Gifts to Moore School
South Carolina Bank and Trust Gives $100,000
A gift of $100,000 from
South Carolina Bank and Trust to the “Envisioning Moore” Capital Campaign is an
investment for the future, says President and CEO
Robert R. Hill, Jr. Though he is an alumnus of the Moore School, Hill (MBA ’95,
Distinguished Young Alumnus ’04) speaks from the standpoint of a successful businessman.
“We are investing in our future employees,” Hill says, “The key to our success is our people,
and if we can recruit the best and the brightest, then we are going do just that much better as a
company long term….We hire a lot of folks coming out of both the undergraduate and the graduate
programs at the Moore School of Business. We have been quite pleased with the contributions that
they make quickly in our company, and we just want to make sure that that continues in the future.”
South Carolina Bank and Trust’s gift will be used to help construct a brand-new graduate center
adjacent to the current facility. The $100,000 has a naming value of $200,000 in the new facility,
thanks to Darla Moore’s matching gift of $45 million, given in 2004. “Improvement of the facilities
is going to help attract the best students,” Hill says. He also suggests the implications are much
broader than the success of the Moore School.
“Outside of the Moore School of Business, what USC is doing overall—with the research campus, Innovista, for example—clearly USC as an academic institution is on its way to another level… which I think is much needed in a state that is behind economically.” So the South Carolina Bank and Trust gift is not only an investment in the business school. Hill says, “We see it as an investment in the state.”
Hill attended school at night for four years to complete his MBA at Moore and says the effort was worth it. “The MBA has opened a lot of doors and helped me see the business world in a much broader scope… you see how much opportunity there is. I’ve been with our company 10 years, and we’r e a small company, but I think the MBA program helped me see the potential this company has.”
Has that vision helped Hill at South Carolina Bank and Trust? “Ten years ago we started as a small rural company. We were a $300 million bank,” Hill says. “Today, we’re a $2 billion organization that covers most of South Carolina… I don’t think I’d be where I am today without the business school; I don’t think our company would be where it is today without it.”