your education on this campus also includes lessons of the heart and spirit, about the value of friendship, teamwork, service to others and leadership. years from now it won't matter how many people friended you on facebook or how many people were following you on twitter. what will sustain you are the special moments that you spent here in this snug harbor of northwest missouri state, among good friends, inspiring teachers, coaches and mentors with high expectations. those special moments may have come at times of personal victory on the football field or at cheerleading competitions or those moments may have come at times with minor setbacks. your friends and teammates, your teachers and coaches and all of those made those moments better and they made you better. your education on this campus has also prepared you to solve all kinds of problems, physical or abstract, practical or theoretical. creating an elegant proof in

mathematics requires the same rigor, discipline and imagination as creating a beautiful work of art. this university has provided you with the opportunity to try your hand at both. of course, you have learned boy now that all people are not equal in all things. hate to break it to you but some are actually smarter than others. some have musical talent, some excel at sports, some have quantitative aptitude. others have a knack for writing. we need them both. we have well educated problem solvers like you who bring facts to the table and who can think critically and independently because as we move into the second decade of the 21st century, the future that you, the class of 2012, will be creating will be defined by not only how well we can compete in

a global economy, but how well we can collaborate to accomplish shared goals and attack shared problems. without a doubt, the nations of the world are more interdependent today than at any time in human history. that has resulted in unprecedented challenges and unprecedented opportunities. in the past year i've had the opportunity to lead two overseas trade missions. one to china last october, and another to brazil just a few weeks ago. in both countries, where the middle class is booming, two facts became crystal clear. first, the world is hungry for the things we grow, manufacture and invent in missouri, and that creates jobs and prosperity here at home. missouri's international exports total $14.1 billion last year, an all-time high. our exports are up another 17%

for the first two months of 2012 over that same period last year. to win the future, we have to be world citizens and world competitors. second, american higher education is still revered as the gold standard around the world. that's why missouri university's continued to have one of the largest increases in international students of any of our states. northwest has also benefited from that trend. it was just mentioned, this year's graduating class includes international students from eight countries and four continents. i'm here to tell you that is going to grow. we are all in this together and there are a lot of us. the world's population is seven billion people and counting. by the end of the century, it's projected to be close to ten billion or more. that means more competition for everything, land, food, water,

fuel, and it means a greater urgency in protecting biodiversity, mitigating the effects of climate change, fighting global terrorism, feeding the hungry world, and developing sources of new clean sustainable energy. let's take just a second to examine that last challenge, energy. in washington, there's a lot of talk about energy independence, about creating green jobs and finding more sustainable sources of energy. quite frankly, not much happens. but here in missouri, just like here at northwest, we do more than talk. we don't wait to put good ideas into action. we get things done, just as you have done on this campus. northwest missouri state has been a pioneer and a role model in its serious commitment to energy conservation and sustainable energy. in 2009, just a few months after i was elected governor, i had the opportunity to visit your woodchip power facility here. since then, this campus has got

even greener by the year. today, 85% of the campus' thermal energy needs are provided by alternative fuels and you're leading the way in recycling and conservation. and your center for innovation and entrepreneurship is primed to foster a new generation of technology-based missouri start-ups with the potential not only to create more jobs but entirely new high tech industries in missouri. this university has set the bar high for the rest of our state. as governor, one of my top priorities has been grow our economy by developing cleaner, more sustainable sources of energy. in april 2009 i signed an executive order pledging that state government would cut its energy consumption by 2% a year for the next ten years and we are well on the way to meeting that aggressive goal. we are also investing in new technologies, conservation and alternative fuels, including ethanol, biodiesel and wind.

pioneers in stored energy technology like eagle pitcher with its state of the art manufacturing facility in joplin are working at the cutting edge of battery development which has been a major challenge to innovation in many fields, from transportation to medicine. eagle pitcher, our missouri company, is the sole supplier of the advanced nickel hydrogen batteries that power the international space station and also make the smallest implantable medical devices in the world. but that's not all. just a few miles north of downtown kansas city, smith electric vehicles is manufacturing rechargeable vehicles that will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and will help lead our automotive industry into the 21st century. ford and gm recently announced historic combined investment of nearly $1.5 billion to build next generation, more fuel efficient vehicles right here in missouri, and create 3200 new manufacturing jobs along the way. we're also embracing new opportunities to create cleaner,

more reliable, more affordable domestic power and to grow our economy at the same time. back in 2010, i had the honor of launching the kansas city power and light's cutting edge plant which is removing millions of tons of pollutants from the atmosphere and enbridge, one of north america's largest pipeline companies, is moving forward with construction of the 600 mile oil pipeline from illinois to oklahoma. the company will invest nearly $1 billion to build this pipeline across our state, touching 11 counties, creating 1100 jobs during its peak construction in 2-13. meanwhile, westinghouse, the global leader in nuclear technology, has selected missouri as a location where it wants to build a new generation of small modular nuclear reactors to sell around the world. building this new generation of reactors will require extensive research, advanced engineering, and outstanding workers. we offer all three right here in the show-me state.

when it comes to creating jobs and transforming our economy, projects just don't get any bigger than this. now, our aggressive energy agenda is paying off, both in terms of a cleaner environment and a growing economy. the missouri department of economic development just announced that the state has added more than 27,000 new jobs since january and our unemployment rate has fallen to 7.4%, the lowest level since november 2008. we are headed in the right direction. together, we will keep missouri moving forward. now, in our rapidly changing world, education is a very high stakes enterprise. there is no investment that will have a greater impact on the future of this nation, this state and on the quality of life for you, your children and grandchildren, than the one you have made in your education. your education has prepared you to take your place as global

citizens who are informed on the issues important to your lives and the future of our planet, who respect and welcome diversity, who are engaged in building communities and strengthening democracy as voters and leaders. so graduates, take the blueprint your northwest missouri state university education has given you, and start building. use it to build strong families, green and vibrant communities, and a prosperous state. use it to build a just and secure nation and a stable peaceful world. the future is in your hands. we know you will make it very bright. congratulations. [ applause ] >> ibm chairman sam palmisano

gave the commencement address at johns hopkins university in baltimore, 39 years after graduating from there. he joined ibm in 1973, starting as a salesman right after graduation. mr. palmisano last month addressed the more than 6,000 graduates and talked to them about remaking the systems of the world, finding something to be passionate about, and not always taking the easy path. he spoke for just under 20 minutes. >> i don't know what i'm supposed to say next. luke, outstanding. i tried to sing but my night was a little earlier than yours, but i see we both have a raspy voice. ron, thank you very much for allowing me to address everyone today. the honorary degree, i'm blown away by. it's a little emotional.

i want the undergraduates to understand my first honorary degree was a bachelor of arts from the johns hopkins university. that's not in the script, by the way. you'll see when i go back and forth. history, i thought i would point out, everybody thinks history is sort of studying the past and technology. you'll find that as you have to solve problems that are imponderable, it does help to understand the mistakes that your pred secessors have made a at least try to avoid those. there's no guarantee of success but you can skip the obvious. but i also would like to obviously extend my congratulations to the class and thank the faculty and all our guests for coming today. it's a wonderful honor to graduate from this esteemed university. maybe at some point you will realize all the hard work was worthwhile but i can assure you at the age of 60 you will still have nightmares about your

finals at the johns hopkins university. i still do. anyway, i could have worked harder i guess along the way and perhaps it wouldn't have been as strenuous at the end, but again, i think the families require a lot of -- luke thanked his parents. i think that's of course very appropriate. i myself and my wife is with me, we went through three of these last year and have one more to go this weekend so we understand where the families are and congratulations to all of you, what your children have accomplished. the other thing i thought i would relate to is i have something in common with many of you. we both are graduating. i'm graduating from a career at ibm and you're graduating from a storied institution called the johns hopkins university. you sit out there and you look at this old guy up here and you say there's nothing in common, this can't be. this is like a fiction. so i thought the best thing for me to do is draw an analogy to my good friend, luke, and why we

have so much in common. we both pursued a career in athletics above academics. neither of us were big enough to participate in our sport without being dead in ten days so we chose alternative careers. as we did so, luke and i did not know what we were going to do and i was working construction and a recruiter from ibm came to the hopkins campus looking for women in engineering. true story. colleague of mine, a ph.d. student in physics, rang me up and said sam, you should -- he got his business card, call this guy up. i said what do they want. he said they want women in engineering. i said well, i don't know that i fit, you know. he goes well, it's better than digging ditches. so i applied for a job. the other thing i would like to say, 40 years, 39 years later, you can rest assured you still

won't know what you want to do. don't despair. things don't change much in life but i'm not trying to discourage you. i thought what i would do is i would go back to 1973, when i sat out there like you, but we were in gillman hall. this was a field, it wasn't a stadium. there weren't championship much of anything sitting up there in those days, and i thought i would relate to some things that were going on in 1973. this is a little bit of my history training. you might find, there was an unpopular war was ending. a president was re-elected for a second term but it didn't end political turmoil. in fact, it was only racheted up after his re-election. we all remembered race riots, student unrest, and some of us survived algebra because we could take everything pass/fail in 1970.

the economy was tattered. let's think about the consensus today for those of you who watch the cable tv programs, thank you very much, john. what are we dealing with? unpopular wars are ending. protracted unemployment. tepid economic environment. political system paralyzed by partisanship. mounting debt and social costs. the prospect of diminished future of the united states as new nations take their place. in the global economy. it's almost 40 years and then there are some similarities, maybe not as stark, maybe we weren't as aware, we did not have the benefit of the internet or cable news. but nonetheless, if you go back then as i sat out there, neither i nor my class mates were beset by a grinding self-doubt or fear of failure. we didn't believe our worst days lay ahead. i don't believe it now and i bet you don't believe it but in case, just in case any of you

do, i will try to persuade you of another point of view that you won't hear on the evening news channels. the fact is, i think there's a more exciting road ahead of you for your generation, it's more exciting than it's ever been in recent times. i'm not talking about a polite statement that i'm expected to make as a commencement speaker. i sincerely believe this. i believe that you're privileged to be entering your working life at a great inflection point of modern history, one in simple terms might say where there is so much to do and so many tools available to do it with. several years ago, the "new york times" reporter tom friedman declared the world was flat. he meant globalization had arrived in full force. we all know why that is, open trade agreements, increasing political stability, both have had an impact around the world, lifted really hundreds of millions of people into the middle class and maybe another billion to go. so it's a wonderful thing. but i'm sure if somebody stood up here 39 or 40 years ago in

1973, some old guy reflected on this possibility or thought about facebook, twitter, groupon, whathave you, linkedin, you would have thought he was crazy. we would have thought he was absolutely whacked out and lost it. well, obviously that's not the case. things do change quite rapidly in technology, as we know, drives a lot of that as well as global economics and integration of the world. but i know as you think about technology, we always focus on what i call the obvious, the facebooks, twitters, the like, but i really would encourage you to look a little deeper because they are just indications of the potential that exists for how you all can change everything that occurs in the systems of the world. l little bit of data to prove i can be analytical when necessary. there are a billion transistors for every person on the face of the earth, two billion people on

the internet. data or computing is putting everything you don't even recognize as computers anymore, every product, the world, power grid, health care, are interconnected and becoming intelligent. it will generate over the next 10 or 15 years, 44 times more data than it does exist today. that's 35 xenobites, one followed by 21 zeros. i'm sure our engineering majors in the audience didn't need me to explain that but for the liberal arts guys like luke and myself, i felt that it was necessary. if you don't buy it from me, how about listening to your professors as some of you i hope did, better than i, anyway. dr. bagger, or some of your alums who are convinced that the future belongs to those who figure out what to do with all that information. it's an enormous natural resource, it's a gusher of data. thanks to advanced computation,

cloud computing, massive super computers and the like and advanced software, wonderful algorithms for the math majors out there, you can sense something really big is about to happen. the world's changing. don't fight crime by adding more cops and giving them better equipment. you do that through data. one of the safest large cities in the world, new york, has done it through data. traffic congestion, it's not done by making bigger roads. you do it through real time information and pricing and changing schedules. using economic incentive to address not only congestion but pollution. you also address consumer demand with supply chains and product inventory, real time between manufacturers and changing consumer wishes and point location of marketing as you all walk down the street past your favorite store and get a tweet as what's being promoted at that point in time so you live it every day. it's a combination of all these things. so that's where we're headed. so many of you are probably

thinking if not the undergraduates, maybe your parents and friends, therefore you must be an engineer or you must be in math and sam, coming from ibm surely that must be the case. i would tell you that the good news, it's not that. you can change a country, a company or individual, all it requires in today's environment is the skills you already have and a little bit of leadership and the willingness to think outside the box and take a little risk. be enterprising, imaginative and then have a direct impact on what you see and what you want to touch. that's what you have ahead of you, class of 2012. it's a wonderful opportunity. every one of you can form communities, can reimagine institutions and enterprises, even entire industries. it's never been possible before and it's so easy today because all traditional boundaries have come down. i know that's hard for governments to understand and comprehend as they try to defend something that no longer exists. but that's our world that we live in.

it's never been easier to dive and to act. opportunities are limit legs on what you can do with them. i guess the question you have to ask is would you move to the future or are you comfortable complaining about what past generations have bequeathed to you. do you want to look to fit in, to learn how to adapt and establish institutional rules and cultures? let me give an analogy. blue suits, white shirts, wingtips. i left out the straw hats. but today, you really don't have to do that. in fact, i think it's more exciting than pursuing a steadfast career over 40 years like i did. it's better in many, many ways because you have the ability to drive fundamental change that maybe doesn't present itself in a structured environment. you have the opportunity to

remake the systems of the world. all you have to do is sort of adjust, learn and fit into it. i think the most powerful asset that you acquired at hopkins is beyond skill and expertise and i would say it's the impulse and the desire to seize it, to go out and grab it. i say that because i'll give you one story about myself, where i was faced with a decision of the traditional versus the nontraditional from a career perspective. i could have taken a very significant position in one of our u.s. operations or i could have gone over to an unstructured job in ibm in japan where i would have been one of two foreigners in 25,000 japanese employees. clearly, the obvious one was take the large position in the united states. the easier path and somewhat straightforward. i chose not to do that. i chose to take a longer term view, one that i thought i would learn more from. so i took a leap. it meant i was going to have to change.

i didn't know how much at the time. i was going to have to learn how to listen versus talk. i needed to learn how to think in we versus me. the least of it, i had to function in an impossible language which i barely understood. some of the things i said, i harken back to president daniels' speech earlier today. we versus me, listen more than talk. the other thing we had to do as a family, i thank my wife for this, i had to uproot everyone, my wife and four children, two infants, two dogs and a nanny, and go to japan for an unstructured job, no guarantees of success, no safety net, no entitlement. did just fine. the lesson for me was more than the value of learning a multi-cultural environment because i worked throughout asia, but it taught me that an optimistic path is not always the easy path and that at the end, you can't move to the

future if you aren't willing to change yourself. so a little advice for you as you think about jobs. maybe the best decision for you and i, luke, as we go next not for our colleagues, that we go off and join the circus but if you do that, luke, if you do that, don't model yourself on one of the animals performing tricks for the trainers. i don't think luke would ever do that, by the way. but think independently but be passionate about something, where the learning is intense and you can grow and constantly broaden your capabilities. if you look at the characteristics of leaders we work with around the world, a lot of the people we're hiring, that is the characteristic of the people. so there's great optimism in what you see in those individuals and what they can get done. they have a bias towards action. they're impatient to seize the powerful new resources of

technology at their disposal. they want to build a smarter city, smarter planet, better businesses, better nations, better community involvement. in contrast to the political food fights in our legislatures, these new leaders are refreshingly nonidealogical and filled with the spirit of pragmatic optimism. so in ways that go far beyond this institution and beyond you and me, today is truly a time of commencement and i would argue for the world. one of my roommates or any of my roommates or all of my roommates at johns hopkins all went on to pursue graduate degrees. since i was -- got my honorary degree as a bachelors i decided that wasn't the best course for me. it wasn't going to quite cut it. so i instead did the improbable. i joined an institution looking for female engineers. it's probably the most academic institution of all businesses

around. as we say at ibm, your ph.d. is your union card and your nobel prize, there are several rather nobel prize winners walking the halls every day. bit intimidating for a liberal arts guy. but i can tell you it's also very stimulating and you can learn a lot by working with others and getting them together to solve common objectives or common goals or common societal problems. i'm a little bit older than them, probably different than the immature kid 39 years ago straight out of the hop with a pile of student loans and yes, i did pay them back. i did not ask the government to relieve me of my debts. it's probably good for you, by the way. thank you. now as a scholarship kid, second generation immigrant italian but put all that aside, it probably was helpful because i was one of the first kid in my family to go to a prestigious university and get a degree in four years from

college. others took a little longer along the way. so i just want to encourage you that exciting times are ahead. you should be grateful that all that you have been given up until now by this wonderful institution and by your families and all the support they have provided, but there's tremendous excitement out there. you and i are both going to enter this transition at the same point in time. to me, i hope you're as excited and positive as i am, because i do believe still we can impact everything that happens in the world and i hope, i hope i have the benefit and the luxury of working with people like you that are smart, clear-headed and more hopeful than any i have seen and i have seen a lot of people, in 175 countries around the world where we operate. so in that spirit, please seek new opportunities, please embrace the future with pragmatic optimism, not rose-colored glasses, and embark on life's travels, and if i can

give you one piece of advice. do not limit your options. do not constrain yourself. reach out, go for it. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> massachusetts congressman barney frank last month spoke to the graduates of lasell college in newton, massachusetts. during his 15 minute remarks, congressman frank questioned america's role as the defender of freedom and encouraged the graduates to consider how federal dollars might be spent otherwise. congressman frank has decided not to seek re-election this year after serving in congress for 16 terms. >> thank you.

i should begin by defining what it means to be an appropriate speaker at a commencement. a commencement is, after all, an occasion for young people who have worked very hard and the families that have supported them to celebrate, but traditions die hard, including the tradition which we inherited from england in the 14th century of wearing these things in hot weather. i guess it was colder in oxford in 1300. but being a commencement speaker, i am very well aware is like being the person who sings the star spangled banner to start the world series. nobody came to hear you, it's just that the event isn't official unless you do it, and the only time anybody will remember you is if you screwed it up. so i will try not to beto