SC State inducts six graduating seniors into teaching profession

Author: Sam Watson, Director of University Relations|Published: May 07, 2024|All News, Student News

teachers — SC State Spring 2024 teaching profession inductees with President Alexander Conyers, Dean M. Evelyn Fields, Education Department Chair George Johnson, Provost Frederick Evans and Clinical Experiences Director Janice Owens.

ORANGEBURG, S.C. – South Carolina State University’s College of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences (CEHSS) on Monday, May 6, inducted six graduating students into the teaching profession.

The inductees are:

Amanda Copeland, Ashley Outlaw Joiner and Genae Sumpter, all in early childhood education.
Myron Dawkins, elementary education.
N’Kosi Ellis, mathematics education (clinical experience cohort president).
Timothy McNeil, special education.

The featured speaker for the occasion in the SC State Fine Arts Building’s Barbara Vaughan Recital Hall was Amanda Fair-Coles, a teacher in the Orangeburg Consolidated School District and a 2018 SC State graduate.

“As you look around the state, you will find that the teachers graduating from our program excel,” CEHSS Dean M. Evelyn Fields said. “Too much emphasis sometimes is placed on quantity because of the teacher shortage in the state of South Carolina, but it is the quality of the teachers that connects our children with academic achievement.

“Mrs. Fair-Coles is a testimony to that, and we are very proud of her. I have confidence that those teacher candidates in this graduating class will also make us proud,” Fields said.

Sumpter, Dawkins, Ellis and McNeil are MATTE/Bridge scholars. Funded by a $1.4 million grant the South Carolina Legislature awarded to the university’s Department of Education in 2019, the SC State MATTE Bridge Program recruits and offers scholarships to high school students from rural school districts to attend SC State to pursue and complete baccalaureate degrees in teacher education. It provides the necessary assistance for undergraduate students to graduate debt-free, certifiable, and employable.

All six future teachers are slated to receive their degrees on Friday, May 10, during the university’s Spring Commencement Ceremony, which begins at 10 a.m. in Oliver C. Dawson Stadium. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will deliver the commencement address.

For more information about SC State's teacher education programs, visit the Department of Education's page on www.scsu.edu.