Comments for Alumni Association Half Century Club Luncheon
Carol Carmichael, First Lady of Caltech
May 18, 2007

Thank you, Angie and Andy, for inviting me to make a few remarks to you today. We enjoyed seeing many of you last night at the reception.

A year ago, when the search committee approached Jean-Lou about the Presidency of Caltech, I knew that it would be effectively a two-person job, so I quickly checked out the announcement for the position. The announcement said something to the effect that the ideal candidate should be committed to maintaining the small size of the Institute. I found this intriguing, so I'd like to relate my observations about Caltech, to-date, with respect to this interesting commitment to remaining "small."

As an outsider, one never thinks of Caltech as a small place. On the contrary, the accomplishments of its students and alumni, faculty and research staff, are grand and prestigious. They do big things like land on Mars, or found companies like Compaq and Intel. The disproportionate impact of Caltech, in the mind of many people I have met, gives the impression of a much larger institution. I actually get a kick out of their reaction when I tell them we only have 900 undergraduate students. The usual reaction is stunned silence.

So what is it about being "small" that is special?

Last Fall, after a few weeks on the job, it occurred to me that my life had come full circle. I grew up in a small town outside of Madison, Wisconsin, where my family had lived for a few generations, where everyone knew everyone else’s business. My uncle was the postman and my father's company was next to my elementary school, all within walking distance from home. Sounds pretty nice, doesn't it? Middle America, Norman Rockwell. But it was also a place where if I was running about, getting into trouble, someone would get on the phone and let my mom know. I grew up in a fishbowl. So when I was 18, I picked the biggest college I could find (the University of Wisconsin—45,000 students) and bathed myself in anonymity, known primarily by my social security number. And from there I went to Atlanta, an even bigger city.

So last Fall, over twenty-five years after leaving my small Wisconsin town, I found myself in another small town, in a house where generations of my "predecessors" have lived, and in a place where everybody knows who I am. And I’m certain that if I were to run about making trouble, someone would get on the phone and let my husband know! So Caltech’s small size has a particular meaning for me. And like most people who realize how great they had it when they were children, I feel pretty lucky to be back in a small town—Caltech. Caltech's small size gives us a chance to have meaningful, high quality interactions with the students, the faculty and our wonderful staff.

So what else about being "small" is special?

As we spent time with students this year, we learned that they're not uniformly, or uni-dimensionally, nerdy. I remind people all the time that the SAT score used for entrance to Caltech reflects both qualitative and quantitative abilities, and our students score high on both dimensions. And we can see it when we interact with the students in formal and informal settings.

For example, over the past 9 months:

• We've cooked, dined and cleaned dishes with students in Tom Mannion's cooking class—the class with the longest waiting list of any elective course.
• We've listened to amazingly talented musicians in the Dabney Lounge—I believe nearly a third of our students play musical instruments.
• We attended a marathon-long Shakespeare play (A Winter's Tale) in the Ramo Auditorium—a production that brought together a cast of students, faculty and staff.
• And we've attended numerous athletic events. Few people know that Caltech, among research universities, has the most students, proportionally, participating in organized athletics. Of course, our student-athletes aren't necessarily as good in sports as they are in math, but I'm certain we have the best math scores, on average, among all NCAA teams. [As a side note, our women's basketball team is heading to Boston to take on MIT. If you'd like to support them, let me know!]

I had a chance to talk to one of the reporters, a physics major, for the student newspaper about her experience at Caltech. She told me about the end of her first year, a particularly rough start, when she was kicking herself for not going to Stanford. It would have been much easier, she said. But then, over the summer, she began to think about the things she loved about Caltech. Of course, she had the chance to learn from some of the best minds in physics. But she also had the chance to become the editor of a newspaper, an experience she would not likely have had at a bigger institution, where there are many talented students majoring in journalism. She realized that at Stanford she would not have made the reporting staff of the school paper. Caltech's small size makes these opportunities possible.

And these opportunities have educational value.

Our students learn important life skills from their extracurricular activities. Last winter, Jean-Lou and I were the honorary coaches for the women's basketball team. We heard Sandra Marbut, the real coach, tell her players that what they learn from the team won't get them a job (their studies at Caltech will do that). But what they learn about team collaboration and competition will get them promoted some day. And Roy Dow, the men's coach, says our players aren't "lovable losers," they're determined competitors [who just don't score as many points as their opponents].

Our students also develop social skills. At the All Sports Awards Presentation in Dabney Hall a couple of weeks ago, one of the seniors on the men's basketball team said that playing college basketball was a dream come true. He spoke with affection about his teammates, and reflected on how much they improved from their freshman year. We also heard from a shy young woman, a first year student we met at Frosh Camp, who played on the basketball team. Her teammates joked that when they first met her, she smiled or spoke about once a week. At the Awards Presentation, she joked and beamed as she was nominated for best female frosh athlete of the year. Her speech: two words. "Thank You."

Our students have, I believe, more confidence to test themselves in other domains, in the humanities and social sciences, and in the wide range of extracurricular activities Caltech has to offer. The reporters on the student newspaper document the injustices of parking fees and Caltech Dining Services, but they also explore challenging issues in the broader community, sometimes challenging the sensibilities of the faculty in their editorial choices. Our basketball players go to practice, play their games, take their beatings, and show up for practice again and again. They do it because they like to compete, and because they have the determination to improve their skills with every game.

In addition to "smallness" as an intriguing aspect of Caltech, I'd like to explore the concept of "narrowness." Our students share a common passion for science, and they're confident in their abilities in math, science and engineering —some times more than others during the core curriculum. I'm often asked how my experience at Caltech compares to Georgia Tech. The biggest difference is what I call the bandwidth of ability. The best students at Georgia Tech are just as good as the best students at Caltech. But the variation in ability at Caltech is much, much smaller—or, put another way, the bandwidth of our students' academic ability is much narrower.

And that got me thinking about the perception of "narrowness", not in the bandwidth of ability, but in the educational experience of students at institutes of technology like Caltech; the belief that students who come to a place like Caltech only learn math, science, and engineering and don’t have a "whole" education. I've spent my entire career in an institute of technology, and I think, to some extent, the potential danger of a narrow education does exist. But I question that assumption at Caltech.

I think that Caltech's small size and narrow bandwidth lowers the barrier to entry into sports, journalism, acting, music, and cooking. Our students bring to these activities the same qualities they bring to their core classes: intelligence, determination and commitment. Sure, I think there is always room for enhancing students' education in the humanities and social sciences (incidentally, I wrote a doctoral dissertation on this topic); but I believe that Caltech students play an active role in broadening their educational experience using an informal curriculum—sports teams, clubs, cooking classes, etc.—and our small size makes that possible. I'd also like to add that your support and contributions also make it possible.

It's been an amazing year, and these are my observations so far. I look forward to hearing more about your experiences at Caltech over the next two days. Thank you.

 

 

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