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USC Salkehatchie outlines student supports, STEM bus grant and nursing partnerships for Colleton County
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Summary
USC Salkehatchie campus dean Dr. April Cohen presented enrollment and scholarship figures, a nearly $1.9 million Department of Energy grant for a STEM outreach bus focused on clean energy education, and ongoing nursing partnerships that serve Colleton County students.
Dr. April Cohen, campus dean at USC Salkehatchie, told the Colleton County Council that the regional campus is expanding local education and outreach efforts, including a recently awarded grant to fund a mobile STEM unit.
"We were established in 1965," Dr. Cohen said, describing the small-campus environment and the university's student-faculty ratio of about 14 to 1. She said USC Salkehatchie served more than 5,000 students in the last decade and enrolled 281 Colleton County students in 2024-25; the campus has awarded nearly $2.27 million in LIFE scholarship awards to Colleton County students over the past 12 years.
Cohen said the campus received a grant from the Department of Energy's environmental management program for just over $1.9 million to build a STEM bus focused on clean-energy solutions. The grant will fund a mobile classroom the campus will bid out to design and equip. "The main focus particularly for this grant is clean energy solutions," she said. The bus will visit schools across the campus's five-county region and provide hands-on equipment to K-12 students, she added.
On health care training, Cohen said USC Salkehatchie is partnering with USC Beaufort to provide a bachelor of science in nursing pathway for local students; historically the program has accepted up to 16 local students in the junior and senior years. She said the technical and transfer relationships within the USC system allow students to complete two-year degrees locally and then pursue four-year programs across USC campuses with seamless transfer options.
Cohen also described campus facilities available to the public, including I Carolina Labs (opened in 2022 with governor's emergency education relief funds), community lecture series and student engagement activities. She said the Walterboro campus lacks a large community space for students and public gatherings and that leaders are seeking funding for that need.
Council members asked how widely the STEM bus will operate; Cohen said it will serve the campus's five-county area. She also described ongoing negotiations to sustain the nursing program in collaboration with regional partners.
