Agnes Corliss
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| Agnes Corliss | |
| Born | 1898, on a farm in Hartwell County |
|---|---|
| Died | 1979 |
| Worked for | Oakridge Institute of Forestry and Land Sciences and Oakridge College |
| Occupation | Forester, director of the Institute, president of the college |
Agnes Corliss enrolled at the Institute in 1919, the year after it opened, as one of its first women students. She came from a farm in Hartwell County and took the salmon creeks for her field. Year after year she measured the silt that came down them after each storm and counted the fish that still spawned in the gravel underneath. Her reports named the logging outfits whose cuts had muddied each creek. They cost the Institute some goodwill in the county, and she kept writing them.
In 1942, when the Institute's director left for war work, she was put in charge as acting director. Most of the faculty expected the arrangement to last until he came back. He took another post instead, and in 1945 the trust gave her the job outright.
She saw the Institute through accreditation, and on July 1, 1947, became the first president of Oakridge College. Every budget she sent the trust had a line for the creek counts, and while she was president that line was never cut. She retired in 1958.
The coastal sciences the college teaches began under her, out of the creek studies she had started as a student.