The Faculty Lounge@UofSC was a free virtual public access classroom series developed by Professor Toby Jenkins in the University of South Carolina’s Higher Education Graduate Program. The series invited national education scholars to have critical one on one conversations about contemporary issues in higher education. As part of a partnership with SCETV Education, the webinar episodes were open for the public to register and “sit in” on the class meeting via Zoom or view a live stream on YouTube and Facebook. The public can also access all past episodes as an audio podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Jenkins created the series in the spirit of one her favorite past television shows. “’Inside the Actors Studio’ was a master class created at Pace University where celebrity actors, affiliated with the Actors Studio, would come, sit and engage in critical conversations about the craft. The series ran from 2019-2021.
“The original intent of the faculty lounge on college campuses was to provide an intellectual space for faculty to push cultures of thought among their peers. All too often the reality is a musty room, uninviting room filled with idle talk. I wanted to explore the idea of academic “movers and shakers” in our field- those people who seem to always be in service to the body of research or their community, to be given space to reflect, debate, question and mentor. We have had participants from California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, and of course throughout South Carolina. ”
