Honors Day 2004 Convocation Address
by Dr. C. Grant Willson

Thank you for the kind introduction. The honors and awards that I have received recognize success in research and the development of new materials and processes. The interesting thing is that the list does not include any recognition whatsoever for the only thing that I think I do really well, which is to recruit excellent students. You see, it is the exceptional students at this great University that are responsible for those awards, not me. My graduate and undergraduate research students are the best in the world in their field. I recruited them!!! They are so good that all I have to do is feed them and try to keep them out of trouble and they produce great things. Several of the terrific students that I recruited to work in my laboratories are seated among you. I am pleased and proud to have this opportunity to thank them and to thank all of you for your efforts, dedication and commitment, to congratulate you for your success and to tell you how proud I am of all of you!

I know that your parents are extremely proud of you and you are proud of yourselves. You certainly deserve to be proud. It may be a surprise to you to learn how proud your teachers are of you too. We are proud, very proud of you. After all, you are the product of our efforts and the product of this institution. You are the best possible examples of all that is good about The University of Texas at Austin. I am here to tell you that your teachers are proud of you!

When I received the prestigious invitation from Dr. Faulkner to speak to you I was very pleased…but surprised. I asked myself “why me”? So, I sought out some of the speeches from years past to see what I was meant to say. The past speakers have had the common attributes of being successful alumnae and being old. I graduated from The University of California, Berkeley …twice…so by the process of elimination, it became clear why I was chosen. I turned 65 last week. Can you be 65 and still be alive? When I was at Berkeley in the 60’s and 70’s we did not trust anyone over 30. How can you trust some one over 65 to tell you anything about life?

Well, I asked myself, “Is there anything fundamental that I learned from all those years? Is there something that I can give to you…something that you can take away with you?” Well, yes, I think there may be. Please let me share with you two things that I learned from those 65 years of experiences.

The first of these is to expect and embrace change. Right now nearly all of you are working hard to find, or you have already found, the exact job, graduate school, or professional school position that is right for you. The interesting thing is that many of you will not stay in that place you find or even in that profession for very long. People used to go to work for a company and then stay with that company for the remainder of their careers. In IBM, we called that “full employment”. This is rapidly changing; IBM does not have “full employment” any more. Most of you will change jobs during your careers and many of you will even change jobs often. You need to be prepared for that, to be prepared for the changes in direction and to recognize them as opportunities. Ultimately, you will find the perfect place for you, but it is not likely to be the first place you work. Let me tell you how I got here, to the perfect job for me. It was a long and circuitous path.

Like many of us who are in this hall, I chose my field of study because of the influence of one Mr. Raymond Palmer, a dedicated high school chemistry teacher who, for God knows what reason, paid some attention to me. I am a chemist because of him. Teachers can change lives.

I graduated from Berkeley with a B.S. in chemistry and made exotic rocket fuels for a few years. The discovery aspect of the work was very exciting, sometimes very much more exciting than one would like, but the job was not a fulfilling experience. It had no people component. So, I went back to school, earned a secondary teaching credential and taught high school in Los Angeles for several years, hoping to do for some kid what Mr. Palmer had done for me. To “pay it forward” in terms of the book by that name by Catherine Hyde or the movie based on the book that you may have seen. This was certainly fulfilling but I was a teacher only, not a scientist, and I ultimately missed the thrill of discovery and the technical challenges. To be honest, there were also problems of bad pay and some battles with the administration as well…so I went back to school again to get a Ph.D. and prepare myself to teach at the university level where one can both teach and do research, and of course the pay would be huge and there would never be any problems or bickering in dealing with university administration.

I taught at UC-San Diego where I discovered that the pay was actually very bad. In fact, I discovered to my dismay that the custodian that was cleaning my office was making quite a lot more than I was. So I went to my boss and told him I needed a raise sufficient to bring me into parity with the custodian or I would have to leave this job that I had worked so hard to get. I stated this as an ultimatum. To my utter surprise he said, “Goodbye.”

I guess there is also a small lesson to be learned here--never present ultimatums or draw lines in the sand unless you are really ready to cross them. I left, I had to leave, but that is not what I wanted to do at that time.

I took a job with IBM working in their research laboratories at nearly double my academic salary. It was great fun, we discovered many new things that have contributed to advances in computer technology…but I was pushed higher and higher up the management chain until I was clearly just an administrator, not a teacher or a scientist. So, I left IBM and found my way to THE University and here I finally found THE place for me. I can teach, I can do research and I earn a fair salary.

What did I learn from all this? I learned that change is o.k. I learned that it was wise to make these changes. Change is fine, change is ok. Embrace change, and be prepared for it.

In this day of mobility and restructuring and outsourcing, one needs to be flexible and be prepared to take advantage of opportunity. My sons are both Eagle Scouts. From them I learned the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. I urge you to adopt that motto. Keep yourselves prepared for change by staying abreast of the developments in your field. Be active in your professional societies and keep yourselves active in the network that is part of your profession. In so doing, you will be positioned to take advantage of the changes that are inevitable and they will become opportunities rather than disasters.

There is a second thing I learned that is very important. I want to say something about it, but it is something that I suspect each of you already knows in your heart of hearts. It is about integrity and about trust. Trust is your most valuable and most fragile asset. Protect it at all costs. Trust comes from integrity and it takes a lifetime to create trust but it can be lost in just an instant of weakness. Once lost, trust is extremely difficult to regenerate. The regeneration process is very slow and never fully complete.

As you leave here, you will be subjected to almost daily tests of both your knowledge in your academic field and in ethics. I want you to get A’s on both of these tests. I expect you to get A’s on both of these tests. But, if you are to fail one of these tests, let it be the technical test and not the test of your integrity.

Thank you for what you have done. You make me happy and proud. Continue to do well at what you do and do GOOD at every opportunity.

Dr. C. Grant Willson is the Rashid Engineering Regents Chair in Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Professor of Chemistry and BioChemistry in the College of Natural Sciences. Willson serves on the editorial boards of several journals in polymer chemistry and materials science and is co-author of more than 300 journal publications. He is editor and author of several books and co-inventor of more than 25 patents.

Dr. Willson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a fellow of the PMSE division of the American Chemical Society. He has been recognized internationally for his research in the design and synthesis of functional organic materials into microelectronics. Willson is the recipient of the Arthur Doolittle Award, the American Chemical Society Chemistry of Materials Award, and American Chemical Society Carothers Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award from the Federal Republic of Germany, the American Chemical Society Award for Cooperative Research in Polymer Science and Engineering, the SRC Technical Excellence Award, the SRC Aristotle Award, the Malcolm E. Pruitt Award and the National Academy of Sciences Award for Chemistry in Service to Society.