MUSC President Ray Greenberg, USC President Harris Pastides, and Clemson University President James Barker discuss the success of CoEE.

In 2002, the S.C. Legislature created the South Carolina Centers for Economic Excellence (CoEE) program, or the Endowed Chairs Program as it is also called. The early goal was to use Education Lottery money to buy academic standouts for assignments at the three major research universities in South Carolina: University of South Carolina, Clemson University, and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. The later goal was to gain a critical mass of brainpower to attract more standouts and to attract greater gains in research and development. And industry should follow.

So far, according to the Washington Advisory Group (WAG), it's working. The WAG report thoroughly analyzed the full CoEE experience since 2002. The study cost about $400,000, and it was funded by the Commission on Higher Education.

In the conference room of Wilbur Smith Associates on the 16th floor of their building at the corner of Sumter and Gervais, the CoEE board members held a presentation of the results of the WAG report. Board Chair Paula Harper Bethea led the presentation.

Referring to the success of CoEE, Sam Tenenbaum says , "I did my job."

Also present to speak were S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell, MUSC President Ray Greenberg, USC President Harris Pastides, and Clemson University President James Barker.

"In fact," said Bethea, "the WAG evaluation team has called South Carolina's CoEE program the best of its kind in the nation and one that should be the envy of all other states."

According to the press release by the Clare Morris Agency:

"In just six years, South Carolina's CoEE program, which provides state lottery proceeds to match non- state investment to recruit top scientists and engineers to lead cutting- edge research programs in the state, has generated 2,000- plus jobs in South Carolina and boosted the state's economy by nearly a quarter of a billion dollars ($246 million) in non- state investment or pledges to the program..

S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell

"The CoEE Program is a challenge grant program; the universities must raise non- state, dollar- for- dollar matching funds prior to accessing state funds. Both the state and non- state funds are used to establish research centers in knowledge- intensive areas such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, and automotive engineering. The universities then recruit top scien- tists and engineers (designated "CoEE endowed chairs") to lead these Centers of Economic Excellence. To date, 21 CoEE endowed chairs have been successfully recruited."

Part of the progress cited at the presentation was USC's attainment of "very high research activity" status as one of 62 American public universities so classified by the Carnegie Foundation. Also, Clemson had climbed

to 22nd on U.S. News and

 

 

World Report's ranking of public universities. Annual research funding at MUSC has risen from $116 million in 2001, the year before CoEE was funded by the Legislature, to $200 million in 2008.

The original idea behind CoEE germinated in the creative and determined efforts of Columbia's Sam Tenenbaum, former steel executive and husband of S.C.'s former Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum.

CoEE Review Board Chair Paula Harper Bethea

Tenenbaum was familiar with Kentucky's "Bucks for Brains" campaign and even with Texas Gov. John Connally's speeches from the mid- 60s that began with the declaration, "Brains attract industry." Connally was quietly quoted as saying he wanted to give the University of Texas football team a "school they could be proud of."

Other examples abound in the country, but to be identified as the "best of its kind in the nation" by WAG was enough for Tenenbaum. "I did my job," he said.

S.C. Speaker Harrell, one of CoEE's primary legislative supporters, promised to protect the funding for CoEE. The S.C. Legislature passed a law last year to ensure funding for CoEE at $30 million. S.C. Governor Sanford, however, has recently cut CoEE funding from his executive budget.

Quoted in The State newspaper, Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer observed, "It never ceases to amaze us that when a group pays for a study, it largely says what the group wants it to say."