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Gillaine Warne received an honorary
Doctor of Humanities during the ceremony.
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GREENVILLE, S.C.—The 2011-12 school year at Furman University officially got under way with an opening convocation Thursday, Sept. 1 in McAlister Auditorium.
Gillaine Warne, founder of the Partners in Agriculture program in Haiti as part of the mission work of Christ Church Episcopal in Greenville, delivered the convocation address. She also received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree, the university’s highest honor.
Furman president Rod Smolla presided as the university welcomed the Class of 2015 to campus. John Beckford, vice president for academic affairs and dean, and Theodore Hess, president of the Student Government Association, also spoke.
Glen Adkins, a 1977 Furman graduate and former minister of music at First Baptist Church of Greenville, received the Richard Furman Baptist Heritage Award. The award recognizes a Furman graduate who reflects Baptist ideals by thinking critically, living compassionately and making life-changing commitments.
Biographical information about Warne and Adkins is below.
Gillaine Warne—An Australian agronomist now living in Greenville, Warne provides hope and opportunity to residents of Haiti whose lives have been ravaged by natural and man-made disasters. As part of the extensive mission work of Christ Church Episcopal in Greenville, she founded the Partners in Agriculture program near Cange, a village in the Central Plateau of Haiti. This program, which started with a simple hillside garden, has become a thriving multi-farm complex. One of the most impoverished areas of Haiti, the Central Plateau had for more than a century been deforested and unable to feed its people adequately. Alongside her husband Charles, and with the help of Christ Church parishioners and Zammi Lasante, the Haitian partner of Partners in Health, she planted trees for re-forestation, grew crops to be used as food medication for severely malnourished children, and started a small transformation factory for these products. She began a family assistance program to teach about sustainable agriculture, nutrition, community awareness and environmental responsibility, 6and to help restore hope and dignity to the region. The families involved now number more than 1,500, and the program touches the lives of their more than 15,000 dependents. To meet the need to educate the youth of the region, an agriculture/trade school is being built. There, correct agricultural practices and innovative construction will be taught, thus ensuring that young people will be able to work, be independent and contribute to the rebuilding of their country. All these efforts instill in the people in and around Cange a sense of accomplishment and responsibility for their own well-being and that of their neighbors. She insists on discipline and commitment, and the people of Haiti respond in kind.
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Glen Adkins
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Glen Cleveland Adkins—A 1977 cum laude graduate of Furman, Adkins has distinguished himself through dedicated work, critical thinking, outstanding service and a life of compassionate commitment. After graduating from Furman with a Bachelor of Music Degree, he earned Master of Church Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. A consummate musician and choir director, he has served congregations in the Southeast for more than 33 years, and choirs under his direction have performed for the National Choral Directors Association divisional and national conventions. He has also been an adjunct professor at various institutions of higher learning, including Furman, and at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. In 2007, at the peak of his professional career, he resigned his position as minister of music at First Baptist Church in Greenville to join his wife, Clista, as a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionary to the Gandhi School in Pecs, Hungary, where they worked with the heavily persecuted Roma gypsies. During their three years in Hungary they taught English and established a choir at the school, all the while helping many Roma students pursue their dreams of higher education. Now back in the States, he serves as minister of worship, music and fine arts at Emerywood Baptist Church in High Point, North Carolina.