COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY

CCU graduates take on rapidly changing world

Armed with diplomas, students turn dreams into job opportunities

By Robert Morris - rmorris@thesunnews.com

CONWAY --

Among the robed graduates standing on the field Saturday at Brooks Stadium were the ordinary heroes of any college class - the athlete planning a career in law enforcement, the farmer's son becoming a scientist, families first-ever graduates and future entrepreneurs.

A closer look at the life stories in Coastal Carolina University's class of 2008, however, gives a glimpse of how rapidly changing is the world they will soon inherit.

Rather than participate in a traditional major, 23-year-old Corbin Cudd designed his own through the school's interdisciplinary studies program. Seeking a career in public relations, Cudd's specific interest is a new field called "guerrilla marketing" that siphons advertising away from phonebook or billboard companies and directly to a target audience.

An example, Cudd said, would be alerting young people to a product's promotion through direct messages on the popular social-networking site Facebook.com.

"It's free," Cudd said. "Just get your ideas out there."

The class of 2008, like every class before it, has become more willing to incorporate computers into any field, said Mark Mitchell, a program chairman in the Wall College of Business. "Every group has a little higher willingness to embrace technology," Mitchell said. "They're not intimidated by it."

As the global political culture changes, so do the jobs policing it.

Trevino Pope, a Chanticleer walk-on running back from Macon, Ga., plans to work in the emerging field of homeland security, said his brother, Jerome Pope. The career choice will take him first to a field office in Saskatchewan, his brother said, because terrorists commonly use the Canadian border to enter the U.S.

"You have to go where you have to go, at least to get started," Jerome Pope said.

The training necessary for many fields has also become more complex.

Honors graduate Kimberly Renay Daniel has already worked in acting and as a writing intern at The Sun News, and now plans to study design at the Savannah College of Art and Design's Atlanta campus, all with the intention of finding her niche in the changing world of the media, said her parents, Edmond and Blondie Daniel of North Myrtle Beach.

"We're looking forward to her being the next Barbara Walters," her father said.

Sitting high in the bleachers, watching the commencement from his wheelchair, Andy Morris of Aiken represented one of the modern era's most enduring figures: the farmer who never went to college, happily watching his son graduate while knowing the boy's education will take him away from the farm.

Morris' son, Jake, is his third child to earn a degree and is attending Coastal on a cross-country scholarship and now is seeking a career as a botanist, researching new medicines.

"He thinks he can hike anywhere. He's ready to hit the rainforest," Morris said.

"I told him to go while he can."

Cancer struck Morris, 46, a decade ago.

An experimental chemotherapy treatment granted him an extra 8 years of life, he said, but is now destroying his organs one at a time. He was so sick through Jake's four years of college that he could only attend one race, and he has all but quit farming.

Without the rapidly advancing medical field his son now hopes to contribute to, Morris said his life would have been much shorter.

"I am so proud, you can't believe. To get through college, and I never graduated," Morris said.

"I didn't think I would ever see this day."

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Contact ROBERT MORRIS at 626-0294.