By Gavin Jackson

FLORENCE -- Clemson University President James Barker told members of the Florence Rotary Club and their guests Monday that Clemson’s importance to South Caroilna and the Pee Dee goes well beyond producing powerhouse football teams. 

Speaking at the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center, Barker delivered a lengthy address on the state of the university and its wide reach. Exhibit A on Monday was the Pee Dee Research and Education Center in Florence. 

“The PDREC is the focus in our future on agriculture,” Barker said in an interview after his prepared  remarks. “So really everything that we’re doing as it relates to crops, irrigation and molecular genetics, all the 21st-century research work will be done at the Pee Dee REC and it will provide that insight directly into the hands of the agricultural community throughout the state of South Carolina and really throughout the country.” 

"It will, it will, because advanced plant technologies which is really the label for all those programs, are pushing the envelope as it relates to agriculture which is a very sophisticated science and if you're not current at what you're doing you're going to fall behind and the economic impact of falling behind is not good,” Barker said. “So we have to stay on that cutting edge and this will help us do that." 

Barker said there were nervous moments over the center’s fate during this spring’s state budget deliberations. Some  $4 million state funding for the renovations to the PDREC was vetoed by Governor Nikki Halley, but State Senator Hugh Leatherman (R-Florence), helped restore the funding. Leatherman and his wife Jean, both members of the Rotary Club, invited Barker to speak on Monday. 

Of the 50 or so members and guests at the event Dr. Bruce Fortnum was perhaps most pleased to see Barker and hear his remarks on the PDREC. Fortnum is currently the director of the facility. 

“They were right on the mark,” Fortnum said about Barker’s remarks. “The advanced plant technology program is an important program for the Pee Dee with agriculture increasing in importance, and with the potential for shortfall in commodities like we’ve seen with grain this year, agricultural production in this country is more in more important than ever." 

Clemson has lots of in-state students -- some 22,000 graduates from the Pee Dee, and 500 more enrolled this year. One considerable challenge, said Barker, is to keep those students here upon graduation. How to do that? By recruiting companies here who need bright young men and women to fill good-payign positions in their organizations. 

Clemson and a consortium of 10 technical colleges received $20 million grant from the Department of Labor to establishing a network which will result in industry recognized credentials and degrees for high tech and high demand jobs like advanced manufacturing in the aviation, energy and transportation. 

“This is the critical workforce preparation challenge that our country faces and we face it clearly in South Carolina,” Barker said. “We’re attracting and creating good jobs with companies like BMW and Boeing and their suppliers now it’s up to us, Clemson and the technical colleges to prepare our young people to fill those positions that is why we’re putting so much of an emphasis at every level from graduate education through our increasingly robust partnerships with the technical colleges.”