Graduation marks life-changing milestone in the lives of unique students
Janel Shoun |
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Commencement Ceremony Saturday, May 9
Nurse Pinning Ceremony
Graduate Student Reception 12:30-1:30 p.m. |
Tyler Jones was curled up in a tent in the Rocky Mountain night air, reading a book about the Lost Boys of Sudan, when he hit upon an idea to collect tents and send them to the war-torn country. He and the Lipscomb campus community have worked on the dream over the past school year. Now getting his bachelor’s degree in marketing, he hopes to use it to raise money and awareness for the victims of war as a career.
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Joe Dixon, a deaf student in Lipscomb’s first graduate counseling class, was expecting to get a master’s degree; but he wasn’t expecting to get a wife as well. He ended up getting both and plans to use his counseling degree in a local deaf ministry in Nashville. Both he and his wife Amanda will walk the stage on Saturday.
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Nuria Rosa studied hard in high school in Honduras to make her dream of attending a Christian university come true. Upon graduation she had no immediate prospects of achieving that dream, until a former Lipscomb University board member Dick Peugeot and his wife Mary Ann sponsored her studies in the U.S. Now she is headed to medical school and plans to return to Honduras as an ob-gyn.
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These are just three of the profound ways Lipscomb University has shaped the lives of the more than 400 graduates to be honored at Saturday’s commencement ceremonies. Keep reading to learn more about these unique graduates and about the milestones in Lipscomb’s Class of 2009:
Tyler Jones
Tyler Jones is making the most of his Lipscomb degree before he even gets out of school. The marketing major from Nashville has started his own non-profit organization, Paulos Missions, devoted to sending tents and portable water purification systems to war-torn Southern Sudan. The tents will allow refugees to live a healthier, nomadic life in a country where quick movement can save lives.
Jones first thought about how a tent, portable stove and water purification system could save lives came when he was camping in the Rocky Mountain in summer 2008. Then back at school at Lipscomb, a friend, Grant Pollock, voiced exactly the same idea. Jones came to believe this was the path God wanted him to take.
“Three semesters ago I was just searching,” Jones said. “I asked God, ‘What in the world is a marketing degree going to do for your kingdom.’” Through this experience he realized, “I do have connections. God has blessed me with the ability to connect with people.”
And so that’s what he began to do. Over the course of the last school year, Jones has:
- Worked with local sporting goods stores to put out donation boxes for customers do donate used tents;
- He has contacted tent manufacturers to arrange potential donations to the cause;
- Through Sudanese Lipscomb student Paul Mator Manyok, he has made connections with humanitarian organizations and leaders in Sudan. He has established a partnership with the John Dau Foundation to distribute tents in Sudan;
- He has recruited fellow Lipscomb students to create a Website for the mission;
- Obtained 200 LEXAN Camelback flexible water bottles and sent them to various third world countries through Lipscomb students on spring mission trips; and
- He and his Lipscomb friends have coordinated several concerts and art shows designed to raise awareness of the war crimes in Sudan and how they can help.
“It’s so cool to see a movement of young kids putting their minds together and changing the world,” he said.
In June, Jones will be headed to Sudan on a fact-finding trip to finalize the best method to transport and distribute tents and water purification systems to the Sudanese. Lipscomb student Andy Hubright and a few other local filmmakers will be going along with Jones to make a documentary about Sudanese children living along the Nile River.
When he gets back, Jones will focus on making his passion, Paulos Missions, his vocation as well. He plans to visit various humanitarian organizations to present the Paulos Missions 10-year plan and try to obtain grants and partnerships. He is working on a deal to allow Paulos Missions to make a plea for tent donations at the Alive Music Festival in Ohio. The 501(c)3 papers are in the works, and his goal is to start by sending 150 to 200 tents to Sudan.
“I think if I jump in full-force, God is going to take care of me,” he said of his personal well-being in his post-college career. “We have to wait on God’s time.”
In August 2007, Lipscomb held the first class in its new master’s program in psychology. Joe Dixon and Amanda Woodring were both accepted in the inaugural cohort for the master’s program. It wasn’t until the third class meeting, though, that Amanda chose to sit next to Joe.
Their relationship started off slow because Joe, who is legally deaf, had sworn to himself he would never date anyone who didn’t know sign language. That didn’t stop Amanda who went out and bought a sign language dictionary and started signing with Joe in class.
He was impressed, and asked Amanda to go with him to church at the Brentwood Baptist Deaf Church, which turned into a lunch, which turned into a movie, which turned into dinner. One year later they were married.
“You shouldn’t go into a master’s program to find a date,” Joe advises potential graduate students, but the unexpected way the couple got together does make it seem even more special, he said.
Neither Joe nor Amanda will become clinical psychologists. Amanda, who graduated from Lipscomb University in 2004, is thinking about eventually getting a Ph.D. in order to teach, and Joe, who originally entered the program to get a master’s before heading to law school, is now more interested in applying the master’s to ministry and mission work through the deaf church in Brentwood.
“Before we got married, we knew exactly what we wanted to do. Then we got married and now we have no idea what we want to do,” laughs Joe, saying that’s actually a good thing, because as singles they probably wouldn’t have enjoyed their chosen careers.
“Maybe the only reason we were in the program was to meet each other,” says Amanda.
The couple have both worked full-time and gone to school throughout their entire relationship, so after receiving their degrees on Saturday, they are looking forward to having more free time together. In fact, they plan to take a two-week vacation from work and just relax.
Nuria Rosa
In February, e-mails began circulating within the Lipscomb community: “Nuria Rosa has been accepted into the class of 2009 at Indiana University!” The word spread quickly – an impossible dream was now one step closer to coming true.
In January 2006, Nuria Rosa journeyed to Nashville from Catacamas, Honduras, to begin her pre-med studies at Lipscomb University. In Honduras, Nuria’s mother had struggled to make sure her three children could be educated in a bilingual Christian school. Nuria studied diligently to keep up her grades and maintain one of the two scholarships awarded each year to promising students. After completing high school, she wondered if her dream of an American college education would come true.
The hope and love of others opened doors for Nuria to begin the journey of following her dream. Dick Peugeot, a former Lipscomb board member, met Nuria when he traveled to Honduras on an engineering mission with Lipscomb. Because she attended a bilingual school, Nuria was eligible to serve as an interpreter for mission workers who came to her community.
Peugeot heard Nuria talk about her educational dreams. He found out that she wanted to study medicine and come back to her country to serve others. So Dick and Mary Ann Peugeot wrote letters hoping to officially sponsor her studies.
“I want to be an ob-gyn,” Nuria states with certainty. “I definitely want to go back to Honduras to work when I am out of medical school. I want to go into the mountains and help women there. I want to help the women physically, but I also want to tie my work into finding ways to encourage the women there. I want to motivate young girls to have a vision for their lives. In the mountains of Honduras, it is rare that the girls go to college. They don’t see their choices. I also want to be involved with global health issues. I believe these things can happen. I think it is the Lord’s will, and no one can stop Him.”
Colin Rucker
There will be thousands of people in Allen Arena on Saturday for graduation, and it could be that a large percentage of them are related to graduate Colin Rucker, 22, of Rockmart, Ga. Rucker is the fourth generation of his family to graduate from Lipscomb, and all four generations plan to attend the ceremonies.
- John Rucker, 96, graduated in 1933 and became a general contractor in Nashville. (He is well-known as the patriarch and builder of the original Otter Creek Church of Christ on Granny White Pike).
- John Rucker Jr., 70, graduated in 1967 and became a business consultant.
- Jonathan Rucker, 47, graduated in 1983 and opened J.R. Rucker Jewelers in Rockmart, Ga.
- Colin Rucker, 22, an organizational communication major, is headed to the Texas Institute of Jewelry Technology after graduation and will join the family business.
Colin chose to attend Lipscomb as well because he got a great financial aid package and “it seemed like the right thing to do, especially with all my family since the beginning of time coming here,” he joked.
Colin had heard plenty of Lipscomb stories from his father, grand-father, mother, aunts, uncles and cousins, most of whom all went to Lipscomb, but he says he managed to make his college experience his own.
“As a community (Lipscomb has) changed so much just while I have been here. It’s really a new unique experience for each generation,” he said.
LaVern Vivio
You know her as U-Turn LaVern, a popular radio traffic reporter for many years in Nashville. In fact, it was the traffic reporter’s job that made her college career at Freed Hardeman University in Henderson take a U-turn. She quit early to take the job with Clear Channel Nashville. Now 25 years later, she’s back in the fast lane, having completed a communication degree at Lipscomb.
She’s thrilled to be completing this unfinished business on Saturday, May 9, because the next Saturday, May 16, her twins will be graduating from high school and heading off to college.
Class notes:
- The spring 2009 graduating class is made up of 413 students;
- The spring 2009 graduating class includes 107 master’s level graduates;
- Lipscomb University will award 306 bachelor’s degree in arts, science, business, nursing and social work; and
- The university will award 107 master’s degrees in Bible, education, conflict management, business and counseling.