Professor Norman Scarborough Retires

BY DR. DEAN THOMPSON

Some of our international students will stop by my office early in the fall after having been whisked off to The Beacon or The Varsity by campus friends eager to inculcate them into Southern foodways. They’re puzzled by a menu term that neither their dictionaries nor Google can explain: “Please, what is meant by ‘aplenty’?”

It’s a concept, I tell them. It means extra, more than you ever expected, served with gusto and generosity until you sit in a happy stupor, thinking Oh wow. That was good. And, once your blood sugar has stabilized: More.

But the truth is they could best comprehend that term by shadowing Norman Scarborough for a day. In life and vocation alike, Norman makes aplenty chime like a finely cast bell.

Let’s begin with his hobbies as we peer through the 7:00 a.m. mists rising off the Linville River, where Norman stands in his Orvis waders amongst the currents, happily fly casting, 10–2, 10–2, ready to match wits with the perfect rainbow trout. Or we might catch the morning sun warming the marshes of the low country, where Norman crouches amidst the reeds, eyes alert for the perfect ringneck or wigeon. Norman on these jaunts is still like a kid on Christmas morning, eager and responsive, bouncing as he walks.

We now make our way to his and Cindy’s home on the wonderfully named Mr. Jim Lane. You may not know that Norman is one of the best cooks in Laurens County. Just the memory of his twice-baked sweet potatoes makes me well up, and as for his famous bacon-wrapped scallops, ohh: one bite will assure you that this scallop did not die in vain. Thereafter he will serve old-fashioned pound cake, taken from his grandmother’s recipe. He beams as he hands it forth, though not as much as the recipient does. We take our coffee in their back yard and admire the pond, replete with waterfall, that he had built for his and Cindy’s pleasure as they watch their koi, again wonderfully named: Gino Vannelli, Mr. Peabody, Dot, Pyrne, and Hugh.

We might move up the street to First Baptist Church. Norman’s adult Sunday School class, like everything else, was nearly derailed by the pandemic last year. But speak not of fear: he immediately led his Israelites to the safe harbor of Google Meet. He has stayed with this class for thirty years, and with Presbyterian College for forty-two, taking as inspiration a favorite passage from Colossians 3: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.”

At last we shift our view to Jacobs Hall at dawn on any weekday morning, long before most people reach for their first cuppa. There before his computer sits Norman in perfectly pressed sartorial splendor (for decades he has kept the stockholders of Jos. A. Bank feeling fat and happy), updating his magisterial textbook, Essentials of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, which has gone through nine (and counting) editions and been translated into Chinese, Spanish, and Indonesian along the way.

Think of it: business owners around the globe have had their dreams of entrepreneurship bloom into glowing life because of Norman’s guidance. So have his students, for Norman has always been quick to turn the noun network into a transitive active verb. Evans Duren ’05, founder and CEO of Care 2 Succeed, remembers that ”During my Junior year, Mr. Scarborough was asked by the PC Baseball office if a student would be willing to run a concession stand for the season. He offered me an opportunity to interview with the coach, and I got the job. I signed a contract with Pepsi and ran concessions for the home games that season as my own little business. My senior year, Mr. Scarborough asked if I would be interested in an internship with a company in Greenville for the spring semester. I took the internship, and towards the end, the CEO offered to write me a recommendation letter for any company to which I wanted to apply.”

But back to Norman’s office, for students are dropping by aplenty. Linzie Steele Batchelor ’03, owner of Outflare Marketing, sums up the reason: “From our first meeting, Mr. Scarborough’s warm personality and encouraging attitude were comforting as we sat down to discuss course selections and my future goals. I knew from our first meeting that he believed in me. And as we all know, sometimes having someone in your corner, cheering loudly, breeds a level of confidence that outshines any obstacle presented.”

Steele continues, “Mr. Scarborough was not only my advisor and professor—he paid attention to me (and to his other students) and sought out opportunities for me to use my skills. Because he noticed my skill in creating Power Point presentations, he shared my name with another department and suggested they hire me to help develop their presentations. He recommended me to a colleague who needed help designing graphics for a publication. He also helped me land a marketing internship with the City of Clinton that involved developing marketing materials and visiting businesses to gain support. When he saw that I ‘got it’ in his statistics class, he gave my name to other students who needed tutoring.”

It’s the top of the hour. A quick glance at his watch, and Norman is off to class in Jacobs 208. Speak not of weary resignation; speak instead of boundless energy, not to mention humor about how his vocation has stretched across the decades. Duren recalls, “As Mr. Scarborough called the roll that first day in Business Law, he said my name and then took off his glasses to ask if I had a relative who attended PC. I told him my father was a student there years ago, and he chuckled, saying, ‘It’s finally happened. You are my first second generation student.’”

On this morning Norman looks around: “Are you ready to do the quiz thing?” One impossible quiz later, Norman takes chalk in hand, and it’s a case of Students, start your engines. Within minutes he’s covered all three rolling blackboards with formulas and equations. He circulates around the classroom as he lectures, extrapolates, segues, drives a point home, posts questions, and vaults to pinnacles of inspiration. One is reminded of a whirling dervish. (One is also reminded how wisely he was chosen South Carolina Professor of the Year.) Perhaps best of all, as students sweat bullets, labor, and reach for answers, he cheers them on as he bounces: “Look at you! You made another business decision using Statistics! How about that?”

He heads back to the office, for there are recommendation letters to write, more networking to be done, more conferences, more calls from grateful alumni. Steele explains: “Mr. Scarborough was the first one I called when I was offered a job at Sonoco Products right after graduation. He was the first one I called when I landed my first adjunct teaching position at Midlands Technical College and then Winthrop University. (You can probably guess who inspired me to teach at the college level!) I called him when I changed career paths and became a marketing director at a large pharmacy. And you better believe I called him when I launched my own business as a marketing consultant and strategist.”

Now Broad Street is whizzing with cars as people head home. Norman, however, is still in his office, and we had better tiptoe away so he can concentrate.

There’s one other question I often field about ‘aplenty’: “Why is it first on the menu?” That’s simple enough: it’s put there as a mark of pride, the finest that can be brought forth. As bagpipes have sounded at Opening Convocation and then Graduation for some years now, Norman has led in both faculty and officers as Faculty Marshal, carrying the College mace and embodying the best this venerable institution can hope to offer. It’s where he belongs, pure and simple. This May, however, he will stand as President vandenBerg utters the dreaded word retirement. The audacity, the sheer audacity, that he dare take his leave just as we lift a wistful plea: More. But he has writing to do, civic and church work, fish to catch, travels with Cindy. We forgive, albeit grudgingly, and we reflect, remembering that aplenty is followed by a sense of wonder: Oh wow. That was good. For Norman, though, we might sharpen the modifier to exactitude: That was magnificent.