The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

Faculties, families and friends gathered at three Rhode Island universities yesterday to see their graduates off, with calls for them not just to succeed in the world, but to change it.

From Providence College’s commencement in the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, Providence, to Salve Regina University’s ceremony on the oceanfront campus in Newport, to the University of Rhode Island’s graduation in Kingston , speakers spoke of the transforming power of education.

PC’s commencement speaker, Army Maj. Michael P. Manning (Class of 1997) told the graduates that their diplomas were not merely a reward for a job well done, but an obligation to use the education they represented.

“I am not standing up here advocating service in the armed forces or a vocation as a member of the clergy,” Manning said. “Rather, I commit to you that you have all been called to serve in some capacity in whatever role that you ultimately decide to assume in life. I translate service to mean giving back.”

At least one PC graduate was already following that call. Nancy Andrade, of Seekonk, a daughter of Portuguese immigrants, was one of the first class of Providence College graduates with a four-year degree in the school’s new global studies major. She said the program fit into her view of the world as in increasingly interconnected place.

“It’s just that everything is really integrated,” Andrade said. “As consumers, as citizens. It’s in the clothes we wear, the food we buy. The label may say made in Cambodia, but a person made this, and we don’t know the conditions they were made under.”

“Being aware of the differences and similarities between people in this world allows us to be better global citizens,” she said of the academic major. “It is important to learn that the American way is not the only way to do things; other nations have their own ways which we can learn and use to improve our own lives.”

For her thesis, Andrade worked with a radio network in Guatemala, finding out what kinds of diseases and health conditions the stations’ listeners suffered. She researched the problems, came up with a list of 35 health problems and ways to deal with them and then helped produce Spanish-language programming — she doubled-majored in Spanish — the stations could broadcast that would give people in those impoverished areas ways they could help themselves.

“It’s not like a handout,” she said of the idea behind the work the program required. “You have to do something with lasting impact on the community.”

Andrade plans to work in Nicaragua and Peru with the Foundation for Sustainable Development. Rather than export American technology, she said, she wants to export American compassion, working with local groups that will help with village-based health programs and an organization that is trying to combat domestic violence.

She said the value of a global-studies background is that she can communicate her ideas in a way that will fit with the culture.

“I’m not going in there and telling them what to do,” she said. “I’m working with the community.”

SALVE REGINA University’s Class of 2008 gathered in tents on the oceanfront lawn of McAuley Hall. The commencement speaker, Alan G. Hassenfeld, chairman and former chief executive officer of Hasbro Inc., urged Salve graduates to be creative and generous and “help make a better world for children.”

“We can never truly enrich ourselves unless we enrich others,” Hassenfeld said. “Dare to dream with me of a world of caring and sharing.”

Americans are losing their sense of personal responsibility, Hassenfeld said, are unwilling to blame their own driving if they cause an accident, or their lack of work ethic if they lose a job. Hassenfeld urged Salve’s 626 graduates to act responsibly and charitably.

“You are as unlimited as your imagination,” he said.

The commencement capped a busy four years for graduate Ian Kerr, of Westminster, Mass., who’s known on campus for being compassionate and generous.

Kerr said attending the Catholic university has inspired him to deepen his faith and do more to help others.

“I really got involved,” Kerr said. “It’s really changed me. The Salve mission is really to learn, but also to help others in need. I pretty much say yes to everything asked of me.”

Kerr served as a Eucharistic minister at weekly Masses in the campus chapel, and he led mission trips to hospitals and homeless shelters in Camden, N.J., and to Appalachia, where students helped build houses for the needy. This summer, Kerr will attend World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, a celebration of Catholicism.

Kerr, who majored in anthropology and cultural and historic preservation, said he picked Salve Regina in part because of its historic setting.

“Newport is really like a living laboratory,” Kerr said. “There’s a lot of historic buildings. It really made sense for me to come to Newport to study.”

Kerr spent two summers participating in archaeological digs in the city, and he looked to his own campus for the subject of his senior thesis: a dig near Ochre Court to learn about a 19th-century building that once sat on the oceanfront property.

Kerr said his studies have broadened his mind.

“With anthropology, you have to remain objective and not judge other cultures,” he said. “You have to kind of look at things with a clean slate and try to understand them. I think Salve helped me be more aware of other people and more appreciative of their cultures.”

Kerr was awarded a full scholarship to Western Michigan University, where he will pursue graduate studies in archaeology.

AT URI, one graduate’s life was already a lesson in the kind of work others were called to.

Caine L. Thompson, 22, of Providence, did more than meet his own personal goal with yesterday’s commencement. He also fortified the mission of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education, a 10-year-old program that provides scholarships to at-risk students to attend a private or parochial school of their choice.

While dozens have graduated from high school by way of the program, Thompson is its first college graduate.

The mission of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education, founded in 1997 by Brown University physicians Timothy Flanigan and Kevin Vigilante, is “to provide educational opportunities and mentoring to children of currently and formerly incarcerated parents.”

Thompson, the middle child of five siblings, was attending a public elementary school in Providence when his mother, Loretta Brown, heard about Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education from her doctor.

The program allowed her son to attend Holy Name School, in Providence, which meant he had to catch a 6:15 a.m. bus and wear a school uniform.

“It was an abrupt transition,” Thompson recalled. “The first year was rocky.”

Soon after, he met the man who would spend the next decade as his mentor, lawyer Eugene G. Bernardo II, of South Kingstown. Bernardo volunteered to spend time with Thompson. He would go over spelling words with him, and later help him prepare to take SATs. Sometimes they attended hockey games, or went to restaurants. Caine, in turn, introduced Bernardo to comic books and teenage slang.

“I used to be taller than him,” Bernardo joked, as they looked back upon their years together in what started out as a mentorship and ended up, Bernardo said, “as a friendship.”

“I would pretty much provide a support system for him,” Bernardo said, shortly before the graduation ceremony started yesterday, his eyes displaying his pride. “He’s an exceptional young man.”

“If I hadn’t been in the program, I probably would have been a different person,” Thompson said. “Had I not been given such support, who knows?”

Thompson graduated from La Salle Academy, and entered URI as a communications studies and film studies major and said he will explore career avenues this summer while continuing to work at American Automobile Association of Southern New England.

“I’m so excited,” said Thompson’s mother of the degree about to be bestowed upon her son. “Every time I think about it I want to cry.”

mwims@projo.com