MIT Commencement Program 2005 - Includes Address by Irwin Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

STUDENT 1: Hi! This is Kelly, and I have with me my friends David, Matye, Steven, Michael, and Sandra.

JONES: Oh my goodness, that's quite a collection of students. So where are you all from?

STUDENT 1: Well, I'm from California.

STUDENT 2: New York City.

STUDENT 3: Toronto, Canada.

STUDENT 4: Kansas City.

STUDENT 5: Westborough, Massachusetts.

STUDENT 6: Knoxville, Tennessee.

JONES: Quite the range. You having a good day today?

STUDENT 1: I'm sorry, can you repeat that, please?

JONES: Are you having a good day?

STUDENT 1: Are we having a good day? Yeah.

JONES: Is this better than the day you got your admit letter to MIT?

STUDENT 1: Ooh, is this better than the day we got our admit letter to MIT? That's a pretty tough call.

STUDENT 2: I would say so.

STUDENT 6: This is much more of a relief.

STUDENT 5: Probably, yeah.

STUDENT 1: I guess much more of a relief.

JONES: It's much more of a relief because you got out?

STUDENT 1: I'm sorry, say that again?

JONES: Because you got out finally?

STUDENT 1: Well, because we got out, finally, I guess so.

JONES: So Kelly.

STUDENT 1: Yeah.

JONES: Just give me one memorable moment at MIT.

STUDENT 1: One memorable moment at MIT.

JONES: A person, a thing, a course?

STUDENT 1: I guess I don't know. Right now, standing here with Sandra, who I work with on the ambulance, the only thing that's coming to my mind's the ambulance. So hi to all the EMTs out there.

JONES: Did you save anybody's life this week?

STUDENT 1: Not this week. Did we save anyone's life?

STUDENT 6: No. We didn't work this week, I don't think we were-- [LAUGHS]

JONES: So what's the most traumatic EMT thing you did? I used to be an EMT years ago in in New York State.

STUDENT 1: Oh, wow. Wait, what was your question again? I'm sorry, it's really loud.

JONES: It's really loud over there with everybody-- a million graduates. What's the most memorable EMT thing you did?

STUDENT 1: The most memorable EMT thing I did was showing up one time to a choking victim and finding him completely out on the ground. And I wasn't actually involved with his care, but I was involved with the hysterical wife care, which ended up being a lot more memorable than anything else I've ever done.

JONES: Ah, yes. So MIT students save the world, and individual lives as well. So, you guys, we have to close this now. You want to give a big shout-out and a thank you to people who are here today? Each of you--

STUDENT 1: --shout-out and thank you to people who are here.

STUDENT 5: What?

STUDENT 1: Shout-out and thank you to people who are here.

STUDENT 5: Thanks to all my friends. I mean, I wouldn't be here without you guys.

STUDENT 6: Thank to all my friends, and my mom and dad, who-- I wouldn't be here without them.

STUDENT 2: Thank you, mom and dad.

STUDENT 3: Thanks to my mom and dad for helping me get here.

STUDENT 4: Thanks, mom, dad, and Eric.

STUDENT 1: And I have to say the same. Thanks, mom and dad.

STUDENT 6: I got to thank my brother, too. He graduated class of '99. He's also the reason why I'm here.

JONES: Have fun today, you guys!

STUDENT 1: Thanks, you too.

ROSKO: Now, the technology that enables us to interview the students over at the Johnson Athletic Center is the same technology that we use for much greater distances. Last year at Tech Day-- MIT's annual alumni reunion-- President Charles Vest conducted a particularly long-distance interview with a distinguished alumnus from the class of 1989-- astronaut Mike Fincke-- aboard the International Space Station, some 400 kilometers above the earth. Let's see this long-distance communication.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- Mike, welcome to your reunion.

[APPLAUSE]

- President Vest, thank you very much for your kind introduction. I'd like to check our coms. Can you hear me?

- You can-- we can hear you very well.

- When we were setting this up with NASA, we were wondering if we'd be able to get a good audio and video, and I can see you guys great. I'm glad you guys can hear me. And I said, if anybody could do great audio and video, it's MIT.

VEST: Lot of applause there.

- I miss MIT, 15 years ago. And everybody who is an alumnus in front of me said, you know, it goes by fast. And boy, it really does. And I'm sure I'll probably feel that way after 20 and 25 years.

But the nice thing about having time is it's given me a little bit of perspective. And the view we have on the planet from up here gives me some more perspective. And what MIT does is very important-- the mission of MIT, the way that MIT goes about teaching its students, and the way that MIT's not afraid to be world-class. These are very important things to the entire planet.

[END PLAYBACK]

ROSKO: Now, when the class of 2005 were sophomores, a good number of them took MIT's renowned mechanical engineering course, 2.007. This is a much-emulated course where students design, engineer and build a machine that accomplishes specific tasks. All this hard work culminates in an end of the semester contest where students compete head to head in MIT's most exciting spectator sport. We offer first a retrospective look at the evolution of the course over the last 30 years, followed by highlights from the contest from 2002, the year the class of 2005 were hard at work as sophomores. Pay close attention, and you might recognize your graduates among some of the competitors.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[BUZZING SOUND]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- 2.70 started long, long ago, in a place actually not far away-- in the basement of this building. We gave the students a creativity kit.

- Inside the tube is a rod-- that is, the piece of welding rod.

- And I was a graduate student at the time, worked closely with the students, and learned that for their first design project, it was really hard for them to decide what to do.

- This is where the lanyard's going to be attached, and that will be stretched out.

- So the next year, we decided that we give them a kit of materials, but give them a very specific thing to try to accomplish.

- I'm doing that for lightness to cut mass, but basically it's for looks and steadiness.

- And they got into it immediately, and that sort of got the ball rolling. And 2.70 began with a very simple contest that involved making the machine go down a hill in three minutes.

- --down and just drill a big hole to know until you're okay.

- The 2.70 contest evolved to where it is today. When we first started, it was a simple machine doing a single thing while people watched. And it was quite slow. After a while, we had machines, side by side, doing things, so you could see some competition. And then we got interested in what happens if the machines actually collide in the middle, and compete for territory.

- Tie the knot, move it back, replace it, set it in the sand.

- From that, we evolved robotically-controlled things.

- Ready, get set, go.

- Oh!

Yeah!

Oh!

- And that has become a much more interactive, interesting thing to watch. But the most important thing that happened was the students took on the challenge, they competed like crazy, but helped each other in the process. That, I think, is one of the most important things about 2.70, 2.007 first-- the whole idea that you can work together, but still compete and help each other. A shared environment, a shared learning experience, a great model for what the profession of engineering ought to be about.

- I first came in contact and actually heard about it when I was here as an undergraduate. And Woodie Flowers was my UROP advisor. Actually, I was blueprinting an engine for my pickup truck. And I was kind of looking forward to taking 2.70, but I had blown my engine on my truck, so he actually agreed to let me at that point rebuild the engine on my truck. So I was peripherally involved, I was always looking in on the class-- gee, that looks like a lot of fun-- but never really got around to doing it. Always kind of wishing I had, but vicariously living it by helping my friends and stuff.

And then I graduated, went off to work, came back as a professor. And then I taught one section in it, because the course has the main instructor in charge of the whole class, where you're really the manager or the captain of the ship. So if I recall, there was a committee for a while, and they were debating to whom to give the class to. And they said, well, the only person who really should teach is Alex, because he has good taste in fashion. And we need someone with a good taste in fashion.

So they ask me if I would do it even though I have tenure, and I said, okay, but let's go ahead and involve the undergraduates more in actually running it, and that will be like a whole army of people helping. Those are the-- that was kind of a birth of the undergraduate assistant arm of it. And we've been having fun ever since.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- The contest is just a lot of fun.

- It's one of the best classes I will ever take. I'm sure of it.

- 2.70 rocks.

- 2.70 has changed a lot. Now, it's remote control, interactive, lots of things happening. That happened gradually.

- The real thing that has changed is that we gone to radio control from the old days of a tether. So now the machines have a lot more freedom. And it also means in designing a contest, we can put more things into it, so it's more like a pinball machine.

- At first, the students were required to do pencil drawing of devices before they would go build them. And most of them wouldn't, they just go start building. Then we learned drafting-- computer-aided drafting-- and they use those tools to help a little bit. Now, we're at the point where you can do solid models, and tools are becoming much more useful, and students will do that because it's actually fast and works. And we're getting to the point now where the onscreen dynamic simulations are good enough that you can actually use them to get an insight about what's going to happen.

- So the kit has involved with the class, and with technology in general. We just give them primarily raw materials-- sheets of aluminum, bars of metal, just gears, bearings, motors. That's it. We just give them the most basic of LEGO bricks. And then they design, cut, fold, weld, put together real machinery from it.

- We always try to change the character of the transportation problem if there is one involved. One year, we had putting a square peg in a round hole, which was a lot of fun, and MIT students can do that. That's probably a good experience.

- So the contests have not really changed at all in the sense that they are to provide a challenge to the students-- that when you look at the contest, there is no single right answer. No one can look at this and say, aha, that's how you win.

- When you get to the end and there's four or five completely different designs that are competitive, it's a good sign.

- And it's fun, because all the students are all really excited. And it's not just, oh, no, a problem set. Let's see. It's like, wow, I'm really doing something useful. Wow, cool. This is cool. I'm going to win. Yeah.

- In 2.70 and 2.007, we try hard to make sure the students know that they have the freedom to try something different. Just get your instructor on board, and say, you know what? I don't know if I'm going to do this or not, but I want to try this crazy thing. And that's okay, because it's not about winning the competition, It's about doing a meaningful, good job.

- When I start the class off, first lecture, I said, okay. Everyone wants to win this contest. First of all, it's not a contest, it's a celebration. It's just a great geeking time, get together with your robots, and yow, going to have fun. Because statistically, everyone here is going to lose, because your chances of winning are only one in 120.

So like, chill out, relax, have fun. And when you're having fun, A, you will do better, and B, when other people ask you for help, or you see someone needs help and you help them, you learn. And the more you learn, the better chance you will of doing better yourself. And that's true in your professional life, also.

- And you compete like crazy, and you get a lot of kudos for helping other people. One of the things that teaches, by the way, is that ideas are cheap. The combination of ideas and execution, and excellence in the whole process, is what really matters.

So, occasionally, someone would keep their secret. They would say, this is my idea, and I'm not telling anybody. And they would do that for a while, and they looked up, and said, wait a minute. Everybody else has had the same idea, and they chose not to. Maybe this is not-- maybe I'll talk to people about what I want to do.

[MUSIC - CHUMBAWAMBA, "TUBTHUMPING"]

- When you're a student, failing early and often is a very healthy thing to go through. Because every time that happens, pick yourself up, say, I now understand something that is very important here. I'm going to use that information go forward.

- If you don't fail, you will never have fun. The trick is to learn how to fail, and that's a very important part of what we want to teach in this class.

- It's also nice to have an environment in which failing is okay. The competition is always designed so that there are lots of ways to go. And consequently, there are a lot of ways to hide your ego, and you can try something that has very low probability of working, but your instructor will say, hey, go for it.

Later in life, if you have not established a faith in your own ability to be creative, it's really hard to do that when the stakes are so high. If you make a mistake, you might lose your job. So while you have a chance to test your creative wings, you better do it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[END PLAYBACK]

JONES: Okay, welcome back. How about you in the cheap seats? Can you see us? Wave. Way in the back there.

I'm the dean of admissions, Marilee Jones. Let's talk to some more students. Who do we have here?

STUDENT 10: Hi!

STUDENTS: Hi!

STUDENT 10: We're part of the MIT Muses. I'm [? Algie. ?]

STUDENT 11: I'm [? Taowi. ?]

STUDENT 12: I'm Fran.

STUDENT 13: I'm [? Nikki. ?]

JONES: Oh, good morning, ladies.

STUDENT 10: Hello!

JONES: So where are you from?

STUDENT 10: I am from Lexington, Massachusetts.

STUDENT 11: I'm from Hong Kong.

STUDENT 12: I'm from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

STUDENT 13: I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.

JONES: Aw. And, quickly, what were your majors?

STUDENT 10: What's that?

JONES: Your majors here.

STUDENT 10: Oh, I am Course 6.1 Electrical Engineering.

STUDENT 11: I'm Economics major, Course 14.

STUDENT 12: Course 8, Physics.

STUDENT 13: I'm Course 9, Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

JONES: Okay, so who are the Muses? What do you do?

STUDENT 10: We are MIT's only all-female a capella group, and we like to sing. Except that's past tense-- we liked to sing.

JONES: Oh, too bad, you're going to be breaking up. So let's see, can you sing the national anthem?

STUDENT 10: The national anthem?

JONES: No, no, just kidding. They're going to sing that later. Okay, can you sing some MIT song like-- what about the Beaver Call song?

STUDENT 10: Oh, okay, the Beaver Call. Beaver Call. Okay.

[HUMMING]

STUDENT 11: Okay.

STUDENT 10: Ready, go.

STUDENTS: (SINGING) I'm an engineer, you're an engineer, we are engineers all. And when we get together, we do the engineer call. E to the u, du dx, E to the x, dx-- cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159. Integral, radical, mu, dv-- slipstick, slide rule, MIT.

[LAUGHTER]

STUDENT 10: You guys are great give me a hug.

JONES: Very good. So you love the Muses. So why don't you each tell me something wonderful and memorable.

STUDENT 10: Wonderful and memorable that we did at MIT.

JONES: Maybe your favorite hack or something.

STUDENT 10: Our favorite hack. I don't know, do you guys have any?

STUDENT 12: I liked The Lord of the Rings on the Dome.

STUDENT 13: I don't know.

STUDENT 11: Me neither.

JONES: How about something memorable?

STUDENT 10: Something memorable. Well, we went to DC this IAP and sang. We went on a little tour, and we sang at state representative offices, at hospitals, on the street, everywhere. And it was really awesome. So, it's been a fun time.

STUDENT 12: Yeah!

JONES: Okay, so quick, call out to your parents and say thank you.

STUDENT 10: Call out to our parents.

STUDENTS: Hi, mom! Hi, dad!

STUDENT 11: Hi, grandma! Sam.

JONES: Oh good. Well, thank you ladies, it was good.

STUDENT 10: thank you!

STUDENT 12: Thanks!

JONES: We have one more student interview, there. Can you hand yourself off to him?

STUDENT 10: Sure, of course.

JONES: Thank you.

STUDENT 10: Bye!

JONES: I believe there are nine a capella groups at MIT. Lot of singers here. There's something about that math gene and the music gene. When one gets triggered, the other goes on as well.

There are a number of a capella groups here. Theirs are the only female group. I notice they changed the words to some of that song, heh heh. And there's a mix, and there are all men as well.

So, right now in Johnson, if you're wondering what's happening to your children, or your loved one, they're actually robing. And they're getting in line, and they have to stay in their exact place in line, because they're going to receive their actual diploma. MIT does this very differently from other schools. At other schools, you just go up and get some empty case. At here, you get the actual diploma. So they have to get in line and stay in line, and this is why this is a big production.

How are we doing? Do we have our student there? Okay, who's there? It's Eric Chemi!

CHEMI: Hello!

JONES: Hello, Eric.

CHEMI: Can you hear me?

JONES: Eric, where are you from?

CHEMI: I'm from Los Angeles.

JONES: So I think Eric and his-- your mom and your sister here are today, too, and they brought Los Angeles weather with you.

CHEMI: Yes. We should thank the nature spirits for the good weather today.

JONES: Ah, I know. It's the great MIT weather machine.

CHEMI: Hi to my mom, and hi to Jennifer out there in the audience.

JONES: So can you sing the national anthem?

CHEMI: Say it again?

JONES: Can you sing the national anthem?

CHEMI: Can I sing?

JONES: No, no, no, never mind.

CHEMI: Heh heh. So Eric.

CHEMI: Yeah?

JONES: This is the most connected student at MIT. Eric knows everybody there.

CHEMI: Well, my connections didn't go that way. I got-- my tassel didn't have a little class of 2005. Everyone has one with 2005, and mine didn't have it, so I think I got a raw deal. and my hat barely fits.

JONES: [LAUGHING]

CHEMI: So my connections don't go too far. They don't work at the coop.

JONES: Eric is a winner of the Compton Award. It's the highest award a student can win for service at MIT. So how's your day been going?

CHEMI: It's been pretty good, just looking around, seeing a bunch of friends, and lots of people here. It's a big crowd.

JONES: What's it like over there, Eric?

CHEMI: It's chaotic, but it's under control. It's very loud, everyone's around, and it's fun. I'm running into people I haven't seen in a while.

JONES: So what happens to you if you step out of line?

CHEMI: I think you get in big trouble.

JONES: I think they don't give you that 2005 for your hat.

CHEMI: Yeah. They're starting to move now, I think. it's around 8:50. We have to report back pretty soon.

JONES: So give me just one memorable moment that you've spent at MIT.

CHEMI: One memorable moment.

CHEMI: My swim test barely making it on the last lap the day before the first day of classes. I almost didn't make it, but I got there.

JONES: So tell me. What is the swim test? A lot of people here don't even know what that means.

CHEMI: Swim laps in the pool, non-stop. And if you don't make it, you don't graduate. That can be the hardest requirement for a lot of people, I think. But I barely did it.

JONES: So you had to take math, and physics, and chemistry, and biology. And you also have to learn how to swim.

CHEMI: Yeah, the swimming is a tough one. That math is pretty easy.

JONES: So what's the square root of 79?

CHEMI: 79? Uh oh. A little less than 9. It should be about 8.9 or something, right? But I don't know how accurate I can make it.

JONES: So what's your favorite hack?

CHEMI: What's my favorite hack?

JONES: Yeah.

CHEMI: Oh, I don't know. Too many good ones. I'm not going to pick a favorite. I'll get in trouble with my friends. I know some of those kids.

JONES: Well, Eric helped us admit the past two freshman classes to MIT because he serves on the undergraduate admissions board. And so, Eric, I'm going to ask you. What do you do for the sheer joy of it?

CHEMI: Say it again?

JONES: What would you do for the sheer joy of it? Remember that question on the application?

CHEMI: We didn't have it, I think, our year.

JONES: I know you didn't, and I'm asking you now. This is your final exam.

CHEMI: That's a tough one. I don't know if I'm qualified to graduate. I guess I can't think of the answer. I would follow directions.

I brought a water bottle today. I don't think that security is going to let me bring it through. Following directions might be what I should try to work on. After four years, I never really got around to doing that.

JONES: [LAUGHING]

So what are you doing this summer, now that you're leaving? What are you going to do?

CHEMI: I'll be working in New York City, trying to pay back MIT.

JONES: Okay, Eric.

CHEMI: Okay, thank you, Marilee.

JONES: Wonderful talk with you.

CHEMI: Great.

JONES: Have a good day.

CHEMI: You too. Bye-bye.

JONES: Okay.

ROSKO: Now, here at MIT, there's a program in the School of Engineering that helps prepare aspiring engineers for the realities they'll face in the day-to-day world. Unlike the Apprentice, where only one individual is crowned a winner, the UPOP program-- Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program-- aims to make them all winners. Let's take a look at the video.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- UPOP stands for Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program. It's a program in the School of Engineering that we have designed to help engineering students gain a better appreciation of the engineering practice, the workplace, and to help them acquire the skills they need to be effective and be leaders in engineering practice out there.

- We have four phases to the program.

The first is a 40-hour corporate training seminar. It's called the Introduction to Engineering Practice Workshop that we teach during IAP. The second is a spring seminar series taught by alumni that focus on career development topics. The third is the summer practice experience, where the students do an internship for 10 weeks during the summer. And then, finally, we have a fall reflective experience, where the students come back and share with other students, faculty and alumni what they've learned from their engineering practice experience, and how it relates to what we taught them.

- I think in doing a program like UPOP in the School of Engineering [INAUDIBLE] responds to that [INAUDIBLE] in the sense that not only do we have to have our students strong in their technical discipline, but it is important that they have an appreciation, and have the skills and ability, to deal with engineering practice as they are in the real world.

- The topics I was most interested about in the UPOP program were how organizations work, what engineers can do and what their role is within an organization, and what sort of factors you need to take into account when you are planning a business, such as marketing, knowing your customers, and working together with your whole team-- rather than just your engineers-- to deliver the product that people really want.

- There is a little bit of warming up to do with the people I worked with. And I guess there were some challenges. They gave my project for the summer, and on the first day I finished it. And they were a little confused as to what to do with me. But I explored around, I ended up learning a huge amount, and I had a marvelous time there.

- It definitely provided a different approach to things. You think engineering, you think private industry. You don't necessarily think the public sector. People miss out on that, especially MIT students. They miss out on the opportunity to explore other realms, because you have these great companies who come here, recruit the students, provide them with great packages for the summer.

So it's hard to turn that down. And to have that opportunity, to have some other opportunities available, like non-profits or government or whatever, I think is a good-- it's a good thing for MIT students, because you need MIT students in all aspects of life, including government.

- I definitely see myself really curious, and not just being able to come up with an idea, but marketing it. Because I've seen these companies fail, and this company was on the edge for a long time now. And so now I'm really-- I really wonder. I really want to learn about what makes a company, and what can really make it great.

- I think that the UPOP experience has been very important to my MIT education as a whole, because it's really helped me get a perspective on the technologies and skills that I've been learning in my classes. While I know from my classes how to get the right answer to a problem from UPOP, I know how to put together questions, how to think about an organization, or new technology, or about my career, and really how to set things up. So it's really taking a broader view and incorporating a lot of different elements from psychology, managerial science, marketing, pretty much everything. And when I add my MIT education to that, I feel very prepared for my career and future.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[END PLAYBACK]

ROSKO: So 2004-2005 was a big year in sports. So 2004 and 2005 was a big year in sports here in Boston with a Super Bowl championship, and, of course, the Red Sox won the World Series. Woo! I'm actually a Yankee fan, but when in Rome--

JONES: Boo!

ROSKO: Now, the 2.007 contest is MIT's biggest spectator event. But a lack of spectators does not prevent MIT students from participating in athletics. In fact, it's not widely known that MIT has more varsity sports-- 41-- than almost any other college in the country-- aside from the one up the river there. As this video illustrates, at MIT, students don't just sit in the stands, they also participate.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- MIT sponsors a uniquely expansive athletic department, which features 25 intercollegiate sports, 40 club sport offerings, and 42 intercollegiate athletic programs.

- Athletics are part of this notion of building a community, and building a complete individual's education.

- I certainly feel more well-rounded because of it. I feel that I've had the chance to excel in different aspects of my life.

- MIT has the largest number of academic All-Americas in the country with 114 since the program began in 1980. I think it showcases that our kids are doing exceptionally well in the classroom, as well as on the field.

- At the beginning of each season, the football coach says, "Gentlemen, the first priority for you is going to be your academics. Second priority is going to be football, and if your list doesn't look like this, then you shouldn't be in this room."

- Nearly 60% of our undergraduates compete in organized sports at some level on campus. It's a good thing, because I met a lot of people that I wouldn't have met otherwise who I would see afterwards. And I was like, ah, you're on my IM team. So how's it going? How's your research?

- They don't exist for themselves. They don't exist for the alumni to make the alumni feel good. We have them because they're part of the educational experience.

- Towards the edge, roll [INAUDIBLE] Out into the water. Down.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- The crew boat itself-- this 70-foot boat-- is a micromanaged system in and of itself. You've got the administrator-- your coxswain. And then you've got your powerhouse. You've got your stroke, who's your leader of your powerhouse. And then you've got your four and five seats, who are the peak of your boat. And then you've got your bow, who kind of guides you along in the little directions, left and right. And so together, you work as a team to the common goal.

- They learn incredible amounts about leadership, teamwork, sportsmanship, and courage-- the willingness to take risks and push their abilities beyond what they think they can achieve.

- I've learned to push myself during races and during practices so hard, and commit myself to a certain goal unequivocally in a way that I never had before.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- The MIT I knew in the 60s and early 70s had a proper emphasis on athletics and a tremendous diversity of sports, and really emphasized participation. That part hasn't changed. But what's happened is there's an even greater variety of sports today.

- If MIT doesn't have something-- be it a club or organization or sport-- if two people want to do it, they'll let you organize it, and you can have it. It's up to the individual, but MIT will embrace that.

- It always has been in the past and always will be about opportunity for all.

- One of the things that I think is particularly striking about the athletic program at MIT is the emphasis on participation in sports, rather than spectator sports. You don't see the whole campus coming out to watch the football game on a Saturday afternoon, like you might plan on some college campuses. But you do see an incredible number of students that are engaged.

Currently, about 20% of the students are involved in a varsity sport; about 80% of the students are involved in intramural sports; and 100% of the undergraduates are involved in the physical education program.

- So it really lets students pursue their interests, whether they pursue them as an extracurricular activity through their school previously, or whether it's something brand new.

- We've been able to make major investments in facilities and support services that have enhanced an already vital program. The biggest single change has been the opening of the Zesiger Center.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- The Z Center-- that thing is just beautiful.

- It just seemed like the MIT campus became healthier, because people were more willing to work out, because there were more facilities, and they were nicer.

- The new facilities had been made possible because there was a vision on the part of MIT, but then the facilities could not have been created without the financial support of the alums who have come forth to say, yes, we recognize that that is an important priority, and we want to be able to support it. You'll be in there lifting weights, and your professor will be in there lifting weights also, or something, and say hi to him. Just little things like that, seeing people outside of the classroom and interacting not in an academic way I think really helps build a community.

- It's not just about the classroom, or just about the laboratory, but it's about growing as a person. And part of that is working with other students who are participating in sports, or other sort of events, the arts-- all of which will carry forward into their future lives.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[END PLAYBACK]

JONES: Welcome back, everyone. This is like breaking news, I feel like I'm on Peter Jennings. Anyway, it's time for us to interview some of the families here today, because the point is that this is all about our graduates. So here, we have several families. I have our first family here. So I want to introduce you.

MILLER: I'm Tony Miller. This is Annette [? Taverner's ?] parents, Manuel and Barbara.

JONES: Welcome. So your wife is graduating today, their daughter.

MILLER: She's receiving her PhD in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology from the Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

JONES: You are also--

MILLER: I'm also a PhD student in the same program.

JONES: But she's graduating before you?

MILLER: She is. She's two years ahead of me.

JONES: She's a little smarter than you?

MILLER: Oh, definitely.

JONES: So tell me something. Her name is what again?

MILLER: Annette Taverner.

JONES: Annette Taverner. Okay. So let's talk about Annette for a minute. So Annette grew up where?

MILLER: In Miami, Florida. Her mother is a Cuban exile. Her father is from Argentina. She's the first person of the family to graduate from college.

JONES: So the very first person in your family to graduate from college, and she's getting her PhD from MIT. Nothing like going to the top. So here's a big call out to Annette, over there robing and getting ready for this today. So what-- why do you think her interest is in hearing and speech? Is there any of that in your family?

MILLER: No, but she was originally trained as an electrical engineer, and she was very interested in communication technologies.

JONES: And how about you? Did you meet her here?

MILLER: I met her here.

JONES: Oh my god, so you're like a real MIT family? We became your matchmakers. This is wonderful.

MILLER: She not only received her PhD. She received her MRS at MIT.

JONES: Oh, her MRS. No babies yet?

MILLER: No babies yet.

JONES: Sorry, I'm a mother. Sorry, forgive me. So tell me a little about your daughter. Tell me a little bit about Annette. What's she like?

MILLER: Annette is very personable. She served on many committees here. She's an avid trap shooter when she's in Miami.

JONES: A trap shooter?

MILLER: Shotguns.

JONES: Shotguns, so like, pull, bang. Like that?

MILLER: Exactly. Yeah.

JONES: So she's got good hand-eye coordination?

MILLER: Very good.

JONES: She's nobody you want to make mad at you?

MILLER: No, especially if you're one of those little clay disks. Don't do it.

JONES: And where do you live here?

MILLER: We live in Davis Square, Somerville.

JONES: Okay, so not in the [INAUDIBLE]

MILLER: No.

JONES: Well, welcome to you. I hope it's a wonderful day for you, and a wonderful day for your daughter Annette.

MILLER: Thank you.

JONES: Thank you. Nice to meet you. Great. So Tom.

TOM: Yes, Marilee? I'm supposed to-- so the students being honored today have been at MIT during a period of unprecedented growth in student life and learning programs, resulting in the construction of new dorms, new classrooms, and a beautiful new athletic center. We recently produced a series of short video retrospectives where students talk about their MIT experiences outside of the classrooms and laboratories. Watch the screen, and you might once again catch a glimpse of your graduate.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- When I came as a freshman coming in, there's all of these things thrown at you. So many activities to do, so many organizations.

- And that's what's really so impressive about this place, is that everyone is passionate about something. You just have to talk to them for five minutes, and you'll start to hear about it.

- I think what surprised me most is really just how much there is to do, and how many people are doing that stuff, like there's a club for almost anything you can imagine. There's enough people that actually fill the club, too.

- We're about to perform an opera made up on the spot from Italy. Let the opera begin.

[NON-ENGLISH SONG]

- I came here at MIT. I was interested in computer science majoring, but I also like the arts. My favorite type of art is dance. I love to dance. I've been dancing since I was two.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- I've been studying mechanical engineering at MIT. And during the time I've been here, I've been really involved in the Hobby Shop.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- I came to MIT to major in computer science, but while I was here, I discovered lion dance.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- What I also found here is a passion for service on a scale, which is different from anything that I had really been able to conceive of.

- We're going to explain about filter systems for water.

- I was a coordinator of the freshman leadership program. I've also done a lot of work within the community at different schools within the Cambridge system.

- The thing that I'm most involved in right now is MIT African Internet Technology Initiative.

- I play both field hockey and lacrosse. I am involved in a sorority alpha phi.

- I'm a small group leader-- a small group Bible study leader-- for Asian Christian Fellowship. And I was involved in MIT Cross Products, which is the only Christian a capella group on campus.

- [INAUDIBLE]

- The range is just so large. It would take a huge amount of time just to enumerate the opportunities. And in some sense, this challenge for the student is figuring out which of those things they want to do, because they can't do everything. They can't even do a small fraction of everything.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[END PLAYBACK]

JONES: Hi, everybody, we're back. We're back with the Mahoney family. So let's talk about your kids. So who's graduating today?

MRS. MAHONEY: 2/3 of our triplets are graduating today-- Maya and Quinn Mahoney. Their sister Brenna graduated from Cornell University last weekend.

JONES: So 2/3 of your triplets are going to be in the great Court in about an hour. So how come your other one chose to go to Cornell? That's what I want to know.

MR. MAHONEY: She's very bright.

JONES: He's mad at me because we were not able to get enough kids out of his high school. You teach there, right?

MR. MAHONEY: Right. I teach in an inner city high school in Washington, DC. It's a public school, and we want to send our graduates to MIT.

JONES: Amen. Benjamin Banneker, right?

MR. MAHONEY: Benjamin Banneker Academic High School.

JONES: And so where did your triplets go to school?

MRS. MAHONEY: Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC, where John taught for 24 years, before he went to Benjamin Banneker.

JONES: You know, I remember these cases very well. I remember your children's cases. Oh yeah. It's not every day you see twins or even triplets. So did they have a good experience here?

MR. MAHONEY: They had a great experience. And our son Quinn was just involved with the Time Traveler Convention. And we're anticipating seeing some sort of prank this morning, but we don't know anything about it. He certainly is not involved.

JONES: So he could be someone who knows people, who knows people who have something to do with hacks?

MRS. MAHONEY: Could be, could be.

JONES: Could be.

MR. MAHONEY: Could be.

JONES: So where do they live here? Which living groups?

MR. MAHONEY: Even though they have the same major-- Course 6-- they live on opposite ends of the campus. Our son lives on East Campus, and our daughter lives in Next House.

JONES: In two different ZIP codes. So how are you financing three big educations? Plus you said you also have an older son. Is that right?

MRS. MAHONEY: And he's here today. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor's and Master's degree. We had help from the grandparents.

JONES: Help from the grandparents. And would you have to hitchhike here for the graduation? Got no gas money anymore?

MR. MAHONEY: And we're going to ask them to pay us back.

JONES: They better get good jobs. Do they have good jobs lined up?

MR. MAHONEY: No. Our daughter's going to get a PhD in biomedical engineering at Purdue University, and our son's staying here for his master's. But they will eventually have good jobs-- good, lucrative jobs. And they'll pay us back.

JONES: And they'll take care of their parents in their old age.

MRS. MAHONEY: Hopefully.

JONES: So did any future time travelers show up at the time traveler convention?

MR. MAHONEY: They decided they rather show up at graduation.

JONES: That's good. Well, it's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for sending your two kids to MIT. Any more at home? Any other Mahoneys at home we should be looking for?

MRS. MAHONEY: No, no younger ones. This is it.

MR. MAHONEY: But there'll be another generation coming in about 30 years. So now that you guys are empty nesters, now when are you going to do? Now that you're broke and empty-nested, what are you going to do?

MRS. MAHONEY: Well, we travel a lot now. We're not totally broke.

MR. MAHONEY: And at my school, we do the first robotics competition, which is co-founded by Woodie Flowers and Dean Segue, and--

MRS. MAHONEY: Dean Kamen.

MR. MAHONEY: --this is a-- Dean Kamen. And this is a way in which the influence of MIT has spread through the schools of this nation. Robotics is just turning kids into engineers. It's just been a lot of fun.

JONES: So your kids are really loving that, are they?

MR. MAHONEY: Yeah. It's just been a great program. It's an extension of Course 2.70 into the high schools, same sort of kit that we get, and it's neat. We do it in the back of my classroom.

JONES: Well, that's great. Well, it's a pleasure to meet you. And we're going to get some of those kids out at Banneker.

MR. MAHONEY: Thank you.

MRS. MAHONEY: Thank you.

ROSKO: Hello again. Once again, I'm Tom Rosko, the Institute Archivist and head of special lectures and archives in the libraries here. And that was Marilee Jones, Dean of Admissions. And welcome to you all, those just arriving for the ceremonies that are about to occur. Now, most people understand that MIT is a research institution, and that new inventions happen all the time. And here's a look at the genesis of a particular recent student intervention.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- I like working on projects where I'm dealing with the smaller things in life, the little things that perturb you every day. And this problem of waking up in the morning is certainly something that I used to think about a lot. When I was waking up I would hit the snooze button accidentally for up to two hours, or even accidentally turn the alarm clock off. So this is just sort of a way I could include some sort of playfulness inside technology, and solve a problem without adding complexity.

Alarm clocks are traditionally very annoying devices, and I wanted to create something that was playful and meaningful, and that could sort of even excite some laughter in one of the most hateful times of the day. So I took an industrial design course at the MIT Media Lab that inspired me to create Clocky, and I came up with the idea and just sort of prototyped it for a few days. And from there, I think somebody picked up on it and realized it was something that everybody could relate to.

- Part of the goal of consumer electronics research here at the MIT Media Lab is to take advantage of the intelligence that we could put inside ordinary products to make them more delightful, to make them do the right thing, to make them behave in a predictable and understandable way. Clocky is a clock that has behavior, and as Gauri likes to say, it has the behavior of a somewhat troublesome pet that you still love. And in this case, we also think the behavior is useful. And one of the reasons I believe that we've seen such a response from press, and just from ordinary people to Clocky, is that they understand exactly what it does, and they think that's going to help them wake up in the morning.

- The concept for Clocky originally was not to use the most advanced technology, but to create a new place for technology that was playful and that has a personal meaning for an individual's life. Clocky is made up of a small computer inside that is programmed with a random generating sequence of numbers that control the speed and the direction that Clocky will move in. And it's connected to a couple of motors and a couple of wheels, and that does enable it to move around the room. When you hit the snooze button, Clocky will roll off the bedside table and wheel away on the floor running in random directions and speeds, until he finds a place to rest. And every day, Clocky will find a new place to rest, so it's sort of like a hide and seek game that you play every morning.

Clocky is of course a research project at the Media Lab, and I'm currently developing on more prototypes. But Clocky could be soon be in production within a year. The Media Lab is a great environment for a project like this to emerge. I've been able to do everything from fabricating to programming, to coming up with ideas and thinking about real world problems, all in the space of one lab.

- Well, I think Clocky answers a need that is felt across cultures throughout the world, and that is being able to get up in the morning when one really doesn't want to. And the snooze bar makes it very easy not to get up in the morning. Well, in this case, Clocky lets you use the snooze bar once, and then you have to go find the alarm clock in order to turn it off the second time. And by that point, you're out of bed. And it's a very simple scenario to explain. Anybody who has an alarm clock can understand exactly why this is an interesting idea.

And the kinds of responses we've seen from people who have written to us or who have written on blogs on the internet around the world is that they understand what this is about. They may agree or they may disagree, but they can immediately see what the point is.

[END PLAYBACK]

JONES: Okay, we're back. More families, this is my favorite part of the show. So would you introduce yourself?

MOTHER 1: My name is [INAUDIBLE] I actually come from Los Angeles.

JONES: And who are you here for?

MOTHER 1: It's my son. His name is Michael [? Tan. ?]

JONES: He's graduating with a Bachelor's degree in--

MOTHER 1: EECS.

JONES: That's electrical engineering and computer science. And you two.

MOTHER 2: Yes. We are [INAUDIBLE] [? Sugai ?] and today my son Bruno is graduating from comparative media studies.

JONES: He's getting his Bachelor's degree?

MOTHER 2: Yes, he is.

JONES: We got a twofer here.

STUDENT 15: I'm Andre Sugai I'm his little brother, and also a CMS undergrad. I'm a rising senior right now.

JONES: So two boys at MIT. Yeah, you're pretty broke. So tell me about your son.

MOTHER 1: He's pretty excited, this is a dream school for him, so he's very excited here. Learn everything a lot here, so.

JONES: What high school did he go to in LA?

MOTHER 1: He was at Beverly High School.

JONES: Where?

MOTHER 1: Beverly Hills High School.

JONES: So you're the one responsible for the California weather?

MOTHER 1: Yes, it's wonderful here. And also, we're here for a day or two.

JONES: Because, you know, those of you who are not from New England, you don't understand that the month of May was raining and freezing cold. So we knew all the Californians are here today. Okay, so now your brother, he's comparative media studies. That's kind of a new major here, right?

STUDENT 15: Yeah it's actually the second graduating class since it has become a major.

JONES: So it's safe to say that you guys are pioneers?

STUDENT 15: I like to think of it that way.

JONES: And now, where are you from?

STUDENT 15: Well, we're from South Carolina originally, but my parents have recently moved to Belmont, Mass.

JONES: Oh, Belmont. Got to be close to the family.

MOTHER 2: Exactly.

JONES: I see.

MOTHER 2: Our two boys being here, it was closer to home than--

JONES: Do you have more at home?

MOTHER 2: No. It's just Bruno and Andre.

JONES: And they're both at MIT. So you're really a MIT family.

MOTHER 2: We are. All our heart is with MIT.

JONES: So now what are you going to do, do you think, when you finish? What's Bruno going to do, and then what are you going to do?

STUDENT 15: Bruno is looking into electronic music, or digital music. I'm more of an advertising kind of person. So that's probably what I'm going to do.

JONES: So you're going to be doing interesting summer work, summer jobs?

STUDENT 15: Myself, I'm working at the Tampa Tribune for the summer, doing the news media desk over there.

JONES: Tampa, Florida?

STUDENT 15: Yes. And Bruno is currently building his portfolio and looking for some good electronic music prospects and he's also working with his band, the Hong Kong Regulars. So if you are around here, go check them out.

JONES: Okay, so it's nice to meet you, and congratulations. And here you go, Tom.

ROSKO: Now we're going to take another look at a research video about a recent invention.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- This is Toddler. And this is Dr. Russ Tedrake. Together, they're covering new ground at MIT.

- So we call the robot Toddler because it learns to walk, and because it toddles when it walks.

- Toddler's a passive dynamic walker. That means he's a simple mechanical device with joints. In the past, the only way these robots could walk was to trundle down a slope. They couldn't walk on flat surfaces. This is where Toddler steps to the front of the class. He's simple, like the passive dynamic robots, and he could walk on flat surfaces, too. The difference is, he uses very little power to do so.

- We're letting the dynamics of the robot solve most of the control problem, and we just add a little bit of energy here or there to kind of push and pull the robot. And that's a much more energy efficient strategy for designing a walking robot. It turned out that the dynamic walking was a great way to make a system that could learn in real time on a real machine.

- The robot has a computer and battery packs on board, and the steering is controlled with a wireless connection and a laptop, but Toddler does a lot of the work itself. Because the robot already knew how to walk down a slope, it required less work to find a solution for walking on the flat. Dr. Tedrake gave Toddler the ability to use sensors that communicate with motors. So with each step the robot takes, it's able to make adjustments.

- And that's what we call learning. It's a simple idea, but it's the best way we can embody what we think the nervous system is doing, too, when we're talking about learning. When we put it on the flat, and we start asking it to learn, then it can actually change the parameters quickly enough that in we say, 20 minutes, to be safe-- in 20 minutes, it learns to walk on the flat, and it continues to adapt to the terrain as it goes.

- Toddler can also be adjusted to learn very quickly, but with faster learning comes a price.

- There's this very interesting result in learning theory, which tells that you can't have learning without generalization. The problem is, when you start generalizing, then there's a possibility that you'll overwrite things that you've learned in the past.

- So if it learns faster, the robot will walk from linoleum to carpet with only a quick adjustment. However, the return to linoleum may take a little longer. But it's easy to see that Toddler has in fact learned, and that ability has enabled Toddler to tackle new terrain.

- It's just such a thrill whenever you see the robot walking, and especially when you do it in a public place and you can see all the people go, oh, look, it's a cool little robot.

- So how does studying a robot that walks like a human actually benefit humans?

- So by just looking at how a machine walks and understanding that, we can actually learn a lot about how humans walk. Ultimately, down the line-- far down the line-- if we understand the motor learning system better, then there's a potential that we can use that information to design rehabilitation programs-- even neural prosthetics-- to help people recover from injuries or augment their performance. There's a lot of different potential applications.

- As for Toddler, he's got a big brother already in the works. This new version includes changes such as smaller feet, new components, and a fine set of knees. Knees that can both walk and swing through a step will enable the robot to be more versatile. It's also one of the steps being taken to make the robot appear more human-- something Dr. Tedrake thinks is very important for the future of robot design.

- When you see a robot that looks like a human, you kind of have a tendency to reach out to it, and it really helps, I think, with the human-robot interaction.

- Dr. Tedrake says there is still much to learn from the original Toddler, and from its new brother.

- It's an iterative process where we basically start adding components back in and see just how far the learning can take us. And once you've built one, and once you watched it walk, the idea really sells itself. I think it's the first step in a long road of building better robots, more efficient robots, and learning systems for robots.

[END PLAYBACK]

JONES: So let's see what's happening over in Johnson with our graduates. They look like they're all in line. It looks like they're in alpha order. If they step out of line, they don't graduate. How many MIT students can follow directions?

Good, a quick commercial break-- for those of you who want the CD or video of this graduation, you can order them at the information tables on either side in the back of the court. Every graduate will be photographed as they graduate, and you may want to purchase one of those photos as well. And you can arrange that at those tables in the back.

So here, we're back with family. Here's a wonderful family from Canada. So would you introduce yourself?

GILBERT: Hi, I'm Marcy Gilbert.

SCHACTER: And I'm Shalom Schacter.

JONES: And who is your graduate?

GILBERT: Matye Gilbert-Schacter.

JONES: So his name is Matye?

SCHACTER: Correct.

JONES: And you're from where?

SCHACTER: We're from Toronto, Canada.

JONES: In Toronto. So you just reminded me that this weather is not necessarily California, it's actually Toronto weather. So we thank the Canadians. The Canadians-- you know what, a Canadian was a first international student at MIT-- 1866.

SCHACTER: The year before Canada was confederated.

JONES: So a true pioneer. So tell me a little about Matye.

SCHACTER: Well, Matye has been only here for three years, and he's had to take it all in. He was a transfer student from University of Toronto. He switched disciplines from engineering to physics, and he'll be graduating with a physics major and a minor in mathematics.

JONES: In three years.

SCHACTER: Yes. He's really enjoyed his stay. He's dreamed as a child of coming to MIT. We tried to support him and his dream, but he made it come true, and we're very happy to be here to see it come to fruition.

JONES: That's wonderful. You know, we hear about stories like this where students have been dreaming their whole life to come. And mostly we hear those stories of people of students we turn down. So it's always wonderful to hear that we actually took people who've been dreaming their whole lives about MIT. It's wonderful.

So tell me a little about Matye as a person.

GILBERT: Matye's a wonderful person. And he's going to be moving on to Philadelphia, where he'll be a trader with one of the companies.

JONES: So he has sibs at home in Toronto?

GILBERT: Yes. He has one sibling who is living in Waterloo right now, attending the University of Waterloo in engineering.

JONES: In engineering So does this run in the family, does it, this engineering thing?

SCHACTER: No. My father in fact is a practical person in terms of technology. But we're both social scientists, although I did start myself in the physics and mathematics as an undergraduate.

JONES: So was Matye on the screen before?

SCHACTER: Yes, he was.

JONES: Oh, he was. I thought I remembered his name. So he was with the first group of students.

SCHACTER: That's right. He's been active in many of the special resources at MIT. He's been active in sports. He took pistols, which was a shock to us. He was active in the student organizations-- he became president of Hillel, the Jewish student organization. And he was active in his fraternity.

JONES: I remember Matye now. Oh yeah.

GILBERT: It's nice to know that he's remembered.

JONES: Oh yes. Every student at MIT is handpicked, you know. It's true. And we don't take very many transfer students each day, so this is good. So where does he live here?

SCHACTER: Well, he's moved into the fraternity house that's on the other side of the Charles River, but for the first year that he was here, he was in a number of the residences.

JONES: So I'm so happy he's had a good experience here, and it's a pleasure to meet you. And now we're going to turn it back to Tom.

GILBERT: Thank you.

ROSKO: Now, MIT is very well known for its first-class engineering education and research. But MIT also has an excellent arts program, and it compliments all the other disciplines. In fact, the arts and humanities have been a part of MIT's educational experience since MIT's very founding. And when William Barton Rogers, MIT's founder and first President, drew up the plan of what the education at MIT should be, the humanities and arts were a key part of the curriculum.

And over the years, that part that includes humanities and the arts and its importance has always been a part of MIT's curriculum and its education. And in fact, MIT prides itself on educating lifelong learners who understand the societal and humanistic effects of technology and science. And now we offer you an excerpt of a program overview of the arts at MIT.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- One morning, I came up the steps of Massachusetts Avenue, and walked through the door. And the entire space had been transformed into a wheat field. Innovative visual arts projects like that are happening all the time on campus. The arts at MIT, like science and engineering at MIT, are on the cutting edge of their disciplines. They are serving the students. And in the way they're serving the students, ultimately they're going to be serving the entire society.

- At MIT, you'll find some of the best musicians-- virtuosos, completely. A person who lives next door to me has perfect pitch, and if you name any song whatsoever he can strum it out on his guitar. If it has multiple lines of music, he can strum out all lines on his guitar. And you can see that it's indicative of the level of quality of the MIT symphony orchestra, the MIT concert choir, et cetera.

- Last year I got to premier a song cycle written by an MIT composer, and that was a lot of fun. Modern poetry, modern music, and everything.

- Everyone at MIT cares about something, whether it's their classes or their UROP, or some student activity they do. There's always something that they really care about.

- The thing about MIT students that I most appreciate is the elegance of their thinking, and the fact that it's sort of "live and let live" here.

[GROUP SINGING]

There's a point of concentration that any discipline requires, whether it's engineering or it's directing for acting, or painting. That point of concentration is the focal point. It is the thing around which you organize your thinking and your technique. And so the fact that there is ensemble work, where people learn to work collaboratively, is something that I see that people take into their labs in a way that you would hope that labs work collaboratively.

[MUSIC - ROB THOMAS, "SMOOTH"]

- (SINGING) Cuz you're so smooth. And it's just like the ocean under the moon, it's the same as the emotion that I get from you. You got the kind of loving that can be so smooth, yeah. Give me your heart, make it real, or else forget about it.

[LAUGHTER]

- I'll kill you!

- Ooh! He kills me. Ooh!

- Well, right now, it's sort of-- theater is a way I can investigate my own sort of identity, especially my own cultural identity. But I also enjoy theater because it's such a collaborative art, and it's a lot like engineering, which is one of my majors. And I also intend to pursue engineering, and that is so collaborative. And so you get a lot of different people's perspective on things.

- We find our students-- a certain number of them go on to graduate study in music and in the arts. Some of them go on to become leaders of arts organizations within their communities. Some of them go on to sing in organizations or performing organizations, like the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. And in a couple of notable situations, I have myself a number of times have been engaged by organizations whose presidents were either in my class at MIT 20 years ago, or had been at MIT years before that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My first visit to MIT, when I walked through the halls, I remember passing through the math department on the way to Building 14, where we used to be. And I looked in the door and saw mathematicians hunched in carols, and I felt right at home, because that looked exactly like walking down the halls of Juilliard into the practice rooms, and seeing people working personally on something.

- One of the amazing things about MIT students is the incredible wide range of interests and abilities that extend far beyond the intellectual and the academic. And our special guest with us, this section of the concert is no exception to that. His name is Jonathan Lee.

[APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- I think that being involved in activities like this only enhances your education. I think it's important that while you're at school to focus on things besides your own research.

- So people come here as scientists, as engineers, as mathematicians. But when they are making art, they're artists.

- I think that it's a way of chilling out some of the stresses you have. It's a way of looking at the things you're doing with a broader picture.

[GROUP SINGING "WE ARE THE ENGINEERS"]

- So you shouldn't think that MIT has no art, because they've got them like sprawling all over the place.

- Well, now, the advice I give to incoming freshmen consistently is don't leave your trumpet at home. You can use it here.

- (SINGING) Engineers!

- Go, go, go, go, go, go--

- Engineers!

- We are, we are, we are the engineers.

- Engineers!

- We are, we are, we are the engineers.

- Engineers!

- We are, we are, we are the engineers.

- Engineers!

- We are, we are, we are the engineers.

- A lady and an engineer were sitting in the park, and the engineer was working on some research after dark. His scientific method was a wonder to observe. While his right hand--

[END PLAYBACK]

JONES: Okay. We got progress. I understand the procession may have already begun. Let's take a look at what's happening in Johnson. Here they come.

Just so you know, they're across Mass Ave. in the Johnson Athletic Center. They're going to come across, they're going to come down Mass Ave., they're going to curve around Memorial Drive down here to the bottom of the court. And very shortly, the commencement will begin, and they will enter straight up the middle aisle. So this is-- we've already begun.

So we have one more interview for a family, because then you have to quickly grab your seats and get ready for this big show. So why don't you introduce yourselves here, and who are you here for?

FATHER 1: My name is Melvin [? Magny. ?] My son is Eric Magny, and he's graduating from biology today.

STUDENT 16: I'm his sister, Sonya Magny.

MOTHER 3: I am [INAUDIBLE] Magny, Eric's mother.

STUDENT 17: And I'm Melvin Magny, Eric's brother.

JONES: And Melvin, you are a junior here, right? Good, so another brother at MIT. So tell me about Eric. So what's his degree going to be in?

STUDENT 16: Biology.

JONES: It's good to be in biology. And then what is Eric going to do?

STUDENT 16: He's going to UCLA for med school.

JONES: He's going to be a doctor.

STUDENT 16: Yep.

JONES: That's good. This is how he's going to take care of you parents, huh? So you which department are you in, Melvin?

STUDENT 17: I'm in biology, too.

JONES: And you're in biology as well. Same kind of track.

STUDENT 17: Basically, yep.

JONES: Are you guys doctors?

FATHER 1: Yes.

MOTHER 3: Yes.

JONES: Oh, you're an all doctor family. So if you have an emergency here, we know who to call right now. And how about you? So you're a junior in high school?

STUDENT 16: Yes, in Florida.

JONES: Where?

STUDENT 16: Florida.

JONES: In Florida?

STUDENT 16: Mhm.

JONES: And then what are you going to do?

STUDENT 16: Hopefully come to MIT, I don't know.

JONES: Well, you're talking to the right person. So where is your family from?

MOTHER 3: Florida.

STUDENT 16: Florida.

MOTHER 3: We are from Fort Pierce, Florida.

JONES: Where's Fort Pierce?

MOTHER 3: It's in--

STUDENT 16: Hurricane.

MOTHER 3: It's 100 miles north of--

FATHER 1: Miami. North of Miami.

MOTHER 3: It could be Miami or Orlando.

JONES: So how many hurricanes did you get hit by last year?

STUDENT 16: Two in a row.

JONES: Two in a row. Everything's okay with your home?

MOTHER 3: No, no.

JONES: Bad story. So tell me about Eric and Melvin.

STUDENT 17: Eric's a great guy, and he'll be here soon. And I mean, he has really given himself to MIT these four years, and he's one of the reasons I'm here. And he also took a lot from it, so he's also someone to learn from.

JONES: And so you said he would perform at any place, any time.

STUDENT 17: Yeah. I mean, he was big in the culture shows, he emceed two culture shows, he was varsity tennis all four years, he did research. He was an active member of our house, the vise president of our house, PB. And just all around, he was all over MIT.

JONES: So he sounds like a very active and fun student, huh? So how about you? Are you the same way?

STUDENT 17: I'm kind of the same way.

JONES: You're kind of the same way? Are you a performer too?

STUDENT 17: Yeah, I do some performing. I do some class council work, same varsity tennis and research, and basically pre-med track, so.

JONES: So next year, you're going to be here-- is it next year or the year after they're going to be here for you?

STUDENT 17: Two years.

JONES: Two more years. Okay. Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, and you better get your seats, because they're coming, and they're going to be coming around the corner any second. Thanks very much.

MOTHER 3: Pleasure meeting you.

JONES: Oh, you're welcome. And now, I'm going to turn you over to Tom Rosko, my buddy. You'll notice he's at the top of the Court at this stage. Wave to Tom. Hi, Tom! Tom has some--

ROSKO: Hi everybody.

JONES: --announcements for everyone, so listen up.

ROSKO: I have just a few public service announcements. We know that each of you is very anxious to get the best photograph or the best look at your graduate, but we just ask that you be courteous and not stand on the chairs or block the aisles, and just think about the people that are trying to watch as well from behind you.

And also, there's a medical tent. It's located at the rear of Killian Court. And the commencement program contains the words to the national anthem and MIT's song. And we also request that if you have cell phones, if you put them in a non-audible position.

And now, I'd like to say that the MIT color guard is about to come up representing the MIT police and the ROTC-- I believe-- with the presentation of the colors. And then-- sorry, just the MIT police. And after that, we'll hand you over to Larry Isaacson and the MIT Brass Ensemble.

So once again, I was Tom Rosko-- I am Tom Rosko, the Institute Archivist here, and my partner was Marilee Jones, Dean of Admissions. And we hope you enjoyed what we did for you this morning, and also that-- thank you-- and also that the procession has begun. Congratulations to the graduates of 2005, and we hope you enjoy the ceremony. Thank you very much.

[MUSIC - BACH, "SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE"]

[NO AUDIO]

[MUSIC - HARDIMAN, "LORD OF THE DANCE"]

[NO AUDIO]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JONES: Yes, we're ready. Can you hear us, Larry? Okay.

[FANFARE MUSIC PLAYING]

ROSKO: Welcome to MIT's 139th commencement exercise the commencement of the class of 2005 I'm Tom Rosko, the Institute Archivist and head of MIT's archives and special collections.

JONES: And I'm Marilee Jones, the Dean of Admissions at MIT. We will provide commentary leading up to the beginning of the commencement ceremony, and offer insight into what you're witnessing, as well as providing some current and historical context.

ROSKO: Periodically, we'll break away to allow our listeners to appreciate the ambience of the courtyard, and to listen to the processional music being played in Killian Court by the MIT Brass Ensemble. We welcome those just joining us, and we welcome our audience from across the MIT campus, the greater Boston campus community, and from around the world. And thanks to MIT professor emeritus Jay Keyser, and retired MIT museum director Warren Seamans, for their work on the previous MIT's commencement. Thank you, Jay, and thank you, Warren.

Now, here we are at MIT. MIT was founded in 1865, and its first commencement was held in 1868. And what you're seeing now is a view of the great Court, the main Great Dome of MIT, which was built and completed in 1916. MIT's original campus was across the Charles River in Boston's Back Bay, and it was known as Boston Tech.

So its first classes were held in 1865, and then the move occurred in 1916. And the first commencement exercises held in Killian-- in the Court area were in 1917 in celebration. And then in 1922, when a tent blew down, they moved the exercises inside. But back in 1979, they once again moved to this the greater Court that you see here, and commencement has been held outside ever since-- except in 1992, when severe weather forced it inside.

JONES: I've always been struck by how the Dome in Lobby 10 looks like the Pantheon in Rome.

ROSKO: Indeed, it does. The architecture is actually the Beaux-arts style, drawing from Roman and Greek influences. And it's an interesting set of buildings in that it's really one giant building with interconnected smaller buildings with corridors, so that-- and it was designed purposely that way, so that the students and the faculty could share ideas and be able to work together more easily than having to run from one building to another.

JONES: I think of those corridors coming off the Lobby 10 area and into the court as being great arms reaching out, surrounding the students.

ROSKO: Now what we'll be seeing today for commencement is a procession, and the honor guard of MIT police has already walked with the colors and presented them at the-- on the podium. And then there'll be an academic procession led by the president of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae, Linda Sharpe. And then she'll be followed by the stage principals, including MIT's President, Susan Hockfield, as well as past presidents; the Corporation chair; the mayor of Cambridge, Michael Sullivan; the individual giving the invocation-- Swami Tyagananda; the provost; the chancellor; and the deans.

They'll be followed by members of the Corporation, and then members of the faculty, members of the Class of 1955. Each 50th-year reunion class marches in commencement. And then following that will be the guests of honor, the graduates.

The ceremony itself will include a greeting from the Chair of the Corporation; the national anthem, sung by the MIT Chorallaries; the invocation by the Hindu chaplain; guest speaker, who this year is Irwin Jacobs, the former CEO of Qualcomm; and then a salute to the class given by the president of the graduate student council, Barun Singh. Then the class gift, given by the President of the Class of 2005, Rohit Gupta; and then the charge to the class given by President Hockfield.

And following that will be the actual awarding of degrees. And that will occur on both sides of the stage, the left and the right side, and each graduate will actually get their individual degree. And then after that is the Association of Alumni and Alumnae President Linda Sharpe will speak. Then we'll have the school song and then the recession.

JONES: Oh, there's Tom Byrne, the husband of Susan Hockfield, president of MIT.

ROSKO: Dr. Tom Byrne, who actually has an appointment with I believe Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty here, and also at Manhasset-- Massachusetts General Hospital.

Once again, we see a shot of the Great Dome, and what you see there is the stage, and the empty seats will be filled up momentarily by the graduates who are currently processing from the Johnson Athletic Center, which is on the west side of campus. This would be the central part of campus. The procession began a few moments ago, and at any moment now, we'll see the president of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae coming forth, carrying the mace. And following her will be the academic procession.

JONES: It's an absolute beautiful day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

PA ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, the academic procession, led by the Chief Marshal, will now enter Killian Court.

[FANFARE MUSIC PLAYING]

ROSKO: And there we see the President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae, Linda Sharpe, followed by on her right-- the camera's left-- Susan Hockfield, and on the other side is Dana Mead, the Chair of the Corporation. Behind them are the former chairs of the Corporation, as well as past presidents at MIT.

The mace she's carrying-- the gold stick-- is a gift from the class of 1907, given at the time of their 50th class reunion. It's created by [? Leverett ?] Kutten of the Class of 1907, and it's adorned with a-- on top of it is a beaver-- which is the MIT mascot-- nature's engineer. And there are also some symbols of acorns and oak leaves, which symbolize strength. And then around are other symbols representing various-- representing symbols that are representative of the technological culture of MIT, rather than specific courses of study.

The procession is making its way up to the Great Dome from the Charles River basin along Memorial Drive at the foot of the campus.

Now, President Hockfield was just inaugurated this past-- about a month ago. She became the 16th president and took office December 6 of 2004. She was MIT's first woman president, and also the first life scientist. The robe she's wearing-- you see the colors of the silver gray and the cardinal red-- are the colors of MIT, which were established in 1875 by a vote of the faculty and the alumni. We see the various deans coming through.

JONES: We love these beautiful robes from all the different schools.

ROSKO: The academic garb, the caps and gowns, date back to the 12th and 13th centuries, and it actually stems from the clerical garb, because many of the original institutions of learning were based in religious societies. And the colors represent the various-- often the robes will be of the school attended, and then the hoods representing the school and the doctoral degrees.

JONES: There's Michael Sullivan, the mayor of Cambridge.

ROSKO: We see in the back Rafael [? Bras ?] carrying the shepherd's staff, and he is the current chair of the faculty.

JONES: There's Howard Johnson--

ROSKO: Former MIT president in the late 1960s, and also former chair of the Corporation. There you see all of the diplomas to be handed out, which is something MIT didn't always do. it was actually in 19-- and most universities don't do that today. It's actually something special about MIT. Originally, before 1923 they used to simply put all the diplomas in a big basket, and have the graduates just run up and get which ones they wanted to try and find theirs.

Here, we see the procession of MIT faculty.

JONES: Better not mix up those diplomas.

ROSKO: Here we see some of the marshals. Each of the different academic divisions that are processing are led by a marshal and also associate marshals. Those would be those in the more floppier cardinal red caps.

JONES: That is Kim Vandiver, Professor and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education.

ROSKO: And head of the Edgerton Center.

JONES: An all-around wonderful guy.

ROSKO: You see the faculty precessing in two lines. One side of the stage will be awarded the undergraduate degrees for the most part, and then the other side will be the graduate degrees.

And there once again, we see MIT's mace, the symbol of the academic procession.

The music you hear in the background is the MIT Brass Ensemble, being conducted by Larry Isaacson.

And here we see precessing members of the Class of 1955. It's become a commencement part that the 50th reunion class does process, and you see that they have their class jackets, which are awarded to members of the 50th class.

JONES: In those days, their favorite activities coming out of high school were music, ham radio, and tinkering.

ROSKO: And how has that changed with the classes today, Marilee?

JONES: Well, the most recent class, their favorite activities were volunteering, music and the arts, leadership activities, and athletics. Very different life for kids today than for the 17-year-olds of the Class of 1955.

ROSKO: In the class of 2005, there are 2177 undergraduate and graduate students. There will be awarded 1,094 Bachelor's degrees, 1078 Master's degrees, 257 Doctorates and 12 engineering degrees. And here, we see a shot of President Hockfield talking to the provost, Bob Brown. And behind her, left to right, we see Alice Gast, the Associate Dean of Research; and Claude Canizares, Associate Provost-- Alice Gast is Associate Provost-- behind, I believe, members of the Corporation.

And I believe that was Irwin Jacobs we saw standing next to Susan. He will be today's guest speaker.

JONES: Isn't it wonderful to see all those red jackets.

ROSKO: The alumni certainly have a warmth for MIT and their experiences here, as you can tell by the number.

JONES: Many of these people are the reasons why this nation is so prosperous today.

ROSKO: Here we see a shot of the stage, and on the podium we see a view of MIT's seal, which if we get a shot later, we'll probably talk a little more about that.

JONES: More than a decade ago, there was a study by the Bank of Boston of all of the employment provided by graduates of MIT over time. It determined that our alumni together created the 24th largest GNP in the world. Mind and hands indeed.

ROSKO: And here we see the marshal for the faculty, Paul Lagace, standing next to Linda Sharpe of the Alumni Association.

JONES: Paul's professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics.

ROSKO: And a big Boston Red Sox fan.

JONES: And a great baseball player.

PA ANNOUNCER: --the guests of honor, the Class of 2005.

[APPLAUSE]

JONES: And now, the real guests of honor are graduates themselves.

[BRASS MUSIC PLAYING]

ROSKO: They are being led by the Dean of Students, Larry Benedict, on the left.

JONES: And my boss.

ROSKO: At the right, Bob Redwine--

JONES: The dean of undergraduate education. They look pretty spiffy with those hats on.

ROSKO: You note some of the students dressed in different regalia. Some of the recipients of doctoral degrees are wearing the MIT colors, with the robes-- with the three bars on the sleeves denoting the doctoral degree.

JONES: They're moving nice and slowly so that people don't get out of line. It almost looks like one of those slow-motion movies. It's really quite a beautiful sight.

ROSKO: And it is quite a scene here today with not only the lovely weather, but also-- it's packed to the brim with students and well-wishers, the family of the graduates.

JONES: The energy at MIT is very different today. Commencement is always such a joy. The energy is relief, relaxation, fun, it's real joy here. Very different from the rest of the year, where people are buckling down and getting their work done. It's very similar to the first day of school, but much more relaxed. Very happy day.

ROSKO: And as well as the marshals-- we see Larry Benedict and Bob Redwine-- behind them are the associate marshals-- Professor Deb Fitzgerald and Professor Leslie Norford, as well as Rohit Gupta, the President of the Class of 2005. And Mr. John [? Blasko, ?] the Treasurer of the class, and Barun Singh, the President of the Graduate Student Council. And Hector Hernandez, the Vice President of the Graduate Student Council, followed by Julie Norman, the head assistant marshal.

JONES: You can see they're coming in four lines. Two will go to the left, and two will go to the right. I have to say, as Dean of Admissions, my heart really bursts with pride when I see these young people, because in the Admissions Office, we have handpicked every single one of those students. It is very difficult to be admitted here.

ROSKO: Marilee, perhaps you could talk a little bit about the admission process itself, then-- what the students did to get into MIT.

JONES: Well, they had to be extraordinarily prepared in terms of their academic work, but they also had to be a good match for MIT. They had to be very self-motivated and have some kind of emotional resilience, not being afraid of failure. They have-- we look for people who are willing to risk, because at MIT students risk themselves every day. There's a great look.

They risk their egos every day. They need to be brave. And there are so many thousands of students who apply here, nearly 11,000 this year for this soon-to-enter freshman class. For this particular group, the Class of 2005, we had about 10,500 of them applying. and we admitted just 18% of those students. They're really extraordinary.

For those of you listening who are MIT graduates, you may wonder if you had been admitted today, many of us look at these students and think, "We would never get admitted to college today, and we feel very badly about it." And I just want to let you know-- you should not feel bad, because we admit the best of each generation. And you alumni out there were the best of yours.

ROSKO: Very nicely said.

JONES: It's comparing the apples and oranges, but now I'm going to really shock you by telling you that the average-- the mean SAT scores for this particular class as you're watching them enter was 711 Verbal-- that's 711 out of 800, folks-- and 756 Math. So many of you alumni from previous years may not have scores like that. You might have had high Math scores, but perhaps the verbal wasn't where you wanted it to be. These young ones are extraordinary.

41% of them were valedictorians of their high school classes. Well over 90% of them are in the top 5% of their high schools. They were very well prepared coming in. And every single one of those students out there has a story. They come from somewhere, they come from a family who loves them.

Every one of them have had to face tough times at MIT. They've been challenged to the max. As you know, this is a very rigorous curriculum, and they all made it.

They come from 56 different countries in the world, this group. 48 different languages spoken in their homes. That and a 711 mean SAT Verbal score. Am I proud of my kids? Yes, I am.

ROSKO: And well you should be, Marilee.

JONES: Anybody who knows me knows I take full responsibility for everyone in the class. When they do something wonderful, I write them little notes of pride. When they do something that's not so wonderful, I blame everybody else.

[LAUGHTER]

ROSKO: Now, this year's Class of 2005 also certainly was different from the Class of 1905. The much earlier alumni and graduates was a class of 244, and as far as foreign countries represented, they were three-- Brazil, England, and Ireland. And there were only 18 master's degrees awarded that year. And 55% of the class-- or of the student body came from Massachusetts.

The number of clubs that they were involved in was 11. The number of sports were 10, including a tug of war team, and the number of musical clubs three.

Here, we see another side of the stage and the principals sitting there, members of-- the deans, the members of the Corporation, the marshals, various members of the faculty seated at the front, and department heads and chairs. Also I said members of the Corporation towards the back. Once again, you note the different regalia that's being worn.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JONES: The students have been told to just follow the student in front of them-- no matter what follow the student in front of them. So now we get to see how well they take direction.

ROSKO: And it really is quite a process to award each student their degrees. I say it will be done in two parts. It will be simultaneously the degrees being given. At the left side of the stage, President Hockfield will present the Bachelor of Science degrees, the Bachelor of Science slash Master of Science degrees, Bachelor of Science slash Master of Engineering-- that would be on the left side of the stage looking out. Also President Hockfield-- I know you see a shot of President Hockfield talking to the guest speaker Irwin Jacobs-- President Hockfield will also give out advanced degrees in the School of Science, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology.

The right side, provost Bob Brown will award advanced degrees in the School of Architecture and Planning, the School of Engineering, the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and the Sloan School of Management.

JONES: Glad to see that Susan Hockfield is staying hydrated up there on the stage. It's very warm in the Great Court today, and everyone has a big bottle of water under their chair. Push fluids.

ROSKO: I'm sure no one minds the heat after the rain and cold that we've had for the month of May.

JONES: What a May we had. This is Susan's first commencement. She looks like she's having a wonderful time. There's Dana Mead, Chairman of the Corporation, and Howard Johnson.

ROSKO: Howard Johnson, former president of MIT in the late 1960s early 1970s, and then also a former chair--

JONES: There's Paul Gray.

ROSKO: Paul Gray, the president from 1980 to 1990.

JONES: I want to say just a quick word about Paul Gray. Paul Gray's a true citizen of MIT. He reminds me of George Washington in that after serving as President and then Chairman of the Corporation, he's gone back onto the faculty. And he's now joining our admissions office faculty oversight committee, the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, which is staffed by faculty members. He has not served on CUAFA for many years, and he's back.

ROSKO: And there in the middle, we saw a shot of the Mayor of Cambridge, Michael Sullivan. And he was talking to Alex d'Arbeloff, former chair-- the preceding chair of the MIT Corporation.

So some facts about MIT itself. There are over 10,000 students-- approximately 4,000 undergraduate students, and approximately 6,000 graduate students. There are 900-- over almost 1,000 faculty, including 178 women, and there are nearly 10,000 staff. MIT consists of five schools. There's the School of Engineering, the School of Science, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and the Sloan School of Management, as well as the Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology.

You see some members of the Corporation. The MIT Corporation is the governing body of MIT. The president reports to them, and we see in the bottom-left Kathryn Willmore, who is the secretary of the Corporation. So the MIT Corporation would be similar to a board of trustees, or a board of regents.

[FANFARE MUSIC PLAYING]

Many of them are members of the faculty-- I mean, members of the alumni. In fact, just 100 years ago, the Alumni Association was strengthened through-- there was a proposed merger-- one of several in the history of MIT-- with Harvard University. And the alumni did not want to see that. However, the Corporation and its vote voted that the merger should occur. This was to have MIT become sort of the School of Science of Harvard-- I mean, the School of Engineering of Harvard University.

But it was a vote, and many of the Corporation were actually Harvard graduates. But the Alumni Association fought back and petitioned against it. It was actually a legal case that MIT was not allowed to join the merger because their land, which was at that time in Boston's Back Bay, could not be sold. But anyway, that really was a strengthening of the alumni, and in fact, more Corporation members since that time have been MIT alumni.

JONES: Well, was that a good decision. Because MIT is the premier university of science and technology on the planet.

ROSKO: It is, and it was founded to be a stand-alone institution, and there were other thoughts that it might-- it was really a new sort of way of thinking when MIT was founded, as to what a polytechnic institute should be, and would be. And William Barton Rogers, MIT's founder--

JONES: My hero.

ROSKO: --established a scope and a plan as to what that should include, and it was not just the applied sciences. It was that there should be a firm founding as well in the humanities and the arts, which continues to this day, and has been reinforced many times over the importance of a well-rounded education, but also an education that does solve problems.

JONES: He added to the charter after the Civil War that MIT should teach students to apply science and technology for the benefit of humankind, because he lost family members, his wife lost a brother in the Civil War. He lived in Virginia, although he was actually a Northerner, and lost many friends in that terrible tragedy. And he could not believe how so many good people could do such stupid things.

ROSKO: And it continues as MIT's mission to have an impact on the world and for the betterment of mankind.

JONES: That's what they all do. It's a pleasure to look out over these-- so many students are about to be unleashed into the world. When you think of all the previous people from MIT gone into the world, and all the good that they do because they fix the world for the people who can't fix it for themselves, for the disenfranchised. And I just look at the sea of faces and think of all the potential there. Just think of all the magic that they're going to bring into this planet.

I want to say one thing about the Class of 2005-- they entered MIT in September 2001. So they had about two weeks of the old world, and then September 11th happened, and their lives changed, as all of our lives changed. MIT had a lot of pressure, as other universities did after that, to close its doors to international students, to close its doors to researchers, and fought back very hard to remain a free university. The currency of universities, the lifeblood of universities is ideas. And our previous president, Chuck Vest, fought very hard.

ROSKO: And the sharing with those ideas with the world is something that MIT has always promoted.

There we see in the front Paul Lagace again, one of the marshals. And talking to Susan Hockfield is today's guest speaker Irwin Jacobs. And--

JONES: Bob Brown, the provost. Next to him, Phil Clay, the chancellor. Next to him--

ROSKO: Chair of the faculty, Rafael Bras in the wonderful regalia.

JONES: It's a great, puffy neck thing he has on there.

ROSKO: In the back, we see the Dean of Graduate Students, Ike Colbert; the Dean of Architecture and Urban Planning, Adéle Santos; and the Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Phil Khoury.

JONES: Dick Schmalensee of the Sloan School, the Dean of Sloan School.

ROSKO: And then Tom Magnanti just exiting the screen as the Dean of the School of Engineering. Today's guest speaker, Irwin Jacobs, is an MIT alumnus, with a master's in-- Doctorate in Science. He's a former faculty member in electrical engineering, and co-founder and chairman and CEO of Qualcomm. He's known as an innovative entrepreneur and engineer who places high value on research.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JONES: Ah, yes there's Tom Magnanti--

ROSKO: --leaning forward, sitting next to Dick Schmalensee, Dean of the Sloan School.

JONES: Tom's wearing a nice outfit.

ROSKO: That's Princeton colors, I believe.

JONES: I see. I see Phil Khoury there.

ROSKO: He has Harvard colors.

JONES: Dean of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences school.

ROSKO: Adéle Santos, the Dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning. And once again to the bottom, Phil Clay, the chancellor. To the left up above, we see Ike Colbert, the Dean of Graduate Students.

JONES: Wonderful hat.

ROSKO: And Provost Bob Brown-- Bob Brown, being the highest academic officer of the Institute-- aside from the president-- and the Deans would report to him.

JONES: Chancellor Phil Clay, and Rafael Bras.

ROSKO: The chancellor dealing with student-related activities and services, for the most part, and Rafael Bras is chair of the faculty, representing them.

We see a lot of colors coming through, with MIT's colors there-- the gray and-- the silver gray and the cardinal red. And now at MIT, only doctoral degree recipients wear hoods, and indeed there was a hooding ceremony yesterday, where they all received as you see there the hood behind that graduate walking past.

JONES: They're so happy. They're so glad to be out of graduate school.

ROSKO: The doctoral degrees, the PhD, has a blue velvet trim, and the doctor of science a yellow velvet trim, and the lining would be the school colors. Here, we see Bob Redwine, Dean of Undergraduates to the left. Linda Sharpe, the President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae.

JONES: There's Dean Larry Benedict, who's the Dean for Student Life. There's Gayle Gallagher. You see Barun Singh, President of the Grad Student Council, and Hector Hernandez, who's the Vice President of the Grad Student.

ROSKO: We also got a shot there of Gayle Gallagher, who is the ranger of this event, and coordinating all this activity that must go on. Every year.

JONES: Commencement star. She rules. She does a fabulous job. There's Barun and Hector of the Graduate Student Council.

[LAUGHS]

ROSKO: And you note some military uniforms, and MIT has an ROTC program, representing the three branches-- the Marines, the Air Force, and-- I mean, the Army, Marines, and Navy. And actually, ROTC and military training has been a part of MIT's history since the very beginning. MIT was partially founded as a land-grant university by the Morrill Land-Grant Act, and that was compulsory as part of that training. Of course, it was also just during the Civil War that MIT came about.

JONES: So here's Bob Redwine in the middle, and then we see Rohit Gupta, who is the President of the Class of 2005, and then you see John [? Velazco, ?] who's the Treasurer of the Class of 2005. We see Professor Deb Fitzgerald, who is the associate marshal. Look at all those beautiful faces.

The class that entered in 1970-- the average number of extracurriculars coming out of high school was four. And with this particular class, the average number of extracurriculars that the students did was 12. So it shows you how the culture has changed.

Again, in 1970, the percentage of students entering with a well-defined interest in music, the number one activity at MIT, was 24% entering the class of 1970. This particular graduating class was 60%. So 60% of these kids that you see out here in the Great Court graduating entered MIT with well-defined and distinguished backgrounds in music, and that tells you how the culture has changed.

We see athletics as well in 1970-- 19% of the students came in as varsity athletes, versus 58% of the class you see in front of you, the class of 2005. That's the effect of Title IX from the 1970s that brought gender equity in athletics, and also in many other areas of life as well. It really opened up athletics.

Activities in theater in the class entering 1970-- 4% came in with theater background. This particular class-- over 28%. Some very talented performers in the class of 2005.

ROSKO: And the culture of MIT is often not what you think it would be. It's amazing the value placed on the arts, and just the talent that there is. As you walk down the halls, what you might stereotype as an MIT student is nothing like they are. And there's-- walking down the halls, there's music playing from various classrooms.

The various talents that the students have not just as tinkerers, or being able to fix things and solve problems, but are very broad in the humanities and the arts and in the social sciences, and within various activities and the strengths in athletics. And it's, I think, quite surprising for those who come here as students, even, and then also as faculty and as staff to absorb the culture as is.

JONES: The class that entered in 1970, we admitted 40% of that applicant pool, and this particular class I mentioned that you see in front of you, the Class of 2005. We admitted 18% of them. So it's a very different kind of a caliber of student in the applicant pool. The students entering in '70 had 627-751 SAT scores. 627-751.

And I'll remind you that this class has 711-756 SAT scores.

ROSKO: And we just saw the principals, the marshals from the graduate division, going to the stage, and I believe the ceremony is about to begin with Dana Mead, the Chairman of the Corporation. We thank you for joining us, and we now turn it over. Once again, I'm Tom Rosko, and this was--

JONES: Marilee Jones. Enjoy.

ROSKO: Enjoy the ceremony. Thank you.

MEAD: Good morning. The Corporation and the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are now declared convened, together with this assembly, on the occasion of the commencement exercises at this institution for the conferring of its degrees. The stage assembly and the audience will please rise for the invocation by Swami Tyagananda, and remain standing to join the MIT Chorallaries in the singing of one verse of the Star Spangled Banner.

TYAGANANDA: Swami Vivekananda once said, "Education is the manifestation of the perfection already within us." Our challenge is to transform knowledge into wisdom, and this is best achieved in an environment that promotes both unity and harmony. I will recite now, first in Sanskrit and then in English translation, an ancient prayer that invokes this harmony.

[RECITING IN SANSKRIT]

May we come together for a common purpose. May our minds be of one accord. Let us join our thoughts for integrated wisdom. Common be our prayer, common our goal. Common be our purpose, common our desires.

Unified be our hearts. United be our intentions. Perfect be the unity amongst us all. Let me leave you now with this prayer. May the one and the same divine being-- who is the father in heaven of the Christians, holy one of the Jewish faith, Allah of the Muslims, Buddha of the Buddhists, Tao of the Chinese faith, Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the great spirit of the Native Americans, and Brahman of the Hindus-- lead us from ignorance to knowledge, from darkness to light, from death to immortality. May we be granted clear understanding and the courage to pursue our goals of social justice, nonviolence, harmony, and peace, with single-minded attention.

[RECITING IN SANSKRIT]

Peace, peace, peace be unto all.

[MUSIC - "STAR SPANGLED BANNER"]

(SINGING) Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

[APPLAUSE]

MEAD: Please be seated. I'm pleased to welcome the honorable Michael A. Sullivan, Mayor of the City of Cambridge to our stage. And I'm also pleased to welcome the members of our 50th reunion class, the distinguished Class of 1955.

Now, it is my pleasure to introduce our commencement speaker-- Dr. Irwin M. Jacobs. His distinguished biography is included in your programs. Dr. Jacobs is one of MIT's most illustrious and successful graduates, whose leadership of the telecommunications industry, his advocacy of science and math education, and his philanthropy in education and the arts, are inspiring and in the best tradition of MIT. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, graduates, and graduates to be, Dr. Irwin Jacobs.

JACOBS: Thank you very much. It's a great honor to be here with you on this very special occasion. And I would like to give special thanks to President Susan Hockfield for asking me to provide this address. I'd also like to congratulate the Class of 2005 on this very special day, and provide welcome to the family and friends of the graduates, to the faculty here, to the entire MIT family. It really indeed is a very special time.

It's a very great day to graduate. I remember back to my receiving my graduate degrees here-- a master's and a doctorate-- back in '57 and '59, quite a few years ago, fitting very well in with the 50-year reunion class. I must say that, at that time, I could not possibly have imagined all of the things that we're going to happen in my life over the succeeding years. And that indeed is something I'd like to pick as the theme today. Namely, that we are all going to-- and in particular you're going to-- be going through a great deal of change, providing both opportunities and occasionally some problems, but that, in fact, an MIT education is about the best possible way to prepare yourselves for this very exciting future.

I suspect again that a few years from now, you'll have the opportunity to think back over the many things that you just could not have anticipated, and so it's important to be prepared. Be prepared for those changes.

My life itself has been a number of changes. I'll use those for an example. I actually was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, not too far from here. When I graduated high school, I had always been interested in math and chemistry, physics. My high school counselor advised me that there was-- and this was 1950-- that there was no future in science, nor in engineering.

[LAUGHTER]

And since I didn't really have a measure to evaluate that, I then took his advice. My family had a small restaurant, and so I entered the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. Well, I had an engineer as a roommate. After a year and a half of hearing him talk about-- you couldn't possibly get those grades if you were in engineering-- and knowing I really preferred engineering, again, I made a very significant change in life, and decided to transfer over to electrical engineering. And that was a very exciting period.

I was a co-op student. That turned out to be very useful. One of the engineers I worked with then advised me to go on to graduate school, and that's how I ended up at MIT. But thinking back, in my last term at Cornell-- and this is how fast things have changed-- I took a course in the theory and practice, building, of vacuum tubes. Built a 6SN7, a 6J6-- you probably never even heard of these terms any longer. I was reminded last week, when I gave a talk at the Computer Museum in Mountain View, and that, in fact, has a lot of equipment that originally came from a Computer Museum here in Boston, but now is out in Mountain View, California.

And so, as I toured around looking at all the equipment, seeing analog and digital differential analyzers up to cell phones, which of course are the latest and most powerful computers-- I'll come back to that-- that, it was amazing to me how fast things have changed. And again, that's the key issue with change. It was amazing to see all these familiar items that had been in my life and then passed out of it so quickly.

Well, I did decide to apply and, luckily, was accepted here at MIT to graduate school. I originally came thinking that EM theory, ElectroMagnetic theory would be an interesting area. But MIT, at that time, Professor Claude Shannon had just come, the father of information theory, there was a lot of interest in the theory, the mathematics, probability theory, et cetera. And so I decided that that would be my future, and very pleased with that decision.

One of the early courses I took was from Professor Norbert Wiener. Now, I don't think probably anyone here might have had the opportunity. But it was very interesting. There are many tales, I'm sure, still running around MIT about Professor Wiener. One that I most remember, in taking this class-- probably like several of the classes you might have taken-- the lectures were-- well, I shouldn't say this. Probably, it's not the case anymore. But the lectures were incomprehensible.

And so each night, a group of graduate students would get together and try to figure out what it was we had heard during the day and kind of put it together in a way that we could understand. About halfway through the term, Professor Wiener heard that we were doing this, came to the room and said, can I look at the material? Became interested-- said we should make a book from this. And so we, then, continued to put the material together as a book. He would come in, every day after class, and his only question was how many pages are we up to?

So he always had a different slant on things. That book did come out. It's Nonlinear Problems in Random Theory. It was the first book that I was ever involved with. Went on the faculty here, again, it's a wonderful way-- if some of you are considering careers in teaching, I'd greatly recommend it. It's the best way to learn material.

And while here, decided with Professor Jack Wozencraft to put together a textbook for a senior-level communications course on applying what was then brand new digital theory and information theory and try to give it a little bit more of a practical face. And there were many, at the time, that said that there really is no practical use for this. You should just treat it as applied mathematics.

In fact, of course, that's turned out not to be the case at all. I did take a leave of absence to make my one visit to California about the time we were finishing the book in '64, '65. We decided that might be a good place to retire some time, came back to Boston, had a call from a professor from Cornell saying he's going out to start a brand new department of electrical university in San Diego.

Would we join them? First reaction, of course, was no-- family, friends, career here. But after a couple of days, we decided that California and a brand new university, an opportunity for a different experience might be quite exciting in our lives, and we accepted.

Again, change-- the change from here to a brand new school. It was interesting. A brand new school-- it was very small, of course, very few faculty. One of the classes I started had to do with introduction to computer science. There were some engineering students. But there were students and faculty from music and from the arts departments, and in interacting with them, developed even a greater love and appreciation for the arts and for music that we've been able to follow, then, ever since. It was very interesting being in a brand new university.

But that also led to another major change in my life. Because of the MIT background, a lot of industry in Southern California, there were many requests for consulting. Typically, if you're in the faculty, you might consult a day a week. And so I mentioned that to a couple of friends from UCLA and the faculty of UCLA as we were flying back on a trip. And they said let's start a company and share consulting. And I said fine, as long as I don't have to get involved with managing it. And so we started our first company called Linkabit.

And very quickly it began to grow. And so I did, then, decide to take a year off and check out business, try to get things properly organized. Didn't know, really, a thing about it. Luckily, in the Hotel School I had had a course in accounting, a course in business law-- so a little bit of background turned out to be very useful. But really had to learn the business side of things. Engineering is, by far, the best preparation for just about any field. So that has indeed worked out very well.

Well, Linkabit, this first company did grow very nicely. We got involved in a number of interesting programs-- one scrambling TV signals from satellite to home that's turned into a very major business, another what are called very small aperture earth terminals for-- if you put a credit card in at a gas station, often, it will go over one of these satellite terminals.

The first what's called Time-Division, TDMA type of cellular phone-- we got into the cellular phone business early on. And actually a processor-- we didn't know the name at the time, and I don't think it was really out-- but a reduced instruction set processor that we built into a terminal for use in government programs and, in particular, for a program here at Lincoln Laboratory to communicate with what was then called the LES-8 -9 satellite.

So again, things tied back together very nicely, but very exciting to be able to come up with ideas, be able to apply theory to things that were rather practical, rather useful. Well, we made the mistake, in a sense, of selling that company. And in 1985, I retired. Retirement was a terrible thing. So I lasted about three months and then started Qualcomm. And I very much assured my wife that if things went very well, we might have 100 employees at some time. Put that in context, we're now over 8,000 employees. And by the way, in my welcoming, I also meant to welcome any Qualcomm shareholders that might be here today.

Well, we didn't have any products. Luckily, we didn't have to go out for venture capital, so we didn't have to have a business plan. But we knew digital. We knew wireless would be very exciting. And it turned out that it was on a drive down from a consulting contract meeting in Los Angeles. A drive down the San Diego, about halfway, luckily-- it's 110 miles or so-- about halfway down, realized that something called Code-Division Multiple Access, CDMA would be very useful for mobile communications.

Well, the company was very small. We had to wait a few years before we could go ahead and develop that idea. But the time came when we sold our first product, had a little bit of a cash flow, and were able to, then, go back and pay attention to CDMA, actually, at the end of 1988 began to take a look at it. Well, if any of you decide to go into you own businesses-- and some of you I'm sure we'll be doing that-- you run across a time when you have to make a bet-the-company decision.

And so CDMA was one of those. Should you put a lot of money into R&D in a technology that may or may not be accepted? The world is going off in a different direction. And luckily, at that time, I had not heard one of the projections that had been made to AT&T by a consultant a few years earlier that, if all went well, there might be 1 million cell phones in use by the year 2000.

Actually, they missed by a little bit. It was 600 million. And that, of course, gave a great opportunity for moving ahead with CDMA. We did develop the technology, demonstrated-- because otherwise, everything sounds too complicated. You have to have a demonstration. So that was, again, one of the bet-your-company-type issues. And then the question comes up, if you now have a good product, how do you build a business model? What do you do about that? And so again, this is a type of concern that you may be having going forward.

We decided to go into a mode, which was both licensing and of selling, initially, phones and infrastructure to get things started, but, ultimately, the chips. And that works out very well. As you know, chips keep getting more and more powerful. You can put more and more capability in them. If you come up with innovative ideas, you can build those into the chips. And so that's exactly the path that we followed. It's interesting that, today, there's probably about 1 and 1/2 billion users of cell phones around the world. In 2005, there were over 600 million sold in the one year, or will be by the end of the year.

Comparing that to about 150 million desktop and laptop computers, it's quite clear that the future is not in plastics, but really, now, in mobile devices. And the interesting aspect is that the capabilities keep going up. One of the things that is now being provide is what's called third generation. I won't, again, go into details. But if some of you have been using, not just the wireless that's available on campus-- that's called 802.11, but a wide area coverage provided right now by Verizon here, one can get a very high data rate anywhere that you can receive a cell phone call. And so that is a key step.

But the interesting part is the devices. And because of Moore's law, the number of transistors on a chip doubling roughly every two years or so-- power going down, costs going down, all the right things kind of happening-- there's been a major transformation. When we first built up our first cell phone, it took three chips to implement the communications only.

Now it takes about 20% of one chip. What do you do with the other 80%? You can put a lot of computing power. In fact, now we're going to two processes-- one of which is moving toward a gigahertz-type processing speed. Two processes, a couple of signal processing units, a 3D graphics capability, GPS receiving-- you can put a lot on that chip, make it available at a low cost, high reliability, and therefore very useful to people.

Therefore, since it's a computer now, not really a phone-- you may not realize it when you're carrying it around-- very powerful computer that opens up many possibilities. And so we developed another approach we call ROO. In fact, there's a conference now with about 2,400 people at it occurring in San Diego-- where developers anywhere in the world can develop an application to be downloaded to the phone.

We arranged to provide a digital signature, tested digital signature so it won't corrupt the phone. And therefore, they can develop these, bring them via some internet meeting grounds we've established with the operators, bring their applications to the attention of operators around the world, and build the business.

And I think, at this meeting that's ongoing, it was mentioned that there was about $350 million that had been funneled from operators to Qualcomm, then Qualcomm back to the developers around the world, in this last six months, in the order of $150 million. The more exciting aspect is other things I think that were going to be able to do with that.

We've all heard of issues with the digital divide, access to communications, to the internet being more limited in certain regions. I think that the phone as a low-cost device with a huge amount of computing power, connection to the internet, ability to download software, process-- it had a large amount of memory by the way.

With the appropriate amount of thinking and planning can be used to supplement teaching in many remote areas as well as, of course, developed areas around the world. So I think that there's a great possibility there to move ahead with these devices. People are still just realizing what the power in the devices might be. And again, hopefully, some of you out there will find this challenging. Of course there's also medical devices that are now being attached to the cell phone measuring blood capabilities and moving toward eGovernment providing support, voting, information, et cetera by use of the cell phone.

So again, a device we think of as a phone, very powerful computer, opening lots of opportunities. Well, I mentioned eGovernment-- one of the things I would like to recommend to all of you, at least some of you is to think-- well, all of you to think about politics. To some of you, perhaps, to consider a career in politics. Again, I think an MIT education prepares you for just about anything. And it was interesting. It was over a couple of years ago-- so the previous president of China, we had a meeting. They always have this very formal U.

So myself and the president was sitting at the head of the U and then staff is on either side. And there's a little bit of chit chat that occurs before the formal meeting. What do you think the first question that was raised by the president of China sitting next to me? How many more generations did I think Moore's law had to run-- president of China.

Discussing it with him a little further, it turned out he actually was trained as an engineer, as a radio engineer, as was the prime minister at the time. That's the kind of interest and ability to, again, think about technology, bring it to use that I think is also very important here in this country. And of course, there's very little of that available here.

Another aspect, when I came to be a student here, I was lucky to benefit from the Research Laboratory of Electronics, but it was very well funded at the time. Now, the funding has been cut back quite a bit. There really are reasons to get out, to become very politically active. Well, there have been many rewards from having this type of an education. Being able to go out-- the world is changing.

One can take advantage of those changes, do very well. It's important, of course, to have an impact back. And the opportunity for philanthropy, of course, never goes away. We've been very lucky. Our focus often is on education, but also cultural activities, other activities around the world. And I think, again, that's something that, as you begin to move ahead in your careers, that you should definitely pay attention to.

So I'd would like to finish by, again, congratulating you. You're embarking on a great adventure. You're probably entering a period where there's even greater change, greater things happening around the world than was correct when I graduated here. You might have seen the statement back from 1899 that the head of the patent office said that everything that can be invented has been invented. Clearly, another shortsighted statement. But if you check with the patent office now, you'll find that many of the applications, many of the patents in the US patent office are coming from overseas.

And so again, the competition is heightened. We have to move ahead. We have to improve our education throughout. We have to remain very innovative. You can certainly be guaranteed that there will be there changes. You have been well-prepared. I wish you as much fun and excitement as I have had along the way. Than you all very much.

[APPLAUSE]

PRESENTER: Thank you so much Dr. Jacobs for a very interesting and perceptive glimpse into the future and the challenges, and I should say, the promise that it holds for MIT's graduates. Thank you so much.

And now, Mr. Barun Singh, President of the Graduate Student Council will give a salute to MIT from the graduate student body. And following this, Mr. Rohit Gupte, president of the senior class will present the class gift to President Hockfield, after which the president will deliver her charge to the graduates. Barun?

SINGH: My fellow engineers, scientists, humanists, sociologists, artists, creators, inventors, philosophers, designers, planners, entrepreneurs, leaders, architects of the future, and friends, you gather here today in triumph. And to you have come the spoils of years of rigorous commitment and dedication. For this day, this graduation day from these prestigious halls, of this grand Institute of Technology, this day belongs to you.

We live in a universe defined by contrast. And all of your struggles during your time here define the sheer beauty and joy of this moment. I'm sure that, as you walk through today in the celebration of your success, you will relish the magnitude of what you have gained during your time here in your journey thus far-- the encyclopedic knowledge you have accumulated, the invaluable assortment of relationships that you have built, the amazing uniqueness of activities you have participated in, and, of course, the massive amounts of free pizza you've consumed.

In all reality, what I hope you'll relish the most is the growth you have experienced within yourself, not teachable from the world around you, yet necessitated by those very requirements which have led you to this point. I offer you the words of Sir Edmund Hillary who, along with Nepalese shirpa Tenzing Norgay, became the first person on record to have climbed the heights of Mount Everest. Reflecting upon his trying experience, Hillary stated, "It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." Today, you stand here having climbed the heights to the roof of the world of academia and so have also conquered yourselves.

You have tested and stretched your limits. You have learned to persist in the face of pressure and self-doubt and difficulty, and that is where the true congratulations lie. There are a number of people today who take part in the celebration of your achievements-- your parents, mentors, advisors who have taught you, who have inspired you and supported you so that you could be here today. Your friends, family, and peers who have grown right alongside you, all of the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members who, in playing their own individual roles, make this Institute what it is and, therefore, share in some part of your success.

In recognizing their impact on your own development, I hope that you can recognize that you will soon find yourselves in their shoes. And I invite you to act as the mentors and inspirational voices for the classes yet to follow. Beyond the solidification of your own ability to live and thrive in this world, however, all of us here today celebrate something far greater. We celebrate the hope and promise and potential that you represent for the future of time to come and for the world we all share.

As you talk with people about your graduation from MIT, no doubt they will ask you if you are ready for this thing they call the real world, as if something about your time at MIT had been unreal, imagined, just the dream. And don't you wish that dream could have taken place on a nice tropical beach somewhere instead?

And yet, there is some truth to what they say. Because as you begin the next leg of your journey, outside of this environment, you will likely find yourself in a very different sort of a world-- a world where reason increasingly takes a back stage to rhetoric, a world where fear is fast becoming the norm while curiosity and the search for scientific advancement grow ever more suspect.

At the same time, it is a world where the problems that confront us-- poverty, disease, corruption, war, famine, environmental depletion-- have consequences far greater than that of any problem set. And in this real world, you must be the agents of change. You must be the leaders, for you have demonstrated a mastery of that one most essential skill not to be underestimated-- the ability to think, to reason, to consider the global and the long term, and not just the here and now. These words may seem hollow at first. After all, you walk into this world, but an individual.

You face problems, many of which, have confronted mankind for generations. Yet, I ask you, who will define the status quo of the world to come if not you? Gandhi, a man who knew something of the strength and power of the one in the face of the many once said, "We must be the change we wish to see." This quote holds relevance for all of us here.

For those of you who have truly found paradise during your stay here at MIT, in participating in the meritocratic ideal, in displaying that trademark intellectual defiance, in exercising your passion to debate and delve into the heart of things, and your refusal to accept what is handed to you, and in being open to the most unconventional of solutions to the most hopeless of problems-- to you, I say, and I charge to you today to keep alive that passion and drive. The world needs it. And it waits for you. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

GUPTE: Since the beginning of our life journey, we have dreamed of becoming seekers of knowledge. We are a generation that did not directly witness the mission to the moon or the marches for civil rights like our mothers and fathers. We are inspired by the information age, spawned in our basements, and most symbolically represented by the internet. The difference is significant. While our parents could watch the Apollo missions with awe and envy, their immediate participation in the growth of these important world changes was limited. We, on the other hand, have been gifted with the opportunity to participate in global changes in an unprecedented fashion.

We live in a world where technology has been focused on the public for everyday living, not just for specialized military or government use. Technology has never been more applied to the broad population like it is today. And we have embraced it in all the value that it brings. Since we were surrounded, many of us found our curious minds trying to learn what it is all about. We opened up computers, we built robots, we performed research experiments long before we arrived at MIT.

This world we live in now, with applications of technology everywhere before our eyes, fits seamlessly with MIT's academic goals. The time and energy we have spent in laboratories, classes, UROPs, and the unprecedented number out-of-classroom learning opportunities have culminated to form the experience we call MIT. And yet, our formal training is only a part of what we carry away from our time here. The relationships that we have formed within our community and the way that we have learned to learn in such an intense and rich environment has created the most lasting impact on us.

Our experiences at MIT can be compared to, ironically, a vacation. Imagine you went on a vacation to an unfamiliar place and encountered, perhaps, the worst possible weather. If you had your closest friends with you, together, you would still find a way to have a fantastic time. Well, the same works at MIT. Is the people with whom we have spent our years here that make this place amazing and allow us to succeed. Together we have done more than if we summed our individual efforts. Together we have grown more wise.

As this community diverges and integrates into the larger society, we will never forget the union. Forever are we attached. We have become citizens of a nation, a nation called MIT. We share with our brothers and sisters an immediate connection. When you meet someone and hear that she went to MIT, you already understand so much more about what she's been through. Hear of an MIT grad, and immediately you sense the awesomeness of his intellectual drive and his accomplishments thus far. For to have graduated from MIT is no easy feat.

Yet, we remain humbled as we recall our difficult experiences. It is in these testing moments that we can see the opportunities that allow us to put our experiences to good use. However, as members of this marvelous citizenry, there comes a duty. With our citizenship of the MIT nation, we must understand the incredible responsibility of holders of this great power called knowledge. For the world will look at us and our patent disregard for doing the normal. The world will look at us for our audacity and our courage to question everything we see around us. The world will look to us, and it is our responsibility to look back at them and say, together we can accomplish anything.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." What we have accomplished here at MIT, the education, the relationships, the community is by no means trivial. But what we truly take away from MIT is the way that these experiences have changed us. This is what we bring to our future. Let us go forth and show them who we are. And now please join me as we partake in the tradition of the turning of our brass rat as a symbol of our accomplishments.

[CHEERING]

At this time it is my distinct honor to request President Susan Hockfield to join me as we present the senior class gift. In keeping with the traditions of improving student life, the class of 2005 has designated their class gift towards the creation of a new student lounge to take the place of the cashier's office in Lobby 10 right behind me.

This year, we were able to raise over $31,000 with 25.4% participation. Congratulations. And thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

HOCKFIELD: Thank you, Barun, and thank you Rohit, and the members of the class of 2005 for your gift. The new student lounge off the Lobby 10 will provide a welcome space for students to come together at the heart of a very busy campus. It will create a space for conversation and for collaboration. And thank you Irwin Jacobs for your thoughtful and inspiring remarks. Your work and your life are evidence of a mind that has thought far into the future to explore the expanding promise and power of technology to improve our lives. The Institute is honored to count you as an alumnus and a friend.

Graduates of MIT, this is your day. We have gathered here today in Killeen Court to celebrate your accomplishments, the successful completion of demanding courses of study, often, lasting several years. You have our deepest respect for all that you have accomplished. But today is not yours alone. None of you would be here this morning were it not for the family and friends who have nurtured and supported you since childhood. Those people who have embraced your dreams and lighted your path-- this is their day too. Graduates, I ask you please to rise and join with me in thanking those family and friends.

[APPLAUSE]

A month ago, I stood here in Killeen Court and spoke about what defines MIT, about my dreams and hopes for this great institution. Those inaugural remarks were addressed to the whole Institute community. This morning, I would like to speak to those of you who are graduating today about my hopes and dreams for you. You, our graduates, are exceptional individuals. You arrived at MIT with remarkable native talents already honed by years of demanding study. Here, you've learned from a brilliant faculty, and just as important, from each other. You've learned about complex subject matter, and you've also learned about yourselves.

Now, as you leave MIT, I challenge you to put what you have learned here to work for the good of this nation and the world because we have never needed your talents and skills more than we do now. We live in uncertain and an unsettled age, and we face great challenges.

To name only a few-- we have challenges in energy, in climate change, in contagious diseases, in the design of our urban communities, and in global poverty. You, the graduates of MIT, are uniquely equipped to address issues like these. You are ready to make the necessary advances in science and technology to employ rigorous quantitative and qualitative analyses to develop new methods of interdisciplinary inquiry and problem-solving.

So at times, in the years ahead, when a choice of direction presents itself, I hope you will ask yourselves, where can I do the most good? How can I make a difference in the world? Now, you will not be able to do this work alone. Meeting the great challenges of our era will require teamwork and collaboration. You will need to draw, not only on what you have learned in the classroom and laboratory, but also on what you have learned about the importance of community. As the currents of your lives draw you away from MIT's shores, you will, in important and real ways, remain part of this community.

At the close of this morning's ceremonies, Linda Sharpe, President of the Alumni Association will formally welcome you into the Association's membership. We hope you will stay connected and engaged with the life of the Institute.

But beyond your own personal connection to MIT, I hope you will also transmit the values that define this community to the other communities you will now join, that you will see leadership as an opportunity to serve the common good, that you will make integrity the touchstone of your judgments, that you will exemplify the pursuit of truth and an unwavering drive toward excellence, and that you will continue to demonstrate the value of plain old-fashioned hard work.

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, I ask you to inspire your own generation and those to come with a renewed sense of possibility and optimism for the future. Here at MIT, we see, up close, the myriad ways in which science and technology promise to benefit humankind. If we are to realize that promise, we need to kindle in others the same love and passion for truth and discovery, for creativity and problem-solving that brought us all here. I hope that each of you will embrace this as your challenge.

I would not set you this charge if I did not think that each of you could meet it. I have tremendous faith in you. The intelligence, diligence, and creativity you've demonstrated here at MIT have inspired us all. And I know that, in the years to come, you will do even more and surprise and delight us with achievements we could never have predicted. So for now, in closing, let me simply say congratulations graduates of MIT.

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER: Thank you, President Hockfield, for your first charge to the graduates as the 16th president of MIT. And now, the presentation of the degrees. By virtue of the authority delegated to them by the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and upon recommendation of the faculty, President Hockfield and Provost Brown will now present the degrees. President Hockfield will present the following degrees-- Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Science/Master of Science, Bachelor of Science/Master of Engineering, and the advanced degrees for the School of Science and Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology.

Provost Brown will present the advanced degrees for the School of Architecture and Planning, the School of Engineering, the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the Sloan School of Management. As they approach the ramp,

[CHEERING]

As they approach the ramp, undergraduate degree recipients will be greeted by the chancellor, the dean for student life, and the dean for undergraduate education. Graduate degree recipients will be greeted by their school deans. The first graduates to be recognized are the class marshals who are seated on the stage.

[SIDE CONVERSATIONS]

SPEAKER: Recognition will now be given to the offices of the class of 2005 and the offices of the Graduate Student Council who are seated on the stage.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Advanced degree diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Architecture and Planning who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Bachelor of Science diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Architecture and planning who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

Bachelor of Science diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Engineering who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Advanced degree diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Engineering who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Bachelor of Science diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Bachelor of Science diplomas will now be presented to students in the Sloan School of Management who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Advanced degree diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Advanced degree diplomas will now be presented to students in the Sloan School of Management who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Bachelor of Science diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Science who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

[SIDE CONVERSATIONS]

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Advanced degree diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Science who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offer joint programs of education and research in oceanography and applied ocean science and engineering. John W. Farrington, Vice President for Academic Programs and Dean at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is here to participate with President Hockfield in awarding the following joint degrees.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Advanced degree diplomas will now be presented to students in the Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

SPEAKER: Advanced degree diplomas will now be presented to students in the School of Architecture and Planning who have completed the specified degree requirements.

[READING NAMES]

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER: Graduates, congratulations. It's now my pleasure to introduce Linda Sharpe, the Chief Marshal who will greet the graduates. Miss Sharpe is a member of the class of 1969 and is currently serving as the president of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT-- Linda.

SHARPE: It is my honor to recognize the distinguished class of 2005, the newest alumni of MIT. The entire--

[CHEERING]

The entire alumni body, now, some 110,000-strong joins me in congratulating all of the 2005 graduates and officially welcoming you into the alumni family, your infinite connection to MIT.

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER: At the conclusion, a reception will follow on Kresge Oval in the West Campus Plaza. Now, I'd like to ask the group to stand and join the MIT chorallaries in singing the school song.

[MUSIC - MIT CHORALLARIES, "ARISE ALL YE OF MIT"]

CHORALLARIES: (SINGING) Arise all ye of MIT, in loyal fellowship. The future beckons unto ye, and life is full and rich. Arise and raise your glass on high. Tonight shall ever be a memory that will never die for ye of MIT. Thy sons and daughters, MIT, return from far and wide. And gather here once more to be renourished by thy side. And as we raise our glasses high to pledge our love for thee, we join all those of days gone by in praise of MIT.

[CHEERING]

[MUSIC - MIT CHORALLARIES, "TAKE ME BACK TO TECH"]

CHORALLARIES: (SINGING) Oh, I wish that I were back again at Tech on Boylston Street, dressed in my dinky uniform so dapper and so neat. I'm crazy after calculus. I never had enough. It was hard to be dragged away so young. It was horribly, awfully tough. Hurrah for technology, -ology, -ology, oh.

Glorious old technology, -ology, ology, oh. Back in the days that were free from care in the 'ology varsity shop, with nothing to do but analyze air in an anemometrical top-- the differentiation of the trigonometric powers, the constant pi that made me sign in those happy days of ours. Hoorah, for technology, -ology, -ology, oh. Glorious old technology, -ology, -ology, oh. Take me back on a special train to the glorious Institute, I yearn for the inspiration of a technological toot. Toot-toot.

I'd shun the quizzical, physical profs, the chapel and all that. But how I'd love to go again on a scientific bat. La, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, la, la la, ta da, ta, da, ta, da, ta, da, ta, dum, ta, dum, ta, dum, ta, dum-- Oh, M-A-S-S-A-C-H-U-S-E-T-T-S I-N-S-T-I-T-U-T-E-O-F-T-E and then, it's C-H-N-O-L-O-G and Y, comes after G, it's the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hey!

[APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC - "AULD LANG SYNE"]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC - "SEMPER FIDELIS"]

[MUSIC - "THE ARENA"]