Frank Rhodes, President Emeritus, Cornell University
Guest speaker, Inauguration and Campus Dedication, Olin College
May 3, 2003

Mr. Chairman, thank you for that gracious and generous introduction. You did not equally generously include my title, President Emeritus of Cornell, and I am grateful for that because it was explained to me the other day that President Emeritus involves the use of two classical roots in the word emeritus. It comes from the word E, meaning out, and meritus, you deserve to be.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Board of Trustees, honored delegates from other institutions, distinguished members of the faculty, talented students, dedicated members of the staff, welcome neighbors and friends from the community, ladies and gentlemen. I am honored to take part in this historic celebration because this is a notable day, not only in the life of Olin College, and not only in the life of New England, but throughout the whole commonwealth of higher education. It is a rare thing for new institutions to come into existence. It is a rather more frequent thing these days for institutions to go out of existence. But Olin comes into existence full or promise, full of hope, full of energy, and this is a day that we should note, and a day that we should celebrate. It is said that an academic may be defined as somebody who sees things working in practice and then takes two years to figure out whether they will in theory. But Olin College has turned that aphorism on its head. It is planned in theory; it is already working in practice. And I join with you in celebrating the remarkable achievements of these last few years.

There is behind the whole concept of Olin a boldness that takes the breath away, and that is one of the most promising and one of the most exciting aspects of this new creation. It is all together fitting I think that the college should be named for Franklin W. Olin, himself a man of vision, and a man of boldness. As you just heard from our chairman, he grew up under circumstances that today would have been classified as underprivileged. He worked with his father in lumber camps in Vermont and northern New York. In fact, in the years between age 13 and 21 before he enrolled in Cornell, he had just one semester of formal schooling. He entered Cornell as an undergraduate and graduated in 1886. He had helped his father not only with the business of lumbering but also with the support for lumbering and building watermills, dams and lumber mills. And so he was familiar not just with the practice of logging but with the engineering principles that were involved in the production of lumber. And at Cornell he was an extraordinary student. He supported himself by school teaching, by repairing farm machinery that was brought to him, and -- long before the days of NCAA regulations -- by playing professional baseball in the summer. He was a consummate athlete, but he was also an entrepreneur because he invented a bat of his own, convex on one side for the long hit, concave on the other to deal with the drop curve -- and showed the effectiveness of that by sending a drive on lower Alumni Field at Cornell 180 yards. It would have gone even further had not the wall of the University Chapel intervened. I mention that because Franklin W. Olin was no mere successful engineer. He was a man of strength and conviction and versatility and vision and practicality, and entrepreneurship. And when he graduated in 1886, he put his civil engineering degree to good use by constructing plants for the manufacturer of black blasting powder for his cousin. And a few years later he built his own plant in East Alton, Illinois to manufacture that blasting powder. The rest is well known. He turned that small plant into the focus, the nucleus of a growing range of industries, Olin Industries, in which he achieved remarkable success.

But Franklin Olin was not just a gifted engineer, not just a bold entrepreneur, not just a serious student, which he certainly was, not just a great athlete, which he also was; he was also a benefactor of conviction. He gave his time and he gave his wealth to the support of causes that he believed to be significant. For example, he served for 30 yeas as a member of the Board of Trustless of Cornell University, devoting endless care and attention to the well being of the institution. He paid the university the ultimate compliment of sending all three of his sons there as undergraduates, Franklin Olin Jr., graduating in 1912, John Olin, graduating in 1913, and Spencer Olin, graduating in 1921.

Franklin Olin died in that year, 1921. The other two sons followed their father’s example and each in turn became a long serving member of the Board of Trustless and received the highest honor that Cornell can provide, appointment as presidential counselor. I mentioned that because that tradition of engaged philanthropy, not simply handing over money but engaged philanthropy with the wisdom and the insight of personal experience added to the financial investment was something that characterized the whole Olin family.

When Frank Olin founded the Olin Foundation, the first building that was constructed was the Franklin W. Olin, Jr, Hall of Chemical Engineering. And that revolutionary building, which served as the nucleus for a whole campus of engineering buildings at Cornell, was one that was created with the insight and the design influence of Franklin Olin himself. Engineer, scholar, athlete, entrepreneur, public benefactor. And those same characteristics have marked the life and the work of the Olin Foundation, not least under Larry Milas’ splendid leadership during these last years, seventy buildings spread across 58 campuses across the nation. What greater investment in the future of our society could be conceived with that? But this plan, the plan to phoenix-like convert oneself into the living flames and embodiment of a new institution is the boldest of all, and I would like to think that Franklin Olin looks down with benign delight on the ultimate consummation of his foundation. Most foundations continue doggedly in existence supporting the interests of their trustees, serving the welfare of their officers, often in activities that would have had little interest to their founders. This is an example of courage, of insight, of creativity and of boldness in devoting the wealth of a foundation to serve this new and noble enterprise. Larry and other members of the Board of Trustees of the foundation, I want to salute you and congratulate you and thank you on behalf of all of us for that boldness and generosity.

The results are the results we see before us today. The results of recent years of wonderful investment in discovery, in design, in test and now today in implementation, all that we celebrate and applaud. But the second thing we celebrate is not only the wonderful generosity of the foundation, not only the great addition to the wealth of higher education that the opening of this campus represents, but we also celebrate the inauguration of Richard Miller as the founding president. Rick Miller brings to the task of president a remarkable range of characteristics. In the 19th century when Yale was searching for a new president, assumed in those days to inevitably to be a man, the trustees met together to decide the qualifications that would be needed to fill that particular role. The new president had to be a public figure of considerable stature, a great speaker, and a powerful writer, somebody who was a man of iron stamina and fundamental good health, married to a paragon of virtue. In fact, his wife it was said had to be a mixture of Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale and the best-dressed woman of the year. He had to be a scholar but a man who has not lost the common touch. He had to be a Yale man who had the answers to the world’s problems at his fingertips and yet had a certain spiritual quality about him, which could not be misunderstood. He had to be a strong administrator but able to delegate. And then we’re told, by contemporary observer, a dark thought crossed our minds; we had to ask ourselves, is God a Yale man?

I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know that Rick Miller is not. And we are fortunate because he has a far more notable pedigree for this particular position; California Davis, MIT and Caltech, gold plated all the way. It doesn’t come any better than that. The great thing that Rick Miller brings to this challenging position is the broad view, the comprehensive understanding, the big picture, the essential qualities and nature of what engineering education is about, not simply preparation for a job but preparation for life itself and the professional service to under gird it and serve it well. What an exciting opportunity for him and for you as you inaugurate him today. Rick Miller articulates the dreams of Franklin Olin and the Olin Foundation. He embodies the best hopes that we have of all that this notable institution will achieve. How fortunate we are today to welcome him and inaugurate him as the founding president. But this is a reciprocal undertaking as he devotes his time and his energy and his skill and his life to Olin College, we, you, all of us have the reciprocal obligation to devote our loyalty and support and energy to the partnership we have with him. The role of president is a lonely and a demanding job. It is at times controversial, how could it be otherwise? And Rick Miller will need your support, not just on a sunny morning here in Needham on inauguration day, but also when times are tough and controversies are bitter. I hope he can rely on it with the same energy and commitment that he shows in devoting himself to you. How fortunate we are to celebrate his inauguration today!

But even as we celebrate, we should be under no illusions that Olin College faces an easy future in the world of higher education. These are tough times for all universities. Tough for public universities, even tougher perhaps for private universities. And especially tough for newly founded institutions without a great alumni base, especially tough for institutions of very high aspirations who claim to present a new way of doing things by breaking existing models. It’s not easy to move against the current, it’s not easy to award five-year contracts instead of tenure, to do away with departments and have instead interest groups in common to put students centered learning and continuous innovation at the center of the values that we stand for. None of that is easy, and the years ahead will be challenging. The creativity that we’ve seen in this founding stage now needs to be doubled in intensity as we come to the implementation stage and how fortunate you are to have leaders in the trustees and President Miller, in the faculty, and in the pioneering students as partners who will bring that about. So this is a great day, a day to celebrate, a day to congratulate, a day when I’m especially proud to represent the good wishes and the contributions of all the delegates here from other institutions and congratulate you on bringing a dream now to fruition, and in hoping especially that as you move from this phase of bold dream into successful reality, from the stage of creation to implementation, from this creative vision into blazing reality, from a paper curriculum to living graduates, you will have good success, continuing strength and the support and excitement and enthusiasm of all of us who wish you well. Members of the Olin College Community, congratulations, good success. Godspeed.