Clifton “Cliff ” Burrell graduated from Delaware State College in 1987 with a degree in English. Fun Fact: DSC did not have a mass communications department when he was a student, so he had to major in English with a concentration in journalism. Cliff was involved in various campus organizations like Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity’s Gamma Upsilon chapter, the Student Government Association, Dorm Council, and he even wrote for the Hornet Newspaper as the sports writer and editor. “It was a lot of fun,” he says of his time with the paper. When asked about his fondest memory from his time at DSC, he says that he reminisces about his years with his best friends Robert Saunders and Alan Moses and the fun they had. They have been friends since they started DSC, and they still continue to be friends after all these years.

How did they manage that?

Well, Burrell took to Facebook five years ago to keep in touch with them as well as all the other DSC alumni. He and the other alumni who started the page found that the alumni events the university held, especially Homecoming events, were more “geared towards either the younger or older alum and not us in the middle,” he explained of the dilemma with those within his year of graduating. Along with fellow alums, Burrell helped to coordinate the page. It’s called ‘Friends Forever DSU’ and it connects the alumni who have a Facebook page and keeps them informed of any alumni events that are happening at their Alma mater.

On a personal note, Burrell has been married for 24 wonderful years with two sons who are 20 and 16 respectively. He has been working since 2002 for the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland as an Intelligence Analyst. It is his job to analyze and profile criminal activity, “[It’s] a lot of fun in what I do,” Burrell states. One of the larger cases that he was involved in was the “Beltway Sniper” case in 2003. There was a perpetrator that would drive around and randomly kill people, and Burrell had a hand in solving that case. That position is remarkable considering he graduated from “that black school.”

This is what Delaware State University is about. It molds its students into successes just like Cliff who will later come back to the school and give back to the place that afforded them the opportunities to be successful, and to those who are behind them. Burrell expresses interest in maybe working for DSU’s Alumni Association one day because he is a dedicated alumnus. He frequently comes to the Homecoming events to support the university and is an active participant on the ‘Friends Forever DSU’ page. If this is him now, imagine if he does get to work for the Alumni Association?