SFA President Speaks At Panola
By BECKY BELL
Longview News Journal
5/18/2002

CARTHAGE — Need a little magic in your life? Then pursue a higher education, an East Texas college president recommended at Panola College's commencement Friday night.

"College opens doors and gives you a wider and wider array of opportunities," Dr. Tito Guerrero III, president of Stephen F. Austin State University, told a group of 92 Panola College graduates. "It's like giving yourself a magic wand."

Guerrero began his commencement address by sharing something former President Kennedy said in 1968, two months before his assassination in Dallas. The gist of Kennedy's statement was to remind Americans of the potential that exists here for those willing to achieve success.

Guerrero told graduates he believed Kennedy's comment was applicable, considering that in 1998 only 28 percent of whites in the United States graduated from college, followed by 15 percent of blacks and less than 10 percent of Hispanics.

"A college graduate is in an elite group of people," Guerrero said, noting that a college degree normally improves several quality-of-life factors for people, including a nicer job, home and the freedom to choose how their children are educated.

The SFA president also told the junior college graduates not to forget the less-educated people of Texas who helped make their attendance at Panola a possibility.

"The cost of higher education is heavily subsidized by the taxpayers of Texas, most of whom do not know what it feels like to graduate or to attend school."

Guerrero attended a junior college. He went on to receive a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M University, master's degree in secondary and health education from the University of North Texas and doctorate in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University.

He named the teachers he had for English and botany and said he doesn't regret taking a small step to begin his college career. Besides, it gave him time to spend with his girlfriend, who later became his wife, Guadalupe E. Guerrero.

"Those who complete community college have a higher probability of graduating from a four-year university," he said.

Before allowing the students to pick up the sheet of paper they had come to receive, Guerrero reminded them to not let career anxiety coax them into taking a job they wouldn't be happy doing, to always trust their moral compass — or their gut — and to believe in themselves always, despite setbacks along the way.

He also put in a plug for SFA.