There is a new movement afoot in higher education, and Coastal Carolina University is already ahead of the curve. Four professors launched the program during the Spring 2003 semester.

At universities across America, the era of “public engagement” has dawned. The idea that the public good is enhanced by two-way partnerships between colleges and the community they serve is not new, and certainly not at Coastal. Instead of giving lip service to a vague effort at community do-goodism, Coastal has established a program that insists on measurable results that will make a real difference in the lives of students and citizens.

Coastal was founded as part of a grassroots community effort, and service to the surrounding area has always been implicit in its mission. Indeed, in the 10 years since Coastal left the University of South Carolina system, President Ronald Ingle has taken the community service mandate very seriously, encouraging the development of programs such as Professional Golf Management and helping form the North East Strategic Alliance (NESA), designed to spur economic development in the region. Also, each of the Centers administered through Coastal’s four academic colleges has a specified community outreach function.

But when Peter Barr returned to Coastal in July 2002 to take on the position of provost after working for a couple of years as an executive with the Myrtle Beach development firm Burroughs & Chapin Co., he brought with him a fresh perspective and a new vision for public engagement for the university. Barr, dean of the E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration for eight years before joining Burroughs & Chapin, says the time he spent working in the private sector gave him a valuable vantage point to reflect on higher education as it relates to the world at large. Back at Coastal, he immediately began working with Ingle to develop a new program called Public Engagement Directed Studies.

The program, which Barr describes as being more “proactive and far-reaching” than the traditional concept of public service, offers full-time “internships” for a small number of faculty each semester. The professors work full-time in area businesses or organizations on specific projects relating to their areas of expertise. By completely immersing themselves in a particular “real world” endeavor, they gain a broader perspective on the subject, which they in turn bring back to their students when they return to the classroom.

“This is a natural extension of what the university is supposed to be doing,” says Barr. “It is just as important as supporting research and improving teaching methods.”

Professors are chosen through an application process. Four professors were chosen for the spring 2003 semester, and in the future at least two professors each semester will participate in the initiative.

“There is a potential for university-community partnerships in every field of endeavor,” says Barr. “Education doesn’t stop at the classroom doors. We should be the educators to the community, and the community can help educate us.”

Doing the numbers
How many people are vacationing on the Grand Strand this week?

That is a question that area tourism organizations have never been equipped to answer empirically. Through his Public Engagement project, Taylor Damonte led the development of a data collection system that will answer this question and serve as a barometer of area tourist demand.

Damonte, associate professor of management and the director of Coastal’s resort tourism management program, knows the hospitality industry from the inside out. While he was getting his bachelor’s degree at the University of New Orleans, he worked as a desk clerk and night auditor at a French Quarter motor inn and was the assistant food and beverage director at the old Fountainbleau Hotel.

After graduating, Damonte made a career in the hospitality industry, managing hotels and restaurants on the Mississippi gulf coast before returning to academe to earn a master’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and a doctorate from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. Prior to joining the Coastal faculty in 1998, he taught for seven years in the University of South Carolina’s School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration. He has taught and/or conducted hospitality and tourism research in a number of foreign venues including Germany, Slovakia, Ecuador and Panama.

Last fall when Martha Hunn, director of the Myrtle Beach Area Hospitality Association and a 1987 Coastal graduate, was approached by a group of Grand Strand business representatives in need of better data, she turned to Damonte.
“The Grand Strand has never had a system in place to give an accurate forecast of how business is expected to perform in the short run—next week or next month,” says Damonte. Traditionally, tourism data calculation for the area has been a “best guess” endeavor. Performance estimates were based on accommodations, sales, or admissions tax records and other indicators that only become available after a lag of two or more months. What the area has needed for a long time is a reliable way to gauge the economy in a real time fashion.

Early in 2003, as Damonte was at work designing a data collection system, longtime Grand Strand hotelier and tourism leader Gary Loftus became the new head of Coastal’s Center for Economic and Community Development. Loftus has been working in close collaboration with Damonte on the project, boosting its profile with area business people.

Area businesses are the key to the project’s success. Every Monday morning, hotel managers log on to a secured intranet Web site and report their occupancy rates for the previous week and their projections for the week just beginning. Representatives from other segments of the industry (food and beverage, golf, amusements, retail, theaters) will eventually input volume and demand data on a regular basis.

“The more information management can get about consumer demand, prices and other indicators, the better they can guide their individual business,” says Damonte. “Because the study predicts short-term changes in tourism activity, businesses can fine tune their operation and marketing plans accordingly.”

The index will be used as a gauge to measure the relative health of the tourism-related economy. The index will be a valuable tool to city planners, civil defense officials, public policy makers and other civic personnel in that it will allow them to make timely, informed decisions on a whole spectrum of matters, ranging from utilities management to public safety to bond ratings.

“Our hope is that this study will allow us to do the sort of fine-grain analysis that’s never been done before on the Grand Strand—or anywhere else for that matter,” says Damonte. “Having unit-level business performance data will allow us to measure the value that comes from a business’ proximity to the natural and built tourism resources in the community. This level of detail will allow us to see the larger picture: the economic interrelatedness of the community’s individual tourism assets.”

As part of his Public Engagement endeavors, Damonte also worked with the City of Myrtle Beach Planning Department to organize the first Regional Tourism Summit. The event, held in March 2003, gathered tourism leaders from six counties around the eastern border of North Carolina and South Carolina to discuss regional tourism issues. The meeting helped participants recognize the common concerns that face tourism destinations throughout the region. One of the most important outcomes of the summit was the decision by participants to establish the Coastal Tourism Alliance of the Carolinas. This think tank will address tourism issues such as labor, transportation, marketing and public policy.