Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had a sales pitch for Emory graduates Monday: that government work is good enough for them.
“No matter what career paths you begin on, you should spend some time in government … in public service,” Napolitano told the more than 3,500 graduates in her commencement address. “Emory has prepared you all for the challenge of a vibrant and contentious democracy.”
Napolitano’s exhortation notwithstanding, graduates had their own ideas about what service means and how it fits into their plans.
The next stop for graduate Brett Henson is dental school, where he plans to train to work in a dental clinic in his home state of North Carolina.
“There is a big shortage of oral health care providers in North Carolina, and I plan on going to work in a rural area where the need is greatest,” Henson said. “In that sense, I think I will be answering the secretary’s call to public service.”
Anthropology major Mary Vess has lined up a job with a medical records software firm.
“I’m interested in preventative medicine, possibly nursing or public health,” Vess said. “Not necessarily government work, but definitely a form of service.”
Newly-minted anthropology PhD Amber Campbell Hibbs hopes for a job in rural economic development funded by the National Science Foundation. It would allow the Kansas native to bypass a tenure-track professorship, working instead to convince young people to remain in farm communities.
“Keeping rural areas strong is very service-minded,” she said.
Andrew Banooni, of Detroit, said he came to medical school at Emory to be able to help people.
“A lot of what (Napolitano) said really resonated with what motivated me,” said Banooni, who will begin his career as an anesthesiologist at a Boston hospital.
Emory President James Wagner told the graduates spread out across the sun-splashed quadrangle that, even more than others before them, this class has been shaped by world events and technology.
“Yours is a global community,” Wagner told the graduates.
Napolitano, too, gave a nod to technology, citing the ubiquity of social media and its role in an ever-changing world.
"Some of you are tweeting while I'm giving this speech," she joked.
While Napolitano did not mention the most recent event to fall under her wide-ranging jurisdiction — the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden — she offered references to the societal shifts that have taken place in the near-decade since al-Qaida orchestrated the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Our economic landscape has changed dramatically, making your job search much different from those of the seniors who graduated four years ago,” she said.
Henson said the events of Sept. 11 broadened his perspective and brought him closer to his fellow students.
“I’ve learned the importance of having a global mindset,” he said. “My best friends are from all over the world, and they were just as angry and frightened after 9/11. So we had something in common.”
Lisa LaViers, of Strawberry Plains, Tenn., will turn her bachelor's degree in economics to federally funded research at Emory neuro-economics program, looking into human values as a way to help improve economic decision making.
Although she calls 9/11’s aftermath “my reality,” she still looks toward a bright future.
“I graduated at a time of opportunity because the worst of the economic downturn is over,” LaViers said. “I’m largely pretty hopeful for what is to come.”
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