Ray Hinojosa couldn't afford college, so he joined the U.S. Army. That choice — made by a working-class, first-generation Mexican-American kid from Muskegon — set in motion a career spanning two graduate degrees, a tenured professorship at a research university, a YouTube sociology series with 35 million views and more than $5 million in federal research grants. Hinojosa last month became Ferris State University's director of Graduate Studies and a professor of Sociology, returning to West Michigan to do it.