2005 IT&E Convocation

2005 IT&E Convocation Address - May 19, 2005 - Patriot Center

Earle Williams

Congratulations to all of you who are graduating this week. You have worked hard (well, most of you have) and you deserve to be honored here this evening.

I want to talk with you this evening about why we are here. This is not a religious issue nor a personal one. The question is, why are we here in Fairfax rather than in Blacksburg or Charlottesville.

I am going to tell you how the School of IT&E came to be. My remarks are not intended to be comprehensive. Rather, I will try to paint a picture for you to illustrate how activists can make an enormous difference in the political and educational arenas.

I think you know that GMU is a relatively young university, and the School of IT&E is of even more recent vintage. So, how was the decision made to have a School of IT&E at George Mason?

The technology business community in Northern Virginia began agitating for an engineering school at GMU in the 1970s. There was little or no support for this from the education or political communities outside Northern Virginia. In fact, there was active opposition in those communities.

In August 1978, the staff of the State Council For Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) visited GMU to ensure the understanding that, given the authorized doubling of engineering enrollment at Virginia Tech, there would never be any such program at GMU.

For a while, it appeared that this would be the case. But the technology business community was becoming increasingly agitated and was talking about the need for an engineering school. Six CEOs and senior executives began meeting with then President George Johnson, informally, at GMU, and the group ultimately grew to about 40. This group became known as the George Mason Institute, or GMI. In Richmond, this became known as the “GMI Gang.”

Some of the members of GMI met with the Governor who seemed to be impressed and promised to make something happen to build Northern Virginia’s high tech capability. Then, nothing happened.

There was a national move to create the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) under retired Adm. Bobby Inman. The goal of MCC was to develop the next generation of supercomputers, and GMU found out about it in time to submit a proposal. The bid failed, but Adm. Inman assured the Governor that the only reason was that GMU was not yet sufficiently mature.

Given that point of view, GMU thought it would have the inside track on a new engineering program and center. Instead, the Governor appointed a Commission to consider the requirements for higher education. That Commission was clearly hostile to GMU.

Then, in about 1983, the Commission draft report leaked. It proposed a center at Charlottesville allowing UVA and Virginia Tech to coordinate external grant proposals. There was an outburst of opposition in Northern Virginia, and one of our legislators said “if it’s not in Northern Virginia, it ain’t going to be anywhere.”

The draft was withdrawn. A new version appeared and there was an implicit understanding that the center would be called the Center for Innovative Technology, would be located in Northern Virginia, but would not be located at GMU.

GMI became very active, viewing this as a sellout, because the CIT had been presented as the solution to GMU’s need for an engineering school. Meanwhile, SCHEV urged the downstate universities to pipe engineering programs into Northern Virginia via television. Now remember, this was long before distance learning wa feasible.

SCHEV visited GMU again, and on departure, the Chairman was heard to remark “they may not want engineering by TV, but that’s all they’re gonna get.” I think it was at this point that we designated that proposal as creating “Cafeteria U,” because the plan was to use a large room, like the cafeteria, with a TV set up front.

Tempers were displayed, angry calls were placed, and a delegation of Richmond people, and perhaps others, was picked to visit Northern Virginia. The night before the visit, I received a call, at home, from the Governor. He told me that the relationship between Northern Virginia and the rest of the Commonwealth was the worst he had ever seen.  He said it was imperative that we cool things down and not fight. I responded that I had no intention of starting a fight, and that I would do everything feasible to prevent any members of our delegation from starting a fight. But, I said, if the visitors try to push us around any more, there is going to be blood on the floor, because we are not going to give ground.

There is a little bit of humor associated with this. The next morning at Dulles Airport, we waited in a meeting room for the visitors to deplane. I knew the name of the leader of their delegation, but I had never met him. As they filed in, a distinguished gentleman strode in, looked around, and came straight at me. With a big smile on his face, he said “the Governor says that you and I shouldn’t fight.”  That broke the tension, and they had a good visit.

Matters actually got worse for a while, as we continued to stake our claim to an engineering school and a graduate program. In the final analysis, our job was made easier because the downstate schools laughed at our description of system engineering. And, of course, the last thing we wanted for GMU was a traditional engineering school.

The location and mission of CIT continued to be front page thorny issues. I was in a hotel in London and received a call from a Washington Post reporter who had questions about the CIT and GMU. She wanted to know what we were going to do if the Governor did this or that. I said “We can’t stop the Governor, but we sure can embarrass him.” The Post printed that the next day.

Ultimately, the GMI Gang was recognized as a legitimate voice of the technology business community. At the request of the Governor’s office, the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce agreed to host a meeting of representatives of the Governor, GMI,  and the Chamber of Commerce. The meeting was low key and exceedingly productive.

The representatives of the Governor said, in essence, we are here to resolve the issues surrounding CIT and GMU. How can we, collectively, do this? We told them that we wanted an engineering school with a graduate program, a building to house it, and a computer facility.

They said they needed for us to support the Governor’s decisions regarding the location and mission of the CIT. I said  that as far as I was concerned,  if we got what we wanted for GMU, they could put the CIT on top of the radar dome at Dulles Airport and I would call that a brilliant decision. We solved the fundamental problems of getting an engineering school for GMU at that meeting.

As for the CIT, you are probably aware of the upside down pyramid near Dulles Airport. I think it is a brilliant design.

Throughout the activities I have described, GMU’s President George Johnson, Senior Vice President Wade Gilley, and a small band of dedicated Legislators were working on the Commonwealth’s political and educational community to try to convince them of the urgent necessity for a strong technology program at GMU.

Following the meeting at which agreement was reached about CIT and GMU, the Governor’s budget reflected the terms of the agreement. GMU received 50 new positions for the new school and $12 million for a building to house the school.

Many good things have happened at GMU since that time. There is much more to the story, and the opposition to a fair deal for GMU still exists. For example, per FTE student, GMU receives only 68.1% of the average General Fund contribution received by the other doctoral institutions.

I hope I have given you at least the flavor of the long drawn out and difficult battle to bring you here this evening.

What I ask you to do in return is to get involved. You choose the method, but do something about our political system’s determination to downgrade Virginia’s higher education system.

One organization you might consider supporting is Virginia 21. This is a nonpartisan group of college students and others working to bring some sense into our higher education system. They have had remarkable success already. Their address is Virginia21.org.
But whatever you decide, make you voice heard. Register to vote, and vote to end the nonsense.

Again, my congratulations to all of you.