Jimmy Myers/St. Joseph News-Press

Jenny Harrison adjusted her cap at Bearcat Arena on Saturday just prior to the afternoon commencement ceremony. She led an organization on campus that, over the course of a school year, raised more than $80,000 for St. Jude’s Hospital.

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MARYVILLE, Mo. — Jenny Harrison’s college pal was only half joking when he said people enjoy giving her money.

Andy Horine, a fellow pre-professional zoology major, said Ms. Harrison’s commitment to spreading the word about Up ‘til Dawn, an organization that raises money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, is intense.

Mr. Horine, Ms. Harrison and about 250 others participated in Northwest Missouri State University’s afternoon commencement ceremony on Saturday.

“Sometimes, she would stand up in front of the class before the professor came in,” he said of her attempts to get students to attend fundraising events.

And that commitment paid off. As Northwest’s executive director of Up ‘til Dawn, Ms. Harrison helped raise $80,500 in the course of one school year. Perhaps an equally astonishing feat is that she and seven board members

recruited 600 students to help raise funds.

Ms. Harrison was a board member last year (and assisted in raising $50,000), but a trip to the hospital over the summer and the interaction she had with the kids helped fuel her intensity.

“It costs a million dollars a day to run the hospital,” she said, explaining her approach to potential donors. “Just think how much you can help us help them. ... You have to do this. If you don’t do this, they can’t help.”

Ms. Harrison graduated from Mid-Buchanan High School in 2003. She vividly remembers stepping into her first big lecture hall as a freshman at Northwest. But that’s behind her now as she waits for one of the 40 applications she sent out to pharmacy and microbiology laboratory companies to fall into the right hands.

A fan of the Kansas City Chiefs football team, it was appropriate that her graduation speaker was none other than Carl Peterson, the Chiefs’ CEO.

Mr. Peterson acknowledged the Bearcats successful football season and running back Xavier Omon being drafted into the NFL. He waxed for 25 minutes over the usual commencement fodder but ended with: “I hope I don’t offend anyone when I say, ‘Go Chiefs and go Bearcats!’”

Jimmy Myers can be reached

at jimmym@npgco.com.