{"id":13954,"date":"2015-09-01T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=13954"},"modified":"2015-09-01T11:00:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T15:00:52","slug":"headed-off-to-new-challenges-and-opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/headed-off-to-new-challenges-and-opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"Headed off to New Challenges and Opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In May, almost 3,000 Clemson students received bachelor\u2019s, master\u2019s and doctoral degrees at Littlejohn Coliseum and joined the ranks of 137,000 alumni.<\/h4>\n
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President Clements voiced his hope that the graduates\u2019 time at Clemson helped make them better all-around people.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cI hope that your Clemson experience has been everything that you hoped it would be and that we taught you more than your academic subjects,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope that we challenged you and inspired you to think critically and creatively, to be engaged with your community and your world, and to make a positive difference every day.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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Here are the stories of just six of those graduates:<\/h4>\n
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Alyssa Daniel<\/h3>\n

\"InTheseHills-Alyssa-Daniel\"<\/a>Alyssa Daniel makes you believe that there are more than 24 hours in a day. During her four years at Clemson, the accounting major has crunched an unbelievable number of leadership roles and experiences into her time as a student. But at the heart of her super-human schedule is a very human factor \u2014 family.
\n\u201cI have a younger brother and a younger sister here at Clemson, and setting a good example for them is super important to me,\u201d Daniel said.
\nDaniel said she owes a lot to her involvement with the professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, where she has served in multiple executive positions. It was also at the encouragement of Delta Sigma Pi that Daniel was prompted to take on her biggest challenge \u2014 spending a semester abroad at Aarhus University in Denmark.
\n\u201cI always think I can throw something extra on my plate,\u201d Daniel jokes.
\nDaniel also was involved with Beta Alpha Psi, an international honors organization for financial information students, served on the Student Advisory Board for the School of Accountancy and Finance and worked as a student assistant in the Office of Student Enrichment.
\n\u201cI think that Clemson has a thousand things to offer you, and that it\u2019s just a matter of pursuing them,\u201d Daniel said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to surround yourself with people who are just as academically motivated as you.\u201d
\nThis summer Daniel will complete a second internship with the Charlotte consulting firm Deloitte, before moving to Alabama to work on her master\u2019s in accounting at Auburn University.
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Nate Diehl<\/h3>\n

\"InTheseHills-Nate-Diehl\"<\/a>Even before he arrived at Clemson, Nate Diehl had delved heavily into research at the University of Pennsylvania where he spent the three summers during high school immersed in cancer-related protein research. As a Clemson undergraduate, the biochemistry major continued to explore the medical field with both his undergraduate research and through two summer medical trips to Panama and Costa Rica.
\n\u201cThose trips were confirmation that I was doing the right thing,\u201d Diehl said. \u201cSeeing the look on people\u2019s faces after you helped with even just the smallest thing gave me an incredible amount of joy.\u201d
\nWanting to combine his love of research, medicine and people, Diehl applied for M.D.\/Ph.D. programs. Programs from across the nation flocked to accept him \u2014 eight in all. Diehl says the deciding factor came down to the students.
\n\u201cI knew that I could become a physician scientist in any of these amazing programs,\u201d Diehl said, \u201cBut the Chapel Hill students were incredible to be around. They seemed very similar to the people at Clemson, and the people were one of the best parts of Clemson for me. The students here have made my experience. They\u2019re absolutely awesome; I\u2019ll never forget them.\u201d
\nDiehl plans to continue his cancer research throughout his program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the eventual goal of becoming a pediatric oncologist.
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Nateisha Drayton<\/h3>\n

\"InTheseHills-Nateisha-Drayton\"<\/a>If you\u2019d asked Nateisha Drayton five years ago where she would be today, she would have said she\u2019d be a proud member of the military, rising through the ranks, seeing new parts of the world.
\nShe has traveled. But instead of being in a uniform, she\u2019s been in a lab coat.
\n\u201cCollege was just never an option that I\u2019d thought about,\u201d the Charleston native said. \u201cI\u2019d thought that I would join the military like so many of my family members before me. I didn\u2019t know the first thing about filling out an application or the Free Application for Financial Student Aid paperwork.\u201d
\nAt the encouragement of her high school teachers however, Drayton took her first (and last) college tour at Clemson.
\n\u201cI knew it was the right place for me. I didn\u2019t need to look anywhere else,\u201d Drayton said.
\nThe first-generation college student has forged her own path through Clemson while also lending her hand as a PEER (Programs for Educational Enrichment and Retention) mentor for the past two years. PEER welcomes and encourages underrepresented students in the\u00a0College of Engineering and Science.
\n\u201cMy own PEER mentor did so much for me. If it hadn\u2019t been for him that first semester, I don\u2019t know if I would have made it through,\u201d Drayton said. \u201cI wanted to give back to the same program that was in fact the main reason I was still here in the first place.\u201d
\nDrayton also has completed three research projects \u2014 one at Clemson, the other at Rutgers and the third in Singapore \u2014 all centered on the environmental impacts of cancer research compounds in addition to other contaminants and their biodegradability.
\nDrayton heads into the Air Force\u2019s Officer Training School where she will serve in an environmental engineering position.
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Neyle Noyes<\/h3>\n

\"InTheseHills-Neyle-Noyes\"<\/a>Neyle Noyes doesn\u2019t pull out job acceptance letters to talk about the future. He pulls out a handwritten bucket list that he keeps in his wallet. His dreams include graduating, skydiving, watching \u201cPhantom of the Opera\u201d on Broadway and dancing in the rain.
\nHe talks about these because he feels confident about life after graduation \u2014 he\u2019s anticipating a job with the NBA once its season ends.
\nHe got hooked on the organizational side of athletics after taking a \u201cTrends and Sports\u201d class, which examined sports through data analysis. Later, he connected with a prospective student\u2019s father while giving a campus tour, a chance meeting that led to an internship with the Houston Astros minor league team in Greeneville, Tennessee.
\nBut it was his senior project analyzing NBA trends that really captured his attention. He wants to take number crunching to basketball. For those unfamiliar with sport statistics, he\u2019ll be doing what Brad Pitt did for baseball in \u201cMoneyball.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019ll be changing the game, but not the heart behind it,\u201d Noyes said. Having heart has always been important for Noyes. He says the high-fives, hellos and student passion he saw on his own prospective tour of Clemson clinched his college decision.
\n\u201cAt Clemson, we build and breathe the idea of getting close and taking time to know each other,\u201d Noyes said. Ever since, he\u2019s added to that tradition with his own big smile as a campus tour guide and sharing life with his Kappa Sigma brothers on the quad.
\nHe knows he\u2019ll miss Clemson, but, according to his bucket list, he\u2019ll hopefully have tickets to one football game a season.
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James E. Vines<\/h3>\n

\"HEHD<\/a>James Vines first learned about the small number of male minorities earning Ph.D.\u2019s while getting his Africa and African Diaspora studies certificate at St. Mary\u2019s College of Maryland.
\n\u201cIt was at that moment that I knew I wanted to help improve those numbers,\u201d Vines said.
\nTo do that required his own navigation of graduate school waters, which is how he docked at Clemson.
\n\u201cI heard about the outstanding reputation of the School of Education. Clemson was at the top of my list,\u201d Vines said. While getting his doctorate here, he worked as a research assistant for the Charles H. Houston Center for the Study of the\u00a0Black Experience in Education.
\n\u201cI had no idea what to research for my dissertation. Thankfully, I had an amazing adviser, Dr. Patricia First, who helped me from day one,\u201d Vines said.
\nHis research includes cyberbullying, focusing on advocacy coalitions in the policy-development process. This fall, he has moved on to a fellowship at Bloomsburg University (Pennsylvania), where he\u2019ll be an academic adviser in the Office of Academic Enrichment.
\n\u201cI\u2019ll miss being able to find my quiet spot in the Cooper Library \u2014 I have gotten so much stuff done while writing and getting coffee in Java City,\u201d Vines said.
\nBut he says that more than finding a quiet space, building strong connections with his professors, classmates and Phi Beta Sigma brothers contributed to his positive Clemson experience.
\n\u201cThe support you get from other students is invaluable, and people who can motivate you will go a long way,\u201d Vines said.
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Aurelia Wurzel<\/h3>\n

\"InTheseHills-Aurelia-Wurzel\"<\/a>Tired of sitting on the bench for basketball, Wurzel needed little prompting to follow her older sister to the boathouse one day. And that was that.
\n\u201cI was short, I was on the bench and that wasn\u2019t working,\u201d Wurzel said. \u201cThen my sister brought me with her to the boathouse, put me in a double with her, and I\u2019ve been rowing ever since. It just clicked.\u201d
\nYears later, Wurzel\u2019s passion for the sport was responsible for bringing her halfway around the world, from her hometown of Como, Italy, to her new home in Clemson when she was recruited for the women\u2019s varsity rowing team.
\n\u201cComing to Clemson allowed me to pursue the two things that I was really passionate about \u2014\u00a0sports and academics,\u201d Wurzel said.
\nMost of Wurzel\u2019s mornings these past four years have been spent on Hartwell Lake as a member of the women\u2019s rowing team. For two months each summer, she returned to Como to compete in the national championship, winning seven national titles, and even rowed in the world championship for Italy.
\nBorn in Frankfurt, Germany, Wurzel moved to Como when she was six where she spent the rest of her childhood before coming to South Carolina. During high school, Wurzel was enrolled in the language program where she gained fluency in Spanish, French and English. When it came time to choose a major at Clemson, language and international trade was an obvious fit.
\nHer skills were put to the test during a summer internship with the candy manufacturer, Haribo. The company was working on a business-to-business product that Wurzel was able to help create through a variety of marketing, advertising and logistics measures.
\nExcited by this taste of the business world, Wurzel will go on to work in Switzerland this fall.
\nSee a video of graduation in less than a minute:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May, almost 3,000 Clemson students received bachelor\u2019s, master\u2019s and doctoral degrees at Littlejohn Coliseum and joined the ranks of 137,000 alumni. President Clements voiced his hope that the graduates\u2019 time at Clemson helped make them better all-around people. \u201cI hope that your Clemson experience has been everything that you hoped it would be and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[994,1405,1576,2850],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-these-hills","tag-diversity","tag-graduation","tag-in-these-hills-summer-fall-2015","tag-summer-fall-2015"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/08\/InTheseHills-Alyssa-Daniel.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13954"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}