UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
VOL. 110, NO. 23 l SINCE 1908
MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2018
Capstone, Honors students come together, dance at Y’all Ball Hannah Dear and Meghan Crum @THEGAMECOCK
Honors and Capstone are on two completely different sides of campus, but are similar in their motivations. The two organizations came together for Y ’a l l Ba l l on Fr iday to celebrate their achievements a n d h a r d w o r k a t To p o f Carolina. “Y ’all Ball is t he biggest event of the year for Honors and for Capstone, and it’s a joint event,” said Ward Jolles, first-year geography and broadcast journalism st udent and president of Honors Hall Government. “ We’ve b e e n work i n g on it all year planning and how we’re putting everything together.” The Capstone and Honors hall governments worked through the Residence Hall Association in order to get funding for Y’all Ball. The t wo gover n ment s have been planning for months on how to create a great e v e nt f o r b o t h halls. “ We w o r k really well together in R H A ,” Jol les said. “We have a ver y close relationship, s o w e wa nted to cont inue t h a t
relationship and the tradition that has been built over the past few years.” Even t hough t he Capstone a nd Honors College st udent s in R H A work well toget her a nd have a close relationship, the same cannot necessarily be said for the rest of the Capstone Scholars and Honors College students. Although the programs are similar, many st udents never cross paths. “The thing that separates them is really not much,” Honors College dean Steve Lynn said. “The students who get in the Honors College have the average higher test scores than Capstone students. I think Capstone s t u d e nt s , f r o m w h at I c a n t e l l , thrive, and they are pretty successful transferring into the Honors College, the ones who want to.” Test scores differentiate Capstone a nd Honor s s t udent s f rom t hei r classmates. The average f reshman enrolled in fall 2017 had an ACT score of 27.3 while Capstone had an average of 29.7 and Honors had a 32.5. “Almost the first 450 to 500 kids at USC are Honors College, the next 1,000 to 1,300 or 1,400 are Capstone Scholars,” Capstone faculty principal Patrick Hickey said. Capstone has 1,105 students and 579 students are enrolled in the Honors College, and both receive personalized attention and exclusive programming. O f t he 1, 6 8 4 s t udent s i n b ot h programs, 300 students RSVP’d for Y’all Ball, of which about 250 attended. They came in and out throughout the night, as Top of Carolina could only hold 200 people at once. “We were actually worried before the event that we were going to hit capacity at Top of Carolina and have to start turning people away,” Jolles said. “But thank goodness that did not happen.” SEEBALLPAGE3
Sara Yang / THE DAILY GAMECOCK
Zach McKinley / THE DAILY GAMECOCK
Summit focuses on diversity in workplace Joseph Leonard
@THEGAMECOCK
I n a world f illed wit h movements seek ing equality within the workplace for people of all genders and ethnicities, conferences and summits are held to encourage people of all backgrounds to come together to work toward a common purpose. On Thursday, the inaugural Women in Leadership Summit was held at the Darla Moore School of Business. The summit was a five-hour event with eight panelists and guest speakers whose goal was to encourage women to aim for leadership positions. Gail Morales, the U.S. Project Management Efficiency Executive at TD Bank, pointed to a study that claims gender, ethnicity and cultural diversity correlate with higher profitability for companies. Morales is referring to a study by McKinsey & Company which st udied more than 1,000 companies in the United States, United Kingdom and Latin America. McKinsey & Company claims that companies with more gender and racial diversity returned more revenue than companies without similar diversity. “I would like for the United States of America to leverage the strengths of all Americans, male and female, every ethnic group, every cultural group,” Morales said. G r ace W i l l ia m s , a n I nter n at ion a l M BA graduate st udent who helped organized t he event, was impressed by the study and viewed the Women Leadership Summit as a “conversation starter.”
“Having the facts and saying ... ‘companies that have diversity in their leadership teams really have better ideas, better bottom-lines’ ... it just goes to show that different ideas help us move forward,” Williams said. The other panelists echoed the same idea of diversity, but not only diversity of gender. “It’s diversit y of t hought, it’s diversit y of backgrou nds, it’s diversit y of et h nicit y and gender,” said Heidi Solomon, Corporate Strategy
Kaylen Tomlin / THE DAILY GAMECOCK
Director for Kimberly-Clark. “That’s where teamwork gets its magic.” Panelist Solomon stressed the idea that not only do women need to participate in these discussions, but everyone else as well. Solomon a lso d isc ussed t h ree t h i ng s she believes are vital for women in the workplace: authenticity, credibility and hard work. Beth Renninger, the Director of the Center for Sales Success at the Darla Moore School of
Business and the moderator for the event, agreed with the panelist’s views on diversity. “The end goal is just when business leadership, corporate leadership, look s like t he general population. So that includes lots of different kinds of people,” said Renninger. Renninger also had some advice for young women entering the workforce. “Be as good a listener as you are, be less worried about talking early in your career and more of a listener and a learner,” said Renninger. Renninger began her professional career in male-dominated fields like information technology and operations, which she said helped her realize how to deal with all different types of people. Kate Schaufelberger, an International MBA graduate student who helped organize the event, was enthusiastic about organizing the summit, marveling at the fact that the event was able to take place at the Darla Moore School of Business, a business school named after a woman. “An event like this is a breath of fresh air of having a support system with women and that we are just as capable to do anything we put our mind to,” said Schaufelberger. K ayla Murray, fourt h-year market ing and management student, was inspired by the event. She believes open dialogue will expand into the future and reach goals that previous generations were not able to accomplish. “Women are having a really pivotal moment where we’re getting a lot of opportunities that we didn’t used to and really taking advantage of it,” said Murray.