Ambassador to graduates: Hope, opportunity derive from education

Women huddled in a concrete school house in war-torn Afghanistan may seem to have no common ground with the University of South Carolina’s new graduates, but all share a common belief: Hope and opportunity derive from education.

Speaking to graduates of the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences and South Carolina Honors College Saturday morning (May 10), Barbara McConnell Barrett, who leaves Sunday for her new job as U.S. ambassador to Finland, told three stories of incidents that had shaped her life.

The first came as a young child when a neighbor asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Barrett, who had believed that nursing, teaching or being a secretary were her only options, replied “a nurse.” But her father asked, without hesitation, “Why not a doctor?”

“The world opened up,” she said.

But the death of her father when she was only 14 taught her another valuable lesson: Learn early “the skills of overcoming adversity.” Barrett helped her mother run the family farm and raise five other children, the youngest of whom was an infant when her father died.

Decades later, on a trip to Afghanistan, Barrett saw Afghan women ages 14 – 84 attending school. Though they ran businesses and homes under great challenges, they were eager to learn and knew “education is the key to the future.”

Dennis Pensmith of Irmo, who was awarded a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, said his father, a designer and draftsman, had always encouraged his son to seek the college education that he had not pursued.

“He wanted me to get my degree and not go down the same road he did,” Pensmith said.

But the degree had eluded the younger Pensmith until Saturday. With his 40th birthday just 12 days away, Pensmith finally marched across the graduation stage and celebrated the day that had been “12 years in the making.”

Pensmith had started the university after high school but left because “I couldn’t sit still long enough to go to college.”

He worked at a variety of jobs, including that of auto mechanic, and finally set out in 1995 to earn his degree on what he called “the 12-year plan.” After attending Midlands Tech, he came to Carolina and joked, “I could have earned a Ph.D. by now.”

Winding path aside, Pensmith has a job as an electrical engineer at Ray Coleman Associates in Prosperity – and the degree that his father dreamed for him.

Will Cely, 30, of Columbia, also followed a winding road to commencement. After graduating from A.C. Flora High School, Cely held restaurant, hotel and construction jobs and was traveling in New Mexico when he met the woman whom he would marry. Today, he and his wife, Melina, are the proud parents of sons Guillermo and Jose.

But Cely always knew he needed his college degree. And now, with a degree in biological sciences, Cely would like to work for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

Having the degree is quite a relief, he said.

“It’s a challenge going to school when you have children.”

On Saturday afternoon, the university held commencement exercises for 77 doctoral degree candidates at the Koger Center. Later that day, Barrett was to speak to the last of three commencement ceremonies for the university’s bachelor’s, master’s and professional-degree ceremonies. She will receive an honorary doctorate of human letters.

“Recall Days at a Big University Made Small”

President Andrew Sorensen called on graduates of the Class of 2008 to make the communities in which they will live “small” – no matter where they live.

Sorensen, who is leaving the presidency July 31, delivered the commencement address Friday afternoon, the first of three ceremonies for 2,342 bachelor’s and 947 master’s degree recipients at the Colonial Center. The university also conferred 107 pharmacy degrees, 19 certificates, 44 specialist degrees and eight associate degrees during those ceremonies.

Sorensen said the University of South Carolina has succeeded in creating a close-knit community “beyond my wildest expectations” and attributed that achievement to the fact that “all of us believe we are members of one Gamecock family.”

He cited the closeness of that family through two encounters involving students, one in which a group of students showed up at the president’s home one night and asked to borrow a cup of sugar to make sweet tea. In the other, students created T-shirts emblazoned with the words, “Andy is my home boy” – Andy having become a familiar appellation among students for the president.

“You, you and I are Gamecock family,” Sorensen said, pointing to the graduates and their families and friends. “In the years that lie ahead, I pray that you will take with you the message of making a big university small and translate it into making a big community small – everywhere you live!”

The university made Paul “Pete” Dye a member of the Gamecock family by awarding him an honorary doctorate in business administration. Considered the father of modern golf architecture, Dye has designed and built golf courses in 23 states; seven of his layouts are in South Carolina.

Closer to home, the Klump family in Greenville consider themselves a “Gamecock family” in every sense of the word. When Deanna Klump saw the empty nest ahead of her, she decided to follow in the footsteps of son Allen, already at Carolina. On Friday, Mrs. Klump was awarded a master’s degree in library and information science. Her son, who wants to attend law school, graduated Saturday with a double major in political science and philosophy.

Mrs. Klump, who earned a bachelor’s degree in 1985 in teaching from USC Spartanburg (now USC Upstate), learned this week that she will have a job as media specialist at Blue Ridge Middle School in Greenville in the fall. In typical “mom” fashion, however, she wanted to downplay her achievements.

“This is a very special weekend, and I’m very excited for Allen,” she said. “I just want to graduate and put the emphasis all on Allen.”

Her son, however, saw it differently. “I didn’t realize when she started that we’d graduate at the same time. That’s been really great. Even though I always made the Dean’s List, my mother always had better grades.”

But Saturday probably isn’t the end of commencements for the Klump family. Daughter Natanlyn will be a freshman in Sorensen’s “Gamecock family” in the fall.

Mrs. Klump said she and her husband, Kevin, are “very, very proud parents to have both children as students here.”

Also on Friday, the School of Law awarded 204 degrees, and the School of Medicine awarded 76 medical degrees, two doctoral degrees and 39 master’s degrees.