1 0 8
| 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
would, and they probably thought the same thing, because in
1958 when I left, schools were still segregated. Society was still
segregated.”
As a child, Martin would walk along Columbia’s Main Street
dreaming of going into a cafeteria with a large fish tank in its
window. “The only reason I wanted to go was because I wanted
to see what it would look like from the other side.”
Life had other things in store for Martin. “If you had told me
the day I graduated from college that I would get a telephone
call from a U.S. senator, I would still be laughing at you. If you
had told me, I would stand inside the Senate and speak to a
group of senators, I would have laughed at you. When I came
back in 1974, I wasn’t allowed to go into the Senate and never
had been.”
Things changed. In the 1980s, Martin went as a member of
Trident Tech’s board to speak about education. “The first time I
ever set foot inside our own Senate chambers.”
Martin takes great pride in another system statistic: “We train
and graduate the highest number of minority students in the
state.” In 2007 during Martin’s term, the system began partici-
pating in Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a
national initiative that helps low-income and minority students.
“Achieving The Dream,” said Dr. Barry Russell, system pres-
ident from 2006 to 2010, “was about taking almost a scientific
approach to figuring out why students didn’t succeed and giving
them the tools they need to succeed. It’s not just telling students
you’ve got to work harder and teachers you’ve got to teach better.
It’s figuring out where the problems are.”
Russell gives an example. “Students in technical programs
who washed out, we’d go back and find out where that started
showing up. Did a particular math course get them? Can we
reconfigure that course? Do we need to have tutors assigned to
help students in this course? And they did this and kept very
careful records and found that we can make this better.”
The 2000s
F L Y I N G H I G H
Executive Director Dr. Barry Russell
(2006–2010)
cal colleges will do their part to meet the need, to make dreams
come true, and to provide all South Carolinians the education
they want.
It wasn’t always this way, however.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TANK
Montez Martin has served on the State Board for Technical
and Comprehensive Education since 2001. He cites a statistic
with pride. “Right at 85 percent of the students that the tech
system trains remain in the state. You really can’t ask for much
better than that.” Martin can relate. He was part of the diaspora.
“I left South Carolina because I couldn’t get the education I
wanted. I gleefully left. My mother says she remembers me say-
ing, ‘I’ll never be back.’”
Fate intervened. Martin’s path led him to the state board. “I
have worked with a lot of wonderful people throughout this sys-
tem. I’ve served with some people I probably thought I never
