chemical-engineers-from-the-united-states

"That's right. That's right. They were scientists involved in public health. And for that reason, I always was encouraged to explore science, math, as well as all of the broader fields of social and physical sciences."

"Yes, I was academically inclined. I was the good student. I raised my hand a lot. I got good grades, and I tended to be very much engaged with my teachers. I tended to know my teachers very well."

"Each of you has your own crew of supporters. You can name those friends and family members right now. Those who believe in you and regularly invest in your well-being. Those who surround you with love and encouragement, giving the best of themselves so that you can be your personal best,"

"Whatever your future holds, I hope you will serve humanity and positively impact the way we live."

"My mother encouraged me every step of the way and she always believed in me. Her confidence fortified me for decades."

"For my science project, I studied how quickly different foods would mold when placed in various locations. At one point, we had stinky, moldy food all over the house. That’s love"

"I once stood where you now stand. I know how hard you have worked to get where you are today, and I am impressed by your accomplishments."

"I share my story because it’s important that you understand me and the value I place on learning and formal education"

"Earning a PhD from Northwestern was an important milestone in my life. I once stood where you now stand. I know how hard you have worked to get where you are today, and I am impressed by your accomplishments."

"Perhaps they are among the names listed on your acknowledgements page. Perhaps they are sitting across the auditorium now with huge smiles on their faces. Perhaps they will be hooding you today. You know who they are."

"I fondly remember gracing this beautiful campus as a student years ago and am forever grateful for the solid foundation it has provided me,” she says. “My life experience and career in higher education has provided me with the tools and skills needed to serve and lead this campus successfully."

"You must see every challenge not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to be a beacon of light and hope for others who may not have that same uplifting experience. Simply put: do good and be good"

"IT is now a ubiquitous presence in the lives of students, faculty and staff alike. A modern IT infrastructure is critical as it adds significant value to academic programs and efficiencies to administrative processes,” she explains. “The evaluation and transformation of Alcorn State University’s network infrastructure, wi-fi access, telecommunications and classroom-based technologies are critical components for ongoing success."

"It is my responsibility to ensure we are visible in the spaces, places and with people that are decision-makers so that there is an appreciation for not only the historical but the future relevance of Alcorn."

"But we never stopped moving forward, thanks to the extraordinary efforts and steadfast resilience of our students, faculty and staff, while keeping our community safe."

"It takes courage to break a ceiling – it also requires a willing community who sees that shattered glass as a new floor and not a mess."

"I am not here by accident. And I am also not here solely because of my own efforts. I lead because the legacy of Alcorn’s past has enabled me to envision the promise of our future."

"Education is, however, an extremely interesting and complex institution provided because society has discovered that, if it is to preserve itself and advance, it must spare the time and the people necessary to provide our young people with an understanding of their heritage. But education doesn't take place within institutions. It takes place only within individuals. It is something we cannot buy. It is something that records in the registrar's office do not measure."

"If any one thread runs through the UVM story, it is the continual belief that higher education should be pre-occupied with the progress of mankind."

"Basic to a free society is the belief in a golden rule. Just as you feel you have the right to your opinion, you must feel that everyone else, in turn has a right to his."

"We can all join that most worthwhile of all wars—the fight for tolerance, the fight for wisdom, the fight for freedom. Above all else, continue to develop your tastes—material and spiritual—so that you may learn to choose the best values from life's many alternatives."

"The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt as humans to build an understanding of the universe, the world around us. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us."

"People talk about the '60s all the time. And they talk about the anarchy that was there. But when I think about the '60s, what I took away from it was that there was hope for the future."

"People have this idea that science and the arts are really separate; we think of them as separate and different things. And this idea was probably introduced centuries ago, but it's really becoming critical now, because we're making decisions about our society every day that, if we keep thinking that the arts are separate from the sciences, and we keep thinking it's cute to say, "I don't understand anything about this one, I don't understand anything about the other one," then we're going to have problems."

"If we describe the near future as 10, 20, 15 years from now, that means that what we do today is going to be critically important, because in the year 2015, in the year 2020, 2025, the world our society is going to be building on, the basic knowledge and abstract ideas, the discoveries that we came up with today, just as all these wonderful things we're hearing about here at the TED conference that we take for granted in the world right now, were really knowledge and ideas that came up in the 50s, the 60s and the 70s."

"Once I got into space, I was feeling very comfortable in the universe. I felt like I had a right to be anywhere in this universe, that I belonged here as much as any speck of stardust, any comet, any planet."

"The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin, even, or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they're manifestations of the same thing...They spring from the same source. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt as humans to build an understanding of the universe, the world around us. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us."

"Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations… If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won’t exist because you’ll have already shut it out… You can hear other people’s wisdom, but you’ve got to re-evaluate the world for yourself."

"I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They're really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action."

"We need to revitalize the arts and sciences today. We need to take responsibility for the future. We can't hide behind saying it's just for company profits, or it's just a business, or I'm an artist or an academician."

"We had someone talk about measuring emotions and getting machines to figure out what to keep us from acting crazy. No, we shouldn't measure. We shouldn't use machines to measure road rage and then do something to keep us from engaging in it. Maybe we can have machines help us to recognize that we have road rage, and then we need to know how to control that without the machines."

"...projections are based on completely unproven climate models, or, more often, on sheer speculation."

"First, let's agree there's a lot we really don't know about how climate will change in the 21st century and beyond. That means we need to understand the issue better, and fortunately, we have time. It is highly unlikely that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now. It also means it's bad public policy to impose very costly regulations and restrictions when their need has yet to be proven, their total impact undefined, and when nations are not prepared to act in concert."

"For many things we can find substitutes, but there is not now, nor will there ever be, a substitute for creative thought."

""While there is a reasonable possibility that a peacetime armed force could be entirely voluntary, I am certain that an armed force involved in a major conflict could not be voluntary”"

"To fully understand what these trade agreements are all about, we should remember what Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, said back in 1998. "Ideally," he said, "you'd have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy." What Mr. Welch was saying is that in the CEO's perfect world, companies like his would effortlessly move from country to country, wherever labor was cheapest, taxes were lowest, and environmental protections were weakest. In other words, if the U.S. increased its minimum wage, a company could simply pull up anchor and ship its jobs to Mexico. If Mexico strengthened its environmental laws, no problem, that company would simply move to China. If China banned sweatshops, then the company could just move to Vietnam. Until Vietnam decided to increase taxes, in which case... Well, you get the idea. This is the essence of what the "race to the bottom" is all about, and why millions of Americans are rejecting unfettered free trade. Mr. Welch's analogy of a company on a barge was brutally honest. In this era of free trade, he basically acknowledged that corporations have absolutely no loyalty to the countries where they are based or to the workers they employ. That's exactly what these corporate-backed, corporate-written free trade deals are all about. They really aren't about trade at all. Trade, when structured in a fair manner, can be a driver of increased wages and widely shared prosperity. But free trade agreements aren't fair. Rather, they are all about increasing the profits of multinational corporations that have allegiance only to their bottom line."

"It is time, as a nation, that we stop worshipping corporate greed and businessmen like Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric. While in corporate circles, and in the corporate media, Jack Welch is regarded as a brilliant and successful businessman, the truth is that he represents almost everything that is wrong with contemporary capitalism. As the CEO of General Electric, Welch moved dozens of GE factories abroad, outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs, and slashed benefits for many of his employees. To add insult to injury, after destroying the retirement dreams of so many of his workers, he received a $400 million golden parachute for himself. This type of greed and ruthless capitalism is not an economic model we should be embracing. We can do better; we must do better."

"CEO of General Electric for 30 years, Jack Welch was declared the greatest manager of the 20th century. Focusing firmly on results, he revolutionized management to achieve phenomenal growth for his company."

"Clearly for most Americans, everything is getting worse and worse. The only beneficiaries are the Chainsaw Dunlaps and Neutron Jacks."

"Most Americans today take it for granted that the workplace is unbearably stressful, fearful, and organized to transfer much of the wealth up to a tiny, privileged class of executives and shareholders at the expense of the many. But it wasn't always that way. Long before Neutron Jack, General Electric's stated relationship to their employees was deliberately paternalistic, respectful, secure, and symbiotic. In 1962, right around the time that young Jack Welch joined GE, Earl S. Willis, the manager of employee benefits at General Electric, wrote, "Maximizing employment security is a prime company goal." Later, he wrote, "The employee who can plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer's most productive asset. Contrast this to Jack Welch, who bragged after one hundred twenty-eight thousand firings, one hundred twenty-eight thousand potentially ruined families, that "only the buildings remained standing." Oh, and his billion dollars in savings, his $15 million annual pension, and his company 737."

"In spite of his loathsome, King George personality, what is most appalling is how Jack Welch managed to become absolutely adored by corporate America's white-collar suckers. His minions who stood absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by worshipping his philosophy of destroying tens of thousands in order to enrich a few, called themselves "Welch-heads" in another example of our Reagan-era peasant-like behavior."

"Welch retired just a few days before the terror attacks of 9/11 and was awarded a severance package worthy of a Saudi prince. GE gave Neutron Jack an annual pension of $9 million, health and life insurance, a $15 million Manhattan penthouse, unlimited use of the company's private Boeing 737 jet, a limo, country club memberships, VIP seats at New York Nicks and Yankees games, $7.5 million in furnishings and decorations for his four homes, and more. All this for a man who amassed a personal fortune thought to be close to a billion dollars during his years at GE, while firing one hundred twenty-eight thousand workers. The extent of Neutron Jack's pillage was only revealed after his wife busted him sleeping with another woman. She filed for divorce and sued when Welch offered her a typically Neutron Jack settlement of $15 million, a sum her lawyer termed "offensive." The ensuing Clash of the Gargoyles in the cracked Welch mansion exposed the grotesque size of his compensation, leading to a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and eventually a pledge by Welch to pay back to GE a part of his retirement package."

"United for Fair Economy, an advocacy group, described Welch's feudal wealth this way: "If Mr. Welch's $83 million total compensation in 1998 were represented by the height of the Empire State Building, how tall would the buildings represented by other GE workers be? The typical factory worker, earning $40,000 a year, would be represented by a building just eight inches tall. A well-compensated General Electric manager, earning $100,000 a year, would be represented by a building less than two feet tall. Considered globally, a typical employee working in a GE factory in Mexico and making $4,500 a year would be represented by a building less than one inch tall- smaller than an anthill.""

"One of the office world's most celebrated plutocrats was General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who coined the famous Welchism that employees have unlimited juice to squeeze, and who loved to tell people to "face reality." He earned the nickname Neutron Jack for having fired one hundred twenty-eight thousand of his employees and later boasting that all that was left after his mass firings were the buildings. That, and an enormous amount of cash for Jack and his happy shareholders. Yuk-yuk-yuk. Some people may not find his kind of humor to their liking, but it probably bowled 'em over in Kennebunkport, or the Hamptons, or the Berkshires, or any number of corporate billionaire hangouts... Of course, this doesn't mean that Jack Welch doesn't have a heart. In his autobiography Straight From the Heart, a New Age-infused ego-romp that sold like hotcakes to the credulous masses, Welch did manage to share his thoughts with us on the importance of friendship... buried in the section "A Short Reflection On Golf." Just in case you didn't think he was, uh, human, you see."

"Business success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to real changes as they occur."

"Business has to be fun. For too many people, it's "just a job.""

"Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on one's sleeve can have the same effect. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open—to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren't afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas."

"Getting the right people in the right jobs is a lot more important than developing a strategy."

"Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important."

"Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual motion. The give-and-take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning. The pain of losing. It's as good as it gets! You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is in the fun."