Commencement 1996

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The following is Anita K. Jones' address to the Class of 1996 at the 83rd Commencement on the morning of May 11, 1996. Jones is the Director of Defense Research and Engineering for the Department of Defense.

Members of the Class of 1996, candidates for advanced degrees, parents, spouses, families, friends of the graduates, Chairman Duncan and the other members of the Board of Governors, President Gillis, distinguished colleagues and honored guests, today is a wonderful day for us all. I'm honored to be here with you for this celebration. My contribution is to make a commencement speech. Such speeches are supposed to impart wisdom, be inspirational, be sincere, but above all, be tidily short. I'll try to honor that.

You, the graduates, are typically from every state across this land and from 50 foreign countries. Class of 1996, you are earning not just any degree, you are earning a Rice degree. There is a saying, "Be realistic, demand the impossible, at least demand everything that is possible." And Rice has demanded that of you and you have succeeded. You have achieved. We congratulate you and we salute you today.

This is the day to look to the future and I want to do that. The corporate adviser, Peter Drucker, in the Atlantic Monthly wrote that we've entered a new economic order. It is an economic order in which knowledge, not labor, not raw materials, not capital is the key resource. He called the newly emerging dominant group of workers "knowledge workers." The great majority of new jobs in the 21st century will require qualifications that today's workers do not possess, that today's workers are often poorly equipped to acquire. They will require a good deal of formal education, he says, and particularly the ability to acquire and apply theoretical and analytical knowledge. They will require a different approach to work and a different mindset. Above all, they will require a habit of continuous learning. And people like you graduates, who will lead this knowledge-based economy, will also have to learn continuously and show others how to do so. It does all begin with education. For I, too, believe we have entered an era, when incremental, substantial education will become the norm, not the exception.

Consider the concepts and the techniques of one field in which I work: software engineering. Those reigning techniques and concepts are less than 15 years old, sometimes much younger. We were not taught that when I was here at Rice. When I was at Rice there was no Computer Science Department. There were essentially no undergraduate courses. There was a little research, including something called the Rice One machine, pioneered by John Iliffe and others. There was only one graduate course I ever could find, and that was given by Alan Robinson, who invented something called resolution theory, which turns out to be very important on the formal side of computer science. One engineering professor taught a pick-up, afternoon FORTRAN course.

So the students in Rice classes before me, in mine, and just after me were not formally educated in information technology as we know it today. Yet, today there are Rice graduates all throughout this field. They are noted leaders in microelectronics, computer science, education, research and information technology businesses. There are so many of them -- so many Rice graduates -- that my husband describes it as the Rice Mafia. It is, I believe, partly due to the Rice education that there are so many graduates excelling in what I consider to be the most important field today.

These Rice graduates were not trained in that field at Rice particularly. They learned in subsequent years and they went where the action was, where the challenges were. They learned along the way and they grasped the opportunity. I believe a Rice education equips you particularly well to do both.

Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." What Yogi does not mention is that there are no signposts. In fact, it's more often a crook in the road, an overgrown path that goes off to the side, or a great, vast mud puddle ahead that holds some change, a door that opens to new experience and challenge.

The classmates that I just told you about took many forks in their roads to get where they are today. They, like you, have what I consider an unfair advantage. You are smart, yes, that was necessary to get admitted to Rice. And now you have a Rice education. That means you have a substantial grounding in whatever your chosen field of endeavor is. But it means two things more. It means that you have the grit to act on your convictions when you reach a conclusion. And, second, it means that you are trained to learn, to do this continual learning that will be necessary to live in the knowledge-based world that Peter Drucker talked about. And I consider that unfair advantage a thing you always want to have because life is a competition. So when you come to a fork in the road and you decide that this is an opportunity for you, shoot for the moon. After all, if you fail, you only fall among the stars.

Many of the changes in business and society and in the military operations, especially over in Bosnia today, are strongly rooted in information technology. There is literally a revolution going on in military operations based on the advantage that information technology gives us. We have gone from slide rules and French curves to Pentium processors and computer-aided design. The information revolution is having a dramatic effect on how you prepared for your career and how your alumni sustains theirs.

Our knowledge base is expanding at a staggering rate. Although roughly a hundred scientific journals existed in 1800, there are almost a hundred thousand today. This knowledge explosion is not limited to science and technical fields. It is said that mankind's written knowledge has doubled between 1965 and 1990 and will double again by the turn of the century. Compare that to Thomas Jefferson's tutor. He was noted for his very large personal library. It numbered 150 books. So I submit that looking forward, you graduates should develop an approach to enhance your knowledge base continually, to keep up, to keep ahead, to lead and to sustain that unfair advantage that you enjoy as you pursue your future. In a sense graduation signifies the beginning of evermore education, not the end of it.

I would like to say something special to the 40 percent of the graduates in your class who are women. Today, women make up half our nation's labor force. Women-owned businesses are helping to change the face of the American economy. President Clinton and his administration, of which I am a part, have selected women for more key leadership positions within the government than any other administration in history. And, you know what? They are performing superbly.

President Clinton has appointed women to 40 percent of the top positions in the executive branch. Women comprise 46 percent of this administration's judicial nominees. He has appointed an unprecedented six women to the executive cabinet. And in the Pentagon, many women sit in an office in which stands an American flag, together with another flag that is emblazoned with four stars. Those four stars are an insignia of the rank of her office. In the Defense Department generally -- I can tell you from personal experience -- that those women are performing superbly in what many may think of as strictly a man's world. I looked around to see what was different. And actually, after all that, there are not so many things, day to day, that are different. However, there are a whole lot more flowers in the offices on the outer ring of the Pentagon -- the part with the nice offices that look over the river and downtown. Times have changed for women. We have evermore opportunity to excel. This is, I believe, particularly so in the science and engineering fields where I work. I have certainly experienced and have been blessed with lots of opportunity.

Some barriers to opportunity remain for women. However, there's a particularly influential societal force that is causing improvement. And that force is the "fathers of daughters." Fathers want their daughters to have abundant and fair opportunity. Those fathers of daughters realize the situation, the professional situation, into which their daughters will step, and they particularly are helping to remove barriers. And that force-you fathers of daughters-is, I expect well represented here today.

Let me tell you one story about our vice president to illustrate. During the Democratic Convention of 1992, a woman named Betsy who is now in the White House office was talking to Mrs. Tipper Gore and they were joking about what it would take for Betsy to marry a very respectable U.S. senator. And, joking around, they were saying, "Well, you go to a good school, you have to know how to cook, you have to be politically astute ..." And about that time, Senator Gore came along and Mrs. Gore said to him, "Al, I've been giving Betsy tips on how she should go about marrying a respectable U.S. senator. Do you want to add anything?" Senator Gore said to Betsy, quite seriously, "Betsy, don't worry about marrying yourself a U.S. senator. You should think about what it would take to become one." I relate this story, which Al Gore recently related. He commented that he offered this advice, not from the perspective of a U.S. senator, but as the father of three daughters.

Fathers of daughters take a new perspective when they think about how their daughters will fare in a professional environment. And those same fathers have changed some of the rules, especially over the last decade and a half, to create a fairer playing field for their own daughters. The opportunities open to women have increased, are increasing. So, daughters among this class, it's up to you.

In closing, again I would like to say, that we are very proud of all of you graduates. But we do expect that you'll choose a course in life and return value in some way of your choosing to your family, to your friends, to the economy of this country, to the leadership of this country, to your nation. The fabric of our society is changing and changing very rapidly. The information revolution that is catalyzing many of these changes is having a profound effect on all of us. And whenever there is change there are dazzling possibilities. But keep your feet on the ground. Never lose sight of the fact that all this progress depends on one fundamental. No matter how technologically sophisticated we are, it is the people who make this nation great.

And you step in among their leaders now. At least you have that opportunity. So don't be afraid to try things, don't be afraid of dreaming, don't be afraid of failure. We all stumble, we all face fear. It is part of being human. And you have a lifetime of opportunities in your grasp now. Grasp them firmly, take a risk, follow your vision, just do something that matters. And take your place among those who lead our society, enunciate its goals, take its actions. If you are like me, you will remain tied to Rice all your days and you'll have fond recollections of lifelong friends and remarkably vivid recollections of a few of these professors who were material to the path you now walk upon. You will remember the honor system, the Thresher , the Campanile , the Beer-Bike race, the Marching Owl Band and the Mediterranean architecture of the Rice buildings that surround us today. They will all live quite vividly in your memory.

Robert Fulghum might have written: "Rice is nice, but all you really need is what you learned in kindergarten. When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, stick together." Keep the E-mail addresses of the people that you enjoyed at Rice who are sitting to your right and left. Use them, talk to people, keep Rice in your mind and heart. Rice has given you, I think, four very important things, at least I hope so: knowledge; the conviction to act when it is the right time; the skills to learn all your life long; and far-reaching, noble dreams. I congratulate each of you and I thank you for letting me celebrate you, your achievements and your parents. Rice has given you the wherewithal to take a fabulous, lifelong journey to destinations of your choice. But it is all in the journey, not the arrival. Thank you.

-- Special thanks to Joan Adamson in the Rice News & Publications Office for providing this transcription.

This item appeared in the Features section of the May 17, 1996 issue.

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