Knight, Schmidt commencement speakers

Eighty candidates are expected to earn their master’s degrees.

The Undergraduate Commencement ceremony will be Saturday at 10 a.m. in the Chicoine Center. Chadron native and 2016 Distinguished Young Alumni Award recipient Trevor Schmidt, an attorney living in North Carolina, will be the speaker. Two hundred forty-two candidates are expected to earn their bachelor’s degrees.

Both events can be viewed on CSC Live.

Dr. Robert Knight

As a teenager growing up in San Diego, just a 15-minute drive from Mexico,

Dr. Robert Knight became curious about the systems of government that gave rise to the stark differences in living conditions he observed on occasional visits across the border.

That curiosity led Knight, a Professor at Chadron State College who is retiring in May, , to study political science at San Diego State University where he graduated in 1972. He went on to earn a master’s degree in the subject from the University of California Davis a short while later.

Knight’s master’s degree qualified him for political science teaching jobs in community colleges in the San Diego area and he found he enjoyed teaching.

But a doctorate was required to fulfill his goal of teaching in a four-year institution, so he enrolled in graduate school at Claremont Graduate University.

Combining studies with part-time teaching work at several colleges in the region was difficult, Knight said.

“I was commuting from one institution to another,” he said. “I didn’t have time for anything else. I was working constantly.”

After completing his PhD, Knight took the post at Chadron State in 2008. Over the past 11 years, he has taught a variety of courses, including introduction to political science, U.S. politics and government, American political thought, politics and religion, and international politics.

“Pretty much the gamut of political science courses,” he said. “Teaching at an institution like this, you have to basically cover everything.”

Comparative legislative politics, with a focus on the legislative process in Mexico, is Knight’s specialty and the focus of his research work, but he said teaching a variety of political science courses has been interesting, and perhaps more useful than the hyper specialization required of professors in larger institutions.

“They become so specialized, it becomes esoteric,” Knight said. “Some of the best academics are ones that can draw from other fields and bring it in.”

Getting students interested in the mechanics of government can be a challenge, according to Knight. “I think students tend to be turned off by politics. It’s understandable, but it’s unfortunate,” he said.

To counteract those feelings, Knight said he starts by discussing the essentials of human conduct and explaining why government has to play at least a minimal role in protecting people’s rights and insuring their security.

“You can build from there to what else government can do,” he said. Knight said he has enjoyed his time at CSC.

“I have had great colleagues here in our department that I have worked with. It’s really been a great environment,” he said. “And we have some outstanding students that are really quite sharp and quite dedicated. It’s been really a pleasure to work with a lot of them.”

Knight and his wife, Louise, will be moving back to San Diego where he hopes to continue teaching on a limited basis at one of many higher education institutions.

Trevor Schmidt

Attorney Trevor Schmidt, a Chadron native who lives in Durham, North Carolina, is today’s Commencement speaker.

Schmidt, a 2003 graduate of Chadron State College as a double major in Legal Studies and Physics, received the college’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016. He became a partner with Hutchison PLLC, a firm with more than 20 attorneys that focuses on business formation and corporate governance for start-up and growth companies, in early 2017.

As a partner, Schmidt focuses on customer service, identifying new clients, and overseeing the work of a number of different attorneys.

Schmidt’s work includes protecting the intellectual property of his clients’ companies. He files applications with government agencies to register intellectual property and creates licensing programs to help companies generate revenue from the software or products they have developed. He also prosecutes cases of misappropriated rights and handles intellectual property matters related to the sales or financing of companies.

Before joining Hutchison, he worked for two years at an intellectual property litigation boutique, Wood Jackson PLLC. From 2007-2012, he was with the law firm of Moore & Van Allen doing trademark and patent prosecution, as well as licensing.

He graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 2006. While in law school, he was a staff member of the North Carolina Law Review.

Schmidt said discussions in CSC honors classes taught by Dr. George Griffith and Dr. Deane Tucker provided a solid basis for his advanced legal training. He also has fond memories of studying in London with the late Dr. George Watson and other students.

“I would not be in the position I am today without Dr. Lisette Leesch, Dr. Mike Bogner, and Dr. George Watson. Because of the training I received from them, I started law school months ahead of other students. I am forever indebted to them for their training and mentorship. Even now, having been through law school, the classes I took with them were some of the best law classes I have taken,” Schmidt said.

In addition to coursework, Schmidt gained experience working at the Crites Schaffer Connealy Watson law office as an intern and paralegal.

Schmidt viewed his double major in Physics as a fall back option if he discovered in law school he did not want to become a lawyer.

“That decision, unbeknownst to me at the time, also shaped my future legal career. It turns out that in order to become a registered patent attorney you have to have an undergraduate degree in science. I loved math and physics, in no small part due to the teaching and mentoring of the late, great Phil Cary, who was my high school math teacher before coming to teach at CSC,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt is married to CSC alumna Anna Henkens, also a Chadron native. They have two daughters, Caris and Tierney, and recently adopted their foster son, Logan, who is 20 months old.

After law school, the Schmidts founded the Love Care Centre Charitable Trust to continue efforts to support the Love Care Centre orphanage in Kanchipuram, India, where they worked for two months after Trevor’s graduation from law school.