Contributor Nan Johnston is the interim director of the Clemson University Center for Corporate Learning.
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Clemson’s Center for Corporate Learning got its start nearly 50 years ago
The end of the year is a great time to look back at where we have been and contemplate where we are going. All organizations must evolve if they are to survive, but few have experienced as many twists and turns as ours. From humble beginnings, we have developed into a leading provider of continuing education and a wonderful resource for individuals and companies in Greenville and beyond.
Clemson’s Center for Corporate Learning had its beginning in the 1960s as an offshoot of the College of Textile Science & Industrial Management. It was originally known as PACE – the Center for Professional Advancement and Continuing Education. In keeping with the focus of the college, offerings were initially limited to hosting textile conferences and various textile-related technical educational programs.
In 1982, PACE expanded into the one-day seminar market, very innovative and unique at that time. PACE was the precursor to companies like CareerTrak and SkillPath and defined the format for one-day seminars that is still popular today. A great variety of topics was offered including maintenance management, packaging design and soft skills and administrative improvement. Soon PACE was conducting as many as 12 seminars a day across the country – nearly 600 per year. The varied subjects ranged beyond the scope of experience of tenured faculty in the College of Textiles, so professionals were hired to conduct the training.
The 1990s arrived, and PACE had to change with the times. This led to reworking the seminar format into one-day conferences with well-known speakers. The first offering was known as the PEOPLE conference (Promotion of Excellence in Organizations through Productivity, Leadership and Empowerment) and provided attendees around the country the opportunity to hear speakers like Stephen Covey, Tom Peters and Peter Drucker. Registrations for the one-day conference were $895, and they were held in Tier 1 cities like New Orleans, Denver and Washington. One conference of note featured Deepak Chopra, who spoke without notes for the entire day. Another featured Colin Powell, who was transported to and from the event in the Clemson University plane. The success of these initial conferences gave PACE a great deal of political clout.
Then 2008 brought another wave of creative destruction. PACE moved under the aegis of the College of Business and Behavioral Science, and sought to capitalize on its relationships with Greenville’s community of corporations and businesses. The name was changed to the Clemson Center for Corporate Learning (CCL), and the mission expanded to include providing highly targeted training that results in measurable performance improvement for businesses in the Upstate and beyond. Using the strong Clemson brand to market programs that easily draw participants from a 200-mile radius, CCL provides contract training (offered in-house to the client and typically customized or co-designed) and also “open enrollment” classes held at our new campus at ONE Main Street in Greenville.
CCL partners with faculty or consultants to offer engineering programs that last three full days or more on a repeat basis several times per year and recently launched the Clemson Mini-MBA Certificate Program, a series of five seminars which meets on the first Friday of every month. Seminars include “Leading and Motivating,” “New Media and Social Spaces,” “Project Execution,” “Inside the Numbers” and “Business Strategy.” Students can register at any point in the curriculum cycle and upon completion of all five seminars earn the Mini-MBA certificate.
Celebrating its fifth year in 2014, the Clemson University Leadership Summit will be held the week of October 20-25. This full week of intensive leadership training for emerging high-potential leaders allows participants to interact with some of the most successful leaders in the region, and then flex their leadership muscles by tackling a challenge project designed by Center for Corporate Learning partnering with the United Way.
Though CCL has seen many changes, some traditions live on. The Clemson University Annual Global Tire Industry Conference – which draws participants from the Northeast, Midwest, West Coast, Great Britain, Israel, Australia and Asia – is hosting its 30th conference in Hilton Head in 2014. South Carolina is now the largest manufacturer of tires in North America, and the Clemson Conference is internationally known as the most important conference of the industry.
The Clemson Center for Corporate Learning is proud to have a rich history of serving businesses and professionals in the Upstate and beyond, and we look forward to what the next 50 years will bring.
