Graduate Division Commencement Address: 6/13/08
George R. Blumenthal
Graduate Division Commencement Address
June 13, 2008
Professor Williams, Dean Sloan, distinguished colleagues, honored graduates, family and friends.
Thank you for your warm welcome.
I am honored to be here today, and delighted that I was invited to address you on this very special occasion.
This is a special occasion for me, too.
This is actually my first-ever commencement speech. And I’m delighted that it is here with the graduate division.
I know that professors at UC Santa Cruz are often invited to deliver commencement addresses. After all, nowadays we have 12 of them each June.
But until now, I never had the chance.
Not as a professor.
Not as a department chair.
Not as the chair of the academic senate.
Not even as faculty representative to the UC Board of Regents.
I have been on campus for 36 years and I had to become a chancellor before I could give a commencement address.
But I’m glad I waited and I’m delighted to be with you this afternoon.
As Quentin noted, this is the 42nd year we’ve held a graduate commencement.
Graduate education has always been an integral part of UC Santa Cruz all the way back to its founding in 1965.
Your research as graduate students creates new knowledge.
I saw ample evidence of this through the many wonderful exhibits and presentations at this year’s Graduate Research Symposium.
Your work supports outstanding undergraduate education in many ways.
As I mentioned last week, I want to increase graduate enrollment to 15 percent of total enrollment at UC Santa Cruz and I’m committed to doing so.
I think it is a modest goal compared with other research universities but just right for us.
Last week, inside that tent, I also noted that these seats would soon be filled with rows full of future historians, biologists, and astrophysicists.
Future writers, and musicians, filmmakers, and linguists, teachers, and engineers, entrepreneurs, and perhaps some budding public servants.
Well, today you are on the bleachers. About 75 of you are about to receive your PhDs. There are 6 new Doctors of Education, the first ever to graduate from UC Santa Cruz in conjunction with the California State University system.
I’d like to personally welcome Susan Meyers, Dean of Education at San Jose State University, and Brian Simmons, Dean of the College of Professional Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay.
I’m delighted you could join us for today’s commencement.
We have 80 candidates for teaching credentials and master’s degrees in education
and 60 candidates for master of arts, master of fine arts and master of science.
Congratulations to each of you.
You’ve worked hard to get here. Some of you may have gone without sleep to finish your work, but soon you should be able to catch up on your sleep …
Hopefully after I’ve finished talking!
I really want to make two main points today:
First, always keep your sense of inquiry,
and second, make sure you can communicate what you do to others ... even if you have just received a super-duper high-falootin’ advanced degree.
A week ago, inside that tent, the president of the university hung a medal around my neck and officially pronounced me
Chancellor.
But I also received a gift from the president of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation, a Crown graduate, …
A gift that I think is just as symbolically important. He presented me with two books:
Curious George Gets a Job
& Curious George Gets a Medal.
Do you remember the Curious George books? … Curious George, the monkey and the man with the Big Yellow Hat?
It was an inspired gift and important reminder.
Always stay curious.
Always keep your sense of inquiry, no matter where you are or what you are doing.
Keep asking questions. Keep probing. Keep wondering why, Keep wondering how come?
In my case, I was always fascinated by the puzzle of how structure forms in the Universe, even though as a graduate student, I didn't directly work on that problem.
So, that was me – curious George.
I kept my fascination and never gave up thinking about that puzzle.
So, years later, when I was a professor here, my collaborators and I realized that the newly discovered dark matter, which is now known to be the major component of matter in the Universe, was the key to understanding how galaxies formed.
So that curiosity and determination allowed me to participate in a key paradigm shift in our understanding of the large-scale universe.
All because of continuing curiosity.
Now, let me tell you a story about the master of question-asking.
I had this friend in graduate school who always had the courage to ask questions no matter what the situation was.
We were in a very intimidating class where the professor wrote so much on the board and so fast that we were all hurriedly copying as he was busy erasing.
My friend was the only one with the gumption to ask questions.
When he did, the professor had to stop writing so he could answer. And the rest of us had a chance to catch up.
My friend also got his PhD in physics but his questions didn’t stop. His curiosity didn’t stop either.
He later went on to law school and became a law professor.
And incidentally, he introduced me to my wife.
Soon, you will be taking the next step in your career. Many of you will be returning to the classroom to teach – from kindergarten to the graduate level.
Some of you will return the classroom as students to work toward your next degree, and some will join the academy as professors or post docs.
Back when I was a graduate student … there was this urban myth …
It went that once you officially got your PhD, your faculty adviser would take you aside and tell you that everything you sweated over to learn … all of the information you had laboriously mastered,
was all wrong.
No truth to it at all.
This myth suggested that you had jumped through all of these hoops of learning, just to be admitted to a very exclusive club.
Like an initiation.
But now that you have your PhD, it is OK to let you in on the truth.
And at that point, your advisor would reveal the grand truths of your field of study.
It’s a great story, but unfortunately, that’s all it is.
At least the truth was never revealed to me … (I hope they didn’t just forget) … and I don’t think it will happen for you.
But there is a different kind of truth that comes from interacting with others and learning from others.
When I arrived at UC Santa Cruz 36 years ago, I found a place where I could reach out to faculty from other disciplines and learn from them.
I discovered the intellectual stimulation that thrives here – a place where I could interact with a community of scholars.
And this opportunity to interact brings me to my second point.
One of the things you do as a professor is serve on dissertation committees, judging the research that graduate students complete.
And as someone who works at the intersection of astronomy, physics, and mathematics, I found myself serving on a lot of dissertation committees in several departments.
I frequently served as the outside member of dissertation committees in other departments.
So I’d like to let you in on a little secret. …
I frequently found myself on a committee where I didn’t have a clue.
Sometimes I just didn’t understand the work that the student had done and couldn’t fathom what they were talking about.
It’s really kind of embarrassing to be an outside member, and be a professor, and not understand a dissertation I am supposed to evaluate and judge.
So I developed a standard question that I would always ask whether I understood the subject or not.
My standard question was: “So Mr. or Ms. So-and-So, soon you are going to be Dr. So-and-So, and off you go to the next chapter in your life.
“In a month, you might find yourself at Harvard as a new faculty member or post doc.
I’d say: “I want you to imagine that a week after you’ve arrived, you’re at a party and the president of Harvard University comes up to you.
“She happens to be a historian. And she says, ‘Oh, Dr. So-and-So. … I understand you just got your PhD, so your PhD dissertation must have advanced human knowledge.
‘So could you please explain for me how you have advanced human knowledge?’
“What would tell her? I’d ask the candidate.”
In fact, I’ve asked that question many times on dissertation committees.
And it’s really interesting to watch the reactions. You get some deer-in-the-headlights looks.
And sometimes students rise to the occasion and provide an eloquent explanation of what they’ve done.
But the point is that when you’ve received an advanced degree -- a masters or PhD -- it’s really important that you not only have this knowledge and understanding, or involved yourself in creating knowledge, but that you can communicate your work and your knowledge to all segments of society.
That you can spread the word.
Share what you’ve done. And share it in a way so that it can be heard and understood.
Be prepared to explain it so a historian can understand, or if you happen to be a historian so that even a rocket scientist or brain surgeon can make sense of it.
This brings to mind Richard Feynman, the eminent physicist, who taught for many years at CalTech. Whenever Richard Feynman was talking to non-academics, he never fell back on his authority as a great thinker.
Rather, he said “you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist.”
He felt that if he couldn’t explain it to ordinary people, he probably didn’t understand it himself.
He knew more than most of us will ever know, and yet he insisted on speaking our language.
Speaking of Feynman, I have one little confession to make before I conclude:
Whenever I was visiting CalTech and I couldn’t find a place to park, I’d park in a spot marked “Feynman.” And I never got a ticket.
That’s my third point.
Grab parking whenever you find it.
Here are just a few more parting words.
The first are from Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, and a UCSC graduate … a banana slug.
When she spoke to your counterparts here nine years ago, she said, and I quote:
“As graduates of the University of California, you are expected to live the motto: ‘Fiat Lux,’ ‘Let there be Light.’
“Use your UCSC education as a tool to light the world. Do not just respect differences between people but make a difference in relations among peoples.”
Find work you love. It’s a common theme in commencements from Steve Jobs at Stanford to Drew Faust at Harvard.
And it’s true.
Work will expand to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. Steve Jobs said that.
It is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you don’t love.
Inquire, share your knowledge, do what you love, and have fun while you’re doing it.
And I would add just one more thing.
As you rise up the ladder wherever you find yourselves -- whether it’s business, academia or public service …
Make sure you find time to put your feet up on your desk once in a while and just think the big thoughts.
Congratulations, Graduate class of 2008.
Thank you.
