A Lasting Tribute to a Beloved Leader
Beaufort County Community College dedicated its Centralized Advising Center in honor of the late Laurie Smart Evans on July 21.
The center has been renamed the Laurie Smart Evans Centralized Advising Center in memory of its first director, who died March 18, 2025. Before becoming director, Evans served as an English instructor and department head and led the college’s Quality Enhancement Plan for its regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. That plan centered on strengthening advising for students, and it led directly to the creation of the Centralized Advising Center she would go on to lead.
A Culture Built Around Student Success
College leaders credited Evans with reshaping the culture at Beaufort CCC to put student retention and success at the center of the institution’s work. During her tenure, the college won the SmartAsset College of the Year award among roughly 600 community colleges nationwide and received SACSCOC’s inaugural Torch Award for the highest retention and persistence rates among community colleges in the commission’s 11-state region.
“There will never be another Laurie Evans,” Beaufort CCC President Dr. David Loope said. “She, more than any other single person on our campus, is responsible for changing the Beaufort college culture to one where our faculty and staff place student retention and success at the top of their priorities. She cared. Pure and simple, Laurie cared about our students enough to help them save themselves from failure.”
Carrying the Work Forward
Loope said Evans’ legacy will continue to guide the center’s work.
“We will continue her work, as she would have wanted, but her combination of vision, energy and enthusiastic belief in the innate good of teaching and learning will be nigh impossible to replicate,” Loope said.
“Today, we honor Laurie Smart Evans with the dedication of the Centralized Advising Center in her name, with the expectation that it will continue to be the success that has been up to this point. For the positive outcomes of every student that darkens its doors, may her name, principles, love for the students, her team, and Beaufort County Community College live on forever,” said Bud Garner, Evans’ widower.
About the Centralized Advising Center
The center supports all Beaufort CCC students who have completed 16 or fewer credit hours, helping them build a career or transfer plan and stay on track toward graduation. Students can learn more or connect with an advisor through the Advising Contacts page.