Sample Speeches

The Perfect Storm
Presented By Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D.
President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

National Society of Black Engineers
Dallas, Texas

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Good evening. I am delighted to be back here with you. Three years ago, when I last addressed your organization, I found your theme in March of 2001, "Embracing the Global Community," to be very apt. The United States is competing in an increasingly globalized marketplace, and organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers have done great service to their members, and to society, by addressing these challenges.

This year's theme, "Strengthening the Pipeline to Success," is no less pertinent to today's very real challenges to U.S. preeminence in science, engineering, and mathematical disciplines.

The plain facts are these: The current science and technology workforce is aging, and an insufficient number of U.S. students are entering the pipeline to replace them. The talent pool from which scientists and engineers traditionally has been drawn - white males - is shrinking. At the same time, K-12 education in science and mathematics in the U.S. is slipping, in comparison to other nations.

I think of these phenomena as "The Perfect Storm", a convergence of forces with the potential to create the worst possible situation. The inescapable fact - the eye of the Perfect Storm - is that there simply are not enough young scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technologists to provide the United States with the talent it will require in the decades ahead. Organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) for years have worked hard to strengthen the pipeline. But, more is required. The numbers of historically underrepresented groups - women and minorities - must grow substantially if the United States is to be able to retain its preeminence in the globalized marketplace.

The challenge of ensuring that we, as a nation, will be able to continue our technological capacity - and the leadership necessary to ensure its ongoing creation and maintenance - are the topics I will address this evening.

Last month was Black History Month, as you know. I cannot help thinking back to those forebears whom we venerate for making extraordinary contributions to this country, against overwhelming odds - particularly those who, often self-taught, distinguished themselves in scientific and technological fields.

•  People such as Louis Latimer, who helped to bring light to the world through electricity, as a colleague of Thomas Edison;

•  such as Granville Woods, an electro-mechanical genius who held more than 50 patents, and who invented an induction telegraph that allowed trains to communicate with each other;

•  such as Garrett Morgan, who devoted his life to advancing public safety through his invention of devices ranging from breathing masks for firefighters to one of the first traffic signals;

•  and, such as Archie Alexander, a design and construction engineer who left his stamp on the landscape of America by building power plants, bridges, freeways, airfields, and railroad trestles.

These people, and many more like them, persevered in the 19th and early 20th centuries - largely alone - with little support, and sometimes active opposition from their countrymen, to improve our lives and to provide a lasting source of inspiration. But, how many more people of equal talent and energy were thwarted in their pursuit of scientific and technological careers?

The experience of my generation was somewhat better, thanks to the convergence of two disparate events: Brown v. Board of Education , and the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite.

The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education , whose 50th anniversary we recognize this year, declared that it was against the law of the land to segregate schools. This decision enabled me, and others like me, to attend the local public school in my Washington , D.C. , neighborhood. Once there, I was tested, assigned to an advanced track - essentially, an accelerated program - and my education unfolded accordingly.

Sputnik, launched in 1957, was a spectacular technological achievement, which took the American public by surprise, and quickly plunged the nation into new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. It was a direct challenge to our national capacity, and global standing.

The U.S. government responded by rapidly expanding the U.S. space program, and also by moving to expand our national scientific and engineering capabilities. The passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958 provided real opportunity for a generation of young Americans. As I graduated from high school and began work on my advanced degrees at M.I.T., NDEA support made it possible for many of my generation to develop their talents, and to pursue, and to realize, their interests in science and mathematics.

These events spurred not only my career, but also they contributed, substantially, to the great scientific and engineering achievements of the past four or five decades. The development of life-transforming technologies - including nuclear power, microprocessors, lasers and fiber optics, imaging technologies, high performance materials, the Internet, and space craft and exploration - is the tangible testament to the value, and merit, of the investment the U.S. made in developing its talented young people. The discoveries and innovations that have been made by that generation have given the American people a measure of prosperity, health, comfort, convenience, and security like no other.

Of course, women and minorities still had to surmount barriers in order to be accorded membership in that productive generation. I worked hard, at M.I.T., to be accepted for my work. A similar circumstance led the late, and much mourned, founding member of NSBE, Stanley L. Kirtley, to observe that he knew more white engineers from Purdue later in life than he did back in his undergraduate days. That atmosphere also had a salutary effect, however, in that it brought together the founders of NSBE, and set in motion all the contributions which this organization already has made to strengthen the pipeline for generations to come.

Those new generations must be given a warmer welcome into the scientific and engineering community than their predecessors. This nation simply cannot afford to ignore, or to marginalize, the capabilities and ambitions of young people of color and young women, because these groups now comprise the new majority.

The separate challenges now at work in the U.S. science and technology sectors are converging, and each exacerbates the effects of the others, making the sum greater than that which could be caused by any one individually. Metaphorically, we may face the "perfect storm." Let me describe to you the extraordinary meteorological event (about which a book and a movie were produced) which gave rise to my metaphor. The "Perfect Storm" ravaged the east coast in late October 1991, as climatic forces off the coast of Nova Scotia combined in time and space in a way that seldom occurs, creating, perhaps, the most severe storm in modern history.

Climatologists and forecasters hunched over their instruments, watching in awe, as a fast-moving front containing an embryonic storm moved across North America and out to sea off the coast of New England . There, it collided with a strong high-pressure system from the North and the remnants of Hurricane Grace from the South, subsuming energy from both and intensifying rapidly.

This storm unleashed torrential rains, 150-mile-per-hour winds, and 70-foot seas, meandering along the U. S. and Canadian coastlines, devastating fishing fleets, eroding shorelines, and terrorizing outlying communities.