The international president of the global relief organization that has been in the forefront of efforts to aid people in cyclone-ravaged Myanmar challenged Brenau University graduates to be "agents of hope" in the global community

"I have too many agents of gloom and doom around the world today. I don´t need any more," Dean R. Hirsch, president and CEO of World Vision International, said during Brenau´s 129th commencement. "In reality you are the global citizens."

Brenau conferred 753 undergraduate and graduate degrees during its commencement exercises Friday, May 9, and Saturday, May 10, at the Northeast Georgia Mountain Center in Gainesville.

Between the ceremonies Hirsch said he heard the news that the first U.S. Marines had landed in Myanmar whose military dictatorship government has frustrated virtually all international relief efforts to assist millions of victims of the cyclone that ravaged the country a week ago. One level, Hirsch said the Marines´ arrival made him "proud of our country last night because the Marines were there for humanitarian purposes." But their role in helping direct relief effort assured that his organization, which has hundreds of workers already on the ground in the country, can now start receiving much-needed supplies to fulfill its mission.

"You cannot have this magnitude of a disaster and not allow the world to come in and help," Hirsch said. "It´s impossible and they will have more people dying if they don´t deal with this quickly." He estimated that already between 60,000 and 100,000 have died as a result of the storm and its aftermath. Two million people have been left homeless.

World Vision is a $2 billion-a-year global partnership and nonprofit organization that operates in some 116 countries. Last year, the Christian relief organization provided aid to 100 million people. World Vision has been in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, for the past 40 years, primarily providing relief for children. But Hirsch also told Brenau´s graduates of some of the organization´s other work, which ranges from helping children living in sewers in Outer Mongolia to working with homeless children in Chicago.

Although he said that the diplomas and degrees they represent might help graduates launch careers, get better jobs or increase their earn power, he also urged the graduates to consider the greater responsibilities those degrees conferred on individuals.

"I say to you today that you are going to have to look beyond our shores and engage in these significant issues throughout the world," Hirsch said. "If you leave here today and become isolationists and do not pay attention to this world, first of all, it is going to be a tragedy for this great country. The second issue is that it will be a tragedy for you because you will not experience the richness and the joy of being in company of those who are different from us, or the different language or the richness of culture they bring to us."

Hirsch said one of World Vision´s goals is to make education available to every female child on the planet. It is a statistical certainty, he explained, that increasing education among women in some regions has reduced susceptibility to HIV infection, decreased infant mortality rates and brought peace and stability to communities. He added that he agreed with the president of the World Bank who told him that if "we educate every girl in the world and we will have no need for weapons anymore."

Brenau University includes one of only 53 women´s colleges remaining in the United States. But about 80 percent of those in Brenau University´s coeducational programs on satellite campuses around Georgia and online are women. It is one of only 17 institutions in the United States that has Afghan women among its students, a significant fact against Hirsch´s report of a resurgence of the influence of the female-repressive Taliban in Afghanistan.

"Every girl has the right of education in this world," Hirsch said. "Every girl should have the right to determine when she should get married. No girl should be forced to be married at 12 or 14 years of age. And every girl and boy in this world should have freedom of education, freedom of determination of their future. That is a basic right, and all of us in this country need to stand up for that."

At this year´s commencement, Brenau University awarded 468 graduate diplomas and 285 graduate degrees. Fifteen graduates received bachelors and masters of sciences degrees in occupational therapy. The university also awarded its first fifth-year certificate in opera performance to lyric soprano Cassandra Gabrell of Snellville, Ga.

"Although we are justly proud of the record-breaking numbers of degrees and diplomas, we are even prouder of the people who will receive them," said Brenau President Ed Schrader. "The 2008 class will be tomorrow´s leaders in business, healthcare, education, the arts and many other professions and, in large measure, part of who they are and what they will become will trace back to the quality of education they received at Brenau."

Following a recent action by the university´s board of trustees to double enrollments in the next 15 years, the number of degrees Brenau awards each year will continue to increase. Schrader said the trustees´ approval of the framework for transforming the university into the premier private liberal arts institution in the Southeast also means that the university soon will begin conferring clinical and professional specialty doctorates and other advanced degrees.

The basic foundation of Brenau´s strategic plan is to become an internationally recognized academic leader in the southeastern United States with establishment of several doctoral degree programs and expansion of many existing graduate degree programs. The plan envisions doubling enrollment at the university to about 5,000 students by 2025 through the addition of new graduate and undergraduate degree programs; shortening the path for students between college admission and advanced graduate degrees; and enriching cross-discipline curriculum based on four "portals of learning" that will become the model for liberal arts education in the future.

Honorees in Brenau University´s 129th commencement completed their studies in all three of the university´s divisions - the Women´s College, the Online College and the Weekend and Evening College with operations in Gainesville, Atlanta, Augusta and Kings Bay.

About 15 percent of those who will receive diplomas at the Brenau commencement, 112 total, completed their studies through the Online College, which has grown steadily since the first 29 received diplomas in the 2002-03 academic year.

One is Camerata Matchett, of Sneads Ferry, N.C. wife of U.S. Marine Sgt. Sibley Matchett III, who has completed two tours in Iraq, and the mother of three children. She´d attended Evening and Weekend classes on the Kings Bay campus, but realized after moving to North Carolina that she was one course shy of graduation, so she took it online. Now she is working online toward an M.B.A. in healthcare management.

Schrader said selecting Hirsch as a commencement speaker was "a perfect choice for Brenau" because of the university´s emphasis on preparing students for extraordinary roles in global citizenship. "It is rare to stand in the presence of someone who has caused so much good in the world."

Prior to his 1996 appointment as international president for the relief organization, Hirsch served World Vision as chief operating officer, vice president for development and vice president for relief operations. He has worked in the United States, Africa and Europe and visited virtually all of the 98 nations in which World Vision works. He joined the organization in 1976.