Centre grad studies journalism at Harvard

RELEASED: May 15, 2008

DANVILLE, KY—When William Gray '07 was applying to graduate schools his senior year of college, Harvard was his only choice. Halfway through his senior year, he asked himself, "What if Harvard doesn't work out?" Like many Centre grads who apply to top-notch graduate programs across the country, Gray was accepted into his first-choice school and is flourishing. He currently is finishing his first year in pursuit of a master's degree in journalism.

"The key to my education in general has always been thinking outside of the box," Gray says. "The people I've met always recommend looking at the problem from three or four angles."

Gray says that once he'd been accepted to Harvard there was no real consideration in his mind that he wouldn't be able to handle it.

"I embraced the challenge because I'd graduated from McCallie (a private high school in Chattanooga, Tenn.) and Centre," he says. At Centre, Gray majored in English and minored in creative writing.

"I knew coming into Centre that I wanted to study English, and I came out with an English degree," he says. Gray credits some of his success to Dr. Mark Lucas, Alfred P. and Katherine B. Jobson Professor of English, who taught him to read materials multiple times and to put his "nose to the grindstone."

Gray also credits his success to a course on Ralph Waldo Emerson taught by Dr. Dan Manheim, H.W. Stodghill, Jr. and Adele Stodghill Professor of English. Manheim took the class on a trip to Concord, Mass., to the homes of Emerson and other American literary greats.

Gray says that during the Emerson course, he "started taking a more analytical look at literature and essays."

For a class at Harvard, Gray recently wrote a profile on Dr. Beau Weston, National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Sociology.

"The inspiration for Beau Weston was choosing a professor that we felt was doing something out of the ordinary," Gray explains. "I remembered a lot from Weston's class. I remembered that he had a unique approach to teaching, and I also remembered that I didn't have to agree with the things he said or discussed but that he accepted our opinions regardless."

Gray continues: "I knew dozens of students who loved his classes, changed majors for him, and I knew how he structured his most popular class. But I didn't know that much about him, and that was the real motivation, to get to know this professor and where he came from."

Click here to read Gray's article on Professor Beau Weston.

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Consumers Digest ranks Centre No. 1 in educational value among all U.S. liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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