USC names new board of trustees chair

The University of South Carolina has named a new chair of its board of trustees.

C. Dorn Smith was elected unanimously to be the board chair at a Friday board of trustees meeting.

Smith, who joined the board in 2010, is one of the few members on the board who is not an attorney, but rather a physician. Smith was nominated by trustee Leah Moody. No others were nominated for chair and no discussion was had in public session about who should be board chair.

“Thank you so much for your vote of confidence,” Smith said during the board meeting. “I only hope I can live up to your expectations.”

Smith used his first speech as board chair to lay out some of his priorities for USC. Academically, he wants to grow research graduate programs and online education. More specifically, he wants USC to be “a premiere institution for health care.” Fiscally, he wants to “keep tuition as low as possible” while running more efficiently.

He also called on the board to rename certain buildings on campus after accomplished Black South Carolinians such as Richard Greener, USC’s first Black professor, and Henrie Monteith Treadwell, the first Black woman to integrate USC in the ‘60s, saying such measures were “past due.”

The board also unanimously chose a vice-chair, Thad Westbrook, an attorney who has been on the board since 2010.

The previous chair was John Von Lehe, an attorney at Nelson Mullins who has been on the board since 1998 and has served as its chair since 2016.

Von Lehe, who received his law degree from USC’s law school in 1968, is leaving his position as chair because his second term as board chair has expired, USC spokesman Jeff Stensland said.

The new chair takes over amid the coronavirus pandemic and lingering scrutiny from USC’s accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, following a messy and controversial presidential search process last year.

USC’s board of trustees is a powerful entity that: decides on all major contracts, when and where to build or replace buildings, sets tuition, approves the budget and perhaps most importantly, approves the school’s president.

The board’s chair runs meetings, speaks publicly on behalf of the board and is an ex officio member of all board of trustee committees, Stensland said.

Following the presidential search, the board faced scrutiny both internally and externally. Last year, the Faculty Senate cast a vote of no confidence in the board, citing 2019’s presidential search. In January, trustees faced a public dressing-down from a consultant group, Association of Governing Boards, which the board hired to review how trustees conduct university business.

Most trustees are elected by the General Assembly and represent a judicial district. Others are either appointed by the governor or are on the board because of another position they hold, such as superintendent of education or president of the alumni association. Before the coronavirus pandemic eclipsed nearly every other issue in the country, the selection of possibly new board of trustees members was set to be relatively competitive, with 11 total people running for four seats.

“The university has certainly seen rough seas the last year or so,” Smith said after he was named chair. “We have the opportunity now to set the course of this university for the next 200 years.”

This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 3:38 PM.