Smiles and gowns: 708 students partake in graduation ceremony

~ Five earned a master's degree without stepping on Southeast Missouri State's campus.

Five St. Louis-area residents visited Southeast Missouri State University's campus Saturday for the first time so they could attend graduation.

They weren't here to watch family members finish school. They were here to get their degrees.

The five were the first students to obtain master's degrees through a cooperative program in industrial management between Southeast, the St. Louis Community College campus in Florissant Valley and the University of Missouri St. Louis.

In all, 703 students received degrees, including 589 undergraduates and 114 graduate students.

All five of the St. Louis area master's degree candidates continued at their regular jobs while attending classes on nights and weekends. And they said after receiving diplomas Saturday that they probably wouldn't have their advanced degree without the program.

Leslie Wheat of St. Charles, Mo., works for Tyco Healthcare-Mallinkrodt. Her 10-year-old granddaughter, Kiersten Wheat, and her husband, Gary Wheat, cheered her achievement.

Wheat and the four other master's degree recipients all received their undergraduate diplomas as part of Southeast's 2+2 program. They are the first of 40 graduates in that program to receive master's degrees since the cooperative venture was expanded in 2003.

"To be honest, without this program I wouldn't have gotten past an associate's degree," Wheat said.

The degree will open up new opportunities, Wheat said. "The bachelor's degree got me a promotion to the corporate level. Tyco has a lot of different plants around the country."

For Nigerian-born Gladson David, the master's degree means a chance to take better care of his four children. He currently works as a surveyor for the St. Louis County government.

The degree will make him better prepared to use new technology in the surveying field, David said.

In addition to Wheat and David, recipients of the master's degree were Michael Georgevitch and Paul Guthier of St. Louis and Janeen Sifford of Florissant, Mo.

The graduate program was a natural expansion of the bachelor's degree program, said Randy Shaw, dean of the School of Polytechnic Studies at Southeast. The graduates were asking for a chance to advance their education and the new program was easily built on the foundation of the undergraduate cooperative effort.

Faculty travel to St. Louis to teach the courses and provide teaching through interactive television hookups as well, Shaw said. To gain the master's degree, each student in the program receives 30 credit hours of instruction from a Southeast faculty member and 26 credit hours of instruction from the cooperating campus.

"It is a very economic way of delivering instruction rather than have other schools develop their own programs," Shaw said. "We now have five people who received two degrees each who have never taken a class on our campus."

The fall semester commencement in the Show Me Center had a large percentage of students who, like the five master's degree recipients, were non-traditional students. Many took time off after high school, some were retired from other jobs and some were getting degrees after completing GED work.

Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle gave the commencement address. Most graduation speeches extoll the virtues of hard work, staying true to ideals and remaining optimistic, he noted. They are also quickly forgotten.

"It occurred to me that I cannot remember anything a commencement speaker said in any commencement ceremony that I have attended," Swingle said.

And to avoid being forgotten, Swingle offered some advice -- keep a sense of humor. In fact, he said, keep a file of funny things that happen in life.

Swingle has used such a file to compile a series of stories that show both the humorous side of life and the questionable nature of ego.

And after his novel "The Gold of Cape Girardeau" was published, Swingle said he waited months for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to write a review. Finally, a story about the book appeared.

As he was buying extra copies of the newspaper at a convenience store, Swingle said, the cashier said he looked familiar. He proudly opened the newspaper to the story with a picture, and the cashier instantly recognized him: "Morley Swingle! You're the guy who gave me my felony conviction."

Swingle, however, didn't recognize him. The moral of the story, Swingle told the graduating students: "As far as I know, he was the only person in Cape Girardeau who saw the story."