Significance of signatures: a symbol of family

Roby Hill
January 21, 2022
signatures and stickers on the pharmacy beam

On Jan. 20, 2022, the Medical University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy held a Topping Out Ceremony to celebrate raising the highest beam of its new pharmacy facility.

The following were comments from Philip Hall, dean of the MUSC College of Pharmacy.

For me, 2021 ended on a very special note. We sent a holiday card to members of our MUSC pharmacy family which included an invitation to come to campus and personally sign the beam. For those who couldn’t get here, we included stickers to sign and send back. But it’s a busy time of year, everyone was dealing with the Omicron surge, and it was relatively short notice. So, we didn’t know what to expect.

What we got was a reminder of how many people care about the College of Pharmacy. Each day during that last week in December, another batch of signed stickers would appear in the mail and another crop of signatures would appear on the beam. By the second week of January, I almost called John Hearns, our project manager with Whiting Turner, just to let him know that like the guys in Jaws, he was “gonna need a bigger beam.”

What a wonderful problem to have.

This beam symbolizes our people. We wanted to connect the physical facility to the people who made it possible, and to the people who make the MUSC pharmacy program so special. Our alumni, donors, friends, family, faculty, students, and staff are all represented on this beam, and they will always be there in the very foundation of the building.