‌‌Holley E. Tankersley

Commencement Speaker, August 2013

Holley E. Tankersley, associate professor of politics and chair of the Department of Politics and Geography, has been a member of University faculty since 2006. During the 2011-2012 academic year, she served as associate dean of the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts.

Her areas of expertise are public policy, social policy (health, education, welfare and family), state and local government and politics, the U.S. presidency, judicial politics, service learning and civic engagement in liberal arts education.

Tankersley earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1999 from Birmingham Southern College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a master's degree in public policy in 2002 from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in political science and public policy in 2006 from the University of Georgia. Her work has been published in many journals, and she has presented at numerous conferences. In 2007, Tankersley was nominated for the William D. Anderson Prize, which is awarded for the best dissertation in the field of federalism and intergovernmental relations.

She was named Coastal Carolina University’s Distinguished Professor of the Year in 2009 and 2013. She serves as adviser to CCU's delegation to the South Carolina Student Legislature. In 2008, she received the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching.