was $4,400. yet she managed to send me and my brother and my sister to private catholic schools from kindergarten all the way through to high school. i didn't fully appreciate it then, but it was a gift of immeasurable value. that was followed by a scholarship to the polytechnic institute of new york, now nyu poly, and on to a master's degree in mechanical engineering at columbia university. my mother saw education as a way up and out of the projects. she made whatever sacrifices were necessary to see to it that we had an opportunity to a good education, and then she insisted that we take advantage of that opportunity. all the graduates here today have that same opportunity. don't even -- don't take it for granted. don't take it for granted. all of you will have immense

challenges. you will immerse yourself in a world full of opportunities. i have given some thought about what my advice to you would be today, especially since i have you and you must listen to me, and i boil it down to five things. so here they go. first, i would encourage all of you to follow the example of xavier and embrace change and learning willingly and with a sense of excitement and wonder. the university is approaching its centennial anniversary. think about that. almost 100 years. it has survived and excelled and reinvented itself for nearly 100 years because it has evolved and it has changed. the only thing that i can predict with any certainty is that change will be a constant in your lives, as well. back in 1980, when i sat in the seats that you're sitting in today, there were no cell phones. imagine this. there were no cell phones. the internet, let alone the ipad, was not even the stuff of

dreams. the fax machine was considered close to a miracle. chinese capitalism and the fall of the soviet union were unimaginable. genetics was in its infancy. the word "terrorism," which is what we hear about all day, all the time, was not a part of our vocabulary. even as recently as a few years ago the thought of a global economic downturn was beyond comprehension. i can't pretend to know how your world will change, but i do know that it will and at a pace that will continue to increase exponentially. you can't stop it. in many ways, you guys are the cause of this change so, i say learn to love it, make it your ally, stay relevant by devoting yourself to a lifetime of learning. you are being given a wonderful academic foundation, an invitation to begin a journey of learning, exploration, and growth. so please treasure it. second, have fun.

enjoy life. choose a career that gives you fulfillment and pleasure. surround yourselves with people who make you laugh. don't fall into this trap of letting someone else define your success or your happiness. some of your parents here won't like what i'm about to say. when they left school, which is about the same time that i left school, their immediate future was pretty well prescribed. the vast majority of college graduates got a job, settled down, bought a house, had a family, and all that time wuz done by the time they were 30 years old. that has changed dramatically. now the decade after college is spent trying a few different jobs, getting a graduate degree, traveling, living and then settling down. i for one think this is a very good government. that's because people are more likely to be successful if they have a passion for what they do. finding it takes some time. make yourself a promise today. if down the road you find that

your career is not fun, revert to my earlier piece of advice -- change. third, very importantly, be true to yourself and to your values. your family, xavier, your church, your synagogue, your mosque, your mountaintop have given you a set of core values, a moral compass. hang on to it. a predecessor of mine a xerox used to say he tried to live his life as though any piece of it might end up on his obituary. and if that happened, would he be proud? and that's not a bad test, i don't think. i have an even bert one, and it hangs on the wall in my office, and it goes like this -- don't go do anything that won't make your mom proud. done do anything that won't make your mom proud. [ applause ] fourth, do good in the world. our planet is in trouble.

we need your help. when your life's journey ends, i promise that you won't -- that you won't care very much about how much money you've made or the status that you've achieved if you haven't made the world a better place. money and status, i can tell you this for sure, because i have both, don't bring happiness. they do not bring happiness. [ applause ] doing good -- doing good is not an add-on. it's not what you do after the end of your life. it's not what you've done after you've done living. but it's central to leading a rewarding life. as my mother used to tell me, and my mother told me lots and lots of things -- she died a long time ago -- as my mother used to tell me and anyone who would listen, we all have an obligation to put back more than we take away. she used to say to me all the

time, max, you have to leave behind more than you take away. leave more than you take away. it's not a bad formula for true success. at the risk of getting a little preachy, i'd like to ask you to reflect for just a few minutes on how privileged you are compared to the world's population at large. and think about this. one-fifth of the world's people go to bed hungry every night, and they wake up every morning without hope. one-fifth of the world's population. 4 billion people. that's two-thirds of the world population, lives on less than $2 a day. more than 1 billion people in the world can't read or write. more than 40% of the world goes without basic sanitation. more than a billion people drink water that is unsafe. and that leads to the death of over 2 million people, 2 million children a year. a lot of this is happening right down the street.

you don't have to go to rwanda or angola. you can look right down the street in louisiana and see this, right down the street in new york city and see this. our brothers and our sisters are in desperate need of a helping hand. who will help them ? if not us, who? if not now, when? as scripture tells us, to those to whom much is given much is expected. you have to live your life so at the end of your journey you will know that your time here was well spent, that you left behind more than you take away. fifth, do xavier proud. you have a rich tradition to uphold. st. catharine drexel created a very special place here in louisiana. the mission of this university has remained constant for the better part of the century. i love this mission -- to contribute to the promotion of a more just and humane society by preparing students to assume roles of leadership and service in a global society.

let me repeat that so that you can think about it and let it sink in a little bit. xavier's mission is to contribute to the promotion of a more just and humane society by preparing its students to assume roles of leadership and service in a global society. what a tradition to follow. what an opportunity that you have been given. what a responsibility you have not just to contribute but to lead, not just to succeed but to serve. you are entering a world full of challenge. you will search for jobs in an economy that is still struggling to emerge from the harshest downturn since the great depression. you will enter a workforce in which careers and entire industries disappear or move around the world with breathtaking speed. you will raise a family in which words like terrorism and climate change are a part of your everyday vocabulary. you will live on a planet that is overcrowded and struggling to find ways to sustain itself.

as our world grows flatter and smaller, you will live and work with people who neither look like you nor share the same values as you do. at the same time, you will have an extraordinary opportunity to live out the aspirations that xavier intends for you. you will -- you are well on your way to becoming part of what w.e.b. deboyce called the talented tenth. i've heard about this my entire life, the talented ten. the men and women he believed would emerge as the leaders of the black people. imagine if he were here today beholding the sight i am privileged to see from this podium. he would be proud and pleased beyond all belief. deboyce would be proud, too, of the great strides that black america has made in the past century. some of us have gained great political power and amassed great economic wealth.

we have suck seeded in every facet of american life -- sports and the arts, government, religion, business, academia, the military. we even have a black president. yet the work of the talented tenth is far from done. as we sit here, there are more black men in prison than there are in college. more than 80% of black and hispanic children cannot read or do math at grade level. you can add to the list of disparities that lead to an unmistakable conclusion. as my friend and mentor vernon jordan likes to say, you cannot concentrate on the best of what we have done. you must focus on the worst of what we need to do. that is your charge, to define your success at least in some measure by what we do for our brothers and our sisters. you cannot enter the ranks of the elite and close the ranks behind you. you cannot enter the ranks of the elite and close the ranks

behind you. you are part of a chain of those men and women who have gone before us, those who broke the shackles of slavery, fought for freedom and for justice. they took to the streets and demanded voting rights and civil rights, giants like martin luther king and folks like your teachers, your parents, who now pass the baton of justice off to you to take care of. it is at once a sobering and an exhilarating responsibility. to all of the graduates, allow yourselves just a moment to bask in the glory of what you've accomplished but not for too long. and pledge to yourself that you will cherish what you have learned here and use it as a foundation for good. my congratulations to all of you. you've worked long and hard to arrive at this place. and my congratulations also to all the parents in the room, to the grandparents, to the spouses, to the family members, the faculty, the custodians, the str administrative staff, the street

sweepers, anyone who helped you along way. all of you should feel very, very proud, and i wish you all the very best. may you live up to the mantel that you inherited and make all of your dreams come true. thank you. speaking at his alma mater's commencement last month, ford motor company ceo alan mulally tells the story of seeing wilt chamberlain play his first varsity basketball game, pursuing his passion inspired by president kennedy's moon speech and ended up being ceo of boeing, then colorado of ford. his comments are about 15 minutes. [ applause ]

>> how do you like my new party hat? [ cheers ] rock chop jayhawk indeed. chancellor, faculty, honored guests, proud family member, and graduates of the class of 2012, thank you for giving me the great honor of being part of this very special moment in your lives. it is a privilege for me to be here today and also to stand alongside the other honorary degree recipients. each recipient has dedicated themselves to lifelong service

and contribution to society. i don't speak for them, but i am so honored to be among them. before we do anything else, i have one last assignment for our granl watts. nobody makes it through college without a lot of support. certainly financially. but also, there are people who encouraged you, who gave you emotional support, who believed in you, and who helped you believe in yourself. class of 2012, please join me in a round of applause to thank your family and especially your mothers on this special day, friends, faculty, let's do it. [ applause ]

>> that was simply great. you all pass. we all can clearly see why you are graduating today. traditionally, commencement speakers share lessons gained from their own lives with the graduating class before they head out into the world. i would like to honor that tradition today by sharing a few thoughts with you. maybe the best way for me to begin is to tell you a little bit about who i am. the most important thing you need to know about me is that i am a rock chock jayhawk. i not only received my bachelor's and master's of science degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering in kansas but i grew up right here in lawrence, kansas. [ cheers ] i followed all the jayhawk sports teams, and i went to all the games.

i was there when wilt chamberlain played his first varsity basketball game. i will never forget that day. the university of kansas was playing northwestern university. just before the game, i was sitting at the top of bleachers by the locker room entrance, and wilt walked out, stopped, and looked me straight in the eye. i looked down to make sure he wasn't standing on something. and he wasn't. i said, hi. and wilt said, hi. after that chat, wilt went out and scored 52 points, setting a school scoring record in his very first game. i like to think that wilter's wonderful performance that day was because of the pep talk i gave him. [ applause ] i became a jayhawk fan because

of the athletics. but i became a jayhawk student because of the academics. the university of kansas is a world-class university. applause[applause ] when people ask me what they should do to be successful in life, i tell them the first thing to do is to get a degree from the university of kansas. my congratulations to all of you. you are minutes away from holding that diploma in your hand. this is truly no ordinary moment. when you leave here today, you will have the advantage of having a great education. the question is what will you do next? in the next few weeks, all across america, commencement speakers will be urging graduates like yourselves to follow your passion. in other words, discover what motivates and excites you in life and pursue it with passion. i am a strong believer in

following your passion. but i'm also an engineer, and the university of kansas has trained many e well. we engineers love continuous improvement. so i'm going to give you my version of this advice. call it follow your passion 2.0. follow your passion 2.0 is about pursuing the things in life that are meaningful and contributing to something bigger than ourselves. follow your passion 2.0 means working together with others. and follow your passion 2.0 also encourages us to be open to all life's experiences, the setbacks as well as the successes. because in my experience, the greatest challenges i face turned out to be the greatest opportunities. inspiration can and will come from anywhere if we are open. for example, in my junior year of high school, president kennedy gave his we are going to the moon speech. president kennedy said by doing

so we would learn more about ourselves, each other, and life on earth. quite a compelling vision. and i really wanted to be part of it. i changed from humanities to study physics, chemistry, and calculus in my senior year on my way to becoming an astronaut. i chose the university of kansas to study engineering, and i enlisted in the united states air force. after a year, i started testing for flight school to become a pilot. it was then i learned that i was slightly color blind, which at the time meant that i could not be an astronaut. i was devastated then, but i know now that life had just given me a gift or what i would like to call a gem. a gem is a learning that enables us to re-evaluate what we are doing of course, unless we do with something with it, a gem is just a rough stone. it's up to us to shape and polish it. only then will a gem have real

value. we may have to do things differently or move in an entirely new direction. but for those of us who continue to follow our passions, a

my professor and thesis adviser was doing research work for the boeing company. he asked me to help him in his work and he introduced knme to some of the neat people at bowing. i got a job as an airplane design engineer and i loved it. in fact i did so well that they moved me into management. they gave me one employee to manage. and my first employee promptly quit. life had given me another gem.

one of the greatest ghems of my life. remember a key part to follow your passion 2.0 is being open. so i talked to my former employee at length and he shared what he really th the new 787 dream liner. by 2006, i was serving as president and ceo of bowing commercial airplanes. we overcame global economic conditions and global competition. we were doing great. life was really good. but that's when i got a call from bill ford. yes, bill ford of the ford motor company. 107 years of technology and innovation to safe and efficient and affordable transportation. bill asked me to leave boeing where i had spent my entire career to join a company halves struggling and an industry that faced incredible difficulties. it was another gem. of course we have to recognize a gem when we see one. we have to be open to life's experiences and expect the unexpected. from my perspective, the call from bill ford came from out of the blue. it was one of the seemingly random things that happen in life. but because i was open to the possibilities, i i decided the

right way to follow my passion was to join bill and the ford team. boy, there were plenty of gems waiting for me at ford. but by working togethers as one global team, we have been able to fully leverage our resources around the world. today we've turned things around, we are creating an exciting, viable and profitably growing company for the good of all stake holder. we're building great products, creating a strong business, and we are contribute to go a better world. the last part is so important. for companies and for individuals. to be truly successful, fwheed to be part of something bigger than ourselves. i've discovered that my definition of follow your passion 2.0 is bringing large numbers of skilled and motivated people together to work on something bigger than myself. to work together for the greater good because to serve is to really live.

i've had the honor of working for two great american and global icons. both companies are contributing solutions to the three critical issues of our times. economic development, energy independence and security, and environmental sustainability. boeing and nord have given me opportunities to serve and bring people together. and along the way, i have learned that bringing people together to work together for the greater good has another side benefit. that i personally find very, very compelling. when we spend time together, we can realize that we have more in common than we are different. and when we realize that we are basically the same, we also have the opportunity to realize that we can live and work together in peace. and for me, that is a most compelling vision. now it's time for you to begin your journey, to begin to define what follow your passion 2.0 means to you. the world you're entering is filled with challenges.

and opportunities. it's up to you to turn them into gems. pursue the things that matter to you with great passion. be open and be flexible. and willing to learn even if the lesson is a hard one. bring people together and work together for something bigger than yourself. life is unpredictable, but the journey is phenomenal. embrace it and enjoy it. so my goal today was to make my remarks just as effective as my pep talk i gave wilt chamberlain all those years ago. i hope i've succeeded. i'm confident you'll be successful not because of what i've said today, but because of who you are and the education you have received from the university of kansas. thank you for listening. enjoy your special day so much. and enjoy the journey and each other. thank you. [ applause ]

congressman james clyburn of south care karks tell us about your experiences speaking at college commencements. >> i really enjoy doing commencements. first of all, because i pig out how to do a great commencement speech. i did a commencement address a few years ago and a couple days later, i ran into two young ladies who told me they were in attendance. and when i asked them what i spoke about, mets one neither om could remember but they remember it being a good speech because it was short. so i try to give 10, 12 minute commencement addresses and i try to lay out three themes. first one of course being to remind young people that the first sign of a good education as taught to me by my father,

good manners. so i asked them to join with me in thanking their parents, their guardians and the faculty and administration for helping to get them to this point. but secondly, i try to tell the young people that we ought to be very, very careful about the people we interact with and how we enter act with them becauint all of us are but the sum total of our experiences. we can be no more or less than what those experiences allow us to be and we should respect the fact that no two people will have the same set of experiences and we should learn to honor those differences. but finally, i try to tell all students to never give up on themselves. i ran three times before i got elected to office. and at that time, i was asked by a friend what was i going to do

next because three strikes and you're out. i said to that friend of mine that three strikes and you're out is a baseball rule and life should not be led by baseball rules. e and i try to share those kinds of experiences with yuoung peope and i close every commencement address with three words. i may repeat them, but they are three words. never give up. never never, never give up. and i think it's important for young people to know that no matter how many times you fail, the next time just may be the time. >> congressman james clyburn is the assirizonssistassistant lea. thank you so much. now a speech by john lechleiter, chairman and ceo of

eli lilly. he spoke at the university of indianapolis commencement in early may. he talks about you how the world and the job market he faced in the '70s compares to the job market today's graduates face. this is about 15 minutes. >> it's my privilege to present dr. lichleiter to give the commencement address. >> good afternoon. president p about itts,