Good evening. The organizers have seen fit to place me on the schedule between you and dinner. So I will be mercifully brief.
As Terry mentioned, we had the awesome task of reviewing 150 promotion files last year. The word "awesome" can mean many things. Here it means humbling. It was humbling to review the impressive files of the full professor candidates. Our university is fortunate to have such tremendously accomplished faculty.
Terry, the Provost, and I upheld the highest standards in full professor promotion cases. Each and every person being honored here tonight has made important contributions to scholarship and learning, and is an invaluable member of our university community.
A final remark before we eat our rubber chickens. It is often said that we are entering or have entered the age of the knowledge economy -- that a person's contributions will be from their knowledge, intelligence, and creativity. But when an attorney prepares a case it is for her client. When a Google engineer develops a new algorithm, it is for Google -- for money. Fewer than one in a thousand individuals in our society have the privilege, the freedom, to pursue their own ideas and creations. The vast majority of such people are at research universities. A smaller number are at think tanks or national labs, but most are professors like yourselves. It is you who will make the future better than the past; who will bring new wonders into existence. Your work may be largely invisible to our fellow citizens, but the future owes its greatness to you. My sincere congratulations.
