Every once in a while, Associate Vice President of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness Jill Millard makes a comment about her pre-South Piedmont life, and you can’t help but be intrigued.
She’ll make passing reference to her career as a sonographer.
Or mention that she attended a two-year college, which gives her work for South Piedmont deeper meaning.
Or randomly offer that she’s made two trips to the American Poolplayers Association’s League championship.
After a few times of this, you have to wonder: Who exactly is Jill Millard and what interesting path did she take to South Piedmont?
We recently sat down with her to find out more.
First things first, can you explain your position with South Piedmont? What exactly does an associate vice president of planning and institutional effectiveness do and how does your job affect students?
I serve as a liaison between the College and our accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). Accreditation certifies that we meet the industry-recognized best standards for higher education in our services, faculty, policies – every aspect of our operations. Accreditation is a quality assurance stamp for our students. It says that an outside party has certified we are providing students with a high-quality education. If we weren’t accredited, students would be ineligible to receive financial aid, and their credits would not be eligible to transfer to other educational institutions.I asked for this job. I’ve always been very interested in accreditation and quality assurance.
Prior to your work in accreditation, you were a sonographer. Tell us about that.
I bounced around a lot when I was younger. I went through two divorces, lived all over the country. I started and stopped a lot of different things. Sometime in my late 20s, I decided I had to do something; I had to make something work. I needed to support myself, and I knew I didn’t want to spend a long time in school. My sister had done dental hygiene at a technical college, and she recommended I look into a medical sciences program at a community or tech college – something that would give me a short path to a career. Plus, my mother made a deal with me. She said if you finish a program, I’ll pay for it. So, I had to finish.
You earned your Associate of Applied Science in Radiologic Technology from Spartanburg Technical College. What was it about sonography that finally hooked you?
I wanted to do something with technology. I wanted to have interactions with patients. I wanted to both work independently and as part of a team. When you’re a sonographer, you collect images on your own, but your work is vital to the healthcare team and to the care the patient receives. The more I did sonography, the more it resonated with me. In the late 1980s, I went to work for Carolinas Medical Center, and that’s when it really started to click. We were crazy busy. The patients were very sick. I wanted to care for them and get the work done. I started to realize the impact I could make.
A lot of people only think of OB-GYN when they think about sonography, but you were drawn to vascular. Why?
Vascular sonography is my passion. I keep my licensure up to date because I love it so much. In vascular sonography, you’re helping the sickest patients, the transplant patients, the ones who need you the most. Vascular sonography is so dynamic. You’re listening to the pulses of the heartbeat when you’re recording. You’re seeing the arteries and the veins and the blood lighting up the screen like a Doppler radar. I love it. You also see firsthand what happens when you have diseased arteries. That’s why I eat more of a plant-based diet now; I’ve seen what happens when you don’t.
You eventually became the sonography supervisor for Carolinas Medical Center, overseeing the department’s accreditation. Then you decided to come to South Piedmont, where you initially worked as a sonography instructor and clinical coordinator. Why the switch?
I really liked the idea of being able to stay local, share my knowledge and pass it on to students. After Spartanburg Technical College, I earned a bachelor’s degree in radiologic technology and a master’s degree in Instructional Systems Technology. I had a lot of education and experience I thought I could pass on to others. I guess the analogy between my sonography career and my career at South Piedmont is that I was first caring for patients and now I’m caring for our College and our students.
Bonus question. What do you like to do when you’re not ensuring South Piedmont maintains its accreditation?
I’m a pool player. I’ve played since 1991. I’m in the ladies league. We’ve gone to the national playoffs in Las Vegas and St. Louis.