Joseph Vincent Paterno

1926-2012

 

This has been an emotional weekend for everyone here in the Valley. Former PSU player, current Oakland Raider, and Schreyer Scholar Stefen Wisniewski spoke eloquently at the vigil last night about the humanity of Coach Paterno, that he was, like all of us, a human who did things requiring forgiveness and redemption, but he was also a man who provided incredibly positive influence in the lives of thousands.

 

The circumstances of the last few months are not what anyone would have wanted, but I do not believe they will define his career and certainly not his life. Coach often said he lived a full, happy life doing what he loved best with a wonderful family and friends. He transformed the lives of thousands of young men for the better. He reminded us all to be gracious in defeat and when we are successful, to act like we have been there before and will be there again. That, I am convinced, will be his legacy.

At Mr. Schreyer’s funeral Joe said Bill was like a brother to him and that his passing marked the end of a great era. I am sure Mr. Schreyer would say the same.

This evening’s 9 pm mass in the worship hall at Pasquerilla Spiritual Center will be offered for Mr. Schreyer and I am sure Coach Paterno will be remembered as well.

“May light perpetual shine upon him.”

Joe Paterno 1926-2012

 

Where do we go from here? Remembering the past, transforming the future

As I write this it is Thursday morning, November 10, 2011, six days after the Attorney General released the presentment in the Sandusky case and less than a day since President Spanier and Coach Paterno have been removed from their positions. These last days have filled us all with an incredible array of emotions that have been at times overwhelming. As a community we are grieving; we are grieving many things.

First and foremost, we grieve for the victims of abuse and their families. As a father of young children, I felt revulsion and horror as I read the presentment. The possibility that any of us in any way might have contributed to such acts is devastating. I continue to pray for the victims and their families even as we wait for the justice system to take its course. The Board of Trustees has announced that a Special Committee will be formed to not only investigate what has happened in the past but also to ensure that it never happens again.

We also grieve for ourselves. The idea that someone in our community could have perpetrated such acts overwhelms us. People who have successfully led our community for decades are no longer present. It is understandable that we feel loss and disbelief.

We are saddened by the way in which the world now seems to view Penn State. We have been “Penn State Proud” of our institution, our integrity, and our honor. Now, we are forced to ask ourselves if all of that may be lost. Last month a 99-year-old distinguished alumnus of Penn State was addressing a group of Schreyer Scholars and concluded his remarks with the following prescient comment: “You will spend your whole life building your reputation, but it can take only a moment for it to be destroyed.”

So now we come together to grieve, to apologize, to investigate ourselves, to heal, and to build a future that is better for not just the Nittany Nation, but all nations.

Penn State remains what it has always been: an amazing institution with tremendous foundations in honest and integrity. We are more than any single individual or small group. We are thousands of faculty and staff, tens of thousands of students, and hundreds of thousands of alumni.

We need only think of THON, not just to be proud of Penn State, but to see the path forward. The Four Diamonds Fund was started in 1977 through the tragic loss of one couple’s child to cancer. Charles and Irma Millard used their loss to inspire them and others to raise awareness and support of pediatric cancer. In the years since combining with the Penn State Dance Marathon, tens of millions of dollars have been raised. A tragedy has become an agent of healing and Penn Staters have made that possible.

There is a long road ahead for our community and it will be difficult, but I am confident in our future. Already our students are seeking to make this tragic situation one of hope. Blue is not only one of the colors of Penn State, but also the symbol for the campaign to stop child abuse. They are calling for Saturday’s game to be a “Blue Out,” not simply as a sign of support of the university, but more importantly a statement to the innocents who have been harmed.

This is why I have hope, confidence and pride in Penn State.

 

This morning Penn State photographer (and Vespa driver) Steve Williams shared the link to a series of 1-Minute Master Classes from Steve McCurry available on Phaidon’s site. McCurry is a Penn State graduate and captured perhaps the most famous photograph of the 20th century: Afghan Girl. I encourage you to go and take the few minutes necessary to watch these “Master Classes” with McCurry. They are simple, practical tips for anyone who wants to get beyond the simple point-and-shoot stage. The most important tip: be intentional. Go with the intent of taking pictures and allow yourself to absorb your surrounding and be aware of it all.

I also wanted to update you all on my own photography experience this fall. It has been almost 2 months since I received my birthday present, a Nikon D7000. I absolutely love it and, thanks to shooting my sons soccer games in high frame-rate mode, have taken over 6,000 pictures already. You can see a sample of my photos on flickr. I have created the set “D7000” for all of these pictures. Just this Monday, in the few hours in the early morning before the clouds rolled in, I was able to catch a few shots of Old Main that I am fairly pleased with.

In the one below the challenge was to have the nice bright sun on the columns without blowing out (making too bright) the sky. This has been the task of the last two months: play with the camera’s settings and learn how to get the most out of it. In this case making sure that the exposure is set based upon the “center weight” of the picture.

A little unexpected tip I picked up: read the manual before you ever touch the camera. My gift arrived a week before my birthday and my wife would not let me open it until the day of my natal celebration (the nerve!). I was, however, able to download the manual and read it on the iPad for the week before I started shooting away. The result was that I was keen to try all the different features I had read about in the manual. I think that had I not done that I would have simply started shooting with the camera since it is so easy to use in Auto mode, thus missing the incredible potential of this “prosumer” camera.

In my second shot below, “Old Main Bell,” I didn’t quite get the foreground as light as I wanted in the camera. The solution? Use “dodging” in Aperture to lighten just the foreground. In addition to the new camera, learning how to better use Aperture was also on my “to-do” list this summer. It was wonderful to discover that in Aperture (and many other apps, I am sure) I could easily dodge and burn, making just certain areas of the picture lighter or darker respectively. While it is always best to get it right in the camera if you can, post processing is now a LOT easier and again, taking a little bit of time to read the manuals or watch tutorials can really pay off.

 

Starting this year we are asking all PLA students to maintain a separate “blog” (really just tagging blog posts with the word “passion”) about something they are passionate about. In most cases for our students we expect this to be about their major or what they hope or intend to do with their lives. Those interested in a career in medicine might blog about scientific research, healthcare costs, or questions about end of life choices.

Of course our interests/majors/life plans change along the way so while we are to stay focused on that one topic (healthcare, engineering, security) if one decides that they are not really that passionate about a particular field or topic they simply write a blog post explaining why they have changed their focus and a bit introducing their new “passion blog.”

Now I will immediately make an exception of myself. I am passionate about my role in higher education as dean of the Schreyer Honors College and as a scholar of ancient Hebrew and Jewish literature. But I already have two blogs for those topics (not including this one): Engage and Targuman. So I am going to go more of the “hobby” route with my passion blog and talk about photography.

Why photography?

I have lots of things that I am interested in and hobbies (if you will) that I have picked up over the years: music, both listening and playing guitar, technology, swimming, and of course my family is not a hobby but is something I am passionate about which takes up a lot of my time. Last summer my wife and I were in Helsinki Finland for a conference. While there I had time to think about the fact that I needed something to do outside of my normal research and work. I had considered taking guitar lessons or even tap dancing (don’t laugh! Just try and tell me these guys aren’t athletes!) but in all these cases I knew my travel schedule would make a mess of any lesson plan.

Photography, on the other hand, was something that I have loved since I was fairly young. My brother and I have been taking pictures since we were in 4-H and we used to shoot for newspapers and I even did a few weddings. When I went into graduate school film and processing was just too expensive to keep up (we had had a black and white darkroom in our basement growing up) and when digital cameras started coming out they simply were too expensive. A decade ago that began to change and after I arrived in State College I was given my first digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera as a present, a Sony Alpha A100. For the last several years I have always had a camera with me, especially now that the iPhone has a decent camera.

I realized then that I should get serious about my photography. Much of what I had learned in terms of technique and technology was 30 years old and I frankly had forgotten most of the technique part. I began reading Popular Photography again and, as it happened, one of my close friends and the father of my son’s best friend is an avid photographer as well. He is a Nikon man and when it came time for my new camera he persuaded me to move over…to a Nikon D7000.¹

I remain passionate about my job and my research, but here I will share with you about photography. I hope you find it interesting and in some way informative. If you are interested in my photos you might start with “Some of my favorites” on my flickr account.

 

1. Actually many people persuaded me to make the move, not least of which were the two pro photographers who do work for our college. I will likely write a post on why I made the switch at a later time.

I received an email this morning from a former student. I have not read the novel (but have been meaning to for years) and now I have further incentive to do so. We lived for 6 years in the same town where Walker Percy had lived, Covington, LA. A great author, his works are incredibly well known in the south but not so much up north. He is well worth reading. My student’s email:

I’ve been reading Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins lately and came across the following passage about Penn State:

“Here’s the riddle. Father Smith speaks of life. Life is better than death. Frenchmen and Germans now choose life. Frenchmen and Germans at Verdun in 1916 chose death, 500,000 of them. The question is, who has life, the Frenchman now who chooses life and will die for nothing or the Frenchman then who chose to die, for what? I forget.

“Or a Pennsylvanian. This afternoon during the assault on Fort Douaumont, I heard a sportscaster listing the football powers of the coming season. Number one on his list were the Nittany Lions of Penn State. I do not care about the Nittany Lions. But what would it be like to live in Pennsylvania and every day of your life hear sportscasters speak of the prospects of the Nittany Lions?

 ”With my lapsometer I can measure the index of life, life in death and death in life. It is possible, I suspect, to be dying and alive at Verdun and alive and dying as a booster of the Nittany Lions.”

Wikipedia describes the novel

Seems timely. I have already downloaded it on iBooks.

 

2011 Spring Medals Ceremony

Good afternoon Scholars, Parents, Trustees, President Spanier and Provost Erickson, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. Congratulations to you all! Each one of you in this room has played a significant role in getting to this moment.

It is my great pleasure and honor, as dean of the Schreyer Honors College and as our tradition dictates, to address you one final time.

“Graduation is both an ending and a beginning.” “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” “A journey begins with but a single step.” “Your future lies ahead of you.” “The best is yet to come.” “Remember, do what you love and love what you do.” “Keep your eyes on the prize.” “Spread your wings and fly.” “Be true to yourself.” “Always aim for the moon and if you miss you’ll still be among in the stars.” And finally, “Will you succeed? Yes, you will indeed. (98 3/4% guaranteed.)”

For the last few years I have begun this speech with this same silliness. Graduation speeches can be boring; you are ready to get on with the celebrations, so why not inject a little humor into the affair?

This year I contemplated leaving aside what has become my traditional opening. You probably know that Mr. Schreyer passed away in January of this year and I want to spend some time this afternoon remembering not simply his generosity to Penn State, but his legacy that you are fulfilling as Scholars. So I thought perhaps such a frivolous opening would be inappropriate. But then I remembered that Mr. Schreyer would have loved the irreverence. Mr. Schreyer was known for many things and certainly one of them was his tremendous sense of humor.

Mr. Schreyer was, of course, president and CEO of Merrill Lynch and saw the company and all of Wall Street through the dramatic plunge of the stock market in 1987. This was serious business, to say the least, and yet he always maintained that it is “important … never to lose your sense of humor when the going gets tough, or to take yourself too seriously. Take the situation seriously,” he would say, “but not yourself.” Needless to say, five years ago these same words were a great encouragement to a young dean just starting out at Penn State.

Those who were privileged to spend any length of time with Mr. Schreyer were regaled with stories and the tone was often self-deprecating. He was often fond of telling the story of how he was fired early in his career with Merrill Lynch. While in high school he worked in the Williamsport office that his father ran and was caught in the back room one afternoon “necking” with a girl from school. An inauspicious start, perhaps, for the man who would make Merrill Lynch a global giant.

Mr. Schreyer was also fond of implying that he was not a very good student, but that wasn’t strictly true. He did very well in all courses except an introductory course in engineering. As a result he decided to move into Liberal Arts and business. He went to meet with the engineering dean of students to make the transfer and the dean kept insisting that he should stick with engineering. In his memoirs, Mr. Schreyer writes,

Finally I got a little desperate and said, “I never did see the results of the aptitude test we took during freshman week.” [The dean] said, “That’s a good idea, Schreyer.” So he had his secretary bring in the file. He took one look at it and said, “Your request is… Granted! The last thing in the world you should be is an engineer.”

Even as a young man Mr. Schreyer knew what he wanted and had determination. I found this out when it was decided we would be able to create a creamery ice cream flavor in recognition of the college. Many of you were able to sample some of our fantastic “Scholars Chip” ice cream earlier today. When I called Mr. Schreyer to ask for his thoughts he was very direct.

“I like chocolate chip.”
Well, we couldn’t just have chocolate chip that already existed, so I asked him if he liked swirls, maybe some fudge in it.
“I like chocolate chip.”
What about fruit, perhaps some fruit with the chocolate chip?
“I am not nuts about fruit. I like chocolate chip.”
What about nuts?
“I am not crazy about nuts either. I like chocolate chip.”

And so we have Scholars Chip, a delicious blend of French vanilla and Wilbur’s Buds chocolate.

It would be easy to slip into hagiographic writing about Mr. Schreyer, to portray him as a saintly figure that never set a foot wrong in all his business and personal decisions. It wouldn’t be accurate and frankly I don’t think it would be what he would want. But at the risk of putting him on a pedestal I do think there is much we can learn from the man whose name you now bear as Schreyer Scholars.

Certainly he would council you, as he often did me, to enjoy life to it’s fullest. We ought to have a sense of humor and always seek to be optimistic in our outlooks. Our graduates weren’t even born on that Monday in October of 1987 but it was the largest one-day decline in the history of the stock market and Mr. Schreyer was the CEO of Merrill Lynch. The decision was made for him to go on TV and announce firmly and with conviction that Merrill Lynch was still “bullish on America.” That phrase became synonymous with Bill Schreyer and Merrill Lynch but it was more than an ad slogan. It epitomized his approach to life. He believed that, in the long term, if people are willing to work hard and remain true, the future would always, eventually be better than the past.

And he firmly believed that our future rests with you. Mr. Schreyer often remarked that out of all his many and profitable investments in his life, the best investment he and Mrs. Schreyer ever made was in you. He understood full well that the college and university is not the named buildings or well-groomed sports fields. It is the people who make up this wonderful community. Their endowment was a direct investment in you, the men and women who will leave Penn State and transform this world. The question is, how will you transform it? What sort of impact will you make in this world?

That is why the mission of the honors college is not, “to bring in the very best academic students regardless of all other criteria and characteristics.” Rather it is “to achieve academic excellence with integrity, to build a global perspective, and to create opportunities for leadership and civic engagement.” Mr. Schreyer understood that smart people will find a way to succeed and the job of the honors college and Penn State is to help you understand that this success must be with integrity and honor.

These weren’t just platitudes, he firmly believed that our mission was to ensure that we are developing you as leaders who understand the importance of doing what is right and not just expedient. The very first time I met Mr. Schreyer was during the interview process and he “suggested” that we should require an ethics course. Being smart isn’t enough, he said, these students also need to understand what it means to be ethical and do what is right. Needless to say I agreed whole-heartedly with his sentiments, but I disagreed about requiring a course. It was and is my view that we want you to be ethical people, not people who study ethics. That means that moral questions have to be a part of everything we do in the college. We have to set the example for you to follow that there is no area of your life in which you are not making ethical choices every day. I hope that at least in some small measure we have done that.

It is now up to you. You have earned the academic honors that we have bestowed upon you. Now you must decide if you are going to be a person of honor. Will you do what is right, not thinking first of profits or personal gain, but of what is best for all? Will you be not simply some of the smartest people the world has ever seen, but people who have a vision of the world that is large enough to embrace others? Will you engage in scientific and humanistic research, not simply for its own sake, but so that it might benefit others? Will you be able to run a company well and profitably and ethically?

I know the answer to all these questions is a resounding Yes! You will continue to fulfill the VISION of our college, as men and women having an important and ethical influence in the world.

Mr. Schreyer once told me the story of a friend having found an aphorism in the front of an old family Bible.
“Lose money and lose nothing.

Lose health and lose something.

Lose character and lose everything.
[Mr. Schreyer said,] “I think of those words in relation to my dad’s life. He lost money, and he lost health. But he never lost character. It remained straight and true throughout his life, and it inspires me to this day.”

And so the younger Mr. Schreyer also remained straight and true through his life and continues to inspire us all.

Congratulations to you, the 2011 class of Schreyer Scholars!

 

No President Obama didn’t use those exacts words, but that was the gist of his message. Mr. Obama was on the University Park campus today to highlight his new energy policy and Penn State’s new Energy Innovation Hub, funded with $129M from the federal government, to create more energy efficient buildings. In fact, as I write this NPR is airing its story about his speech and his call for creating more energy efficient buildings with the “Better Buildings Initiative.”

Needless to say (but I will say it anyway), it was a exciting to be there and see the POTUS in person, even if from a distance. It was a great opportunity for Penn State and the fact that he announced a new initiative meant that the speech, and consequently Penn State, got a good amount of press attention. The speech, however, was light on substance, as is often the case with such stump speeches.

You can watch the speech and get a copy of the transcript here (WhiteHouse.gov).

That means investing in cutting-edge research and technology.  It means investing in the skills and training of our people.  It means investing in transportation and communication networks that can move goods and information as fast as possible. And to make room for these investments, it means cutting whatever spending we just can’t afford.

So I’ve proposed that we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years, which will reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and will bring annual domestic spending to the lowest share of our economy since Eisenhower was President, meaning since way before most of you were born.  (Laughter.)  He said, not me.  (Laughter.)

Now, just like Americans do every day, government has a responsibility to live within its means.  But we also have a responsibility to invest in those areas that are going to have the biggest impact.  And in this century those areas are education and infrastructure and innovation.  (Applause.)  And that last area, innovation is why I’ve come to Penn State today.

Embedded in here is the difficult work that is before our country. How do we invest (that requires money after all) in innovative and cutting edge research if we have a massive deficit? We could go further into debt, but Obama has said he won’t do that so he says we will “freeze annual domestic spending” and remove “subsidies” from oil companies. Both require Congress to enact and I am less than optimistic that either will happen. I also wonder if we are going to freeze domestic spending, does that allow us to have new domestic spending, which is, I assume, what new funds into research would be.

You see, as always, the devil is in the details and such speeches are usually very light on the details. Take the “oil subsidies,” for example. I am still doing some research on this, but they seem to date from the 1920s when it was important that our government support and protect a fledgling industry. We are hardly in that situation now. Furthermore, these subsidies are also often tax breaks. (And I wonder why we do that. It is not like they can go elsewhere to get the oil. It is in one geographic place, it is not like the film industry who can talk filming to Canada and call it southern California.) An engineering friend of mine from college responded on facebook to my questions about this.

Their profit margins are generally 10 percent or less, and it’s a commodity. We use gargantuan amounts of the stuff, so 10 percent of a big number is, of course, a big number. But oil is vital to our economy in so many ways that a healthy oil sector ought to be viewed as an issue of national security, not just convenience or comfort. The media continually makes idiotic comparisons to the profits of oil companies and other sectors that simply aren’t germane (e.g. I saw a graphic comparing Dell computer profits to oil profits one quarter), and they ignore the interesting number, which is to me profit margin. It’s often in the single digits for oil.

He has a point. Would we begrudge another company, say a computer company or a grocery store chain, for making similar profits? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps some of our finance majors can help me out here. As I said, the devil is in the details. For the record, I am a big supporter of innovation and I hope that in my life I see us move from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy sources. There are just a whole lot of woods to get through first.

Now, Penn State is a place that knows a little bit about playing to win.  Last I counted, Coach Paterno has got more than 400 wins under his belt.  (Applause.)  But your nation needs to win, too.  We need you to be as proud of what you do in the lab as you are of what your football team does on the field.  (Applause.)  We need you to seek breakthroughs and new technologies that we can’t even imagine yet.  And especially the young people who are here, we need you to act with a sense of urgency — to study and work and create as if the fate of the country depends on you — because it does.  It depends on you.  (Applause.)

And if we’re harnessing all the energy in this room, all the young people in this audience, then I’m confident we’ll do it.  We can do this because what this university is going to lead will be more than a pioneering research center or an economic engine for Pennsylvania and America for years to come.  What you’re going to do is lead a modern-day incubator for what sets us apart — the greatest force that the world has ever known — and that is the American ideal.  (Applause.)

If you remember that and keep breaking new ground, if we as a country keep investing in you, I’m absolutely confident that America will win the future in this century, just like we did in the last.

Thank you.  God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.