Terry Dixon, College of Mass Communications and Information Studies

Terry Dixon The big news at USC this week came from the Moore School of Business and the National Advocacy Center, a lease deal which resulted in a giant leap forward for the Moore School's new building below the Koger Center. Another indirect beneficiary, now that the Moore School has most of its money for a new building, is the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, aka the J- School and the School of Library Science. The CMCIS, like the Law School, now has less competition for state money for its new building. The CMCIS is moving into 50,000 square feet, most of which is the former School of Public Health at the northeast corner of Sumter Street and Greene Street.

Meanwhile, the CMCIS moves forward with the expansion of its programs while it also moves forward with new and continuing sources of support discovered by its director of development, Terry Joye Dixon.

Dixon was born at the corner of Harden Street and Hampton Street in the old Columbia Hospital. At the time, among many pursuits, her father, Jimmie Joye, was competing for the Golden Gloves boxing championship. Her mother was in business school.

Dixon has a younger brother, Ron Joye, who owns Norfolk Wire & Electrical, a Charleston- based telecommunications company.

After kindergarten in North Columbia's Belmont Baptist Church, Dixon finished grammar school in Irmo's Seven Oaks. She attended both Irmo Middle and High School. While at Irmo High School, Dixon worked on the school paper, The Stinger, as in the Irmo Yellow Jackets. For walk- around money, Dixon worked as a cashier at Holly Farms Chicken and at Food Lion, both on St. Andrews Road.

After high school graduation, Dixon entered Winthrop University the next fall, where she pledged her sorority, Zeta Tau Alpha, and where she pledged to her parents full intention on finishing in four years with a degree in communications. In the summer between her freshman and sophomore years, Dixon worked two jobs. She was a breakfast waitress at the Shoney's on Bush River Road, and she also worked later in the day at the nearby Burger King.

With a minor in political science, Dixon landed a Washington job with Congressman Spence in the Rayburn Building for the summer after her sophomore year. She lived on 4th Street, near the Capitol, which gave her an easy walk to work every day. The next summer she returned to Washington to work in Senator Thurmond's office.

Graduating on schedule, Dixon's first job out of college was with the McBiz Company, the people who promoted Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza. Dixon was the community relations director through 1987, when the company's parade floats were getting famous for Billy Bob, the bear.

After one year promoting Chuck E. Cheese, Dixon worked with Rutledge Business College (later Phillips) as its placement director, helping the students with their jobseeking skills.

Dixon spent more than two years with Rutledge, where she attracted the attention of Columbia Junior College when it was owned by Columbia's Mike and Robin Gorman. Columbia Junior College had just opened its Professional Center for Para- Legal Studies, and the Gormans asked Dixon to manage its admissions and placement efforts.

After four years with Columbia Junior College, Dixon worked for another four in program management with USC's School of Business (pre- Moore) while she also completed the course work to earn a master's degree in Higher Education Administration from USC's School of Education.

Dixon took her management education credentials to the Palmetto Health Foundation at what was formerly Richland Memorial. She became the director of development for the Children's Hospital at Palmetto for a little more than four years.

And then she met Raleigh's Jimmy Dixon, who proposed marriage and a move to Raleigh. Soon after, the Dixons had Jack, now six- years- old. For Jack's first four years, Dixon stayed at home in Raleigh, but husband Jimmy took an offer with the Columbia office of Westinghouse's nuclear division on Bluff Road.

Once relocated back in Columbia, Dixon went to work as the director of development for the CMCIS, answering to Dean Charles Bierbauer. Besides raising major financial gifts, Dixon is raising awareness of literacy in South Carolina through Cocky's Reading Express, which she coordinates with USC's student government and the library school, all through the South Carolina Center for Childrens' Books and Literacy.

In her time off work, the mother and wife is on full- family alert, but she is threatening to take up tennis and finish more fiction. But before that, she has already scheduled a parachute tandem jump.