{"id":6426,"date":"2017-02-06T21:27:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T02:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2017\/02\/06\/a-furman-education-opens-doors\/"},"modified":"2024-07-23T15:53:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-23T19:53:15","slug":"a-furman-education-opens-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/a-furman-education-opens-doors\/","title":{"rendered":"A Furman education opens doors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greater Greenville Sanitation executive director Steve Cole \u2019<\/span>00 graduated from high school in 1990. \u201cAt the time,\u201d he says, \u201cgetting a car was more important to me than getting an education.\u201d So he went to work after graduation to start earning money right away.<\/p>\n

When he started working at the Laurens Electric Cooperative, though, his thoughts returned to education when he learned about their tuition reimbursement program. He took a year\u2019s worth of courses at a school that was convenient to where he worked, but when he began to have suspicions about the quality of the education, he started researching other programs in the area. That\u2019s when he found Furman Undergraduate Evening Studies. Cole decided to pursue an accounting degree<\/a> at Furman, feeling that this business specialization would give him an edge in a competitive job market.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t say enough good things about Furman,\u201d he says, \u201cits reputation, the quality of the education, and the availability of career-relevant degree offerings.\u201d Holding down a job, having a family, and getting a degree in four years is not for the faint of heart, but for Cole, the challenge was worth the effort. \u201cIf you\u2019re going through that effort, it might as well be for a degree that means something,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Cole\u2019s instructors were accommodating, but held students to high standards. One instructor who stands out in Cole\u2019s memory was Michael Elliot, a practicing CPA who taught a tax course every spring as his own refresher for tax season. He took another course taught by Furman\u2019s Director of Learning Technologies Susan Dunnavant, and her instruction was practical and immediately applicable. \u201cThe faculty are very professional and well-prepared,\u201d Cole says, \u201ca mix of professional adjuncts and academics who provide a well-rounded education.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, as a direct result of his degree from Furman, his career prospects began to change. Cole was promoted at LEC until changes in that organization led to a layoff; he then worked as a controller for a Subway franchisee group and later held the same position for a construction company.<\/p>\n

Cole later learned that the finance director at GGS was leaving, and he applied and was hired for the position in 2010. A year later, he started an MBA program at Clemson, and he says his acceptance into the program as well as his ability to do well in it were helped by the quality of education he received at Furman. After receiving his MBA, the opportunity for promotion came up again, this time for the position he now holds.<\/p>\n

As for his knowledge of solid waste before working at GGS, Cole says he had \u201cabsolutely zero,\u201d and he had not envisioned himself working in the garbage industry. But it\u2019s a service that everyone, from a person living alone to a large corporation, needs and will always need. And he\u2019s doing his part to ensure that the service his customers receive is of the same quality they\u2019ve come to expect in spite of rising costs at his end.<\/p>\n

GGS has a fleet of 70 vehicles to service residential garbage and recycling, commercial collection, and yard waste disposal, and 121 employees to service around 52,000 customers in Greenville County. The constant challenge of the industry is finding ways to divert waste from landfills, and to do it in a cost-effective way. Because GGS is a tax-supported utility, simply raising rates to consumers is not an option, so Cole implemented such changes as moving to a four-day work week to eliminate overtime pay, lobbying the state legislature to allow GGS to participate in the state employee health insurance plan, and only sending recycling trucks to homes that specifically opted in\u2014for a savings of over $550,000 a year to offset increases in landfill fees.<\/p>\n

As a service provider, GGS goes the extra mile to keep Greenville County clean, providing trash pickup from the porches of disabled customers so they don\u2019t have to haul it to the curb, picking up trash that\u2019s left under overpasses and in other public places, and implementing a program called Community Green to help residents maintain a clean neighborhood and properly dispose of unwanted items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greater Greenville Sanitation executive director Steve Cole \u201900 graduated from high school in 1990. \u201cAt the time,\u201d he says, \u201cgetting a car was more important to me than getting an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":6427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-undergraduate-evening-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6426"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33208,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6426\/revisions\/33208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}