 I pretty much knew I was going to be a, wanted to be a civil engineer. I used to make my parents stop at every bridge on the way as we would drive from Pittsburgh to Florida occasionally for vacation. I would make them stop at the New River Gorge Bridge and then if we came to another interesting bridge in another city, I would make them stop and oh my brothers and sisters, you would get off, they'd be rolling their eyes as we were doing this but it turns out that I'm the only civil engineer in the family but I think we have folks that understand a lot about bridges. I mean the great thing about this university is it just keeps getting better and better. I keep telling folks we're still on the ascendance as a university which is a great thing. But when I showed up it was a place that interestingly enough, it was advertised as the professionals choice, you know, Carnegie Mellon, the professionals choice and I think what they were trying to convey at the time was that you're going to be prepared to be a person that companies are going to seek, they're going to recognize that you are rigorously educated and boy, we were. We actually had the statement in one of our classes that said look to the left of you, look to the right, only two of you are going to be here when the dust settles and I don't think it was quite that bad in the end but there was a lot of the retention back in those days was a lot lower than it is today and it's not because it's gotten any easier it's because I think the university has put I think a lot more support infrastructure in place a lot more places for students to go to get help a lot more places for you know students to find their strengths and find help if when they're challenged. What I think is a lot of the folks today don't realize is how much nicer it is in the facilities, the food, I hear that the students still are not 100% happy with the dining situation I said this to the students the other night I said do you realize when I was here as a student we had one tartan grill in the middle of Skibo Student Union and then we had a petition and beg and almost protest to get a salad bar and I said and today I look around and see what we offer it's just absolutely such a great improvement. The way I lead is very much influenced by what I saw happening in my education I mean while I think about while I was a student I was seeing the field robotics center come to life I was seeing the school of computer science come to life I was seeing the you know the robotics institute take shape you know statistics got created as a department while I was a student. Carnegie Mellon was always striving to be avant garde was striving to be a setter of direction not a follower there was a lot of courage being demonstrated at many different levels of the university in terms of decisions that leaders were making. This is another dimension of Carnegie Mellon I've always loved is that people here don't just write a paper and put it on the shelf they want to create a system that they can take out into the real world and expose it to the real world you know I know you've talked to other folks in the archives and you know some of the folks that I'm thinking of are ones that create you know that create robotic systems and take them out and test them and early on I remember while I was a student in civil engineering I would see the earliest versions of what was called NAVLAB driving up through Flagstaff Hill on that sidewalk and it was funny we would laugh because it was it was going so slowly you couldn't even tell if it was moving but it was like a cat that was sneaking up on you in a in a in a video where the you know that it would be there and then it would be a little further so you knew it was moving and then like a two year or two later it's driving at a pretty good speed up through the thing and then had to go at speeds that would be unsafe on that context so they would take it off into parking lots and other places and you'd start to see it really moving fast and that to me is such a metaphor for what Carnegie Mellon overall tries to do with its research they didn't try to just do a toy and they really tried to solve the problem of moving and navigating and eventually just trying to do it at speed that's what I was being exposed to even in my courses was uh was you know we were thrown real-world challenges where the solution didn't sort of fit into an A-B category it was it was a messy solution and we had to deal with it and figure out how to to do something with it that plays out in my my behavior today is that I'm not I'm not thrown off by challenges I'm not thrown off by you know an unusual situation and believe you me in this office I'm encountering unusual situations every day and you know I think I credit the courses I had way back in Carnegie Mellon in civil and environmental engineering as a as an undergraduate very much why I was associate dean that I took on this attitude of being in service that as associate dean I was in service of the college faculty and staff and graduate students more faculty and graduate students in my role and and then as department head I realized I was in service of now 20 some faculty 10 staff members and about 200 you know at the time was like 250 students that approach to leadership tends to be much more accepted that people don't want to be led by somebody who they think is in it for themselves or is going to be more autocratic as opposed to being more um you know focused on on serving this community now one has to be careful because there will be times where you have to make very difficult decisions and part of leadership is courage to make those difficult decisions but I always felt it you'll you'll get much better support if you take the time to learn from hear from what your community is expecting and what their thoughts are on different decisions that need to be made and then you recognize your your services that you have to make a decision that is in the best interest of the who you're serving not yourself