Technology Day 2023: Fireside Chat with MIT President Sally Kornbluth
![Technology Day 2023: Fireside Chat with MIT President Sally Kornbluth Technology Day 2023: Fireside Chat with MIT President Sally Kornbluth](/pic/technology_day_2023_fireside_chat_with_mit_president_sally_kornbluth/N2ZXT1FhVkRpVXM_.jpeg)
Please welcome to the stage, MIT Alumni Association CEO, Whitney Espich. That was pretty awesome. It gives new meaning to having friends in high places, right? [LAUGHTER] Let's give Professor Zuber one more round of applause for just deep thanks for making that possible. [APPLAUSE] And also just the incredible speakers. It seemed like everyone had smiles on their faces and your brains were working hard.
Those questions in the second session were really impressive. So a round of applause to you for really just engaging with our faculty. [APPLAUSE] All right. So, normally, I would say it's a pretty tough act to follow some amazing MIT Alumni astronauts.
That doesn't happen very often. But I feel confident that you're going to be just as dazzled by the next set of stars who are going to come to the stage. In just a moment, our 128th MIT Alumni Association President, Steve Baker, and MIT's 18th President, Sally Kornbluth, will join us for a fireside chat. Your Tech Reunions app will tell you all you need to know about these special people, including President Kornbluth academic trajectory that has brought her to us and to this stage today. This marks not only President Kornbluth first Tech Reunions, but also her first alumni-exclusive appearance, and we're so delighted to have her continuing in the coming year with a global listening tour for her to meet even more of our alumni community. Her travels will continue the conversation in person as she listens and learns about MIT.
Stops will include New York, San Francisco, and London for sure, and we have some more cities to announce in the near future. Before President Kornbluth and Steve Baker sit down for their conversation, we thought it might be fun to remind you all of the MIT she's been brought here to lead with all of you let's roll the video. [MUSIC PLAYING] [INAUDIBLE] [APPLAUSE] Hello, and welcome, President Kornbluth. Welcome to your first Tech Day.
Well, thank you. [APPLAUSE] One of the things that I've really enjoyed most about my year as president has been watching the many ways that the Alumni Association and MIT keep our alumni connected. Excuse me.
And certainly, this is one good example. So this is a great moment. Sally, as you know, we have here in Kresge Auditorium many alumni who are celebrating reunion years as well as people live streaming from around the globe. Wherever you are in the world, the institute is working to offer up opportunities to once again drink from the fire hose as we all did in students. And so let's keep the learning going now. We're going to dive into some questions for president that have been synthesized from her listening tour for the last few months.
Are you ready? I am ready. OK. I think the first question that might be on folks minds is, five months into your role and with your inauguration and your first commencement in the books, what do you think of the MIT fire hose so far? Yeah. It is a fire hose. I have to say, around every corner, every day, I'm learning incredible new things.
So for someone who's curious, this is paradise. It really is. Just take this morning.
I never heard [INAUDIBLE] and I never heard someone casually say, "When I was out repairing the Hubble Space Telescope," dot, dot, dot. I have to say also I'm glad there's no quiz at the end of it because the amount of information flowing in is amazing. I actually mentioned to Steve. I actually had a dream last night that was a variant of when you take a class and you never show up to the class, and you have to take the exam. You know, that anxiety feeling.
I had this dream last night that I was walking along the road with Provost Cindy Barnard, and she said to me, you know, in order to maintain your status as an MIT faculty member, you have to pass two MIT classes every year. [LAUGHTER] I was like, what? Nobody told me that. So-- [LAUGHTER] So anyway, it's been fantastic.
I'm learning a lot. But as I said, a quiz might be problematic at this point. Those GIRs are tough.
Since your arrival at MIT in January, you've embarked on an extensive listening tour, as we already mentioned, with students, faculty, staff, postdocs. And what are you hearing across the campus? And are there any overlapping themes that are emerging? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one thing-- and this is probably true at many institutions, but I've really felt it palpably here going from group to group-- is this desire to reconnect as a community after the pandemic and thinking about what avenues the administration can provide for establishing some of those reconnections. You know, I've heard a lot of people who are really intensely interested in understanding how the MIT education of today tracks with the needs of our future society. How do we think about our GIRs? How do we think about our majors? How do we think about educational experiences for students outside the classroom? And there's intense interest in really thinking about pedagogical innovation and how we continue to educate our students in the best way possible.
And of course, there's a very strong interest in what MIT is going to do in the arena of climate change. And I spoke to that at my inauguration. And there are at least 20% to 30% of the Institute, their own research work has-- bears on that question.
And so really thinking about how MIT has a huge impact on the climate change problem is really on the tip of everyone's tongues in our conversations. Yeah. So let's jump to that and go into that a little bit more.
You're beginning your time at MIT at a consequential moment for the world. At your inauguration, you called out climate change as a challenge that requires leadership, not just contributions, from MIT. Can you share more of your thoughts about that? Yeah. I think this is also part of what I've heard across all the listening tours, is this sort of, you know, MIT is really a place where a thousand flowers bloom. So when I say there are 20% to 30% of the faculty working on climate change, it's a little bit anybody's guess how many people are working on it because in every corner, everyone is so entrepreneurial and so innovative.
But part of the issue, I think, for climate change, and also for some of the other big institutional societal challenges, rather, at this point, is how we make the whole be greater than the sum of the parts and how we organize. So I think I'm starting to think about ways in which we can harness the expertise without dampening the innovation and dampening the entrepreneurial spirit to answer really big questions. And so it's going to require leadership at all levels at the faculty level. It's going to require some sort of organizational principles in constructing a roadmap that really says, for instance, how do we decarbonize construction, or how do we decarbonize transportation? Or whatever the big questions we choose are, how do we harness the collective strength to really directly approach some of these really big questions? And we recently had a conversation with 40 climate change leaders on campus.
There's another conversation coming up next week. And we're really just starting to generate ideas and discuss how we might organize around those principles. And I think we can come up with a way to continue the individual innovation and to also state collective goals that will get us to impact on climate change more rapidly. Well, I know that that's a subject that a lot of people on campus and among the alumni body are very interested in. And they're going to be, I think, a lot of people supporting you in that, so-- you're listening tour has mostly been on campus.
But I know that you have met with alumni during inauguration fest, you said certain other volunteer events, including you met with the Alumni Association Board of Directors this week. Thank you for coming to us. Yes, that was fun. How do you plan to expand your understanding of MIT's alumni perspectives? I mean, I think first of all, as you know, there are sort of trips planned. Whitney and also Julie Lucas have plans for me to travel around the country and internationally to meet people.
But also, I think alumni are so involved in many aspects of the conversations already going on on campus. For example, I know there are alumni organized around climate and sustainability. And so I would invite alumni to contact me to continue some of the conversations that are already underway.
I think there are many ways that alumni can interact more with students on campus. And so I'm open to a lot of-- to any ideas folks have. And also, I think I will be, in a much more systematic way, having conversations with groups of alumni. Just like I've done the internal listening tour, it's time to do the alumni listening tour. Yes. Excuse me.
[CLEARS THROAT] I have to say, inviting the alumni community to contact you as an invitation to overflowing your inbox because this is a passionate and engaged crowd. True. It's true.
So you may be hearing from 145,000 of us. Yeah. [LAUGHS] So for those of us who have either just graduated from MIT or maybe a few decades ago, we know that there's a pride and power in the individuality of MIT's schools and departments and labs and centers. How do you square that decentralized approach with the need to unite the campus across disciplines, and specifically to address climate change? I think there's a-- that tension definitely exists here. When I ask, is there a center on x, y, or z at MIT, whatever it is, and I look it up, the answer is there's 8 of them or 10 of them. And sometimes, they don't even the other ones exist.
And so I think one thing that's important as we move forward on some of the big problems, societal problems like climate change, like the impact of AI on our work environment and on our personal environment, we're going to really have to think about, again, how we harness the collective. We also have to think about what things are better done in a central way and what things are better done in a decentralized manner. So for instance, I hear a lot about tools for better research administration et cetera. There's no reason for every little unit to be deploying that to reach a goal. So we have to think what centralized services look like, what's deployed well in a central fashion. And also, part of it, as I mentioned-- and I think this is true for climate change but across the board-- is that historically, MIT has had a huge impact based on the work of individual brilliant scientists, engineers, et cetera.
Now, I think that society's problems demand more collective action, it takes many, many, many different approaches to tackle these problems. And this is not only science and engineering. This is the humanities. This is social sciences. So for many of these large societal problems, I think that the role of the central administration is going to be to take sort of a bird's-eye view across the whole landscape and try to help make the kind of connections that are needed to look at these problems holistically.
Great. So just on that note about decentralization, I recall one of my predecessors, Don Shobrys saying, if there's a good idea, then there's already 12 people-- 12 different organizations at MIT doing it. Exactly, exactly. That has definitely been my experience. That's part of that fire hose you talked about.
Right, right. So beyond climate change, you just mentioned AI. What other pressing societal changes or challenges do you think there are that the community-- that the MIT community needs to tackle during your presidency? Yeah. You know, and I'll make one comment about AI. I think that MIT has been at the forefront of technological innovation in terms of AI, but it also has a strong presence in terms of thinking about the social and ethical consequences of AI. And so I think that we have to step up our game in terms of all of the arenas where we're sort of the trusted guarantors of a lot of the technology being developed that is going to really impact the broader world.
And from recent external surveys, it's been clear that the broader public trusts MIT to deploy technology responsibly. And I think that has to be part of our conversation. So that's one concern I have, and not just about AI, but really about anything we do. Another thing that's near and dear to my heart is the role of the life sciences at MIT and also in terms of biomedical innovation. And I think MIT is almost unique in the very close juxtaposition of the life sciences and innovation and engineering.
And also, obviously, we're situated geographically, due to a lot of the efforts of MIT people over the many years, to one of the most vibrant biotech and biomedical innovation hubs in the world. And so I think it behooves MIT to address the many, many biomedical challenges that face us. I mean, I think we most recently came through the pandemic and saw how important it was-- efforts at MIT and efforts in the broader Cambridge area-- to combat the pandemic.
And I think MIT has to stay on the top of its game for emerging infectious disease, for other health challenges. And that's something that I really want to think, again, about how to build a collective because every corner of MIT has somebody working on some aspects of the life sciences or biomedical sciences. So in short, I would say have the inbox from hell.
[LAUGHTER] You've talked about your belief in the theory of incrementalism, not only in the theory of incrementalism but in the theory of rapid incrementalism. Can you enlighten us about that? Yeah. I always-- people would always ask me what my theory of management and change was. And I always thought back to how I did experiments in the lab and how I wrote grants.
When you write grants and you want to get funding, you've got to really be looking down the road to your goals, whether it be 5 years from then or 10 years from then. You have to articulate big important ideas. No one wants to give you money for your next experiment. But the truth is, the way scientists do work is they keep that long goal in mind, but you have to be always integrating the data that you're receiving and reacting.
And if you're good, you're reacting rapidly. You're incorporating the information you're getting. You're changing direction somewhat. You still may have that long goal down the road, but you've got to be able to rapidly make very incremental adjustments in your course. And people always used to ask me even when I was provost-- and I've certainly heard this all the time as president-- what's your vision? And I can articulate some really long-term vision, but I've got to think in concrete ways how we get there.
And how we get there is plotting your course, getting data input, and also, by the way, having a strong team, having them doing their things and bring back what they're doing to, again, allow you to adjust your course. So I've always thought that the successful academic administrator takes in that information. And honestly, if you move at what people sometimes call "glacial academic pace," you're not going to get there. So that's where the "rapid" comes in to make quick changes and adapt. Yeah. So it's interesting.
I think in the presentations we saw this morning, there was definitely some n that-- the mentioning about, well, OK, it didn't work, so now we've got to change and try something else. Although I guess in space exploration, it does happen at a little bit slower pace, perhaps. But OK. So how do you think that the MIT alumni community can help you as you confront these challenges and opportunities? Right. I mean, one thing I already mentioned in terms of just on-the-ground grassroots action in things like climate change, et cetera-- I think another thing is that the-- well, two other things. One has to do with the interactions with students on campus now.
I was actually surprised-- and again, this is not unique to MIT, but it is an issue, which is in surveys of our students, only 30% to 40% of students will say that they have robust significant interactions with faculty outside the classroom. And I think that is happening because everyone is so incredibly busy, everyone is really engaged in and immersed in their work. But I think the students are crying for, if you will-- they might not admit it, but they're crying for an adult presence sometimes and interactions, guidance in terms of what their future careers will look like, in terms of how they navigate the MIT of today with respect to how some of their predecessors navigated MIT. And I think we could think much more intentionally about how we have really strong interactions between alumni and the current students. Now, I think there's another issue on the horizon. I think people are probably aware that the Supreme Court is likely to come down with a decision fairly soon.
And not to get totally ahead of it, I anticipate-- and if you read the newspapers, most people anticipate-- that they will be striking down affirmative action as we understand it right now in college admissions. And as we understand it right now is a checkbox on an application. And I think we-- MIT has become such a rich and diverse community, and that that sort of diversity enhances the community life. It enhances the science.
It enhances the engineering on campus. And it actually prepares our students, all of our students, for what life is going to be like out in the real world. And I think the alumni are really going to have to be ambassadors to making sure that our outreach and access is really broad, that the pipeline to MIT stays wide, and that we can select the very best talent no matter where people are from, no matter their demographic, diversity, et cetera. And I think it's going to behoove us as a large community to try to keep this community diverse and vibrant.
And if you look at MIT over the years, it's never, ever been stronger academically, and it's never ever been more diverse. Yes, it's true. And I will say-- [APPLAUSE] I think you will find willing partners in the alumni community on both those efforts. The mentoring piece, I know that we have mentoring programs.
And a lot of alumni have stepped forward and have said they have been disappointed that they have not yet been contacted. So maybe there's more we can do there. And certainly, the assistance with making sure that we continue to attract the world's best students from everywhere. So moving from a kind of global view to a little closer to home, specifically your new home here on campus, this has been an interesting year for MIT, that it simultaneously completed two major efforts-- the publication of the strategic action plan for belonging achievement, and composition as well as the faculty statement on freedom of expression.
Some alumni have questioned how those two efforts can coexist, feel that maybe that they're in conflict with one another. I know you have said that they can and should. Would you like to share your thoughts on that philosophy, a little more on that? Absolutely. I'm glad you're hitting me these softballs, Steve. This is a-- [LAUGHTER] Yeah, a softball question.
Yeah, this is a complicated question. So I really do believe that the notion of belonging, achievement, and composition and the notion of freedom of expression, I think it's a false dichotomy. I really do not see that we cannot have an inclusive, welcoming, diverse environment while still allowing people or encouraging people to say what's on their minds. Now, the devil's in the details there. And probably many of you saw the video that I released in the wake of some of the freedom of expression issues emerging on campus. And one thing I said there I really believe strongly, which is there is a distinction between what you can say and what you should say.
And so part of it is going to be really, as I mentioned coming out of the pandemic in particular, really building community, in a sense, immunizing ourselves against the sort of hate speech that really does provoke people in terms of thinking about that dichotomy. So I think that's part of it. The other thing is to think a little bit more about time, manner, and place of expression. So for example, we want it to be an environment for learning and for work that people feel comfortable, happy being here. I could argue that seeing hateful statements posted along the Infinite is not the right time, manner, or place to achieve that.
And so you can put in-- and we are working on policies around this. You can put in policies that help provide guardrails without violating people's fundamental right to expression. The final thing I'll say about this is that I see a clear distinction between espousing your beliefs on something in general and targeting individuals, particularly vulnerable individuals in the community-- students, et cetera. To me, there's no world in which that is really acceptable and is not really part of how we understand free speech on campus. So-- and I say "finally."
Finally, I'll say on this one more point-- we're working hard to encourage a lot more dialogue on these issues on campus. And I think part of the issue across American life at this point is really polarization. And the more that we can bring people into conversation together, the less problem we're going to have with those flash points.
And the thing about students is, you can call a symposium on anything you want, and it will be filled with faculty and staff and community members, and students aren't always volunteering to attend what they think as of an extra class. And so I think we're going to have to work hard. And I know Suzy Nelson and Melissa Nobles and Ian Waitz and others are thinking a lot about this, which is, how do you bring these conversations to the dorms, to the places where students hang out and live? And how do you craft, if you will, sort of case studies and discussions that are relevant to them? Yeah.
I'm reminded I know that John Dozier has started a symposium serious, Dialogues Across Differences. I was able to attend the first one with you. And I think it's an interesting subject.
It's a challenge for our time, not only because of the polarization-- that larger societal polarization is beginning to seep into the academy as well. Exactly, exactly. So yeah, that's a softball question.
[LAUGHTER] So hopefully moving to one that perhaps-- oh, no, this is also not a softball question. [LAUGHTER] Another area of campus interest. Some in the audience today might know about the establishment of the Graduate Student Union here at MIT, and that there have been ongoing negotiations between the union and the administration, and those predate your arrival, but they're continuing. Knowing that there are sensitive conversations and there are things you may not be able to share with us, can you provide us with a top-level view of what's happening now and how you foresee the relationship with the Graduate Student Union going forward? Yeah, thank you. First of all, I should say, again, this is not unique to MIT. It's really a national movement among graduate students at many, many universities, unionizing.
I think the negotiations have been-- between the graduate students and the sort of administration slash faculty side of things-- have been really cordial, really productive. And despite the narrative that we hear, I think we're quite a long way to an agreement, meaning that there are many, many, many issues that have been resolved. Now, part of the issue now is we're at the sticking point on a couple of things. One has to do with, as you might anticipate, financial arrangements and pay. So students want-- asked for initially a 30% increase. They had a substantial increase last year before I arrived.
And MIT graduate students are already the second highest paid in the country. So there's not a lot of headroom there. We're trying to work with them productively. But I would say the main sticking point at this point is what we would call a distinction between an open and a closed union shop. So a closed shop or a union shop means that all of the students that are technically in the bargaining unit have got to join the union, pay dues to the union. And that's around $700 a year, which out of a graduate student's stipend is significant.
And that money goes to the national union-- so whether it be here Electrical Workers, my old institution, they were trying to organize around service workers. The United Auto Workers Union is in this game as well. But they're interested in bringing new individuals into the union. Obviously, there has to be a revenue associated with it. And we believe that students, even if the union passed-- first of all, a lot of the students didn't vote.
And second of all, even those that did vote, there were plenty of students who did not vote for the union. And so we believe that students should elect to either join or not join the union, pay dues, or not pay dues. The issue, though, obviously is-- and they're in close consultation with the national union-- the national union wants, obviously, a closed shop.
Now, there may be compromise points. So for instance, there's something called an agency shop, which would mandate that student pay fees but-- pay these dues, but it doesn't have to go to the union. It could go, for instance, into a student hardship fund. There are other ways to arrange this, and we're really in a lot of conversation.
But we would like, if we can, to come out of this negotiation preserving the right for students to choose to participate or not in the union. But we'll see how it goes. As I said, I think the channels of communications are open and the students and the negotiators have had many good conversations. And hopefully, we are reaching a point where we can wind this up. Great. Just a very quick follow-up on that.
Do you have any thoughts about the time frame for that? Or do you feel like you can't say at this point? It's hard to say because the students had originally put out some information to their stakeholders saying they wanted to get it done before commencement. But obviously, that didn't happen. And part of that, obviously, is that some students who are involved in the union are graduating. So my guess is that there's going to have to be a little bit of regrouping, hopefully, over the summer. Look, you know, I'd like to have this settled when we start in the fall. And I'm generally an optimist by nature, so I'm hopeful.
Great. Great. Well, we look forward to seeing that resolved in a way that is satisfactory to everyone's interests.
So now, how about a few softball questions? OK, OK. These are the softball questions. We've talked about your role as MIT leader and the inbox from hell and all of that, I think our alumni might like to know a little bit about you as a person.
So I'm going to ask you what we call a lightning round of questions about getting to know Sally as a person. Are you a morning person or a night owl? Night. But I don't have a choice nowadays.
But intrinsically, I'm a night person. OK. Dogs or cats? Dogs. [LAUGHTER] That was definite. Did I wait long enough? [APPLAUSE] OK. How about large dogs or small dogs? Oh, yeah.
This is a hard one. For those of you who've seen me walking around campus, I have a Collie shepherd mix and a Chihuahua mix. So you know-- [LAUGHTER] That's like asking which one of your children do you like better, except they don't really understand the answer. But-- And by the way, you just lost my two cats' vote. There you go.
[LAUGHTER] OK. Do you prefer, for a vacation, the mountains or a beach? Mountains. OK. And do you have a favorite MIT alum in pop culture? Oh, you know, this may be showing my age, but it's Will Hunting, as opposed to-- I haven't even seen some of the more recent movies. So Good Will Hunting, OK. And how about a favorite book or a movie about MIT? Favorite book or a movie about MIT? Isn't Good Will Hunting a movie? [LAUGHS] OK, well-- are you allowed to answer the same question-- Yeah, I think so.
I think so. OK. And last, if you were trapped on a desert island and you could only have one record album with you, what record would you take? Oh, definitely, definitely James Taylor's Greatest Hits. [LAUGHTER] I'm a huge James Taylor fan. There you go.
I'm in the right-- I'm in the right state now. So knowing that you moved up here from North Carolina to Massachusetts, I don't need to ask you to rate your experience about the weather-- True, true. --or the pollen, I might say. But what are some of the things that you've learned about living here in Cambridge and on campus that you're enjoying so far? Well, I have to say that Cambridge and Boston in general have great food.
So I've really enjoyed a much expanded restaurant scene. And even I have to say, all the food on-- like, all the food at meetings and the alumni-- I mean, everything-- haven't had a bad meal since I arrived here. So that's been great. I really like living right along the river. It's just fantastic every day to look out and see people rowing and sailing. In fact, I told my husband that I was-- you have to go take sailing lessons so that we can go sailing.
[LAUGHTER] So-- he's like, I like how I have to-- anyway. So I'm hoping that will happen. And it's a great place to just walk around. I've been really enjoying walking the dogs all over Cambridge and Boston. And so it's been fun all around. And the weather recently has been wonderful.
Great, great. Although unfortunately, not today. Not today but in general. So we're out of time, but I would like to get to one final question. Of course, it may not be fast, but we'll do our best. What are the early messages that you would like to share with our alumni about the direction of MIT under your leadership? Yeah.
I mean, I think that-- a couple of things. First of all, MIT has always been this beacon for the best talent in the world. And the most important thing I can do is to sustain that and to continue to build on that.
And so I think we have to-- we have to keep, as I said, our pipeline of talent abroad but also just get the MIT message out to the world and continue to bring the best and brightest at all levels, from undergrads to graduate students to faculty to staff, et cetera. The other thing is, what attracted me to MIT in the first place-- I mean, I've said in other settings I was perfectly happy where I was. It wasn't that I woke up every morning and said, I've got to go be a president somewhere. But when MIT called, I couldn't say no, because I think the most important thing is that MIT is maybe the place, or at least one of the very few places, that can address in an effective way the many challenges facing us in society. And I think that to me, the most important thing is to continue the impact of MIT on the broader world and honestly, as an administrator, to do everything I can to grease the skids to enable MIT to achieve those heights. Wonderful.
[APPLAUSE] Thank you, President Kornbluth, very much for joining us this morning for Tech Day. Before we conclude Tech Day, I'd like to bring it back to our earlier discussion on-- the earlier discussion on space. And we have a unique presentation, a gift for you. In a moment, we will bring to the stage Dr. Maya Nasr.
But first, a little bit about Maya. Maya is a triple-degreed MIT AeroAstro alum, having earned her PhD just this week. Congratulations to Dr. Maya-- Dr. Nasr. [APPLAUSE] She is also the project lead and co-founder of HUMANS, which is an acronym that stands for Humanity United with MIT Art and Nanotechnology in Space. Everybody got that? HUMANS.
[LAUGHTER] Somebody worked hard on that one. This MIT project combines art and nanotechnology for increasing global representation in space and has done so by creating a 6-inch silicon wafer using MIT nanotechnology that contains a recording of messages in 64 languages from people from more than 80 countries around the world. This nanowafer just traveled to the International Space Station, where astronauts will display the humans wafer and the audio submissions in a live stream, allowing contributors to hear their own voices, and for some, their native languages in space for the very first time.
President Kornbluth, Maya would like to present to you an exact replica of the HUMANS nanowafer. Come on up, Maya. [APPLAUSE] [INAUDIBLE] Thank you. Thank you so much.
Of course. Oh, fantastic. This is also something I haven't had in my life before. [LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] Thank you so much.
Thank you for [INAUDIBLE]. Fantastic. Wow, that's amazing.
Thank you. Do you want to say-- do you want to say thank you? Oh, yeah. Well, I'll just thank everyone here. Thank you, Steve.
Thanks, Whitney, for-- and thanks to the hundreds of volunteers that have made this all possible. And thanks for joining us for my very first Tech Day. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your time on campus. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, Sally. Thank you.
Wow. We're on our way to lunch. So very briefly-- I don't want to keep-- between you and lunch. I just want to thank-- take a moment to thank Our presenters today-- President Sally Kornbluth, Vice President Maria Zuber, Alumni Association CEO Whitney Espich, Professors Cahoy, Wood, Perron, and Kara, and our Better World Service Award winners, Vanessa, Segun, and Don, and Maya Nasr and the HUMANS team, and of course, all of the Alumni Association staff.
Thank you for being here with us today. And if you are attending the Tech Reunions Picnic, it's right outside. So enjoy the rest of your weekend. Have a great afternoon. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
2023-07-25 14:15