Next Thursday marks the beginning of Jerry Brewer's 38th academic year behind a desk for USC's Department of Student Life, though not so you'd notice.
His office in Russell House's secluded West Wing is out of the way but well-furnished; books taking up one wall, with plans for a new campus development project hanging from the shelves. In front of them, Brewer looks back on what he's accomplished since his first days as director of Student Media in 1980, a position he soon grew out of.
His position as associate vice president of Student Life came about and allowed him to oversee Student Life as a whole, eventually expanding virtually everything from Greek Life real estate to Student Government influence. His accomplishments have earned him more than a few fans along the way.
"He has been a great mentor to everyone that has come through here," student body vice president Dani Goodreau said.
Student body treasurer Merritt Francis said, "He's a very smart businessman, but he uses that for the advantage of the students, and it's pretty awesome."
Over his decades in Columbia, Brewer's work has affected the USC student body more than Sterling Sharpe, Lou Holtz and Anheuser-Busch put together. It was Jerry to whom nervous Student Government officers went for advice, Jerry who developed Greek Village and Strom, Jerry who proposed an end to pledging in Free Times last June.
"I've probably touched a little bit of about everything," Brewer said.
And he has. Up until last month, Brewer's duties as associate vice president had him overseeing most student activities that took place outside a classroom, including substance abuse prevention and operation of Russell House.
But the campus wasn't always the way Brewer has helped make it. Over his tenure, USC began to take a "different approach to being a national or international university."
"The quality of the university of the whole, the academics, its status has grown immensely with it," he said.
Significant change, Brewer said, came about when USC joined the Southeastern Conference in 1991. The Gamecocks competed as independents in every sport after leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1971 until joining the Metro Conference in 1983, three years after Brewer began working at USC. The football team continued as an independent until the SEC schedule added Carolina and Arkansas in 1992.
But off the field, USC found a group of sister universities to compare itself to. Having 11 direct competitors allowed administrators to properly gauge USC's academic, athletic and financial progress.
"That really changed the outlook on things and gave us a comparison group and gave us something to grow into," Brewer said. "I think the university's grown from being a South Carolina-centric place."
Brewer originally arrived at USC as an undergraduate in 1974. To give an idea of how things have changed, he described the old system of registration for student organizations: Your group asked a particular sect of Student Government for an organization license. They then replied "yes" or "no."
"When I came to school here, we'd just gone through a lot of civil unrest in the country, and a lot of issues challenged and the country, and of course all that flows on college campuses," Brewer said. "Students were in charge of a lot of things."
In Brewer's first year on the job at USC, recreation services hardly extended past intramural sports. The club sports program was "fledgling," in his own words. There were no fitness programs, no outdoor recreation programs. With the Strom Thurmond Fitness Center still more than 20 years off, students shared Blatt Physical Education Center with USC athletes.
"It basically consisted of, 'Okay, let's check some basketball out and play basketball,'" Brewer said. "But that's changed in society and it's changed on the college campus."
His summary of how student services have since changed is simple.
"There's nothing simple anymore," Brewer said. "When I started working at the university, there were four people working [resident] life, but there's 400 now."
Brewer said the changes he has seen since 1980 have been "overwhelmingly good" for students and the university at large.
"Any time you have more opportunities and more situations where students and grow and learn as themselves, yeah," Brewer said. "But it also costs money."
Money is a common theme at USC in 2017. State funding of higher education has plummeted 37 percent in South Carolina in less than 10 years. Beyond the attitudes of the Statehouse, Brewer said the attitude of South Carolinians outside of government have changed as well.
"The general theme was, 'well, the state of South Carolina should fund the cost of higher education,' because that's an economic engine," Brewer said of his early days at USC. "At this point, I think the majority of people view higher education as 'it ought to be funded by the student and their parents,' because they're the beneficiaries of it."
Brewer does not declare a side in the debate, only musing, "That's the way it is these days, money-wise."
Brewer's new position with Student Life has him focused on development and fundraising for university projects, a job for which there is no endgame at an institution expanding as quickly as USC. But he sees it as another unique opportunity.
"We were always in a situation where you never had time to really get into facility development for students and student functions before," Brewer said. "So I'm gonna have a lot of time to do that now. We need that."
When asked about his interim replacement, Anna Edwards, Brewer says one of his keys to good leadership is being able to recruit and develop an individual who can do their job better than the person who trained them.
"And I think I've done that," Brewer said. "I think Anna has ... the skill-set, the work ethic to do way better than I ever did. I think she'll do a great job."