By Darla Martin Tucker

“I’m excited. [But] I’ll miss La Sierra,” global studies major Debra Marovitch said as she waited with an eager crowd of black-robed graduates for commencement to begin.

Marovitch, who graduated Summa Cum Laude from La Sierra University on June 15, is planning a career in international development. She takes off this year for China to teach English and may later join the Peace Corps. She and three other students with interests in various forms of international service comprised the premiere graduating class of the university’s new global studies major.
It might be said that Marovitch and other graduates are moving ahead with ‘ganas,’ a Spanish word for acting with enthusiasm, passion and earnestness. In her keynote address titled “Ganas: Inspired Motivation,” Cari M. Dominguez, former chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged the 2008 graduating class of 323 students to find their passion in life. “What compels you to make your voice heard?” she said. “Finding your mission is critical to success in life. …Once you find that mission, may you do it with ganas, lots of ganas.”

She spoke to an audience of more than 3,000 family members, friends and graduates who braved the heat of a June morning to sit under white canopies on La Sierra’s Founders’ Green. Some enthusiast onlookers held up signs and balloons, waved national flags, shouted graduates’ names and blew noise makers. Graduating students, some encased up to their ears in rings of candy and flower leis, occasionally bounced around a beach ball.
Dominguez, a Seventh-day Adventist, oversaw a $325 million budget and 53 offices throughout the United States as the EEOC’s 12th chair and chief executive officer. She held the post between 2001 and 2006 following a Presidential nomination and unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate. The commission is the nation’s lead agency on all matters pertaining to the enforcement of civil rights employment laws.

Dominguez is currently a lecturer, consultant and corporate director of international employment services giant Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) in Milwaukee, Wis. The 60-year-old, $21 billion company appointed Dominguez as a board director on May 2, 2007.

Her brother, Francisco J. Perez, is president and chief executive officer of the Kettering Health Network in Ohio. The network includes five hospitals and a medical arts college.
During her commencement talk, Dominguez related the story of her childhood immigration from Cuba to the United States with her mother and sisters. She told of acquiring a work permit at age 14 and of getting a job with the housekeeping department at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Md. She filled paper towel dispensers “and dusted pianos, lots of pianos,” she said.
She talked about the inequities her father suffered after he and Dominguez’s brother, Francisco, later immigrated to the U.S. She spoke of her parents’ unending gratitude for their newly-found freedoms despite the steep challenges of life in America.

She talked about her difficult climb up the government career ladder, the move to the corporate world and then the nomination to lead the EEOC. She described how a talented student from the same school where she had dusted pianos years earlier performed at her swearing in ceremony as she took leadership of the nation’s top agency on job discrimination laws. “Only in America,” Dominguez said.

“God expects us to be high-performing individuals in all we do,” she told graduates. “Ganas …is about one’s inner desire to achieve,” she said. While talent leads to aptitude, ganas, or motivation “determines altitude.”
She advised graduates to maintain the four Cs - competence, character, confidence and most of all, Christ, through Whom the first three are attained.

Prior to Dominguez’s address, university President Randal Wisbey presented Dominguez with La Sierra’s first Presidential Medallion in recognition of her service to the people of the United States.

In remarks to graduates, Wisbey said the university learned from them, when as students as they took tests, asked “amazing questions” and moved from memorization to knowledge. “You called every one of us to be better than we’ve ever been,” he said. Quoting poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, Wisbey challenged graduates to “go where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“It is our deepest hope, our most sincere prayer that you will leave this place better able to be a light to the world as you reflect the love of Jesus,” he said.
Enrique Rodriguez, 2008 senior class president presented as a class gift to the university funding toward the purchase of two new scoreboards for the gymnasium. “You guys have been a pillar of support to each other,” Rodriguez told his fellow graduates. “There were times when you thought you were going to be a complete failure, but you made it,” he said. “It was God who made this all possible. …Never forget about Him because He’s never going to forget about you guys,” Rodriguez said. “Let’s go out and change the world.”

Biohealth sciences graduate Roland Montang sported thick layers of flower, candy and money leis, compliments of a 20-plus contingent of family and friends who came to see him awarded for his work. “It’s surreal,” he said of the day’s events.

Montang gave a high rating to his La Sierra days, “…the teachers and the whole experience. It felt like they wanted you to exceed. They cared about research,” he said. Montang plans to take a year off and apply to medical school.
Graduating “feels good,” said marketing major Mario Gomez. He plans to return to La Sierra for a master’s degree. His friend and management major Matthew Allen described commencement as a “liberating” moment.

Graduate Andrew Hibbert’s parents, Tina and Garth, and his youngest brother, Robert, traveled from Sri Lanka to watch Hibbert, a Cum Laude, receive a Bachelor of Science degree in finance. Hibbert served this year as La Sierra’s student association president. Another brother, Gavin, is a freshman at La Sierra.

“It’s going to be awfully hot today, but it’s so worth it after four years,” Andrew Hibbert said prior to the start of commencement. In August he will begin work as a financial analyst at Florida Adventist Hospital. While looking forward to the future, Hibbert laments leaving La Sierra. “I have so many friends here.”

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)