Dr. Charles Vest<\/a>, President of the National Academy of Engineering and President Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). \u00a0Dr. Vest is among the most influential and prominent engineers in the nation. He served on the President\u2019s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) during the Clinton and Bush administrations, was vice chair of the Council on Competitiveness for eight years, and was awarded the 2006 National Medal of Technology by President Bush.<\/p>\nAddressing the audience, Dr. Vest quickly captured the spotlight with a startling public admission of a love affair, saying \u201cFor the last 40 years, I have had a love affair with American higher education. My passion for American public and private universities and the opportunities they create is undiminished.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis century truly is the knowledge age. To thrive in this century,\u201d he said, \u201cWe cannot depend on our geography, natural resources or military might. We can thrive only on brain power, organization and innovation.\u201d\u00a0 Doing so, he said, requires loosely structured partnerships among government, industry and academia \u2013 with academic institutions constituting the most essential element.<\/p>\n
Dr. Vest remarked \u201cIn this age, it\u2019s incumbent on the United States to enhance its capacity for engineering and scientific innovation, and to build a broad technological literacy and skill in its workplace in order to have the possibility to prosper, be healthy and secure, and to contribute to solutions to great challenges facing our planet and its inhabitants.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called upon citizens to \u201cRecover our optimism \u2013 our \u2018can do\u2019 spirit \u2013 in order to remain a great nation and to meet the challenges of our times. The way to accomplish this is to reconnect what we do with what we dream.\u00a0 In the end, I believe knowledge and skill trump ignorance, and optimism trumps pessimism. If you believe this, and you embrace the opportunity to serve, you will find personal happiness and fulfillment beyond expectation. And you will benefit our world immeasurably.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concluding his remarks, he charged the 2011 graduating class to ponder the unthinkable, question the status quo, be citizens of the world as well as the U.S., dream of a better future and \u201ctake your talent, education and energy and build our nation and community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graduating senior Khayriyyah Munir (Biomedical Engineering), who was chosen for the honor of representing her class, followed Dr. Vest in addressing the audience. \u201cNo matter what type of engineering, the purpose of our work is to make getting from point A to point B easier, no matter what those points may actually be,\u201d she noted, pointing out that most engineering students found the path anything but straight.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the academic challenges experienced by engineering students, she said, \u201cPart of me thinks the term \u2018engineering degree\u2019 is synonymous with \u2018difficult struggle,\u2019 and every one of us made a conscious decision to accept this. No matter what the reasoning was \u2013 if it was the hope for a higher paying job in industry (when the market actually takes a turn for the better), or a better step-off into professional school, or the fact that we just knew we could do it \u2013 we are now where we hoped to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we must always remember is that we are now professional problem solvers. We have it inherent in us to make things better, and we\u2019re expected to do just that. By no means is this an easy task, but it\u2019s something each of us is capable of doing,\u201d she concluded.<\/p>\n
To riotous applause and peals of joy from proud families and friends, each graduating student in turn strode across the stage to greet administrators and receive a UConn engineering certificate attesting to dedication and accomplishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In early May, the School of Engineering honored the achievements of over 435 undergraduate students and nearly 185 graduate students who were awarded their B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees after years of long nights, countless problem sets, design challenges and joyful “aha” moments when difficult formulas suddenly gain meaning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":221073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-6573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 01:11:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225035,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6573\/revisions\/225035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/221073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6573"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=6573"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/grads1.jpg\" "\\"grads1\\"")
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