May 31, 2006 - Claremont, Calif. -

One hundred seventy-six students were awarded bachelor of science degrees at Harvey Mudd College's commencement ceremony on May 14, 2006.

Staged for the first time under a large tent in the Harvey S. Mudd Quadrangle north of Honnold Library, the ceremony was the 48th since the college's founding in 1955.

In addition to the conferring of degrees, the college recognized contributions and service to the college with the following awards:

• Sprague Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service: R. Michael Shanahan, chair of the board of trustees
• Henry T. Mudd Prize: Jeanne M. Noda, vice president and dean of students
• Doctor of Engineering, honoris causa: E.H. Clark, Jr., trustee; Henry E. Riggs, president and trustee emeritus

The student keynote was given by Elizabeth "Libby" J. Beckman '06, a biology major from Montesano, Wash. In her address, she asked, "If you could do it again, would you?" She reflected on her experiences at the college and how she realized she could indeed become a scientist, a dream she has had since she was a young girl: "When I was in second grade, I didn't think I could be a scientist. Now, as I graduate, I believe I can. Harvey Mudd College has given me a gift, a choice."

After they were awarded their diplomas, graduates were welcomed to the Harvey Mudd College Alumni Association by Frederick H. Pickel '74, president of the association.

Founding President Emeritus and Senior Professor of Physics Joseph B. Platt delivered the commencement address. In his introduction of Platt, President Jon C. Strauss, who presided over his final commencement before his retirement June 30, said: "When we considered who would be most fitting to address our graduates, their families and the Harvey Mudd College community on this auspicious occasion—the commencement of our 50th anniversary year—one name rose immediately to the top."

The text of Joe Platt's commencement address follows:

Commencement Address

by Founding President Emeritus

and Senior Professor of Physics

Joseph B. Platt

We come here today to celebrate the graduation of the Class of 2006 at Harvey Mudd College. We are proud of all graduates of Harvey Mudd College. This year we have a particularly strong group, including many able young women. Not only are this year's graduates bright and accomplished, but they have been a socially responsible group, helping others from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to nearby service in California. We congratulate them! We expect they will shortly be doing well in the next stages of their careers, whether in jobs or in graduate schools or in other tasks of their choosing. Please keep in touch with this college!

Today is also Mother's Day, and we are grateful to the mothers here. Without mothers, none of us would be here today.

This year is also a special anniversary. Harvey Mudd College is now fifty years old as a college, and I am asked to report on this half century as well. Accordingly this graduating class also has a final history lesson.

Fifty years ago takes us to May, 1956. At that time Harvey Mudd College had a charter from the State of California, a Board of Trustees of eleven persons, sixteen acres largely covered with rocks and chaparral which might become a campus, and had appointed a president who might reach California in September.

But the primary asset of the new college was an idea. Here was the idea: the United States, in 1956, needed more college and university facilities because the postwar babies of the late 1940's were now in school and approaching college age. Nationally, the numbers seeking higher education could triple, and in California the State Legislature projected a tripling from 1958 to 1975. The nation, and in particular California, needed to provide colleges and university classrooms and teachers to educate these young people, and to provide them the skills and the leadership they in turn could give their communities.

That was the first part of the idea. The second was that the postwar world was being reshaped by science and technology, so we particularly needed engineers and scientists who could help that reshaping to benefit everyone. That meant not only more engineers and scientists, but especially those able to and interested in creating technology that was generally understood and welcomed. In the early 1950's, a great deal of national discussion among engineering educators focused on this need.

The final portion of the idea came from The Claremont Colleges. In 1920 the then-president of Pomona College, James Arnold Blaisdell, proposed that rather than have that college double in size, Claremont might foster a family of small liberal arts colleges, each with its own character, in which each student body and faculty would remain small enough to constitute a community. As of 1950, The Claremont Colleges consisted of Pomona College, Claremont Graduate School, Scripps College, and Claremont McKenna College. Why not a new college? That new college would combine the teaching of engineering and science with the range of education of a liberal arts college.

That idea—that hope—is the primary asset of Harvey Mudd College.

How is it working out, and how do we know?

Colleges and universities have two purposes—two sides of the same coin. The first is to help students make the most of themselves; to prepare them for life in the Great World. The second is to supply the community at large with the people it needs to manage and carry out its work. Example: Harvard College was founded in 1636 by a group of New Englanders who stated they were (and I quote) "unwilling to entrust our progeny to an ignorant and illiterate clergy when those who now lead us shall lie in the dust."

Harvey Mudd College now has 4695 graduates. They are an educated lot. Forty-five percent report they hold advanced degrees, and 20 percent report having earned doctorates. They do a wide range of things. Many of them are in research; some teach. Some are in industry, some are in private practice, others are in government service, and we have a few hundred who have formed their own companies. We seem to be contributing more than our share of the nation's technical leadership, but we also have among our alums an ambassador, two astronauts, a number of practicing artists, and other surprises. I will return later to the records of our graduates.

How did we grow from an idea to an institution?

The idea attracted students, faculty, additional trustees, and financial support. The first 48 students were greeted by a faculty of seven when the students arrived in September 1957. Harvey Mudd College now has a student body of 700, and a faculty of 80 on its own appointment, plus another twelve shared with other Claremont Colleges.

We needed, and found, faculty and students. We also needed trustees and other friends to help us plan our program and attract support. We were much helped by those who knew and admired three generations of the Mudd family. Here is a sketch of that family history:

Harvey Mudd's father, Col. Seeley Mudd, had been a Pomona College trustee in 1920 when Pomona's president, James Blaisdell, proposed what became the Claremont Group Plan. Col. Mudd. a mining engineer, had developed the Cyprus Mines Corporation, which mined copper on the island of Cyprus (Copper had been mined on Cyprus for more than two thousand years, and the metal had been given the name of the island. What the Mudd family did was to use modern mining technology on ancient ore bodies.)

In Claremont, Col. Mudd supported President Blaisdell in establishing Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) and then Scripps College. His son. Harvey, also a mining engineer, succeeded his father as head of the Cyprus Mines Corporation, and also joined the Board of (what was then) Claremont Graduate School and University Center.

In 1926 Col. Mudd died. His son Harvey succeeded him as head of the Cyprus Mines Corporation, and as chair of the Claremont Colleges Board. Harvey Mudd helped in the founding of Claremont McKenna College, and later promoted the discussions which planned what became Harvey Mudd College. After Harvey Mudd's death in 1955, his friends proposed to his widow, Mildred Mudd, that the planned new college be founded and named for Harvey Mudd. She agreed, and helped support the founding. Harvey and Mildred had two children: Henry T. Mudd and Caryll Mudd Sprague, whose husband, a medical doctor, was Norman F. Sprague, Jr. Henry Mudd succeeded his father as head of the Cyprus Mines Corporation, and served for 24 years. He succeeded his mother as Board Chair of Harvey Mudd College, and served in that capacity for 23 years. Caryll and Norman Sprague were warm and effective supporters of Harvey Mudd College, as are Norman F. Sprague III and his wife Marianne in their generation.

Indeed the extended Mudd family has supported the college. The family was known for its effectiveness in building a public-spirited Southern California community, and the family interest in the college attracted other leading citizens to help the college. We have had, and now have, trustees who see to it that the college does well in educating its students, and is adequately supported.

Thankfully, we grew and flourished.

The years were not without incident. In the United States, we were the first new private engineering institution to be founded in the twentieth century, so we had the opportunity to build a new curriculum along the lines then nationally advocated: greater emphasis on basic science, the humanities and social sciences. These provided the basics of engineering.

What remained was the practice of engineering. We did not want to copy the "how to" instruction then common in many university engineering courses, such as bridge design, but we did want our students to have experience in design and building. Our new HMC engineering faculty invented the "engineering clinic" in which clients brought problems to student teams for the teams to solve, with faculty and client guidance. We now have 30 to 40 student teams per year working on problems that range from civil engineering to computer software design. No single student has a wide range of engineering experience, but she or he also learns from observing what classmates do with other problems, be they mechanical, electrical, chemical, or structural. The student learns how to tackle new and unusual problems.

In this last half century, Harvey Mudd College has grown. In the 1950's we graduated two students. In the 1960's we graduated 433, in the 1970's 811, in the 1980's 1116, in the 1990's 1374, and in the first five years of this century we graduated 959.

Forecasting the future is risky, but we are now at about our intended size. We hope to graduate our full share of the technical leaders of generations to come.

Many helped the college to grow, in reputation as in size. A college is as good as its faculty, and we began with a small faculty of excellent teachers and scholars. We have continued to attract first-rate faculty. As our alumni and alumnae established themselves, many have remained close to the college as supporters, trustees, and our most effective advocates. We thank each of you.

My successors as president have each presided well through growth and change: Ken Baker, then Hank Riggs, whom the college honors today with an honorary degree, and most recently Jon Strauss. We are grateful to Jon, under whose leadership we have attracted more women students, so that women now are 31 percent of our student body—and we have also considerably increased the number of underrepresented minorities in our student body. Harvey Mudd College continues a very selective college, but we now select from a more representative group of applicants.

To sum up: As of 2006, I believe we have a student body and a faculty of which we can be proud.

The measure of the contribution of a college or university is the record of its graduates, and our graduates have many notable accomplishments. A number of our graduates teach, both at the secondary level and in colleges and universities. Some hold named chairs in major colleges and universities, some are deans or department chairs, and as a group they are respected teachers and scholars. Others head significant research groups in organizations (nicknamed "think tanks") such as the RAND Corporation or The Aerospace Corporation. Many graduates are in industry, and their job titles indicate substantial technical responsibility. Quite a few are in the health sciences, including perhaps twenty medical doctors, and a sizeable number are involved in developing new medical devices. Many are in government service. A look at our Alumni Directory identifies over a hundred professional categories in which our graduates are distributed, from accounting to water quality.

I am particularly proud of those who have chosen careers of service in jobs such as the relocation and employment of refugees, teaching overseas in secondary schools of other cultures, and other callings which build a more understanding and humane world.

Has Harvey Mudd College now arrived?

Well, hardly. The world population continues to grow, and the world resources remain limited. Generation by generation, we in the United States have, on average, improved our standard of living. But the gap between the rich and the median income continues to grow. The task of building a better world, with more productivity and more rewards for all, still eludes our grasp. This is true for the United States, and it is true the world over. In our next half century I hope we have many more graduates, and that they will have a distinguished record of lifetime accomplishment. If Harvey Mudd College produces its full share of leaders in the betterment of mankind, we can look forward to our 100th anniversary in 2056 with real enthusiasm and joy. As we rejoice with this year's graduates, may we also look forward to the next 50 years!

Thank you!