Ann Marie Stieritz has been named director of business solutions for Innovista. The title alone makes the position seem incredibly useful; Innovista definitely needs more direction, more business, and it sure as heck needs more solutions.
And maybe the position, which is meant to provide a "single point of contact" between USC and the businesses it hopes to recruit, will be as useful as it sounds.
We at The Daily Gamecock know firsthand how frustrating it can be to get any information out of the university, so it's good that businesses will now have someone to navigate the bureaucracy for them.
And, let's face it, we either have to keep taking a risk by spending on Innovista or accept that we've wasted millions. It's like nation-building in the Middle East, except more expensive.
Stieritz seems to have a great track record for success in the Technical College System, and we applaud the university for hiring her. But we hope they did a background check because Kale Roscoe seemed pretty impressive, too.
If USC is going to invest more money in Innovista, it needs to invest more time in making sure the people it has hired are doing their jobs. No more hands-off approach, USC; your name is on this financial quagmire, and you need to fix it.
But if we do decide to abandon this project, the buildings won't go entirely to waste.
Who cares if Patterson Hall is being renovated or the Greek Village is too small when you've got all of Discovery I for dorm space?
