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.

 

In this summer research project, we are exploring the use of the iPad, whether first or second generation, as  tool for academic research and other scholarly work by faculty.   To accomplish this, we are working in partnership with Education Technology Services, which has graciously loaned us the use of seven first generation iPads for this project.  Other faculty members are participating by using their own previously purchased iPads, and still others have been given permission to apply research funds toward the purchase of one, which is ordinarily not permitted.

via Digital Research in the Liberal Arts | A Digital Learning Lab for Faculty.

 

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!

 

I know myself. I know that I do not like cities, at least, not as places to live. That is much of why I love State College. I drive past horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, experimental crops, and Beaver Stadium in my 4.3 mile commute. Yet in 3-and-a-bit hours I can be in Wash. DC, Philly, Pittsburgh, or NYC. All the benefits with little of the hassle of living in the city itself.

I also know that I enjoy going to my in-laws at Rehoboth Beach, DE (no really, I do). But I have never really enjoyed that whole beach scene, the mass of people, the boardwalk (although I love Fun Land! hasn’t changed in 40 years).

And today I find myself at Torrey Pines, California. Wow. It is stunning. Beautiful flowers, shrubs, and breathtaking bluffs with the surf below. I could really get used to this. San Diego is just 20 miles away. But then I consider the taxes, the earthquakes…

So I will enjoy this day and the morning to get some work done with the balcony door to my hotel room open and the light aroma of the Pacific Ocean blowing through the curtains. And remember, that “all creation declares…”

You can see more of my pictures from Torrey Pines on flickr.

Location:N Torrey Pines Rd,,United States

 

Wonderful Hindbeernkuchen I had for lunch when I arrived. O! So good!

The last time I was in Germany, other than in an airport flying through, was in 1988. I had taken a year off from college between my freshman and sophomore years and attended a Goethe Institut in Schwäbisch Hall, not terribly far from Freiburg. One of my great regrets is that I have never become fully fluent in German and it has been too long. I was surprised, however, at how much I did remember. Could understand most conversations and most that I read (reading the academic articles have helped in that regard) but when I came to formulate a responses, my vocabulary was lacking.

These two days have been, as I said, incredibly busy, but also very draining in an energetic way. In order to be useful in my consultation I had to learn as much as I could as quickly as possible about the current German system of higher education since the Bologna Process, particularly at Freiburg, and as much again about the system before Bologna. The structure is quite different. Like Oxford they have Faculties rather than colleges and students enroll directly into a program of study, there are no “general education” courses and little in the way of what we would call electives. Their course of study is three years long but all (if one is going to have anything like a management position) are expected to do a two year masters program following.

What is happening across Europe is now a desire to return to a liberal arts style of curriculum, something that we take for granted at Penn State. The Netherlands have led the way with a number of universities now having “Univeristy Colleges” that are four year programs designed to expose students to truly interdisciplinary approaches to thought and research. One aspect that I found surprising is that almost all of these programs are taught excessively in English.

One overwhelming feeling I have after my time is one of gratitude. We are very fortunate to have such a strong educational program at Penn State that places an emphasis upon literacy, numeracy, and global perspective. And we are able to do this, by and large, for all students, even those in fields that require very directed programs of study such as engineering. We are not perfect by any measure and I am encouraged to continue to develop our own programs at Penn State so that they are not just for the benefit of our PLA and SHC students.

The train that begins my journey home. Where’s Waldo?

Location:A train, somewhere in Germany

 

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.

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_sEYWTuz7s&feature=player_embedded

 

Penn State to Hold Conference on Climate Change and Religion

The conference, entitled “Stewardship or Sacrifice? Religion and the Ethics of Climate Change,” will take place on October 7 and 8, 2009, at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on the Penn State University Park campus.

The conference will explore the role of religion in helping solve the climate change crisis. Panels will include:

• Penn State climate scientists on the most recent data;
• Pennsylvania theologians on the theological and ethical basis for protecting the world from climate change;
• local initiatives by Pennsylvania churches and synagogues.

A series of workshops will focus on specific, practical steps that individuals can take to help avoid the threat that climate change poses to human health and the environment.

The Rev. Canon Sally Bingham, founder of Interfaith Power and Light, will be one of the keynote speakers.  Rev. Bingham has been a leader in recognizing global warming as a moral issue.  Linking together over 5,000 congregations with affiliated programs in 29 states, she has brought widespread recognition to the link between faith and the environment.

The organizers invite wide participation from members of Pennsylvania faith communities interested in learning more about responding to the ethical problems posed by climate change.

The conference is co-sponsored by Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute, Jewish Studies Program, Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs, Department of History and Religious Studies, and the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence.

For more information, please go to:  http://rockethics.psu.edu/climate/events/ssrecc/.  The Web site will be up-dated as plans develop.  Those seeking additional information can contact:  Jonathan E. Brockopp, Department of History and Religious Studies (jeb38@psu.edu).