The Challenges Begin for UCI’s Class of ’96

Gretchen Andes used to sit on her father’s lap as he reached around her to work on his computer. As she grew older, Andes helped him mold information bytes into working programs.

The love for her father and his work led Andes to pursue a degree in computer science, which was awarded to the 22-year-old on Saturday.

And once more, her father was there to put his arms around her.

“I’m just ecstatic about this,” said David Andes, beaming with an ear-to-ear smile as relatives snapped photos of him and his daughter.

“I remember when she used to program with me. . . . Now she’s going on to do consulting” for Fortune 500 firms, he said. “I’m very proud of her.”

Gretchen Andes was among some 3,700 students graduating in UC Irvine’s 31st commencement amid flowers, balloons, cheers and a reflection on the future.

At the Bren Events Center, Nobel laureate Mario Molina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discussedthe environmental state of the Earth in a speech laden with statistics on world population, biological extinction and chemical pollution.

Molina, who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry last year with UCI’s F. Sherwood Rowland for research about the ozone layer, encouraged students to use their knowledge not only to benefit themselves, but also the world.

“The next three decades are likely to be the most stressful mankind will experience,” Molina said. “And it will get worse.

“This is one of the greatest challenges we face in natural sciences,” he said.

As she sat listening to Molina, Linda Schechinger, 30, who received her doctorate in chemistry, thought about her plans to help change the future.

“I think science education is the key,” said Schechinger, who is planning to do a postdoctoral stint overseas before returning to Orange County to teach in a community college, where her interest in chemistry was spawned.

Schechinger graduated from Cerritos High School and received her undergraduate degree from Cal State Long Beach. One of her most memorable college experiences came at Cypress College, where a professor showed Schechinger “all the things you could do with chemistry.”

“He was so excited about it and he made me excited about it,” she said. “That’s what I want to do for other students.”

While Schechinger had her teacher, Scott Steiner had his father.

Steiner, the 22-year-old son of Orange County Supervisor William G. Steiner, said his childhood was spent in a “very political” environment, prompting him to pursue a degree in political science, which he received Saturday.

In a commencement address for the School of Social Sciences, Scott Steiner talked about such societal ills as poverty, illiteracy and discrimination, and rallied his fellow students to accept the “responsibility of civic engagement.”

“Trite but true, today is about transition and, hopefully, transformation,” Steiner said. “Life changes today for us all.”

The sunny day and beautiful weather wasn’t lost on William R. Schonfeld, dean of the School of Social Sciences, who began his speech at Aldrich Park by asking students: “Why are we all dressed in black robes?”

Schonfeld then spoke of the essence of the university and its origins in medieval Europe, including a tradition in Italy where students “elected their teachers and fired them.” Several graduates cheered that idea.

Another student introduced the crowd to a blue-and-white beach ball, which floated in a sea of black caps and gold tassels.

When their names were called, graduates heard their friends and relatives scream encouragement and sound loud horns. Some former students danced on the stage and others punched the air with their fist in victory. Toward the end of the commencement, the audience descended upon the new graduates, who hugged them and yelled and threw their caps in the air.

Some students painted smiling faces on the top of their caps, while others applied the name of their sorority or fraternity. One computer science graduate designed his cap to look like a floppy disk.

Amid the celebration was also an unwillingness to let go of the friends and teachers who acted almost as war buddies through the struggles of academic life.

Gretchen Andes had as her buddy Kelly Quiggle, 27, who also received a bachelor’s degree in computer science and planned to remain at UCI to pursue graduate work. The pair met four years ago and began a support group for women in computer science, a field dominated by men.

The two women took many classes together and spent night after night in computer labs helping each other write programs.

“We really feed off of each other’s knowledge,” Quiggle said. “We’ve been studying together for so long that we have figured out what works for us.”