TROY >> Lessons in resiliency, both personally and professionally, was the theme at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s commencement colloquy Friday.
Rensselaer President Shirley Jackson welcomed commencement speaker Admiral Michelle Howard and three other distinguished guests at the annual event, titled “Resilient Leadership for a Resilient World.”
Admiral Howard is the 38th vice chief of the United States Naval Operations and was joined by filmmaker and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr, cybersecurity policy expert Craig Mundie and CEO and co-founder of the Carlyle Group David Rubenstein.
Howard spoke of her first lesson in perseverance when she decided at a young age to pursue a career in the Navy but learned women could not join.
“We tend to think about resilience as things … but really it’s the people,” she said.
In 1999, Howard took command of the USS Rushmore, and became the first-African-American woman to command a ship in the US Navy. On July 1, 2014, she became the first female promoted to a four-star rank in the Department of Defense.
Rubenstein described a series of failures in his life as important learning experiences.
“If you don’t fail at things, you don’t experiment, I think you’re not likely to get very much out of life,” said Rubenstein. He said he tried working as a lawyer twice and found he wasn’t very good at it, before going on to trying other things.
“If you don’t find something you love you’ll never be great at it,” he said.
The group discussed cyber security, privacy and other domestic and global challenges faced in this digital age.
“This domain has everybody. It has individuals, it has citizens, it has criminals, it has terrorists it has innovation … and its dense. But it has vulnerabilities whether you’re in the commercial world or the military world. And it’s integrated into how people work and play and operate,” said Howard. “And we as a Navy have to embrace this domain.”
Gates described his work with inner-city students, trying to get young people more interested in biology and history.
“The differences that separate us seem so obvious and apparent … and I think it’s been because we’ve been taught history so poorly,” he said.
The colloquy is part of the university’s 209th commencement. Saturday, 1,672 students will receive a total of 1,838 degrees from Rensselaer, the United States’ oldest technological research university.
Molly Eadie can also be reached at 270-1288.
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