health insurance agent in Isle of Palms

ISLE OF PALMS, S.C. (WCSC) - A volunteer organization is encouraging others to help with litter removal on Isle of Palms.

The Isle of Palms Cleanup Crew will be holding its first of six litter cleanups, the Spring Litter Sweep series, on Monday and they’re encouraging others in the community to participate.

Co-founder Susan Hill Smith said volunteers collected 60,000 pieces of litter during cleanups last year. That’s a 130% increase over 2021.

She says common litter items found on the beach and commercial areas are plastics such as bottle caps, food wrappers, lids, and straw wrappers.

Smith said one litter item remains at the top of the list even though it is prohibited and that is cigarettes.

Organizers say 44% of litter items collected on the beach, streets, sidewalks, and parking lots last year were smoking-related litter items.

“Cigarette litter is our number one both on the beach and on the streetscape even though on the beach the city council passed and adopted in 2020 a law against smoking on the beach,” Smith said. “We’ve seen a decrease in cigarette litter as far as our totals. But that’s still cigarette litter is still our number one and that has both toxic chemicals and plastic threads in it.”

The group has entered a partnership with the South Carolina Aquarium to document their litter data through the aquarium’s Citizen Science app. The app allows citizen scientists to document observations in the area. They said the aquarium reports at the turtle hospital showed a remarkable increase in the amount of plastic they’re seeing ingested by their patients.

Smith said the crew was founded in 2018 after concerns about litter and pollution problems on the beach and how that was affecting both the beach and ocean ecosystems as well as public health and really just wanted to help keep their islands beautiful and protect the area.

Smith encourages avoiding bringing disposable items to the beach and keeping track of beach ordinances prohibiting single-use items.

If you are interested in joining the clean-up crew the first meeting is 5:30 p.m. Monday at 1100 Ocean Boulevard.

More information on the group and future cleanup dates can be found on their Facebook page.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

This post represents the first installment in a DawgNation series this spring featuring the “Next Generation” of Georgia football players from the 2023 signing class. 5-star Monroe Freeling ranks as the nation’s No. 5 OT and the No. 33 overall prospect for 2023 on the 247Sports Composite ratings and the On3 Industry Ranking.

==========================================

It is a fall Friday night in coastal South Carolina. The palms in the Palmetto State are swaying. There’s a blissful breeze drifting inland.

Oceanside Collegiate Academy is coming out for the second half. We fix our eyes on a Bunyanesque offensive tackle walking out.

Monroe Freeling offers a unique visual. His weight ranged between 290 and 295 pounds for his senior season.

South Carolina measured Freeling at 6 feet, 7 inches with no socks on. The Gamecocks offered him before he played his first varsity game as a sophomore.

He’s big and long and lean. Like a walking parenthesis in size-16 cleats. Freeling will not take up a lot of space. But he’ll eclipse everything in front of him.

With that second half about to follow, we keep our eyes on Freeling.

The rest of the team is getting warm. Running in place. He had to hang back a bit from the rest of the team. Probably needed more tape. That’s what head coach Chad Wilkes thinks.

Those two have a quick word.

“Alright Monroe,” Wilkes says. “Go stretch.”

“Do you mind if I just do yoga?” Freeling replies.

Wilkes did not. His 4-star OT can indeed do yoga if that’s what he needs. As long as he goes back out and physically dominates opponents and finishes every block with domination on his mind.

It was no random request. Freeling’s mother, Brandy, had established a tradition of doing yoga with the team on Fridays in the season. She started Monroe on yoga after his freshman season.

“It is all about knowing your body coach,” Monroe Freeling said to Wilkes at the moment.

Freeling takes that discipline very seriously.

“It helps a lot,” Freeling said this past season. “Even if you don’t really do it that often. Even if you just kind of get in a little rhythm of it. You can know exactly where your body hurts and how to fix it. That’s the biggest thing because a lot of players will hurt and go to a trainer and will say they are hurting. This way, a lot of the time I can just go ‘Hmm I know where I hurt. I know the way I hurt my body. I know how to fix it and I can stretch it out’ and then coordination-wise and obviously flexibility wise it helps a great deal, too.”

“But for me, the biggest thing was body awareness and knowing where I hurt and how I can stay healthy for a long time.”

Get you a Left Tackle that can lead a yoga session after a long road trip!!! pic.twitter.com/CuOhv21y4L

— Chad Wilkes (@CoachChadWilkes) November 25, 2022

It’s a tool for him to succeed.

Senior Season Highlights OL/DL

Share Video

facebook twitter email

link<div>http://www.hudl.com/v/2K6TKe</div>

Copied

Rewind 10 Seconds

Next Up

Live

00:00

00:00

00:00

Chromecast

Closed Captions

Share Video

Settings

Fullscreen

Error loading media:

File could not be played

48 Play

The South Carolina Department of Transportation is asking residents to weigh in on a preferred concept for the Isle of Palms Connector restriping project. At the transportation committee meeting on Feb. 6, Mount Pleasant council members discussed a new alternative concept presented by town staff that includes a larger multiuse path compared to SCDOT’s concepts.

The Town’s concept includes a 14-foot multiuse path on the south side of the bridge (left shoulder when facing Mount Pleasant) with designated bike and pedestrian lanes, a four-foot buffer between the path and traffic and two 11-foot vehicle lanes with an 11-foot median in the middle. The median provides space for emergency vehicles to pass through, and it could be used as an additional westbound lane off of the island for planned special events or evacuations.

“The main change that was proposed as part of that concept was actually to provide a wider pedestrian lane and a wider bicycle lane, separating those uses,” said James Aton, the deputy director for capital projects and transportation for the Town.

At the base of the connector on the Mount Pleasant side, there’s an option to restripe the road to include two westbound lanes leaving the island.

The Town’s concept is similar to SCDOT’s Concept 3, except SCDOT proposes a 10-foot multiuse path with a six-foot buffer and the median between the two travel lanes is 10 feet. SCDOT’s Concept 4 is a mirror of Concept 3 with the bike and pedestrian lane on the other side of the roadway. However, both municipalities favor the bike and pedestrian lane on the south side of the bridge – in Mount Pleasant it allows cyclists and pedestrians to easily access shopping, restaurants and nearby apartments and the Isle of Palms has infrastructure in place to gather pedestrians on that side.

SCDOT presented five concepts in front of the Isle of Palms city council on Dec. 13 and the Mount Pleasant transportation committee on Jan. 3.

SCDOT’s Concept 1 includes a 10-foot bike and pedestrian lane on the south side of the connector, a six-foot buffer, two 11-foot travel lanes with a four-foot paved median in the center and a 10-foot shoulder on the north side of the bridge. Concept 2 is a mirror of Concept 1.

The first four concepts presented by SCDOT do not add capacity to the connector. On a typical travel day, the center median lane or shoulder lane would be used in emergency situations, whether its drivers pulling over for an emergency vehicle or first responders moving an accident out of the way. It would not be used for travel except for planned special events.

Concept 5 presented by SCDOT creates two westbound travel lanes leaving the island to help reduce travel time on the bridge, especially during the busy summer months. This concept includes the 10-foot multiuse path with a five-foot buffer area on the south side of the bridge.

Another option is to leave the current configuration as is. The Isle of Palms Connector was restriped early 2021 to provide more safety for cyclists and pedestrians. The existing configuration includes bike and pedestrian paths on each side of the bridge in a single direction with a 3.5-foot buffer on each side. There are two 11-foot travel lanes with a 4-foot paved median in the center. Additionally, the speed limit went from 55 to 45 mph.

“The benefits of that [configuration] is you’re separating direction of travel for bikes and pedestrians, sort of improving the overall safety of the interaction of those users,” said Aton.

The main goal for revisiting the restriping, initiated by the City of the Isle of Palms, was to assess emergency vehicle response times and find a solution for traffic leaving the island. Police and fire chiefs for both Mount Pleasant and the Isle of Palms said there have not been any issues getting emergency vehicles through the connector and there have not been any delays in response times.

“It’s not something we’ve seen as an issue,” said Mount Pleasant Fire Chief Mike Mixon, “but [a median lane] would keep the cars from having to move to the side.”

The SCDOT survey opened Jan. 17 and closes after 30 days. To provide input on SCDOT’s five concepts, visit http://bit.ly/3YJMtOZ.

Seven Lucy Beckham High School student athletes signed letters of intent to play their sport at the collegiate level.

“I have the privilege to be around these student athletes who have worked hard at all those practices,” said Athletic Director Scott McInnes at the signing ceremony on Feb. 9. He acknowledged the sacrifices the parents of student athletes make throughout the four years.

Each coach shared a few words about the athletes, plus the athletes had an opportunity to thank family and friends for helping them reach this goal.

Baseball

Lane Lockhart — University of South Carolina Union

Football

Malachi Coakley — Union County

Tierell Milligan — St. Andrews University

AJ Kut — The Citadel

Jack Weil — The Citadel

Track & Field

Allison Kammer — University of South Carolina Upstate

Sam Seifert — The Citadel

Bishop England High School hosted a signing day ceremony on Feb. 1 to celebrate nine athletes who committed to playing sports in college. The student athletes took the stage individually with their parents and coaches as their high school sports accomplishments were recognized.

Swimming

Lindsay Burbage — University of Massachusetts

Matthew Piccard — Virginia Military Institute

Softball

Adelaide Coyle — Erskine College

Football

Tommy DiLiegro — Wofford College

William Poole — Gardner Webb University

Charlie Ranney — Bates College

Track & Field

Maggie Long — Anderson University

Rowing

Sophia Savage — Fairfield University

Baseball

Asher Western — University of South Carolina Beaufort

Football

Zach Hagedon — Old Dominion

Timmy Castain — North Greenville

Swimming

Ben Hutson — Converse College

Gabe Grimm — Lees-McRae College

Soccer

Beck Dean — Furman University

Soccer

Turner Orvin — Johns Hopkins University

Soccer

Maile Merklein — University of South Carolina Lancaster

Three more Mount Pleasant high school athletes committed to play college sports on Dec. 21 by signing their letters of intent.

Wando High School’s Mikey Rosa committed to playing football at the Citadel. The team captain and linebacker was selected to play in the 2022 Shrine Bowl and was named the 2022 Shrine Bowl Defensive MVP.

“Mikey is a remarkable young man. He checks all the boxes when it comes to character, leadership and being a teammate. Mikey is a leader on the field and off always willing to lend a hand to whoever may ask,” said Wando coach Rocco Adrian.

Two Oceanside Collegiate Academy football players also signed their letters of intent. Vaugh Blue signed with Liberty University, and Monroe Freeling committed to the University of Georgia. Freeling is the number one college prospect in the state for the class of 2023.

When engaged professors pair up with successful alumni who want to give back to the university that served them, magic happens for students. This semester, that magic is happening now for sixteen lucky students in Travis Hicks’ Interior Architecture (IARc) studio class, who are spending their final semester redesigning restaurants and a VIP suite for a beachfront resort near Charleston, SC.

Beyond the Studio

IARc offers students a broad knowledge in design, commercial applications, and architectural processes. Class options can be tailored to a student’s individual professional aspirations. Although many classes include hands-on projects in the Gatewood Studio Arts Building, Hicks gives fourth year undergraduate students an opportunity to apply the knowledge they’ve absorbed to functioning business environments.

“By the time a student gets to the end of their fourth year, they have skills in conceptual thinking, research, tradition and styles,” Hicks explains. “They have experience looking at materials and systems and understanding how buildings go together. And they have an understanding of how people feel in different kinds of spaces, how colors and materials affect people, and how different proportions of spaces affect people differently. So, by the time they’re at the end of this fourth year, students are really skilled in the studio environment.”

As this group of seniors approaches the completion of their degrees, it is time to test their preparation for real world design jobs. Hicks’ studio class generally engages with design projects in the community. But as he considered what the focus of the final projects would be, Hicks realized that this particular class would take him on a different journey.

“Typically, I would have a studio project in mind. I’d already have a site of building or an idea of what the end product would be. This time I thought, let me ask the students,” the professor explained. “It’s their final semester, their final studio. They’ve been through a lot during COVID and I wanted to make it fun for them, and meaningful to their interests and goals in life.”

seeking hospitality through alumni connections

The students had an overwhelming response to their professor’s request for input on the semester-long projects: hospitality design.

“I’m not a hospitality designer by trade, but I know how to teach students to use design skills to accomplish virtually any program type,” admits Hicks. “With hospitality design, we’re talking restaurants, hotels, boutique hotels with bars, etc. Not being that type of designer myself, I had to think about who I knew who was a hospitality designer.”

Enter Anna Will Maginn ’11, ’13, a UNCG alumna who has combined her passions and education to build a career that led her to an associate marketing director position at one of the most popular beach resorts in the Carolinas, Wild Dunes Resort.

Before moving to Charleston, SC, Maginn received a BA in Interior Architecture in 2011 and a Masters in Interior Architecture in 2013, both at UNCG. In the marketing department at Wild Dunes, Maginn uses her design know-how to enhance sales and customer experiences.

The beach resort, managed by Hyatt, includes accommodation types from hotel suites to private homes; expansive meeting space; restaurants and retail shops; and pools, tennis and golf amenities. Maginn has participated in a recent renovation and expansion of the resort, and currently holds the interim marketing director position at Wild Dunes.

“I knew when Travis approached me that we had some unique offerings that the class could experience that they probably can’t get elsewhere.” Maginn explained, “We’re just coming off of a renovation. It’s a good place to be because we’re in a design evaluation mode.”

“The students are coming in at a point where we are reflecting on what we need for this space that will better communicate the concept. They get to put their stamp on it and potentially produce something that will actually come to be. I don’t think you get that very often and it’s a very cool thing that the students can take away.”

From Proposal to Syllabus

Remembering the studio projects she worked on during her time at UNCG, Maginn proposed a partnership with Hicks’ studio class to her management team at Wild Dunes. The resort needed new ideas for the redesign of a tapas restaurant in the hotel lobby, a sports pub at the golf course, and a VIP suite; the class needed functioning hospitality design projects to tackle. It was a win-win opportunity.

Hicks is excited to work with Maginn again and has great expectations for what his current students can bring to Wild Dunes resort executives.

“I think the students are getting a great opportunity to work in a space where they might not have access otherwise. But the resort management is also getting a huge amount of thinking and design conceptualizing from the students. And it is possible to take any one of the students’ designs and implement them with the right team of people at Wild Dunes.”

Maginn and Hicks developed a syllabus for the class that includes multiple remote meetings between the class and the resort management team. Project briefings began in January; Maginn and other resort executives will give periodic input on student designs via Zoom; Wild Dunes generously offered the class a 3-day visit to the property to study the sites and get input from management; and student presentations to resort management were set for later in the semester.

Creating Opportunity for Undergrads

The Wild Dunes projects will consume this class’ final undergraduate term with a real-world designer/client relationship. All students will finish the projects with portfolio building designs, but some may produce designs that will be utilized on the property.

Maginn is proud to help facilitate this connection between the future designers in UNCG’s Interior Architecture department and the resort she works for. Although the designs may take a while for the resort to implement, she plans to stay in touch with the students.

“I hope they won’t be off and running into the world and forget about us,” Maginn says. “Because if it takes shape, I definitely want to invite them to be part of the process. If that happened to me when I was in school, I would be honored beyond words to know that I had a real stamp on a very real setting in a commercial space of this magnitude.

Travis Hicks credits the IARc department’s ongoing connections with alumni like Anna Maginn for providing avenues that lead to opportunities for current students.

“I can imagine that Anna agreeing to participate in this project might be a way for her to give back to our students in the same way that I watched other professionals help her when she was finishing her IARc degree,” Hicks muses. “Our alumni are pretty giving at UNCG. Anna is continuing in that long line of alumni as she gives back to UNCG of her time and her connections”.

Postscript note: Stay tuned as University Communications follows the IARc studio class’ trip to Isle of Palms to present their proposed designs to Wild Dunes Resort executives. It’s a perfect example of the ways our faculty and alumni work together to help students make a direct impact on our community and beyond.

Photography by Sean Norona, University Communications.

wANT TO TURN YOUR PASSION FOR DESIGN INTO A CAREER?

View Full Story

View Full Story

View Full Story

Members of North Charleston City Council spent the day trying to tour city schools in the Charleston County School District on Monday.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Members of North Charleston City Council spent the day trying to tour city schools in the Charleston County School District on Monday. But they never made it inside.

Mayor Keith Summey made an announcement in February saying his city would explore breaking away from the county to create its own school district.

The councilmembers said they wanted to look at the “disparities” between schools in their city and other cities like Mount Pleasant, Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island to try to further prove that their schools aren’t receiving enough support from Charleston County School District.

Four members of North Charleston City Council, Rhonda Jerome, Mike Brown, Jerome Heyward and Virginia Jamison, drove around in a city vehicle to district schools across North Charleston, including North Charleston High School and the Charleston County School of the Arts. They were hoping that the school district would let them go inside the schools, but they were denied. Instead, they just looked at the exteriors of the schools and pointed out flaws from the outside.

“Ride around, you’ll see,” Jerome said. “When you ride over to Mount Pleasant and Isle of Palms you can see a big difference just from the outside. So, you can imagine what the insides look like, just use your imagination.”

Charleston County School District spokesman Andy Pruitt said the councilmembers were potentially violating district policies by using schools as “political forums” along with being unauthorized visitors on campus.

“Every single child that we serve, we feel dedicated and feel very passionate that we want to make sure we provide them with life-changing opportunities. It doesn’t matter where they live,” Pruitt said. “They’ve been entrusted into our care, and we believe that’s important to make sure they all get what they need.”

Councilmembers say leaving the district is something that’s been talked about for 15 years. But they say the time is now to work to actually achieve their goal of starting a new district.

“Nothing’s getting better, “Jerome said. “It’s time.”

After Summey made the announcement last month, State Rep. Marvin Pendarvis filed a bill that would remove North Charleston schools from the Charleston County School District and create a new district.

The council members say they want Charleston County School District to come to the table with them as soon as possible to talk because they say their kids deserve better. The school district said they have always been open to sitting down with the city.

“The goal here is collaboration,” Pruitt said. “We really want to work with the City of North Charleston to find a path forward so that all of our schools and for them, specifically the schools in the City of North Charleston, can move in the right direction. We believe they are moving in the right direction.”

Pruitt said they are working on that path forward for North Charleston schools that belong to the district by improving academics and upgrading facilities, including a new campus that will be in the works for Morningside Middle School.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.