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Partin is a 1995 HPEB graduate who works part-time teaching in the Department of Exercise Science
December 3, 2008
Elise Partin
Elise Partin has made her home on Cayce’s L Avenue since she was a graduate student at USC’s School of Public Health more than 15 years ago.
It has been a great location to start a family, make friends and launch a political career that saw her neighbors choose her in November as the first woman mayor of this riverside community of 12,000.
Cayce also has been the venue where Partin employed public health principles she learned while studying for a 1995 master’s degree in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior.
“In public health, success is all about finding out who the community leaders are, bringing people to the table and making change happen,” Partin said.
That sounds exactly like the prescription she used on her way to City Hall.
She was a leader in numerous local organizations and was a founder of the Avenues Neighborhood Association, representing the residential areas surrounding Brookland-Cayce High School.
The neighborhood association introduced her to an array of public concerns and helped kindle a public service spirit that soon had her immersed in community issues.
Among those was a controversial decision for Cayce to annex land and a development in Richland County across the Congaree River.
Partin said during her campaign that the annexation was an unwise decision but her election now means she will have responsibility for overseeing the fate of the property.
Public health does not compete with police and fire protection on a municipality’s list of top concerns, but Partin says quality of life issues also are important to residents too.
She is a proponent of the “complete streets” concept, a relatively new idea that municipal streets ought to serve everyone, not just vehicles. “That means that there is a lane for cars, a lane for bikes and sidewalks for pedestrians,” she said.
Partin also is unabashedly proud of Cayce’s section of Three Rivers Greenway along the Congaree River.
“It’s amazing. I’m biased, but our side is the best,” she said.
Since graduation, Partin has worked at USC where she currently is an adjunct instructor in the Arnold School’s Department of Exercise Science.
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CAYCE’S FIRST FAMILY – Mayor Elise Partin sits for a portrait with her husband, Gene, and children, Joseph and Zoe. |
Partin’s husband, Gene, also is a school of public health graduate, earning a degree in Environmental Health Sciences in 1998. The couple did not meet until both graduated, “but we love it that we have the same school in common,” she said.
Gene is the Environmental Site Assessments services manager in the Columbia office of Terracon Consultants Inc., a national engineering consulting firm based in Olathe, KS.
The couple has two children, Joseph, 4, and Zoe, 3. The family is active at Trenholm Road United Methodist Church.
