In his nearly three years as president of USC, Andrew Sorensen has emerged as Columbia’s visionary in chief, pushing the Midlands toward a new economy centered on research.

Others have had similar dreams, but there were higher priorities or scandals to ride out.

Now the table has been set to transform USC and the Midlands’ economy, Sorensen says. And the 66-year-old Sorensen — working in what he says will be his last university presidency — has set about ordering the meal.

With construction of the new Arnold School of Public Health building on Assembly Street under way, USC’s research campus is going from fuzzy fantasy to dirt-turning reality.

But, in the coming months, Sorensen will make other key decisions, as well. Sometime before athletics director Mike McGee’s June 30th retirement, Sorensen will name a new AD. Sorensen also will have the final say on a new USC baseball stadium.

In making those decisions, Sorensen will rely on a management style that is charming and disarming, according to more than two dozen current and former associates interviewed. The Sorensen they know works endless hours and focuses on forming alliances. He has a reputation of being accessible when he can prevail but also possesses an acute sense of when he should cut his losses.

Sorensen’s relationship with Columbia Mayor Bob Coble shows he works with the like-minded and potentially like-minded.

Conversely, Gov. Mark Sanford — who has said the state has too many public colleges — and Sorensen talk only during social functions. Sorensen says he has used those chats to make the university’s case for more money.

“I talk to him casually about those things, but I don’t yell and scream at him or bang on his head,” Sorensen said. “I don’t think it would have much effect. I think he understands my position very clearly. He has a different position.”

So Sorensen moves on, diligently sticking to his plans, hearing — but not necessarily heeding — those who don’t agree with or don’t fit into his vision for USC.

“I think he sees Columbia as being on the cusp of great things,” said his wife, Donna Sorensen, “and we don’t have time to wait.”

‘WE COLLABORATE ON EVERYTHING’

Sitting at a conference table on the 15th floor of the Wachovia building on Main Street, Coble is talking about “us” and “we.”

But Columbia’s mayor isn’t talking about the city. “Us” and “we” is how, a couple of times, Coble refers to USC during an interview about Sorensen.

Sorensen and Coble talk several times a week. They aren’t golfing buddies, and they don’t swap comments about the latest NASCAR race or basketball game. Theirs is a working relationship, but it is a close one, something new for Columbia.

In the past, city and university officials often talked past each other — or not at all.

But three years ago, USC’s Board of Trustees — eager to move forward with a plan to create a research campus that depended on the city’s cooperation — wanted to change the town-and-gown relationship.

Sorensen, an ordained minister and former president of the University of Alabama, had a good relationship with the mayor of Tuscaloosa, Ala., home of the Crimson Tide.

“We worked on some things together — housing for students and ‘university dollars,’” said Tuscaloosa Mayor Al DuPont, describing a Sorensen-backed program that allowed students to use vouchers to buy meals at local restaurants. “He was well-known in the community, and he got to know the community well.”

That’s part of what USC’s trustees wanted — someone who could form the kind of relationships needed if the university was to remake itself.

John Palms, who preceded Sorensen as president of USC, had worked to repair the university’s credibility after the scandal-plagued tenure of James B. Holderman. Palms’ demeanor — understated, calm, steady — fit that mission.

Sorensen’s mission and mode of operation are very different.

USC trustee Mack Whittle invited Coble to the press conference introducing Sorensen as USC’s new president. Not long afterward, Sorensen got in touch with Coble, starting a relationship that has become pivotal for the university and the city.

“It would be unusual if I don’t talk to him two or three times a week,” Coble said.

“I don’t mean this as a criticism but, from the time he was hired in April (of 2002) until he took over in July, I met with Dr. Sorensen more times, during that period, than I had with every other president that I had an association with since being mayor,” said Coble, first elected in 1990. “He has made it a point to have a good relationship with the city, and we collaborate on everything.”

That relationship is criticized by some who feel USC essentially dictates its wishes to an all-too-ready-to-please city.

Sorensen and Coble reject that criticism.

Coble says he works closely with Sorensen because that is in the city’s best interests. “He has a vision for the university with the research campus that will transform Columbia’s economy.”

Donna Sorensen said her husband has not always found it easy to be so focused on the future.

“It is hard when you’re a visionary,” she said. “Even though people say they want change, they don’t really want change. ‘It’s OK for there to be change as long as it doesn’t affect me.’”

‘HARD TO GET POLITICIANS ... TO THINK ... LONG TERM’

Despite USC’s late entry into research, few in the Midlands publicly question the viability of building a campus where top-level researchers will work on groundbreaking technologies that fuel the local economy and produce revenue for the university.

Far more established research centers operate elsewhere, including Raleigh, 230 miles north of Columbia.

Meanwhile, USC does not have all of the buildings, land or money it needs to build a research campus. Even if it can get those, there is no guarantee USC will be able to outbid established universities to attract top-notch researchers.

State leaders say they like USC’s plan — up to a point.

Gov. Sanford generally likes the idea of focusing on emerging technologies and industries, said his spokesman, Will Folks. But Sanford does not believe establishing a research campus is the key to future economic development in the Midlands.

“We think the key to economic growth — not only in the Midlands, but in the rest of the state — is a more competitive tax climate,” said Folks, whose boss wants to lower the state’s income tax rate.

Some state legislators have praised Sorensen’s vision for USC. But that hasn’t stopped them from cutting state money for the university.

USC, by its account, received $232.6 million in state money in 2000. By 2003, that had been cut to $179.1 million. State funding edged up slightly in 2004 to $181.5 million, $10 million more than USC received a decade ago but not enough to reach its lofty goal of research prominence.

Interviewed in his office Tuesday, Sorensen said the state cuts have been one of the few disappointments he has had as president of the university.

“I would hope that we wouldn’t keep cutting the university’s budget every year,” he said. “I think it’s hard to get politicians — who think of their futures in terms of the next election — to think of policies that will pay off with benefits in the long term.”

However, none of Sorensen’s money frustrations were apparent last month, when he appeared before the General Assembly subcommittee that oversees USC’s state money.

Instead, he was at his smiling, charming best — touting the university and joking with subcommittee chairman Harry “Chip” Limehouse III, R-Charleston, about his days as a USC student.

“He’s got a great way about him,” Limehouse said afterward. “He’s very businesslike, but he isn’t a stuffed shirt. He gets what he needs, but he doesn’t antagonize you in the process.”

‘THAT VOTE IS ADVISORY’

Perhaps no decision has better defined Sorensen’s leadership style than his move to merge the pharmacy schools of USC and the Medical University of South Carolina.

To seal the deal, Sorensen used a close relationship with a like-minded leader, MUSC president Dr. Ray Greenberg, and called on the high regard USC’s trustees have for his decisions. He did not move to shut down opposition, but that opposition did not derail his plans.

Greenberg and Sorensen discussed merging their pharmacy schools as early as September 2003. The move was portrayed as a money-saving arrangement that would eliminate duplication.

It wasn’t until April 2004 that Sorensen met with USC’s pharmacy faculty to discuss his plans. By then, Sorensen had come to see a merger — “integration” and “collaboration” is how he and Greenberg described it — as the best way forward.

Members of USC’s pharmacy faculty, worried about losing the independence of their school and frustrated by how little they knew of what was being planned, made it clear they didn’t like the idea. Their students shared their misgivings, donning lab coats and marching on the State House in protest.

Students and faculty members set up a Web site — ProtectPharmacy.org — to draw attention to the merger and raise questions about it.

Opposition to the merger gained more steam when USC’s Faculty Senate, with Sorensen present, voted unanimously against proceeding. Sorensen was silent as professors ripped into the idea.

“With these two faculties located 100 miles apart, it is difficult to imagine that much research collaboration will be initiated,” said Duane Yoch, a biology professor. “The payoff for giving up our College of Pharmacy seems questionable at best.”

Five months later, over the continued opposition of many faculty members, a panel of USC trustees voted to approve a merger, effective this July.

Sorensen had understood that, no matter the opposition, he had the authority to move forward and the backing of USC’s trustees. The faculty vote had not changed those realities.

“I gave very thoughtful consideration to that, but that (faculty) vote is advisory, and the Board of Trustees, seeing my report, thought that it was an excellent idea,” he said.

‘HIS THINKING IS TO OWN EVERYTHING’

Sorensen’s work in seeing through another idea — building a university-affiliated hotel on Pendleton Street — is another example of how he has overcome opposition to something USC wanted.

Plans for the hotel already were in the works by the time Sorensen joined USC. But the university faced opposition from neighborhood residents, as well as area hotel owners and managers, who feared they would lose business to a hotel built for a tax-supported institution.

Key state legislators joined the hotel operators in questioning the need. But the key figures in the hotel dispute — the people who would determine whether the project moved forward — were city officials, and Sorensen’s relationship with them was strong.

“We told him that using public dollars to build a hotel was unacceptable,” said Rick Patel, chairman of the Greater Columbia Hotel/Motel Association.

Patel, however, found Sorensen was determined to press forward. Eventually, USC reached a deal with neighborhood residents and, afterward, the hotel operators.

“We looked at it this way: Fighting a 500-pound gorilla, we aren’t going to win,” Patel said. “We took the deal.”

Patel said some frustration remains among hotel operators who felt forced to accept a deal or watch USC build the hotel anyway.

“His thinking is to own everything,” said Patel, one of the few critics willing to speak on the record against Sorensen’s plans. “I think they should stay in the business of teaching.”

For his part, Sorensen said the hotel dispute is not an example of USC dictating to anyone.

Still, USC wanted a hotel on Pendleton Street, and — despite strong, organized opposition — got it.

‘HE’S VERY HAPPY WHEN HE’S WORKING’

While issues such as the research campus, hotel and a baseball stadium will say a lot about Sorensen’s legacy, none of his decisions thus far has received as much attention as the move to pull the USC’s football team out of a possible bowl game.

Sorensen was in Ireland with Whittle on a research-related trip when USC and Clemson football players gave their schools a black eye with an extended, ugly brawl during their season-ending game.

“They were watching it on the Internet, and then, when (USC) got so far behind, they decided to go out to dinner,” Donna Sorensen said. “So he really didn’t see it (the fight). He didn’t see it until he got back.”

When Sorensen got back to the United States, USC was being included in a national discussion about outrageous behavior in athletics. Commentators were wondering whether the 6-5 Gamecocks should be allowed to play in a bowl game.

In e-mail responses to questions asked by The State for this story, McGee said the Southeastern Conference was “reluctant for USC to withdraw from the bowl game and said it would cost the school financially.

“I had come to the determination Sunday morning that I was going to recommend to the president (Sorensen) that we withdraw from the bowl game.”

McGee said Sorensen was “out of town, but we discussed it several times during the course of that evening and next day. After Dr. Sorensen talked with the president of Clemson Monday afternoon, he directed that we announce a withdrawal at 5 p.m. Monday, which was simultaneous with Clemson’s announcement.”

McGee’s timeline of events indicates he was leaning toward pulling the Gamecocks out of a bowl game before Sorensen made up his mind. But Sorensen announced the decision, earning national praise.

One consistent curiosity about Sorensen’s tenure has been his relationship with McGee, a dominant figure in Columbia before Sorensen came to town.

McGee initially declined to answer questions for this article. Later, he changed his mind and offered this e-mail assessment of his current boss: “I have observed that Dr. Sorensen is a high-energy administrator, as demonstrated by his ‘Bow Tie Tours.’ He has a definite agenda for the university, and I wish him and Carolina continued success in the future.”

Sorensen said his relationship with McGee has been good, quickly pointing out key decisions that will enhance McGee’s legacy. He noted McGee’s hiring of football coaches Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier, as well as men’s basketball coach Dave Odom. He also mentioned McGee’s work on the Colonial Center.

Sorensen’s legacy, meanwhile, is a work in progress.

At an age when many retire, he says he has no timeline for leaving USC. Donna Sorensen says her husband shows no signs of slowing down.

“I can see him working into his 70s, definitely,” she said. “I would support him in that. He’s very happy when he’s working.”

Reach Washington at (803) 771-8385 or wwashington@thestate.com.