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
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The 1990s
A H I G H E R R O L E I N E D U C A T I O N
had some encouragement along the way, but to have planned my
career and end up making it? I could be the first. The early guys,
I give them all the credit, but I don’t think any as undergraduates
were saying, ‘I want to make my career in the technical colleges.’”
Eventually, he had more than encouragement. When Dr. Lex
Walters, Piedmont Tech’s president, received Russell’s letter, he
asked the dean of students to invite Barry in for an interview. “We
were all impressed with Barry, thought he would be a great ad-
dition to the staff, and he was offered an entry-level job as a field
representative. He was one of those young, dynamic people that
got the job done. This led to other leadership roles at Piedmont,
then as a president at other colleges and finally as president of the
technical college system.”
Russell can tie his fate to 1961. There were no technical col-
leges when the “boy presidents” struck out on the road of life.
But that would change in 1961 when Greenville TEC sprang up
on a garbage dump. From a landfill came learning, a place where
President Reagan would address students in 1984.
We’ve seen what the system accomplished in the sixties, sev-
enties, and eighties—progress that set the base for the achieve-
ments of the 1990s, which began under Dr. JimMorris and end-
ed in 1999 under Dr. JimHudgins’ watch. The years had rolled by
faster than a James Bond-driven BMW Z3 Roadster. Something
far bigger than a decade ended, however. If you looked in the
rearview mirror, a millennium slipped out of view. South Car-
olina’s technical training system, poised on the brink of a new
century, was training workers, supporting industrial develop-
ment, and helping people achieve the dream of post-secondary
education.
YOU MUST PERSIST
None of the above would have taken place had it not been
for untiring education entrepreneurs who redefined training
and learning in South Carolina. Despite opposition, they steered
the technical training system to a higher role in education. New
career paths resulted, spreading from sixteen technical colleges
across South Carolina. One path would catch a man’s interest
and open a door for him where he’d be destined to follow in oth-
er leaders’ footsteps.
It may be a cliché, but dreams do come true. Barry Russell did
persist. He did get into the system, and he did become a college
president. And, Hell, he did become the director of the system
just as Laurin Lowder predicted. The parable of Barry Russell’s
letter should inspire anyone who nurtures uncommon career
longings.
In the 2000s, something phenomenal would happen that
Lowder would have been hard pressed to predict: universities
and technical colleges would join forces like never before. And
something else amazing would happen. Boeing would choose
South Carolina as its assembly site for the world’s first compos-
ite airliner —the Dreamliner 787. The groundwork for this feat
would be laid during letter-writer Dr. Barry Russell’s tenure as
the system’s executive director.
And that letter Russell wrote in the early seventies? He ham-
mered it out on a typewriter—an antiquated piece of equipment
viewed from the 1990s Electronic Age. Was it a Smith-Corona
Marchant typewriter, built by the company Stan Smith recruit-
ed? For the sake of legend let’s say it was. If nothing else, Russell’s
typewriter, regardless of who built it, is legendary.
From a Special Schools typewriter made in Orangeburg to
Boeing’s Dreamliner plant in Charleston to higher education,
leaders of South Carolina’s technical college system had persisted
in bringing wholesale improvements to the state by the millen-
nium’s end. And in the 2000s to come, it would help South Car-
olina fly higher than ever, build a bridge to the future, and even
witness a major university president come calling on a technical
college president—unprecedented change indeed.
