Dr. Saundra H. Glover named vice president of Research and Economic Development
GLOVER JOINS HUGINE’S CABINET AS
VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Dr. Saundra H. Glover looks forward to the work ahead as the newest vice president for Research and Economic Development
ORANGEBURG, SC - President Andrew Hugine Jr. is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Saundra H. Glover as the newest member of his cabinet. Glover, an Orangeburg native, will serve as the new vice president of Research and Economic Development where she will work to make South Carolina State University a lead institution in addressing the health issues that impact the rural communities in South Carolina and throughout the Southeastern United States. Included in Glover’s new responsibilities is the James E. Clyburn University Transportation Center, which she envisions serving as a hub for student, faculty, and community learning, along with the 1890 Research and Cooperative Extension and the University’s sponsored programs and research area.
Glover graduated from South Carolina State University in 1979 with her bachelor’s degree in accounting and spent many years in the banking industry, primarily in Orangeburg. She earned her MBA degree in 1984 and Ph.D. degree in 1991 in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management from the University of South Carolina (USC).
Prior to returning to her alma mater, Glover served in multiple roles, including director of the Institute for Partnerships to Eliminate Health Disparities at USC, associate professor of Health Services Policy and Management in the Arnold School of Public Health at USC, and associate director of the South Carolina Rural Health Research Center at USC.
Although her education is business related, Glover’s interest in public health developed after taking a teaching position in the School of Public Health at USC where students in the masters of health administration program were required to take business courses. It was then that she began developing research in the field of health services and policy management. As a result, Glover completed a two-year post doctorate fellowship with the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) where she examined the disparity in access of children and adolescents who displayed violence and acting-out behaviors in the classroom. She focused on why minority children tended to end up in the Department of Juvenile Justice system versus other children who ended up in mental health system.
After completing the post doctorate fellowship, she turned her attention to addressing health disparities that disproportionately impact the African-American community and finding solutions for improving the health status of all people statewide and worldwide through research grants. She served as principal investigator and co principal investigator on a number of contracts and grants examining access and quality of care issues for low-income children, community-based mental health service delivery, school-based mental health service delivery, syphilis prevention, teen-pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, diabetes and childhood obesity. Dr. Glover’s $2.75 million project, funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan, is designed to increase the number of African-American public health professionals and health researchers.
Glover completed a one-year sabbatical with 1890 as an associate research professor, which gave her the opportunity to engage staff, faculty and members of the administration on the issues of minority health and health disparities. One of the outcomes of the sabbatical experience was the articulation of the role of the 1890 and South Carolina State in eliminating racial health disparities in the state and the southeast region by linking to other 1890 schools in the land-grant system, which Glover felt was the greatest opportunity to affect minority communities. She knew by linking to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), she could do more than provide the expertise to collect and analyze the data that most colleges and universities could; but she could go a step further by providing the added ability of translating that data in a way that would impact more lives.
Glover was also instrumental in establishing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the S.C. Rural Health Research Center and 1890 to allow for ongoing collaborative research activities and a partnership between South Carolina State University and USC to address the health disparities issue. Glover has since partnered with all six four-year undergraduate degree-granting HBCUs with the funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to build the research network focused on racial and ethnic health disparities.
Glover is married to Reverend Samuel B. Glover and together they have three children: Samuel Jr. (Denise), Jared and Crystal. They also have one grandson, Samuel B. Glover III.