SCC instructor assists U.S. Commerce Dept. with international website project

FRANKLIN - When the U.S. Department of Commerce chose to intensify its efforts of getting information out over the Internet, officials looked to Southwestern Community College's Stacy J. Guffey for help.

Guffey, who oversees the e-commerce Solutions Design program from SCC's Macon Center, spent two weeks out of his hectic summer in Miami, Fla., at the invitation of the U.S. Department of Commerce to assist in the development and implementation of a new website aimed at increasing exports to other nations.

"I thought it was going to be something like a technical internship, but it turned out I was wrong – and that was for the best," said Guffey. "What I was involved with was the decision-making process for figuring out what the best way is for information to flow both into and out of this website. We had some high-end web developers from alaskanstar.com – a company that has done work for MTV - and they handled the technical end. Everything we came up with, they implemented it."

The group developed plans for the new buyusainfo.net website, which is sanctioned by the Commerce Department.

"The exciting thing to me was determining how to gather, index and disseminate information about commodities that our country exports," said Guffey. "We are giving people from outside our country a place to retrieve the information they need. All this information is already out there. The challenge is to assemble it in a way that will be useful to the people who need it, and what we’re doing has added credibility because the U.S. Department of Commerce is behind it."

Guffey's work ethic and ability so impressed Michael L. McGee, Director of the Commerce Department's Miami Office, that McGee wrote a letter of appreciation to Dr. Cecil Groves, SCC President. A portion of the letter reads:

"Stacy is an outstanding ambassador for Southwestern and the state of North Carolina. He came well prepared and immediately embraced the project with enthusiasm, working long hours in the office and spending his free time thinking about the project and sharing ideas with our staff. His contributions were constructive, practical and insightful. I can truly say that he became a member of the team of employees and interns overnight and we were sad to see the week come to an end. He brought with him a deep knowledge of the applied use of technology and internet strategies. Finally, he brought a genuine respect for our efforts and a large dose of southern hospitality. I only wish we could have given more to Stacy. We felt that the benefit from his visit was overwhelmingly one-sided in our direction."

The two trips Guffey took to Miami for this purpose were funded by a Tier A 'Return to Industry' grant. He was in Miami from June 10-15 and again from July 2-11.

Although he's back at the SCC Macon Center, he remains involved with the project. Guffey was recently selected to chair an advisory board for the "Buy USA" project. The advisory board's purpose is to watch for trends in e-commerce and to determine ways to apply those trends to the project's website.