The Clock & Seal™ award banquet, sponsored by Burning Spear, is a core tradition included in Homecoming weekend festivities. Since its inception in 1995, Clock & Seal™ has hosted chief names in various spheres of leadership, as well as icons of Seminole lore. Attended by a vibrant mix of current and past campus leaders, FSU faculty, staff and administration, Clock & Seal™ has become the must-have ticket for every Seminole fan.

Members of the 2009 Clock & Seal™ committee are proud to announce that former Rhodes Scholar and Burning Spear Alumnus Garrett Johnson will be the keynote speaker at the 15th Annual Clock & Seal™ dinner. Garrett Johnson focused much of his academic energy on United States-Haitian relations. Garrett parlayed that interest into a position with Florida Governor Jeb Bush's office, helping to analyze and implement changing government policies towards Haiti. Garrett worked as Special Assistant to the Governor and Chief of Staff to help implement the recommendations he helped formulate during his time in the Governor's Haiti Advisory Group.

An ESPN The Magazine Academic and NCAA All-American in Track and Field, Garrett ranked among top twenty-five shot put throwers in the world in 2005, and established the ACC Indoor Shot Put Record and FSU Indoor and Outdoor Shot Put Records before winning the NCAA Indoor Shot Put Track and field National Championships in 2006. Garrett is the former vice-chair of the Atlantic Coast Conference Student-Athlete Advisory Council, where he was responsible for representing the interests of 7,600 student-athletes within the institutional, conference and national administrative levels of governance. As president of the FSU Student-Athlete Advisory Council, Garrett led a yearlong campaign that resulted in over 4,500 student-athlete community service hours and he himself traveled to Haiti with the Haiti Hope Foundation to distribute food and medical supplies to areas destroyed by floods and mudslides. This campaign also donated musical instruments to Compassion Orphanage and to a music school for children. Garrett was also awarded a grant to conduct field research and critical analysis of the economic and social ramifications of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Rwanda.

After finishing his Rhodes studies in Oxford, Garrett returned to the U.S. and relocated to Washington, D.C., where he is working with the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations as staff under the purview of Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), the most senior Republican in the U.S. Senate.