Patrick Payton

[ChiTownBull]

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/08/Tampabay/USF_graduates_new_gen.shtml

For Andrew Mason II, the path to college started in Liberty City, one of Miami's toughest neighborhoods. Mason was set to follow his best friend, Patrick Payton, who had a football scholarship to USF. The two had grown up together, Mason said; they were inseparable.

"Wherever he was going, I was going, no matter what," Mason said. "He was like my brother."

But Payton died in a motorcycle crash just days before Mason was to join him at USF. At first, Mason said, he didn't want to go to college without his pal. But his friends and family convinced him: "Everybody told me I have to do it for him," he said.

Saturday, Mason graduated with a 3.2 grade point average and a major in film. His friend's death gave him concentration and drive, he said.

"When I walk across that stage there's really two of us there," he said.

Mason was the first in his family to graduate from college. Admissions councilor Tyvi Small said that Saturday's graduating class held a high percentage of such "first-generation" graduates, in part because the university goes out of its way to recruit them.

"It's by design," he said.

Small said the university runs a program for freshmen whose parents did not attend college, to help them acclimate to the college experience. The freshmen start school during the summer session and receive extra attention and support services.

The program makes the university richer, Small said, because it draws students for whom a college education is not routine.

This year's class of "first generation" graduates include a 37-year-old mother of five, and a soldier who was deployed to Iraq midway through his studies, according to a university spokeswoman.

The university held three graduation ceremonies Saturday to accommodate the number of students getting diplomas: First, undergraduates from the college of Arts & Sciences graduated in the morning; in the afternoon, a ceremony was held for undergraduates in business administration, education, engineering, nursing, undergraduate studies, and visual and performing arts.

In the evening, the university held its first-ever ceremony for graduate students, conferring 1,000 master's degrees and 114 doctorates and specialist degrees.

[E.T.]

Great Story ... Thanx !

[ChiTownBull]

I as well as the future Mrs. Chitown are both the first in our familys to graduate from college.

We are both proud it was from USF!

[USFMikeB]

1000 masters students graduating, wow that is HUGE!

[ChiTownBull]

114 phd's is a lot also.....

when i got my masters at UT i think there were about 25 of us......though i think they only have 3000 students and 2 or 3 graduate programs.....that was an awful comparison.....oh well.

[Apis Bull]

I'm the first and only in my immediate family.  I do have a cousin who was first in my family.

[hightechbull]

In the evening, the university held its first-ever ceremony for graduate students, conferring 1,000 master's degrees and 114 doctorates and specialist degrees.

I wish they had that when I got my master's degree.