Randy Folks The nationally ranked international business degrees at USC's Moore School began in 1972 as a conversation between two S.C.- based companies, Springs Industries and Sonoco, and the dean of the business school at USC, the late Dr. James F. Kane. The Commission for Higher Education approved the innovative international programs on St. Patrick's Day, 1974, and the first students began classes in June. Dr. William Randolph (Randy) Folks Jr. was instrumental in getting the programs off the ground, and he is still there as the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Business in the Sonoco International Business Department.

Randy Folks was born in Warner Robins, Ga., where his father was in the Army Air Corps at Robins Field during WWII. When his father was transferred to the West Coast in August 1944, six- month- old Folks and his mother moved to Dillon, S.C., where her parents lived.

Folks has two younger brothers. Both graduated from USC. Robert is a lawyer in Lancaster, and Steve is a producer/director for ETV.

Immediately after the war, Folks's father returned to complete his coursework at UNC (Chapel Hill) in accounting. Upon graduation, he took a position with Springs Industries, moving the family to Lancaster, S.C. In the early 1950s, Folks's father mastered the IBM 650 computer, a vacuum- tubed job, and formed the IT department for Springs Industries.

Folks attended Margaret Moore's Kindergarten in Lancaster next door to his house. He began elementary public school in Lancaster, and he stayed within the local system through the eighth grade. For high school, Folks attended The Hill School in Pottstown, Penn., where he played varsity soccer.

He graduated from Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.) with an A.B. (cum laude) in mathematics. Folks was training to become an insurance industry actuary when he was offered a full- ride fellowship from the Harvard Business School to complete his doctorate in business administration (D.B.A.).

While still working on his dissertation in foreign exchange risk management, Folks had beginning career opportunities at Harvard, Stanford, Georgia State, and USC. He took the offer from USC.

Soon after settling in at USC, Folks met his wife Kathy Mitchell, then a graduate student in English and a resident at Capstone. Until recently, she was the elementary education coordinator for First Presbyterian Church on Marion Street. Her brother Dick Mitchell is an architect in Greenville. He designed Gambrell Hall on the USC campus.

Folks and his wife have two sons. Will is a journalist and a political consultant who has a four- year- old son. Rick is in IT at BlueCross Blue- Shield of S.C., and he has two sons, ages five and one- and- a- half.

In 1972, after Dean Kane entered into discussions with Springs Industries and Sonoco about how to improve the success rate among American executives abroad, Folks was called in as the management science part of a core group of USC business professors that included Fitz Beazley (accounting), Dick Molten (economics), Oscar Hotlzman (accounting), and Bill Salisbury (economics).

The group worked for 18 months putting together a business education that didn't exist anywhere else, particularly the major league language requirements and the internships six months overseas. Called the MIBS degree, master's in international business studies, the program was marketed as an alternative to the MBA degree.

Initially only two language tracks were offered, German and Spanish, for the two- year MIBS degree. In 1975, French and Portuguese were added. When Japanese and Arabic were offered, those two tracks took three years due to the difficulty in achieving fluency in the languages.

For the first 10 years, the graduate program went from 20 students a class to 150.

In 1990, there was a major curriculum review, and in 1993 Folks took over the administration for the MIBS program until 2000. In 2000, there was a merger between the MBA and the MIBS degrees into an International MBA.

Folks still directs the international undergraduates, where the Moore School has 65 students per class with an average SAT score of 1,300. Out of the 65 students, 25 are in the Honors Program, and five are McNair Scholars, which means those five are from out of state and attend tuition- free.

Off campus, Folks has considerable accomplishments. He chaired the facilities expansion committee at First Presbyterian from 1993 until 2002. He has been a church elder since 1981. He is on the board at Laurel Crest, the retirement home on the Saluda River. He is also on the board at Erskine College in Due West, S.C.

Folks retired as a professor at the Moore School in 2006, but he still works there full- time. For 2008, he is the International Business Educator of the Year, a distinct honor.