VOLUME 12, NO. 1     JUNE 1998

un and the smiles of graduates and their proud families brightened the breezy Saturday when 850 students received their degrees at WPI's 130th Commencement on May 16. Bachelor's degrees were awarded to 588 students, 235 received master's degrees, and 27 men and women were granted doctorates.

Ronald L. Zarrella, vice president and group executive for General Motors NAO (North American Operations) Vehicle Sales, Service and Marketing, gave the keynote address. He looked back 100 years for a lesson for the Class of 1998. As that earlier class looked to their futures, he said, the Industrial Revolution was already under way. In 1898 the Curies discovered radium, Count Zeppelin built the first airship, and someone in Marion, Ohio, built the first gasoline-powered tractor. All of these discoveries and inventions were to have powerful impacts on the Class of 1898, but no one would have guessed it at the time.

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"I believe that no other group of men and women are better prepared or better equipped to meet the challenges of 2000 and beyond than the WPI Class of '98."
- Ron Zarrella

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"Those graduates," he said, "had very little in their life experience or their education to prepare them for the changes they would face in the coming new millennium. Your experiences have been much broader, you have been exposed to more information in one year than they were in all their years, and you have technology available to you that they could not have imagined in their wildest dreams."

The message for the Class of '98 is that the forces of change will impact virtually every sector of business and industry around the globe. "What really matters is that we have men and women throughout the broad spectrum of global business and industry who are able to envision all kinds of eventualities in order to prepare to manage change in whatever form or shape it takes," he said. "And I believe that no other group of men and women are better prepared or better equipped to meet the challenges of 2000 and beyond than the WPI Class of '98."

Anne C. Pareti, a chemical engineering major from Meriden, Conn., gave the message from the senior class. Pareti urged her fellow graduates to follow the advice of former President Jimmy Carter: "Don't wait until everything is perfect before we act - be bold! Human beings willing to take a chance result in persisting in the face of uncertainty and risk.

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Left, Honorary Marshal Leonard Albano, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, led graduates to the Quadrangle, where they heard an address by General Motors Vice President Ronald Zarrella '71 before receiving their diplomas.

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"Whatever brings us happiness should be our goal," she said. "It is important that we decide what it is that really makes us happy and what we want to accomplish. Our future should not be placed in the hands of others."

Honorary doctor of engineering degrees were presented to Zarrella, who graduated in 1971 with a B.S. in electrical engineering, James L. Bartlett Jr. '39, president of Bardex Corp., of Goleta, Calif., and George N. Hatsopoulos, chairman and CEO of Thermo Electron Corp., of Waltham, Mass.

Bartlett, who majored in mechanical engineering, held a variety of engineering positions and founded two companies before establishing Bardex in 1984. The company designs and manufactures hydraulic systems for lifting and moving heavy loads. Hatsopoulos, who was born in Greece, attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a scholarship. He was a researcher and mechanical engineering professor at MIT before founding Thermo Electron in 1956. The firm fulfilled his dream of creating a company that would identify major emerging needs in society and create technologies to answer them.

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