CLINTON, S.C. — Presbyterian College, based in Clinton, is one of 11 South Carolina institutions named in a new four-year, $10 million National Science Foundation grant that launches a statewide network to expand STEM research and student pathways. The award is one of the larger single research investments to reach a Clinton institution in recent years, and Presbyterian College is the only participating school based in Laurens County.
The grant, awarded through the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or NSF EPSCoR, funds an initiative called the South Carolina Collaborative Academic Pathways in STEM. The network is known as SC-CAPS. Its purpose is to build research capacity and STEM workforce pathways across the state’s primarily undergraduate institutions and historically Black colleges and universities. The award goes to the South Carolina Research Authority, which will administer the funds across the network. NSF EPSCoR is a federal program designed to direct competitive research dollars to states that have historically received a smaller share of national research funding, and South Carolina has been an EPSCoR jurisdiction for decades.
The SC-CAPS network includes Anderson University, Coastal Carolina University, Coker University, College of Charleston, Furman University, Lander University, Presbyterian College, South Carolina State University, University of South Carolina Upstate, Voorhees University, and Winthrop University. Presbyterian College’s Clinton campus is the only participating institution in Laurens County. The other 10 institutions are spread across the Upstate, Midlands, Pee Dee, and Coastal regions.
Two of the participating schools are historically Black institutions — South Carolina State University in Orangeburg and Voorhees University in Denmark — and SC-CAPS is designed to strengthen research capacity at HBCUs alongside primarily undergraduate campuses. That combination is what SC EPSCoR has described as the distinctive shape of this award.
Dr. Nadim Aziz, director of South Carolina EPSCoR, is the principal investigator and project director. Tim Stemmler, vice president for research at the Medical University of South Carolina, chairs the SC EPSCoR State Committee that oversees the program.
SC-CAPS launches with three interconnected components. The Experiential Learning Core engages high school, transfer, and undergraduate students across all 11 campuses to build research skills. The Building STEM Pathways Core focuses on retention, on-time graduation, and career readiness through articulation agreements, high school bridge programs, enhanced advising, and peer mentoring. The Faculty and Institutional Growth Core supports faculty development to strengthen research competitiveness and long-term sustainability across the network.
Beyond the three cores, SC-CAPS opens additional capacity-building opportunities to all primarily undergraduate institutions and HBCUs in South Carolina, including competitive seed funding for equipment, a proposal-writing academy, statewide best-practice workshops, and research experiences for students. The seed funding is open by proposal, which means Clinton faculty can compete for it directly rather than waiting on a per-school allocation.
Christopher Korey, associate provost for student success at the College of Charleston and a co-principal investigator on the project, said the network is designed to open clearer pathways for student success, with particular emphasis on students who start at a two-year institution and transfer into a four-year STEM program. That transfer-student focus is directly relevant to Clinton, where Presbyterian College enrolls transfer students each year from two-year colleges across the Upstate and Midlands.
For Presbyterian College’s Clinton campus, participation in SC-CAPS means access to the network’s shared research infrastructure, the seed-funding pool, and the transfer-student pipeline programs over a four-year grant period. Neither institutional release disclosed a Presbyterian-specific dollar allocation, and the consortium has not published a per-school breakdown of the $10 million total.
What’s next for Clinton
SC-CAPS begins its four-year grant period now. The three cores — experiential learning, STEM pathways, and faculty growth — are expected to launch programming across all 11 campuses during the academic year. Clinton students and faculty at Presbyterian College can expect the first opportunities to arrive through the seed-funding proposals and the statewide proposal-writing academy. Community members who want to follow the network’s activity will find updates through Presbyterian’s own communications and through SC EPSCoR’s public program pages.
Sources: College of Charleston Today; South Carolina State University News.
Correction, 2026-08-15: an earlier version of this article contained two short quoted phrases attributed to a College of Charleston official. Under HERE editorial policy (§3.1), we do not publish quotation marks around attributed speech; the passage has been rewritten in our own words. The underlying facts are unchanged.
