U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar will deliver the following remarks at the Ball State University Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 9, 2009. Lugar received an honorary doctor of laws at the 1986 Ball State Commencement and will receive the President’s Medal this year. He also will participate in the groundbreaking for Ball State’s geothermal energy project.
I am honored to join you today for Ball State University’s celebration of the graduates of 2009. I congratulate each scholar for the perseverance that has led to this day, and I encourage you all to build on your achievements through a lifelong commitment to never stop learning and never stop seeking the truth.
As you reflect on your college experiences, you should pay special attention to what this day of celebration means to your family. Some of you are accompanied today by parents and grandparents, others by spouses and children, others by brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and lifelong friends. For many of your loved ones, this day is the culmination of years of sacrifice that helped you to seize the opportunities available at Ball State.
From the time that you were old enough to refuse your vegetables, you have been asserting your independence from your parents. At about eighteen, they watched you leave home and exit the sphere of their day-to-day influence, even though they knew that you were not yet a fully completed human being. They knew you needed many more experiences and a more diverse set of mentors and teachers to fulfill your potential. In an act of faith, they encouraged you to go to college, and many devoted financial resources and other support to make that happen.
Today, they can see how much hard work you have devoted to your own development. They see differences in you that go beyond the accumulation of knowledge – the confidence, the ambition, the friendships -- and they are gratified by what you have done at this university, with these professors. Their sense of accomplishment, pride, and, perhaps, relief at seeing you graduate is one of the best parts of commencement. I urge you to thank them and share with them fully the joy of this day.
As new college graduates, you are important bellwethers of our societal experience. New college graduates are associated in our national consciousness with both optimism about our future and inevitable questions about whether the next generation will do better than the last.
Many years from now, historians may well contemplate what it was like to graduate from a university in 2009. Your class is graduating amidst a season of global economic turmoil that has shaken public confidence and redefined how we see the international economy and, perhaps, our own economic futures. You graduate as America continues to fight wars in two countries and as debate over environmental, fiscal, and social issues reaches a national crescendo. Your class is the first to graduate after the historic election and inauguration of President Barack Obama, which has changed perceptions of our nation and stimulated reflection on America’s fundamental direction and purposes. Historians are likely to wonder what newly minted college graduates at this transformational moment in American history were thinking and saying.
Clearly, most of your energies have been focused not on personal reflection, but on the next steps in developing a career in a very challenging economy. For many of you, this process has included uncertainty, and perhaps frustration. But I am hopeful that all of you have a sense of how much opportunity lies before you in the years ahead.
I want you to know that there is good reason to have confidence in the future of our country and our world. History does not move primarily in negative directions. Disasters and downturns can and do happen, but they are not destined to happen. The human spirit possesses remarkable abilities and energies that can be brought to bear on solving problems and improving our conditions.
Each of you should have faith in your own training and abilities. Each of you possesses the fortitude to use your talents in business, science, engineering, art, the humanities, and many other disciplines to be a productive individual who can support a family, contribute to a community, and take action in the service of moral values and human welfare.
We honor individual accomplishments today, but we also celebrate the work of this University and its role as an invaluable resource for Indiana and beyond. In the best academic tradition, Ball State has devoted itself to anticipating and responding to the needs of its region and its students. It has served as both a wellspring of the skills needed in the local and national economy and a conduit for global ideas and opportunities. And it has done this while setting an example as a socially conscious institution that challenges its students, staff, and faculty to take up a life of service.
As this commencement stimulates our imagination about what will be in the coming years, the University is preparing to break ground this very day on a bold endeavor that embraces the future and should inspire pride in every student and every graduate of this institution.
About six months ago, I received a message from leaders at Ball State. They told me that the campus’ current coal-fired boilers have outlived their usefulness and new solutions for powering this campus would have to be found. The easiest solution would have been to swap an old coal system for a new one. Instead, Ball State leaders, with the collaboration of many students and community members, were inspired to find a solution that is better for the local economy, better for the environment and better for our nation’s security. This community had a vision for powering the campus with geothermal power.
The potential financial and energy savings in America’s buildings are tremendous. Buildings account for about 40 percent of America’s total energy consumption and 72 percent of our electricity consumption. A study by the Department of Energy found that aggressive deployment of geothermal technology could save Americans 33 to 38 billion dollars by 2030, just a generation from now.
President Gora has assured me that all Ball State students graduating today are well-versed in the second law of thermodynamics. They will know how geothermal power works. But for the rest of us, a simple description is that water will be circulated throughout the campus and deep into the ground. In the winter when the ground is warmer than the air, the water pulls heat from ground, which is turned into heat and power. In the summer, the opposite holds true. Although the upfront cost of the system is substantial, it will use a free, abundant and local power source for decades to come.
The geothermal plan seemed audacious when I first heard it. I knew there were hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the U.S. that used this technology, but I had never heard of a project on a large scale like this campus. I was not alone. In fact, no one knew of such an ambitious geothermal project because this is the first one of its type in the country and, perhaps, in the world.
Innovative technologies will only take hold and produce more jobs if consumers and investors believe in them. People have to see that the technology works and that it can save them money. This campus is making an extraordinary contribution to demonstrating the viability of geothermal technology. In the coming years this campus will be swarmed with scientists, engineers, tradesmen, investors, and students anxious to learn from your experience. More importantly, each one of us as citizens will see that there are solutions to our nation’s energy crisis – solutions that will save us money, create jobs, protect our environment and safeguard our security by breaking America’s dependence on foreign energy sources.
At the same time, American jobs will be created. One of Ball State’s resident geothermal cheerleaders, my friend Satch Sachtleben, informs me that drilling the thousands of holes necessary for the geothermal system will generate up to 10,000 days worth of work, that the steel pipes used to carry the water are made in America, that the large “chillers” to be installed are domestically manufactured. Even the engineers designing the system are from right here in the Midwest. In other words, more families will have more economic security because of what you are doing in Muncie. And Ball State itself is expected to save $2 million a year – a savings that can be reinvested in students.
Over the years, this campus and the community of Muncie have committed themselves to energy security through a variety of projects from electric vehicles to architectural design. On my last visit to Ball State, I recognized this outstanding leadership by presenting these bold innovators with a Lugar Energy Patriot Award. The geothermal project demonstrates that your leadership is not confined to Muncie or to Indiana, it is global.
As we go forward, the United States must place much greater emphasis on stewardship of global resources and the prevention of conflict related to them. We are faced with intensifying costs of climate change, growing demand for scarce energy and food resources. These problems – most of which barely registered in our consciousness just a quarter century ago -- are likely to be the central moral issues of the next several decades. They cannot be addressed without the deliberate moral actions of leaders like the Ball State University family, who step forward with innovative ideas and projects.
Like the University that is conferring a degree on you today, each of you are potential innovators with the capacity to enrich the knowledge of our society and solve real world problems. In the process, you will help renew the spirit of American idealism. I am confident that what you have learned and the people you have met at Ball State will stimulate your imagination and your ambition for a lifetime.
In the modern world, with all of its uncertainties, each of us will require a large element of courage. All of you – whether you plan to continue in school or whether you are about to enter or re-enter your chosen career -- should have confidence that you are ready to contribute.
We congratulate you for your commitment to education, and we look forward to all that you will achieve.
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