University of South Carolina Honors 2026 Alumni Award Winners

The University of South Carolina Alumni Association has announced its roster of six alumni award winners and one Bethea Volunteer Service Award recipient for 2026, honoring individuals recognized for service, integrity, character, and leadership. Bestowed annually in advance of Homecoming events scheduled for November 6–8, the awards celebrate exemplary alumni and friends of the university, alongside a Bethea award named by the president of the Alumni Association’s Board of Governors every two years.

While the initial announcement introduces the 2026 honories, whether the university will release further details before the November Homecoming celebrations remains unstated, though more in-depth stories on the winners and their Carolina journeys are scheduled to appear in the January edition of Carolinian magazine.

Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award Winner

• Walter Edgar (’67 M.A., ’69 Ph.D.) – A retired professor who taught in University of South Carolina classrooms for 40 years, from 1972 to 2012. Edgar graduated from Davidson College in 1965 before completing his master’s and doctoral degrees at USC, and served two years in the Army, which included a tour in Vietnam on an advisory team. Starting the history department’s public history initiative in 1975, he led the Institute for Southern Studies until his retirement, authored upwards of twelve volumes on South Carolina and the American South (such as The South Carolina Encyclopedia and Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict that Turned the Tide of the American Revolution), and presents the Walter Edgar’s Journal podcast, which evolved from a weekly broadcast established after he served as the featured scholar on an SCETV radio program during the removal of the Confederate flag from the State House dome in 2000.

Bethea Volunteer Service Award Recipient

• E. Scott Moïse (’74 education, ’89 law) – A longtime civil defense attorney at Nelson Mullins who graduated as editor-in-chief of the South Carolina Law Review after arriving at USC in 1970 as a Sumter native who initially doubted she would graduate until encouraged by a French instructor and later a law professor. Her leadership roles have included acting as president of the Alumni Association, chairing the Board of Visitors, and taking on duties as a USC Board of Trustees member and committee chair.

Upcoming Recognition

The honorees will be celebrated ahead of the university’s Homecoming events, which take place Nov. 6-8. Additional in-depth profiles regarding the winners and their Carolina journeys are slated for publication in the January edition of Carolinian magazine.