Call him that, and Director of Campus Safety Eddie Aman—one of Charlie’s closest colleagues—might bristle. “(Charlie) is a man of character and great integrity. He’s just a good Christian man,” Aman said. Yet how do you explain how Charlie Dickerson gets creative with the truth? Because when you ask him how many hours he works per week, this is what he says: “It ebbs and flows. Fifty is kind of the baseline. That’s a typical week.”
But here’s what he doesn’t tell you: for Charlie and his team, there is no such thing as a typical week. “There have been so many times when I’ve said, ‘Charlie, you deserve a day off. You should take a day off,’” said Jody Bryant. As associate vice president of guest and auxiliary services, she works as closely with Charlie and his team as anyone. She sees the work he puts in and the 24/7 mentality he brings as a lead-by-example guy.
“He’ll look me dead in the eye and tell me, ‘But I want to be here. I want to be a part of it all. I want to be a part of the solution,’” Bryant said. That’s what facilities and maintenance workers do: they find solutions. Their hands, ever hidden, prop up a foundation that would crack without them. That’s Charlie Dickerson’s calling, one he’s been answering for years.
He grew up just south of Anderson in the little town of Starr, South Carolina. He didn’t have to go far to find his first role in higher education. Back in 2001, he joined Erskine College in nearby Abbeville County as an HVAC technician. Over the next 13 years, he moved up to a supervisory role before becoming assistant director of facilities. In that time—and especially once Erskine began working with Aramark, an outside vendor, to handle its physical plant operations—he learned the value of collaboration. With Aramark, Charlie was responsible for helping onboard other organizations around the region.
“I really learned a lot from the Aramark Corporation,” he said. “I had the opportunity to start up a lot of accounts with different college locations. It gave me a wide view of how other schools do work. Aramark has a robust training program that I took advantage of. It allowed me to be diverse in how I manage properties.”
There comes a point in any career where you hit a wall. That happened to Charlie when his career with Aramark plateaued around the same time Anderson University was looking for someone to fill the role of physical plant director. It was AU. It was near his hometown. It was a chance at advancement. Three wins. “I always had Anderson on my bucket list. I thought, ‘Hey, if there ever was an opportunity I would want to find, it would be at Anderson.’”
Charlie took the job in 2014 and moved up to executive director just two years later. And, in 2023, he became the University’s first associate vice president for facilities and campus safety.
He dismisses any talk that he deserves it. “I mean, it’s nice to have received a title. I just always felt like if I do my job, if I give everything that I can, natural transitions just happen. There are things that come with titles that help me do my job better,” he said.
That’s classic Charlie Dickerson. It’s not a title. It’s a tool to make him better at what he does. “He’s the ultimate go-getter,” Bryant said. “What doesn’t he do? He saves us all.”