By Brian M. Boyce
TERRE HAUTE — Friends and family milled about in the shade south of Root Quadrangle as hundreds of future engineers and scientists prepared for commencement.
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology hosted a packed campus Saturday, with parking spaces at a premium amidst a sunny sky and temperatures in the breezy 80s. The Indianapolis Fire Fighters Bagpipe Band led the march past Olin Advanced Learning Center, with honor guard, trustees and robed graduates following in step.
And by 11 a.m., the Sports and Recreation Complex was full of fans, as years of effort and training were about to be recognized.
“I often pose to friends a trivia question,” Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said from center stage as he offered the Class of 2009 its commencement address. “Name three mythological creatures never actually found in the natural world. To which the answer is Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster, and an unemployed Rose-Hulman graduate.”
Daniels told the school’s 131st graduating class, “if any graduates in America today are ready for the tough world of a prolonged recession, you are.”
Of the 365 students earning a bachelor’s degree, and 19 a master’s degree, 82 percent have accepted employment, graduate school appointments or military commitments, with an average accepted job offer of $59,697 and a high of $92,000, according to class literature.
But it’s not just the employment prospects of Rose-Hulman alumni that have the governor a self-described “unabashed, vocal admirer,” it’s the country’s dire need for more scientists and engineers.
According to Daniels, the U.S. Congress has eight times as many lawyers as scientists and engineers. In the Indiana General Assembly, only five of the 150 members have a technical background. Meanwhile, in India and China, scientists and engineers are being produced in numbers that dwarf those in America.
“We have passed the time when our best scientific minds can devote themselves solely to their chosen work, or to solving huge, avoidable problems after others have caused them,” he said. “The issues that now face our country often require a technical understanding, or a grasp of statistics, or cost-benefit analysis, or an appreciation of the scientific method with which the general public is not equipped, and which our politicians neither understand nor particularly want to.”
Carbon dioxide emissions and alternative energy solutions are what America needs, he said, not more talk.
“Justice Louis Brandeis said that, in a democracy, the highest office is that of citizen. I ask you today to add the pursuit of that high office to your career to-do lists,” Daniels told the graduates. “You will add value to society well beyond that added by all our society’s lawyers, celebrities, or, of course, mere governors.”
But more than future service was on the minds of graduates, staff and faculty, as Rose-Hulman President Gerald Jakubowski requested a moment of silence for three road fatalities this year which prevented members of “the Rose-Hulman family” from participating in Saturday’s ceremonies.
Mandy Kronmiller, senior class president, said “the college years are the best years of our lives,” as she recounted late night trips to Walmart and area restaurants, studying with friends or playing intramural sports.
And as she thanked the friends, families and Rose-Hulman community for their help, she left the stage to enter a new phase of life.
Brian M. Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.
