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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 12/20/06 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
December 15, 2006 UWGB 'success story' ends with big speech Mexico native came long way to deliver commencement address By Kelly McBride
When the shots were taken six years ago, Bacelis needed a translator.
She was able to hold only a basic conversation in her non-native tongue, and the now-22-year-old was enrolled in English as a Second Language classes at Green Bay East High School.
Today, it's a different story. Bacelis, a native of Mexico, speaks in fluent, articulate English. The translator is gone and in a matter of days she'll be a college graduate.
"Wow, it's encouraging," she said Thursday, paging through newspapers from 2000 and 2001, when she was featured in a series of stories in the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "I guess for anybody."
On Saturday, Bacelis will graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay with majors in biology and environmental science. She'll address more than 350 of her classmates at commencement — an honor that still has Bacelis pinching herself.
"This last semester, my sister graduated," she recalled. "Just hearing the other students speak, I thought, how do they get to be up there? These are great students."
Of course, plenty of UWGB faculty members think Bacelis can count herself among those great students. Diana Borrero-Lowe, coordinator of UWGB's American Intercultural Center, nominated Bacelis for the commencement speaker honor.
"She's very brilliant. She's very curious," said Borrero-Lowe. "She's open to all kinds of new discoveries. When she gets curious about something, she just tries to follow it. ... and I think that's what's helped her so much with the language."
There were times, Bacelis admits, when she thought English fluency was an elusive dream. She remembers writing a paper about endangered marine mammals, only to have it returned full of comments about poor structure and grammar.
But one day in 2003, it just clicked.
"I had to do this presentation for a research project through the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity," she said. "... I had to present and I guess there I realized — I can actually do this."
She's been doing it ever since — attending school, conducting research, participating in myriad campus activities and, this semester, working as an intern at Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary. She has yet to secure a job after graduation, but an environmental career and graduate school are likely next steps.
"She's really been a success story for the university," said Mike Draney, associate professor in natural and applied sciences at UWGB. "And particularly, we take pride in her involvement in the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity. She's been sort of a poster child for what success (is)."
To bolster their children's academic careers, Bacelis' parents have resettled in Green Bay. They'll be there, along with older sister Patricia, when she gives the commencement address Saturday.
"It's going to be an opportunity just to thank the people that have been there through the years," Bacelis said. "And to encourage other students to broaden their horizons and give back once you're done here at school — and think of what they will be doing in a few years from today."
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