Director of Athletics
Charlene Johnson
Charlene Johnson has been a member of the Voorhees Tiger Family since coming on board in 2017 as the Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs/Director of Athletics. Since her time here at Voorhees, she has been responsible for managing admissions, student life, spiritual life, residential services, health services, athletics and student retention and scholarships.
Under her direction, the institution hit the ground running with the installation of a new track and field surface at the beginning of the 2019-2020 academic year. The Indoor track and field teams have garnered enormous success at both the conference level and in national championship competition.
Also, Voorhees has produced All-Americans in indoor and outdoor track and field. In addition, the Men and Women’s basketball teams have competed in both the Association of Independent Institutions (A.I.I.) Conference Basketball Championships and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) National Championship.
And, the Voorhees College Baseball Team has been the recipient of the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) team academic excellence award for achieving a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or higher for the 2019-2020 season.
Johnson spent more than 30 years in athletics at her alma mater, South Carolina State University (SCSU), serving as an assistant coach, head coach, associate athletics director, and athletics director. She received a number of honors and awards during her tenure at SCSU, where she remains the only woman to serve as Athletics Director, a position Johnson held for 12 years before retiring in 2014.
She has been a trailblazer in athletics as she became the first woman appointed to a full-time coaching position at her alma mater in 1983. She later became the first woman to serve as Chairperson of the Directors of Athletics Association in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and was presented the league’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2014. Johnson has also served on several National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Committees.
Currently she serves at Voorhees as the Vice President of Student Affairs and Director of Athletics.
In 2018, Johnson was inducted into the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Hall of Fame. Earlier, she was inducted into the SCSU Athletic Hall of Fame as an administrator and as a member of SCSU’s 1979 Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women National Basketball Championship squad.
She is married to Judge Virgin Johnson Jr., and they have a daughter, Taylor, three sons Trey, Anthony, and Jordan, and two grandsons, Kason and Chase.