Spring 2008 PDF - University of South Carolina Upstate

Alumni Profiles
management, he worked fifteen years for four different
banks, going through the ups and downs of mergers
and acquisitions, management and culture changes.
He realized that along the way he had made excellent
connections and customer relationships that would
benefit from a bank with a simple motto: “The customer
comes first.” So, with partner Allan Ducker, Miller opened
CommunitySouth Bank & Trust, a bank with $340
million in assets that covers the Spartanburg, Greenville,
Greer, Anderson, Easley and Mauldin markets. With
85 employees and expansion plans on the table, the
president of this successful startup bank still has time
for his wife of 15 years, Sharon, their two children,
the Rotary and Sertoma clubs, as well as golfing and
SCUBA diving.
1991
Jayne Case
A non-traditional student
graduating with a 3.7 GPA,
Jayne Case claims that she
owes half her degree to her
husband because he took care
of the house and their two
children while she attended
USC Upstate to
get her nursing degree. “I was
a Mary Black Memorial Hospital Scholarship recipient
for all three years so I had to keep grades high to retain
the scholarship,” says Jayne. She credits Professor Jim
Ferrell for his “gentle demeanor the helped students
to learn with less intimidation.” After graduation, Jayne
worked at the Mary Black Memorial Hospital. In 1996,
she began teaching at Spartanburg Community College.
Recently, Jayne received her master’s degree from
Clemson and is currently serving as the department’s
interim department head. She is very proud of her
two sons, Will and Nathan, and believes that raising
them to be successful men has truly been the biggest
accomplishment of her life.
1991
John Feith
As a psychology major, John
Feith learned early on in his time
at USC Upstate “that to ‘get
along and get ahead’ in the
workplace you have to be very
perceptive of what goes on
around you because there are
all sorts of
formal and informal networks
in the workplace…and anywhere, really.” While many
psychology concepts make sense in the academic
setting, John’s professors were quick to point out that
22 University Review
applying those concepts to the workplace is not as cut
and dry. “They made me understand that the better I
understood these concepts, the better prepared I would
be in the workforce, managing a workforce and managing
workforce behaviors,” he said. John and his family live in
Dyersburg, Tenn., where he is CEO of a string of medical
clinics across West Tennessee. He uses the lessons
learned as a student daily in two of his most important
roles: hiring employees who can lead and work well in
teams, and staying accessible to his workforce. When
asked if any faculty left a lasting impression on him, John
says that he owes a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Jan
Griffin. “As a child, I had always struggled with school and
I was perfectly content to do the absolute minimum to get
by,” he says. “But when I met Dr. Griffin, she wouldn’t
let me slide by. After my first test in her class she pulled
me aside, looked me straight in the eye and basically
told me that she wouldn’t accept mediocre work from
someone who could do much better. If Dr. Griffin had
not intervened and persevered with me, I’m certain that
I would still be struggling for direction and living a much
different outcome.”
1991
Eric Hunter
Farming was not the career
choice Eric Hunter had planned
while a student and baseball
player at USC Upstate.
But he did always have the
entrepreneurial spirit, even
while working post-graduation
management jobs in retail
and restaurants. After he and his wife,
Kristi Ulmer, also a USC Upstate graduate, adopted
a son Ryan, now 11, Eric struck out in the strawberry
growing business on acreage near Easley in 1997 as a
part-time venture that would allow his wife to be a stayat-home
mother. But when the “Hunter Farms” business
took off, he became a farmer full-time. A pumpkin crop
was added as well as the greenhouse business where he
grows bedding plants, and a corn maze soon followed.
While he began farming “with absolutely no experience
whatsoever – I had never in my life grown anything,” the
farm grew into a family affair with his wife and mother
employed full-time, and 15 – 20 part-timers employed at
the peak of the season. Always an athlete, Eric uses his
spare time to compete in triathlons both on the South
Carolina level, where he finished the year ranked ninth
for his age group, and on the international “Ironman” level
where he competed in Cancun, Mexico, and Clearwater,
Fla., last year. On Sundays, you can find Eric at Set Free
Christian Fellowship in Powdersville where he is a care
pastor and a teacher in the children’s ministry.