Purdue President Martin C. Jischke made these remarks during commencement ceremonies on the West Lafayette campus May 12-14.

Purdue president encourages graduates to achieve their dreams

It is a celebration of success. It is a celebration of people. It is a celebration of the future.

Commencement, after all, is not an ending; commencement is a beginning.

Today we are celebrating a beginning that will lead you graduates to your future. That future is not a destination, an established station in life that you are aimlessly traveling toward. Your future is something you are building and creating every day of your life.

We have a great deal to celebrate in these wonderful graduates. All of us at Purdue University are very proud of what you have accomplished. The family and friends who have gathered today to join in this celebration are also proud. They share in this accomplishment; they share in this joy. I hope your Purdue experience has been both beneficial and fun. I am confident it has left you well prepared for the great future that lies ahead.

Long before he was president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson was a university president. Everyone must start somewhere. At Princeton, where he was president, Woodrow Wilson once faced sharp questions from a concerned mother. The mother repeatedly questioned Dr. Wilson about what the university could do for her son. Finally an exasperated Woodrow Wilson replied, "Madam, we guarantee satisfaction or you will get your child back!"

When you graduates were admitted to Purdue, there was no guarantee on your success. The only guarantee was that the work would be difficult and the rewards immense. You already know that Purdue fulfilled that first guarantee: The work was difficult. We are now about to fulfill the second guarantee: The great rewards that will come with this diploma you will soon receive.

There is now only one limitation on the scope of those rewards: You and how far you want to go. More often than not in life, the height of our success is determined by the depth of our commitment.

All commencement ceremonies are filled with dreams for success. Yours is no different. It is the hope — even the expectation — of everyone gathered here today that all of you will reach the full extent of your potential.

We believe in you. We believe in your energy and talents. We know you have tremendous abilities. After all, we are the ones who taught you.

I have no doubt that one day some of you will go where no person has ever gone before.

We are entering a golden age in science, agriculture, medicine, health care, technology, engineering, education, business, the arts and much more. New fields are emerging. New possibilities are coming into view. In your lifetime, the world will be changed dramatically and forever. You will play an important role in this.

As we begin this 21st century, we cannot know exactly what lies ahead. Likewise, as they launched a new company in 1968, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce had no idea all that would unfold in the last part of the 20th century.

At first these two brilliant and ambitious men considered using their own names for the new company. Under this plan, going alphabetically, the company would have been named Moore, Noyce. Unfortunately Moore, Noyce sounds far too much like "more noise." And "more noise" is not a good name for a high-tech electronics company. So Moore and Noyce settled on a quieter name — Integrated Electronics.

We know it better today as Intel.

In fact, today Intel is one of the most widely recognized corporate brand names in the world.

Most our graduates today were born since 1980, 12 years after the founding of Intel. It does not seem so long ago. But the society these graduates were born into is dramatically different from the world we live in today. Intel was not a household name in 1980. Even the television network CNN was little known in 1980. CNN was launched in 1980 and immediately dubbed the "Chicken Noodle Network" by its competitors, who very would soon be copying it.

Imagine what life was like in the year 1980. That decade just 26 years ago dawned to an era so primitive that many telephones were still attached to the wall. Some of those telephones still had rotary dials!

In 1980 there had been only two Star Wars movies.

In 1980 people were forced to struggle through their day without many of the essentials of our modern day life. To name just a few: ATM machines, cellular telephones and MTV! What did people do in 1980 when they needed access to their money after the banks closed or while they were traveling?

Without cellular telephones, who did Purdue students talk with as they walked across campus between classes? Without MTV how did anyone know what was "in" and what was "out?"

In 1980 Microsoft had not yet even been incorporated, and Bill Gates had not yet acquired even his first billion dollars.

In 1980 the shuttle that eventually would take 17 Purdue graduates into space had not even been launched.

In 1980 the population of this nation was 226 million. It will soon be 300 million.

In 1980 the minimum wage was $3.10 and the average annual salary was $15,757.

This was a vastly different world from ours today.

Since 1980 graphite and titanium have gone from working marvels in airplanes and rockets to working marvels in my golf game.

In 1980 Tiger Woods was 5 years old, Academy Award actress Reese Witherspoon was 4, and Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had not yet been born.

Since 1980 we have gone from VCRs to DVDs to TiVo; from music cassettes to CDs to iPods. In 1980 no one on the planet had ever heard of Harry Potter much less Hogwarts, Hagrid and quidditch.

There was no e-mail in 1980, but it didn't matter much because few of us had computers. There was no text messaging. We actually had to speak with one another in 1980.

In 1980 "Google" and "Yahoo" were just silly words. In 1980 if you had said that in the year 2006 we would be able to push a button and within half a second locate 124 million reference sites for the single topic "commencement," they would have wondered why anyone would want 124 million places to read about anything.

In 1980 women were not allowed to officially join Rotary and other service clubs. It was only 26 years ago. And today women lead many of these same organizations.

Last summer CNN — the "Chicken Noodle Network" that spawned the cable news revolution — announced the 25 top non-medical innovations since 1980. It was a list compiled by the Lemelson-MIT program which promotes inventiveness in young people. This list shows just how much everything has changed since 1980.

Here is the list of innovations that changed life in the past 25 years.

• The Internet.

• The cellular telephone.

• Personal computers.

• Fiber optics.

• E-mail.

• Commercialized GPS.

• Portable computers.

• Memory storage discs.

• Consumer digital cameras.

• Radio frequency ID tags.

• MEMS, or micro-electromechanical systems which have a wide array of applications including airbags in our cars.

• DNA fingerprinting.

• ATMs.

• Advanced batteries.

• Hybrid cars.

• Organic light-emitting diodes that have commercial applications, such as screens for mobile telephones and MP3 players.

• Display panels.

• HDTV.

• The space shuttle.

• Nanotechnology.

• Flash memory.

• Voice mail.

• Modern hearing aids.

• And short-range, high-frequency radio.

Medical breakthroughs since 1980 have included:

• Human genome mapping.

• Laser-eye surgery.

• And the self-contained artificial heart.

The 20th century was among the most exciting and remarkable periods of history in all of human development. And the final 20 years of that century beginning in 1980 were the most exciting of all.

We entered the 20th century in a horse and buggy. We left it exploring the planet Mars led by Purdue graduates.

As spectacular as the last 26 years have been, I believe the years immediately ahead will be even more stunning.

There is a convergence taking place of math, science, technology and engineering that is about to change the world.

Art and entertainment are changing.

Medicine, health care, education, business and agriculture are changing.

Everything is changing.

At Purdue today, we are working in the nanoscale in a brand-new $58 million nanotechnology center.

Nanotechnology is a science in which new materials and tiny structures are built atom-by-atom or molecule-by-molecule.

We are thinking about computers with massive capacity and dimensions smaller than your wristwatch.

We have linked our nanotechnology center with a $15 million bioscience center. We are thinking about being able to place devices into your body that will not only determine what is wrong with you. They will fix it!

You will be part of this.

As Theodor Seuss Geisel said, 'Oh the places you'll go …'

All the wonders you will see will make all the changes since 1980 that I have listed today seem small in comparison.

You are building your future at perhaps the most exciting time in all of history.

Even still, as you leave this campus, you will move into a world of naysayers, filled with people who will tell you your dreams are impossible.

Never allow anyone to dissuade you from your goals just because something has never been done before.

Maybe the only reason it never succeeded before is because you weren't there to do it.

Intel co-founder Robert Noyce, the "noise" of Moore and Noyce, said: "Do not be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful."

On behalf of the Board of Trustees, the administration and our faculty, congratulations to the Class of 2006!

Now go off and do your wonderful something!

Thank you.

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