The South Carolina General Assembly authorized South Carolina State College to offer graduate work in 1946. Stemming from its strong 1890 land-grant tradition, a Graduate Division grew into a School of Graduate Studies, which produced its first degree graduate in 1948 with a Master of Science in Mathematics Education. In 1959, when the M.S. program was re-designated the Master of Education (M.Ed.) program, more than half of the sixteen subject-matter areas were directly related to agriculture and agronomy. Since that time, the School of Graduate Studies has expanded to offer 19 different subject matter emphases, which comprise 12 degree programs: an Ed.D. and an Ed.S. in Educational Administration, two M.A. programs, one M.A.T, four M.Ed., and three M.S. programs. In 1994, the School of Graduate Studies was reorganized into the Graduate Studies Program under the direction of the associate vice president for Research and Graduate Studies. In 1997, the unit was renamed School of Graduate Studies.
Until 1972, when the M.A. degree in Rehabilitation Counseling was approved, all programs and courses were designed for teacher preparation and subsequent certification by the South Carolina State Department of Education. Additional variety was added in 1974 with approval of the M.A. program in Speech Pathology and Audiology. Although professional in nature, these new programs brought a renewed emphasis on field inquiry methods in research.
The most rapid period of program growth in the School of Graduate Studies was from 1979 to 1983 when the Master of Science degree programs in Nutritional Sciences, Agribusiness, and Individual and Family Development were approved and the Ed.D. and Ed. S. advanced degree programs were added. The advent of these research-oriented programs significantly altered the goals and directions of graduate education at South Carolina State University, and they were measurable influences in its advancement to university status.
Frederick M.G. Evans, Ed.D.
Dean, College of Graduate and Professional Studies
