Winter Commencement Address (Graduate degree candidates)

Delivered by John Morgridge
10 a.m., Dec. 18, 2005

(This address was directed primarily at graduate students, who made up the bulk of those receiving degrees at this ceremony.)

I have an apology to make to the undergraduates here. Being fairly eager at this opportunity, I actually wrote two speeches, and this afternoon’s speech is dedicated to the undergraduates. But perhaps you can take something from the one I wrote for your fellow graduate students.

Fellow graduates of the University of Wisconsin, I am delighted to share your commencement at this great university. As graduate students, I also want to extend a very special thanks for your past efforts in helping to maintain the high scholarly standards here at Madison. You have been part of making it a world class research and education institution.

During life’s journeys we make a rather small number of key decisions. You have already made several to study and obtain an advanced degree in a particular discipline. You decided to do it here at Madison and for many, you have accepted your first job.

I made that first job decision 45 years ago as I exited the Air Force. Yes, we had a draft back then. I joined Honeywell in their computer division and have been part of that industry ever since. That industry has given us the communications and information age and has provided the tools to map the human genome and carry out basic research on a grand scale.

What will your legacy be? Your advanced degrees give you both the capacity and the responsibility to help shape that legacy. The challenges are many, but I have my favorite four.

The tools to solve them are well along, as is the basic research. You must do the translational research that moves discoveries in the lab to solutions in the field.

First on my list is human health. In a world where a virus can circle the globe in 24 hours, it is world health. It includes things we already know the answers for – malaria, tuberculosis, polio and a long list that still awaits solutions. Hopefully you, like this university, will be about finding the solutions.

Second on my list is developing a sustainable environment. Our use of the world’s water, energy, food and oceans are out of balance with the environment’s ability to sustain them. A world population of 6 billion will grow to 9 billion in your lifetime. The answers to these challenges rest not in a single discipline, but in collaboration with colleagues across disciplines. It requires the collective efforts of government, research institutions such as Wisconsin, civil society and business.

Education is third on my list, and in a very real way, it is the foundation and underpinning for success in the other two. Many of you know well the challenge, having just received a degree from one of the top educational schools in the country. It may be a global challenge, but it is very much a U.S. problem.

While our higher education institutions set the standard for the world, our K-12 schools rank at the bottom of the developed world. Fully a third of our students perform below grade level, and in many urban schools less than 60 percent graduate from high school. When it comes to math and science, the foundations of solving the health and environmental challenge, the picture is even darker.

Last on my list is the challenge of living as a global family and providing for the well-being of all. As we all know too well, local problems can quickly cause global pain. We must find the root cause of terrorism, failed governments and civil unrest. Lack of opportunity and poor governance are clearly part of the problem. Improved education and better health care are part of the solution, as is economic development.

As this state knows well, there is no silver bullet for the latter. These are problems that all of us can play a role in solving. So why should you undertake as a life’s work one of these issues? Certainly enlightened self-interest is one reason, along with the fact that you are well-trained to take on one of them.

I stumbled into the computer industry almost at its dawning in 1958 in the military. Growing with it has been a highly rewarding life experience in almost dimensions.

Second, it will make your parents proud and your children will directly benefit and thank you. My generation can hope to exit this world before one or more of these challenges makes life as we know it very difficult. You and your children cannot hope for the same.

Lastly, while you may have loans to repay for your time here at Madison, they represent only a small part of what society has invested in your education. Eighty percent of the cost has been paid by federal and state tax dollars and generous gifts from alumni. That investment came with the expectation that you would work to help solve our collective challenges.

One last note as I close: Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Hungry is to continue learning. Hungry is to get involved and do the heavy lifting. Hungry is to make the world move.

Lastly, stay foolish. I know that some say there is more than enough foolishness here at UW–Madison, and perhaps this is true. But a dose of foolishness puts color in life. I have tried to make foolishness a part of my life.

For our 50th wedding anniversary I gave my wife, who is my very best friend, a set of Ritz-Carlton sheets at a cost of $275. Foolishness, you say. Wrong! Even at 70-plus we find a certain exhilaration in jumping between those mercerized Egyptian cotton, 191 thread count sheets every night.

Stay hungry, stay foolish – go, Badgers!

John P. Morgridge is chairman of the board of Cisco Systems, a leading supplier of networking equipment and network management for the Internet. He also serves on the boards of a number of nonprofit organizations, including the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the Nature Conservancy, and the technical advisory board for the Milwaukee Public School System. He and his wife Tashia are the driving force behind UW–Madison’s Morgridge Center for Public Service, a central clearinghouse for those wishing to volunteer their time and expertise in the community and to a broad array of organizations seeking volunteers. The center has been instrumental in making UW–Madison one of the nation’s premier institutions in the area of service learning.