Meet some of this year's outstanding graduates

From residence halls to Disney World to the softball diamond, this year's outstanding graduates from Eastern Iowa colleges have left their mark on the world. Now, as they leave the comforts of college behind, these newly minted alumni seek to achieve even more as they look to the future.

CORNELL COLLEGE

MOUNT VERNON - Diego Verdugo didn't know what to expect when he arrived at Cornell College four years ago.

Mount Vernon is a different world compared with Douglas, Ariz., and he struggled at first with the new culture and difficult academics.

“Back in high school, I never studied and had a 4.0 GPA,” he said. “I got a 60 percent on my first exam and kind of freaked out.”

The exam was a wake-up call that he would need to work much harder. So Verdugo refocused on his studies and ended up receiving an A in that class after a shaky start.

Four years later, it's difficult to imagine Verdugo struggling with anything. The dean's list honors student has a double major in business/economics and Spanish, and is involved with seven campus clubs - five of them as an officer. He also works for the college's Office of Intercultural Life and has taught in the school's Spanish department.

Not content with simply being a campus powerhouse, Verdugo has made impressive strides in developing his future career as well. He spent the fall in Montevideo, Uruguay, as part of a finance internship, and he's already landed a post-graduation job with Principal Financial Group in Des Moines.

When Verdugo receives his diploma next week, he will be the first member of his family to graduate from college. His extended family will be making their first ever trip to Iowa for Verdugo's big day.

“I'm really excited they're coming out for graduation,” he said. “It's my mom's first time on a plane.”

CEDAR RAPIDS - Softball standout Amanda Hanson was looking for a double when she came to Coe College in 2008, but wound up with a triple play instead.

She's hoping to round home plate this summer, when she finds out whether or not she passed her nursing boards on the first try. She's not worried.

She's always played for a winning team, so she was feeling confident last month, as she prepped for the tests that would cap her efforts to become a registered nurse.

“My interest was always nursing, so I started looking around the area for a nursing school that was very successful and that employers would look at,” said Hanson, 22, of Riverside. “Coe's very well-known in the area for having successful graduates.”

She also wanted to continue the winning ways the softball All-Stater had enjoyed as a member of Highland High School's 2007 state championship team. She found that at Coe, when the Kohawks played in the collegiate World Series in New Jersey her freshman year.

“That was just the best experience,” she said, made even more memorable when the team placed second.

Coe's liberal arts setting has allowed her to blend her two main interests and add in another role, as the student representative for Coe's Alumni Association all four years.

“I'm able to do all that I want to do and the professors and coaches allow you that flexibility,” she said.

Juggling those varied activities has given her life-lessons that will help her springboard to the nursing career she hopes will keep her in Eastern Iowa.

“It allows you to balance your life,” she said. “It helps you to prioritize.”

CEDAR RAPIDS - Shelby Schaefer has a lot of ways to indulge her creative side: sewing, quilting, clothing design and music, to name a few.

In high school, she loved sewing and quilting in her home economics classes and for 4-H projects that earned her numerous trips to the State Fair. She sometimes made her own dresses for winter formals. She credits her home economics teacher with nurturing her interests and encouraging her to pursue those passions.

“She was so supportive of my interest and put me under her wing,” Schaefer said. “She still calls me every now and then to check in.”

Schaefer was graduating from Kirkwood Community College's apparel merchandising program Saturday and plans to head to Iowa State University in the fall to pursue a bachelor's degree in the subject.

But the 20-year-old from Latimer, in Franklin County, wasn't actually planning to be at the ceremony to collect her Kirkwood diploma. Instead, she's finishing up her four-month stint in Orlando with the Disney College Internship program.

“I won't be back from Florida to be able to go to graduation, but it still counts,” she said with a laugh.

Since January, Schaefer has been a merchandising intern at the Disney Magic Kingdom park, while finishing up her last two Kirkwood classes online. She's learning the ins and outs of merchandising, stocking, store placement and other skills while soaking up lessons in the Disney “four keys:” safety, courtesy, efficiency and show.

Schaefer hopes to someday be a fashion buyer or work in wedding dress production, and she wants to minor in event management at ISU to broaden her business skills.

“I've always just had creativity,” she said.

She designed and made a dress that her older sister modeled last year in the Kirkwood fashion show. Schaefer was vice president of the Kirkwood Fashion Club and also served as a Kirkwood student ambassador, played in the concert band and jazz band on campus and was in the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society.

“Since I went to this small high school, I always had to be involved in things,” she said. “So it was good to come to Kirkwood and still be involved.”

DECORAH --Nick Fisher of Cedar Rapids says he can't wait to pass along some of the lessons he's garnered during the last four years at Luther College.

“While at Luther, I've learned a lot about service with distinction for the common good ... Everyone here really cares about the community they live and work in. It's important to me to give back to that, because I've benefited from it so much,” said Fisher, a 2008 graduate of Cedar Rapids Washington High School.

Fisher, who will graduate May 20 with a degree in biology and minors in Spanish and environmental studies, said he is looking forward to serving in the Peace Corps.

“I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing, but likely something within the realm of sustainable agriculture,” he said.

He said he expects to be stationed in South America, where he will be able to utilize his language background.

While at Luther, Fisher said he has honed his leadership skills by serving two years as vice president of the Student Activities Council and president of the the Food Council. He also is a recent graduate of the Launching Luther Leaders certificate program.

He said he has enjoyed the opportunity to work in the Luther gardens and help further develop Luther's sustainable and local food practices.

“It's been interesting to learn how a local economy can be stimulated by the hardworking and caring individuals at Luther,” said Fisher, who credits college President Richard Torgerson and Jon Jensen, director or Luther's environmental studies program, for their leadership through sustainable initiatives.

“It's been in President Torgerson's strategic plan to reduce Luther's carbon footprint and increase local food consumption ... A lot of other schools now look to us for leadership,” he said.

Fisher also said the leadership development he has received at Luther has been invaluable.

“I am excited to continue to grow as part of other organizations,” he said.

CEDAR RAPIDS - After enforcing Mount Mercy University's rules and regulations for the past two years as a resident assistant, Weston ”Wes” Wery now wants to enforce city and state laws.

The 22-year-old Cedar Rapids resident is graduating today with a major in criminal justice and minor in sociology. He already has started the months-long process in an effort to become a Cedar Rapids police officer. If selected - he said he would be notified at the end of July - he faces another 18 months of training with the department.

In his university residence hall, Wery was responsible for 50 students and often was on call.

Wery said he knows what he's getting into with police work. He spent two months last year as a police department intern working with records and dispatching and riding along with an officer.

“It was the middle of winter and there weren't many people on the streets,” he said. “Still there was plenty of stuff going on to keep me interested.”

Wery said he has no qualms about carrying a weapon.

“I've been hunting deer, ducks, pheasants and other animals with my dad all my life, although that eased off some in my college years,” he said.

The Xavier high school graduate said he likes working outside. He started a small lawn mowing service (seven lawns) six years ago, and he has been working on the Mount Mercy University grounds crew since the summer before his freshman year.

In addition to maintaining a 3.5 grade point average, Wery found time to be the university's sophomore class president and part of the 30-member university soccer team.

Helping people is also the theme for his fiancée, Alyssa Bakke, an emergency room nurse at Mercy Hospital. Wery also has a twin brother, Nick, who will be graduating from St. Louis University with a major in international business this month.

IOWA CITY - As a resident assistant at the University of Iowa and through leadership with his Latino-based fraternity, Thomas Arce has tried to impact other students by living by example.

Arce, 22, a political science major and a gay man from Gary, Ind., doesn't like to describe himself as a role model.

“I just see myself as an example, to say, here's another way that I do things,” he said. “That's who I am as an RA, open minded, and the same thing with my fraternity. They know the biggest thing I'm about is being inclusive.”

In the residence halls, Arce sometimes hears younger students saying something he finds inappropriate, such as calling things “so gay” in a mocking way. Or in the past he may have heard members of his fraternity, Sigma Lambda Beta, say something similar. He would make a point to tell the other person it was a “diversity foul.”

“Now it's kind of like, they stop and ask themselves ‘what would Thomas say about that?'” he said. “I'm glad I have maybe some effect. For me, I'm proud of that, to know I did something good.”

Degree in hand after graduating Saturday from the UI, Arce said he wants to continue working with college students, in a residence life or advising position. Graduate school and hopefully a doctorate are down the road, on the path toward working in multicultural affairs on a college campus, he said.

He wants to make things as open and welcoming for future students as he found for himself, Arce said.

“I think the difference is how you see a situation, who you surround yourself around,” he said. “I was blessed enough to surround myself around those who are open minded.”

Despite initial nervousness of how it would be received, Arce pitched an idea to his fraternity brothers about sponsoring a campus discussion about homophobia in the Latino community. The discussion last semester was a learning experience and attended by students from other UI Greek chapters, too, he said.

And for a recent class for a UI cultural competence certificate program, Arce and some other students launched a campus campaign about how people view diversity.

“It was basically about get to know the individual, not just the label they're attached to, the stereotypes,” he said. “It was something we wanted to do.”

FAYETTE - On May 5, Paul Hunter traveled six hours from his home in Racine, Wis. to Upper Iowa University's Fayette campus to accept a bachelor's degree he earned in business administration.

While hundreds of others also earned degrees that day, Hunter held the distinction of being the only one of Louise Hunter's 21 biological children to ever earn a college degree.

Paul was the nineteenth child born, and with the awarding of his degree at age 41, he said he had realized his dream, “to be somebody.”

Accomplishing that ambition came at a cost, he said.

“My mom wasn't an advocate of education,” Hunter said.

Hunter said when he was about seven, his father died in an automobile accident. He also lost a brother in a house fire.

In the late 1970s, the widowed Louise Hunter created the Love and Charity Mission in Racine. Thousands of homeless people have been helped by the mission over the decades, yet until a few years ago, Paul said he lived in his mother's shadow.

After his graduation from Washington Park High School in 1990, Paul worked at temp services, with juveniles in a detention center, and then in a Chrysler Corporation engine factory.

After losing his job at American Motors Corporation when it moved operations to Mexico, he enrolled at Gateway Technical College, through the Trade Adjustment Assistance program. He earned an associate degree in supervisory management.

“Many of the people that came through the doors of Love and Charity ... lawyers, teachers, principals and airline pilots ... they were homeless because they made bad decisions. They really influenced my decision to go to school,” he said.

None of his family members came to Iowa to see him graduate, but Hunter said some family members supported his decision to earn a four-year college degree and better himself.

“Even though my biological brothers and sisters are not here, I feel I have a lot of brothers and sisters encouraging me who are,” he said of peers from UIU's Milwaukee Center participating in Saturday's ceremonies.

“UIU has been a great university for me. Some of the males on campus became my role models and they didn't even know it.”

Hunter said his future plans include creating his own public relations firm, and potentially earning a master's degree from Duke University.

“This is a great achievement in my life. I want to send a message to my children that education is important,” he said.

In a few weeks, Hunter said he will visit his three children, now living in the San Antonio, Texas area. He said his advice for his 18-year-old daughter, who is graduating from high school, will be: “Surround yourself with positive people. Don't be afraid to ask questions.”