Coker College - Alumni

Alumni

Coker’s alumni giving percentage - a gauge of alumni satisfaction - recently reached 52%, highest among all of South Carolina's colleges and universities and equal to the top 25 liberal arts colleges nationally. Coker’s alumni giving percentage is typically 24% to 34% - higher than most of the South’s Best Comprehensive Colleges.

Notable alumni include:

• Dr. Bonnie Ethel Cone, a renowned educator who founded the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

• Dr. Ruth Patrick, a famous botanist who received her bachelors degree from Coker College in 1929. Her work has been widely published, and she has received numerous awards for her scientific achievements, including the National Medal of Science in 1996. The Ruth Patrick Science Education Center is named after her. On April 4, 2008, she was named Coker College's Alumna of the Century.

• Poet Terrance Hayes, winner of the National Book Award, Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a 2009 Best American Poetry selection and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, earned his B.A. from Coker. He is the author of Wind in a Box (Penguin, 2006), Hip Logic (2002), which won the National Poetry Series and Muscular Music (1999). Terrence is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• South Carolina State Representative Denny Woodall Neilson (Mrs. David S.), representing District 56, Chesterfield & Darlington counties. She is a member of both the Rules and the Ways & Means House committees.

• Marvin Legrand "Le" Flowers, a county council member of Darlington, SC

• Contemporary figurative artist Patrick Earl Hammie graduated from Coker College in 2004 with a bachelors degree in Fine Arts. After graduating from Coker College, Hammie received his MFA degree from the University of Connecticut. In 2008, he was the inaugural recipient of the Alice C. Cole Class of 42 Fellowship in Studio Arts at Wellesley College. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.