Erskine School of Business earns “College of Distinction” honor
Reflecting Erskine’s growth and expanding recognition, Colleges of Distinction (CoD) honored its School of Business for the 2026-27 academic year. CoD was founded in 2000 and takes a qualitative view of a university or a program beyond straight rankings.
To earn the honor, programs must contain nine key components:
- Stability
- Accreditation
- Multidisciplinarity
- Practical Experience
- Collaborative Learning
- Business Ethics
- Dedicated Advising and Counseling
- High-Impact Practices
- Industry Connections
The School of Business is one of Erskine’s most popular, with more than 200 business-related majors and roughly twice that many when including double majors.
“We’re extremely thankful for the demand, and we try to meet it with excellence,” says Dr. Jeff Briggs, the business department chair.
Briggs taught for 25 years at North Greenville University and played an integral role in developing its business program. He has also been an active financial consultant for small-to-mid-sized companies during his career, keeping him connected to current market conditions and trends.
The School of Business encompasses Sport Management, Accounting, Business Administration, Digital Marketing, Information Technology, Supply Chain Management, and the recently announced Master of Science in Athletic Administration.
Briggs noted that business is an especially popular choice among Erskine student-athletes.
“For those student-athletes who want a career in the sport profession, we’ve got a specialized degree,” he says. “It’s called sport management, and it is a pure business degree. It’s accounting; it’s finance; it’s marketing; it’s facilities; it’s law; it’s liability; it’s HR dedicated to the sport profession.”
Briggs has served as an adjunct at Clemson University in the past and notes that class sizes (some including 100+ students) at larger universities make connecting with students more difficult. Not so at Erskine. With its small class sizes and 15:1 student-to-faculty ratio, students readily connect with their professors.
Dr. Mary Gibson directs the accounting majors within the School of Business. Gibson worked in private accounting, and Briggs notes that Erskine’s accounting program is rigorous and prepares students for the CPA exam, which is not a given among college accounting programs.
“At Erskine College, our accounting program focuses on preparing students for the evolving demands of the accounting profession by introducing emerging business technologies,” says Gibson. “Including SAP and Intuit Enterprise Suite, an AI-powered platform designed to streamline accounting processes, financial reporting, and business operations.”
She couples teaching accounting’s technical skills with instilling the ethics needed to navigate a field rife with opportunities for fiscal improprieties. Nowhere is this ethical approach more evident than in the guiding quote in her bio:
“Those that are connected to Christ bear the fruit of the Spirit and manifest Christ-like qualities, including integrity and honesty” (Carmelita Troy and LeRoy Ruhupatty, Scriptural Foundations for Accounting).
Assistant Professor of Business Dr. Preston Menke, who holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Human Factors and Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Wright State University, augments and underscores the diverse disciplines contained within Erskine’s School of Business—all with a Christian ethical compass at their core.
Menke holds a B.S. in Psychology with majors in Biology and Health Science from Erskine; his academic and professional focus spans technology for education and training, data science, human-computer interaction, and user and consumer experience. Professionally, he’s worked at the Air Force Research Laboratory with medical technology, including as a lead data science instructor, teaching coursework in statistics, general linear models, and machine learning.
“Our business department takes a humanity-centered approach to business education, combining project-based learning with ethical decision-making to develop servant leaders who make a meaningful impact in their professions and communities,” Menke says.
Click here to learn more about Erskine’s academic programs and its School of Business majors.
Since 2000, Colleges of Distinction has been committed to recognizing schools across the United States for their exceptional contributions to higher education. Member institutions within the Colleges of Distinction consortium distinguish themselves through their unwavering focus on providing an outstanding undergraduate experience.
