare, there is one group thrilled about it – people who work in healthcare. More healthcare means more opportunities for jobs, businesses and careers. Dr. Nancy Muller is the Associate Dean of the School of Professional Studies at the College…

Photo by Angelina Litvin via Unsplash For many courses in graduate school, the final exam determines a substantial part of the overall grade. That means a semester of work can be undone by one bad exam. So what’s the secret to studying for finals? Three veteran exam takers with very different studying styles share this…

Photo by Jon Elswick—AP via TIME Magazine At the rate she is going, Taylor Bauer thought she would literally never pay off her student loans. A former teacher in the Berkeley County School District who is now teaching in Mexico City, Bauer has been making income-based payments for five years. The federal student loan program offers…

  Photo by Rawpixel via Unsplash Just as new graduates are beginning to pay back their federal student loans, prospective undergrad and graduate students are eligible to fill out the financial aid paperwork for next academic year. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) may be submitted as early as October 1 for the…

Photo by Steve Buissinne via Pixabay The greatest test of a student’s college career is upon us: it’s time for May 2018 graduates to begin repaying student loans. The average college graduate leaves school owing roughly $42,000, in payments of $350/month for ten years. The problem, say financial aid officers, is that many students are uninformed…

Photo by Feliphe Schiarolli via Unsplash No intelligent discussion about improving college attendance and graduation rates can fail to address the onrushing teacher shortage now reaching critical levels in South Carolina. The past school year opened 550 teachers short. That explains why the state’s Commission on Higher Education (CHE), a statewide funding agency for educational initiatives in state-owned…

A new day is coming to the already rambling, shambling, expensive, labyrinthine American healthcare system. U.S. healthcare is twice as expensive as the next most expensive system in the world (Germany’s) while delivering worse outcomes than in most industrialized countries.  Now, a seed planted by the Affordable Care Act is beginning to germinate into a…

Image by Kyle Ryan via Unsplash A country can impose any tariff or pass any trade-restricting law it likes, rail all it wants about unfair trade practices, demand a better deal from this trading partner or that one, says Dr. David Jamison, professor of business at South Carolina State University, but they are fighting the…

Image by Caleb Woods via Unsplash Changes in the state’s tax law, under S.C. Tuition Tax Credit that went into effect this year could reduce college tuition bills for many South Carolina families this tax year, irrespective of income or student GPA.   The significance of this change lies in the fact that college costs in…

If you’ve been to a conference, you know the formula: The organizers determine the speakers, presenters, a panel of experts, maybe some breakout sessions that allow participants to chime in periodically. Participants show up, listen to experts and maybe walk away with some CEUs. If the keynote speaker is entertaining, that’s a bonus. Rarely is…