2026 State of the University Address
September 9, 2026
Cole Rotondo, Student Government Association President
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the 2026 State of the University address.
My name is Cole Rotondo. I am a senior at USC, majoring in business and pre-law, and I serve as president of the USC Student Government Association.
It is my honor today to introduce President Michael Amiridis.
Michael Amiridis became the University of South Carolina’s 30th president four years ago, on July 1, 2022. Today marks his fourth State of the University address, and the first one he will deliver on the Horseshoe.
Today, the president will reflect on some of the highlights of the past year and offer a preview of what to expect for the future of our university.
Please join me in welcoming President Amiridis to the podium for this special occasion.
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President Michael Amiridis
Thank you, Cole, for the introduction and for your leadership. We appreciate the commitment of our Student Government leaders in representing the interests of the student body and helping us improve the experience and success of our students.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our historic Horseshoe for this year’s State of the University address. I’m happy to see many members of our extended Carolina community joining us on campus, as well as members of our Board of Trustees, under our newly elected new chair, Rose Buyck Newton.
Today, we are bringing you a special edition of this event in this beautiful setting, delivered in half the usual time, and we will still cover our most important information on time. And by the way, next year, we will move this event back indoors, with air conditioning, and the one-hour presentation you all love!
The reason for today’s special version is because we wanted to be the first signature campus event to kick off our birthday celebration this year. On December 19, our university will officially be 225 years old – but we are not going to wait until December to start celebrating! Beginning today, the university will host many special programs and activities on campus to mark this milestone.
Public universities were an experiment at that time, and the state of South Carolina was one of the few pioneers in that experiment. A very successful experiment, an experiment which changed forever our state and our country. And even today, when our public universities excel, so does the entire country; and when we struggle, so does our country as well.
While you listen this morning, I hope you will take a look around you. This is where our story started. 225 years ago, our university looked very different. It was a much smaller geographic footprint than the modern campus we know today. And we are still growing, evolving and advancing to meet the demands of the 21st century.
Our beginning may have been modest in size, but it was bold in ambition. Always, there was a vision for a brighter future, and a commitment to serving our state and its citizens for countless generations. We are living in that future, and we are still building for great seasons to come.
This is the state of the University of South Carolina in our 225th year – focused forward, planning strategically, and educating the minds that will build our tomorrows.
As you may have heard before, we have been setting a lot of records in recent years. And I hope you are not tired of hearing about these successes, because we just had another record year again.
We reached a new high in applications for admission this year – more than 69,000! When I greeted our new students and their parents on move-in day, they were amazed to learn they had so much competition! This is a 16 percent increase in applications over the previous year, and a 64 percent increase in the last 5 years!
Our fall enrollment is also hitting high notes:
- 7,800 new freshmen
- A record-high 33,000 undergraduates on our Columbia campus, and a total record of more than 41,000 students on this campus
- Our retention rate for students transitioning from freshman to sophomore is 92%. Reaching this level is an impressive and difficult accomplishment, and we are among just 4 percent of all colleges and universities in this country who have achieved it – 4 percent!
- And during our commencement ceremonies last year, we celebrated the graduation of more than 10,000 students – another new record.
Across the board, we are breaking records by attracting, admitting, enrolling, retaining and graduating more students – including more South Carolina residents – than ever before. Our energetic Alumni Association is doing its part to keep our graduates engaged and connected to our university, no matter where they may be across the country and outside the country. And our Marketing team is driving home the message of how USC guides its students on the path to success beyond graduation.
The past year, we also reached historic highs in philanthropic giving. Fundraising surpassed all previous records, with a total of more than $357 million raised. It was an amazing year for gifts to Athletics, in part for the exciting Williams-Brice Reimagined project.
And we also had a very significant gift, which led to the fourth naming of a USC college in the last three years – the Kay and C. Edward Floyd, M.D. School of Medicine. Sadly, Dr. Floyd passed away earlier this year, and last week we lost another great friend and supporter of our university, Joe Rice, for whom our School of Law is named. Their legacies will continue to benefit our students for many generations to come.
We also had a strong increase this year of alumni donors and first-time donors, as well as engagement from corporate and foundation donors. A wide spectrum of supporters, revealing the broad scope of commitment for the work we are doing at USC.
Our faculty researchers saw increased success in competitive grant awards from prestigious federal agencies during the past year. Funding from the National Institutes of Health grew by approximately 8 percent, and National Science Foundation awards grew by approximately 11 percent. This is substantial growth in an evolving landscape for research funding nationally.
Our researchers are focusing on critical and emerging areas, such as advanced materials; battery innovation and energy; brain health; environmental challenges; obesity; and artificial intelligence, among others. These grants are evidence of the vital and valued work done by our faculty. They also reflect our commitment to elevating an environment with the technology and resources needed, to advance first-class work.
As a recovering engineer, I have learned to rely on data and numbers! And the reason I like these numbers I mentioned is that they demonstrate our success. They show how we have elevated our status to a national university, in our education and in our research. People want to be part of our great story, part of a winning team. The students who commit to USC and want to build their futures here; the donors who invest in USC; the faculty who are driving innovation through research; and the alumni who represent us around the globe; all of these are markers of our success.
Of course, we know the challenges facing higher education – enrollment cliffs; tight budgets; a lapse in public trust; questions about the value of a college degree. Even so, I am confident about a great future. And let me tell you why.
While other institutions are battling financial uncertainty, we are consistently maintaining robust financial health. We enjoy a strong and collaborative relationship with our state and local leaders. We share with them goals for developing a strong workforce, positioning the state for economic competitiveness, solving problems through targeted research and strategic partnerships, and meeting the healthcare needs of South Carolina.
We do this every day by focusing on what we do best: creating well-educated and highly skilled graduates.
The General Assembly’s appropriation to USC this year is a strong indicator of our state leaders’ confidence in the work we do. In total, our USC system secured approximately $108 million in new recurring and one-time funding.
This level of funding will allow us to freeze tuition for the eighth consecutive year, continuing our commitment to access and affordability for South Carolina students. It also includes support for our work in brain health through our statewide Brain Health Network and our planned neurological hospital and rehabilitation center, along with other important initiatives systemwide.
We are also remaining true to our strategic priorities and our USC Next master plan. Just a few minutes ago, I asked you to look around. Keep watching this campus, because dynamic changes are coming. We have promised to revitalize our Horseshoe and bring more life back to the historic center of campus. The visual evidence of how we are doing it is already happening all around us.
Renovation projects are beginning this fall at the McKissick Museum (behind me, at the top of the Horseshoe) and Barnwell College (just behind McKissick). And they will be soon followed by the renovation of the Thomas Cooper Library, which will begin next spring.
The old McBryde residence halls behind the library are gone – and nobody’s upset about it! Look at this site on Sumter Street now, and you will see it is being prepared for a brand-new residential project. We are all looking forward to watching the transformation as the new Commons at Carolina takes shape. Commons at Carolina is the name of the new facility. And, with the addition of a newly constructed Honors College wing on the opposite side of Sumter Street, we will create 1,080 new student beds near the heart of campus, which will be ready for the students in the fall of 2028.
In the past year, we also renovated and reopened the Thornwell residence hall, just off the Horseshoe to my right, continuing to revitalize student housing near the campus core. This effort continues with the renovation of Woodrow College across from Russell House, which started last summer and will be completed by the end of the next summer.
Planning is also under way for more projects, including a new Center for Civil Rights History and Research, an extension and renovation of the 71-year-old Russell House, redevelopment along Main Street, and a new STEM Research and Innovation Building on Greene Street.
At our Health Sciences Campus in the BullStreet District, we cut the ribbon on the new Brain Health Center in March of this year. And nearby, we are making rapid progress toward opening the doors of the new School of Medicine building in time for classes next fall. We are also moving quickly with plans for the new neurological hospital and rehabilitation center on that new campus, and we expect to break ground in the early spring semester of this academic year.
As this health-focused campus develops, the University of South Carolina will not only be educating and training the healthcare professionals and researchers needed for our state’s future; we are also providing solutions and innovations to address South Carolina’s emerging needs and improve the quality of life in our state.
Last Saturday, on the southern end of campus, we kicked off the football season at Williams-Brice Stadium – with weather that we didn’t like! – and fans got the first look at some of the improvements we began in the off-season, for the renovation that will continue over the next two years to fully modernize the stadium. Every new season of improvements will be a step toward a great experience, because of this far-reaching project.
In every direction you look, we are improving our campus infrastructure to strengthen our future. This is a tangible demonstration of our ongoing momentum, and I hope you are as excited as I am to watch this progress as it continues across the entire campus.
Some of the evidence of our momentum, however, may be less visible than cranes and construction, but these improvements are the most critical for the needs and challenges of our university.
The quality and the success of our university depend on the quality and the success of our faculty and our staff.
We have outstanding senior faculty who are recognized as leaders in their fields, in both teaching and research. We are also attracting new colleagues who are at the beginning of their careers, with very promising records.
Over the last three years, we have been steadily hiring new faculty for tenured and tenure-track positions, at a time when other institutions are facing hiring freezes and decreases, in some cases. We are growing our faculty to meet the needs of an expanding student body and to ensure we continue to provide the highest quality teaching and research mentorship to our students. During this three-year period, and through an ambitious Presidential Hiring Initiative, we increased the tenured and tenure-track faculty by 140 positions; this is a 12 percent increase.
We have listened to student concerns during two Imagine Carolina brainstorming retreats – the first in the fall of 2022 and the second last fall. Both times, our students gave us fresh perspectives on how to improve the Carolina experience, and we have listened and responded. Advising, for example, was a very important issue four years ago. We implemented a new system across the campus. And during last year’s discussion, we didn’t hear a single complaint about advising. And we have made great steps in guidance for academic needs, experiential learning, and career readiness. This has also led to improvements in first-year retention and four-year graduation.
Success for our students, and their families, also means a path from degree to career. Our interdisciplinary certificates program started in 2023, with 25 students enrolled in that first cohort. We now offer five career-building certificates, and more than 900 of our graduates have already earned one or more certificates. Also, during the past three years, our South Carolina Internship Program has directed 2,900 USC students to hands-on internships at more than 800 businesses across the state. And the students were well paid, as well.
This year, we are piloting another new option: the Capstone Horizon program with 200 freshmen from the McCausland College of Arts & Sciences, to enhance workforce readiness. This is an accelerated degree-completion program, which will focus on career preparation and will include the courses needed for at least one of our certificates and a guaranteed internship. When these students graduate in four years, they will go into the workforce with not only their college degree, but also a significant amount of job experience in their chosen field. Once again, we are innovating in academics to address the career-building needs of our students and our state.
A lot of these activities – and so many more – are taking place outside of the classrooms. None of these would have happened without our outstanding staff members, who stand behind the success of almost everything we do on our campus. We are very fortunate to have such dedicated employees, and I’m very proud of them!
The past year has been marked by a number of accomplishments, as you can see. And there have also been some special moments for celebration.
We welcomed several new leaders across campus. Stacey Bradley became our new Vice President for Human Resources and Organizational Excellence last July, and Anne Peters joined us one week ago as the new Vice President for Marketing. We also have two new deans leading academic units – Dean Christopher Culbertson at the McCausland College of Arts and Sciences; and Dean Jamie Dwyer at the Floyd School of Medicine.
We named the Department of Sport and Entertainment Management in the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management for our great supporters and partners, David and Nicole Tepper.
We introduced the inaugural cohort of the nationally recognized Evans Scholars as a living-learning community in the McCausland Scholarship House at Thornwell hall.
We celebrated a record number of Goldwater Scholars from USC in a single year – five of them; this is a very rare achievement for any institution – and this marked 34 consecutive years of Gamecocks being named as Goldwater Scholars.
We launched our Center for American Civic Leadership and Public Discourse to open dialogues promoting greater understanding and open discourse in South Carolina’s civic life and our country’s democracy.
And, for a third consecutive period, we earned the 2026 Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement, maintaining our position among fewer than 100 public institutions nationwide, who are recognized for R1 research and a commitment to community engagement.
In Athletics, our Gamecock Equestrian team brought home their fourth national championship. And a few weeks earlier, our Women’s Basketball team gave us plenty of reasons to cheer in a stellar run to the finals of March Madness. They finished second in the tournament, but they are always first in our hearts.
And finally, our talented Carolina Band gave us one more reason for Gamecock pride by winning the grand prize for Division 1 in the Metallica Marching Band Competition for universities. Let’s give them a national champion round of applause, since they are here with us today!
I wish I could name every one of the highlights on USC’s list of achievements over the past year, but we have a birthday cake waiting for us. We are immensely proud of the talents and efforts of all of our students, faculty and staff, and I hope you carry that pride with you as a part of this Carolina community.
Over the past few years, you have heard me talk a lot about momentum to describe the state of our university and its forward progress. Momentum develops through movement in a clear direction, and it can build over time. We are continuing to experience this at the University of South Carolina.
Today is a great day to reflect on and celebrate the history of our university and the successes of our previous year. But more importantly, we are also here to prepare for another excellent year and for a bright future for many more years to come. There is no question that, at some point, we will face challenges. But we are very careful in addressing important issues, keeping a watchful outlook for our long-range future, and planning thoughtfully, strategically, and thoroughly. Our vision is not only for the Carolina of today or next year, but also for the Carolina that serves and leads our state through another 225 years.
Thank you all for contributing to the success of our university. Here’s a health, Carolina, forever to thee! Thank you.