Dr. Willie L. Todd, Jr., president and CEO of Denmark Technical College
Rumors about DTC closing had been swirling since 2017, when South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster transferred the oversight of DTC to the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education. In January 2018, the state board issued a recommendation to shut down the school.
Later that same year, DTC’s accrediting board, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) issued a monitoring report, a prelude to DTC’s 2019 probation.
Todd arrived just as the probation was announced. His original role at DTC was vice president for academic and student affairs, but by 2020, he had become the ninth president at the struggling institution.
“People think I came here to be president,” said Todd. “I promise you, I did not.”
In 2008, DTC had 2,277 students. Ten years later, enrollment had dropped to just 489 students. Since becoming president, Todd has overseen an enormous overhaul of the institution, inside and out. He’s led the restructuring of finances and academics, the overhaul of an aging campus, and he’s working to create a culture of caring and belonging for students, faculty, and staff. It’s all part of his ten-year strategic plan to get DTC back on track in its 75th year.
Dr. A. Clifton Myles, vice president for administration and innovation and chief strategy officer at DTC, said that “the whole [beginning] period was spent eradicating the twelve sanctions issued over the last four to five years,” said Myles. “As we’re doing all this work to transform this institution, we’re running for our lives to ensure [we] meet the minimum standards, to ensure we could document and provide evidence of what we were doing.”
