 I would now like to ask that you join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God. Good evening. Welcome to NCSSM's 37th Convocation. I have the pleasure of introducing our dignitaries this evening. Please hold your applause until everyone has been introduced. As I call your name, please stand. NCSSM Chancellor Todd Roberts, Convocation Speaker Jonathan Mattingly, Class of 1988, Vice Chancellor for Academic Programs Katie O'Connor, President of Student Government Josh Zhao, President of Student Senate Jordan Jones, Chair NCSSM Board of Trustees Tom Williams, Board of Trustees members Paula Benson, Steve Griffin, Eric Hall, Hugh Holston, Tom Looney, Minnie Matile, former NCSSM Chancellor Gerald Borman, John Frederick, former Board of Trustees Chair and now Foundation Board member Henry Crow, Class of 1982, Foundation Board member Brad Ives, Class of 1982, Pairing Association Chair Jane Torecki. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to Convocation for the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Convocation signals the beginning of our school year and I hope that each of you has had a great first day of classes and that all of you are settling in for what I believe is going to be an outstanding school year. We are very happy that you're all here. I want to thank our distinguished guests and our faculty and staff and all of our students for being here this evening. It's also wonderful to have emeritus members of our faculty, two of our former heads of school, members of our Board of Trustees and Foundation Board here this evening as well. I also want to take this opportunity to welcome and thank Dr. Jonathan Mattingly for being our speaker. Dr. Mattingly is a member of NCSSM's Class of 1988 as you've heard and as you will hear in a few minutes he's had a remarkable career. It's also wonderful to have Dr. Mattingly's mother and sister here with us this evening sitting in the front row. I know that you're so proud of him and his many accomplishments as those of us at NCSSM are as well. I'm pleased that we start each year with an address from an outstanding alumnus. One of the things that I've found so special about NCSSM is the fond memories alumni have of the school and their willingness to give back to our school. Whether it's through their financial support that allows us to provide all of you with the many opportunities you have day in and day out on campus or whether it's by giving other time and talent like Dr. Mattingly is tonight. Through his story he's providing you with a chance to dream about the possibilities that are yours to achieve in the years that lay ahead. Students I hope seeing all the people here tonight helps you understand the type of community, the type of legacy you're a part of. This evening marks the beginning of NCSSM's 37th year. About this time in 1980 the first class of 150 or so juniors was here on this campus preparing for the first year of what they and the faculty and staff were not exactly sure but what they hoped would be a time to explore the infinite possibilities of what this new idea, this new opportunity, this new school might offer. Fast forward 36 years and here you all sit the 680 students of the classes of 2017 and 2018. While you're sitting in a much more comfortable setting now than then, I'll bet many of you still have that same feeling the students in those first classes had. You're not exactly sure what to expect but you have hopes of the possibilities that lay ahead of you this year at NCSSM. Much has changed over 36 years, many of the people, many of the things, but what has not changed is that you are here with talented students from all across North Carolina. You're here with outstanding faculty and staff, you're here with the tremendous support of our state and the many friends of our school and as was the case for the students 36 years ago you will find that these are the key ingredients of which infinite possibilities are made. To this point in your life you work very hard to achieve this success, only the foundation for your future. Every student in this auditorium has a success story to tell or you would not be here. Not all of your stories are the same, you come from all over the great state of North Carolina representing 82 of our 100 counties and you bring with you a diversity of experiences that make you all different people but you share a commitment to learning, to being successful in school, you all have big dreams and a desire to accept the greater challenge. NCSSM is the place where each of you will write the next chapter in your story where you'll design your future and collectively you'll help NCSSM write the 37th chapter in our story. Class of 2018 I know that you've been provided with a lot of information over the past few days. I bet you might be a little bit overwhelmed at this point, you had your first day of classes, no homework yet but tomorrow I bet you will. As you begin this time at NCSSM I hope you're excited for what lies ahead and ready to take advantage of all the next two years have to offer you. Let me tell you that you are not only have the wonderful guides of the guide the leadership and guidance of our amazing faculty and staff who work here but you also have that in your seniors. The class of 2017 is a wonderful class and I know they will play a large part in the story of your success. In class of 2017 I know that you're also excited about what lies ahead this year, your senior year. It's a busy one while you live and learn at NCSSM while at the same time turning an eye and the page of a college application towards your next chapter. I encourage you to make the most of every minute of your next nine months because come May I'll bet you had a bet you wish you had a little bit more time here. So students with that in mind just how fast the two years at NCSSM goes I hope each of you enjoys the year ahead. At this time it's my great honor to be able to present the UNC Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award to Philip Rash. This award is usually presented each year at commencement but Philip was with students in Singapore at a math competition during commencement this past year. Philip has been an exceptional teacher, an extraordinary mentor for the past 12 years at NCSSM. He's led hundreds of highly capable students to discover the beauty of mathematics and the importance of learning throughout life. Philip expects his students to take ownership of their learning and as he says mathematics is not a spectator sport. He sees his role as not only a teacher striving to be an expert in his field but also a student always learning something new about both the content and the students he teaches. An alumnus of the school captured the essence of Philip's impact when they stated. From the first day I sat in Mr. Rash's class as a junior I knew that he had every hallmark of a good teacher. He was extremely knowledgeable, eager to help and teach, interesting and challenging. However over the course of the next two years I came to more fully understand why his impact was so profound. The thing that changed my entire experience in his classes was that he was able to connect with us as people not just students. This manifested itself in many ways. Little jokes slipped into lectures encouraging and congratulating students on their extracurricular pursuits and introducing students to his own interests through his aviation mini term. He celebrated individual efforts of his students not simply tangible impressive successes which is exceedingly important and easily overlooked in a school with so many highly achieving students as NCSSM. He particularly in problem solving made it easy to do well in his class without being able to solve every problem which turned our focus from pursuing points to wanting to conquer thought processes and push our limits. The end result of his efforts was that his students as his students we had the utmost respect for Mr. Rash and he is still adored by many long after graduation as among the best that NCSSM has to offer. So congratulations Philip on receiving this well-deserved honor and I'd also like to take a second to recognize um recognize Philip's fiance who is here with us Laura in the front row if you don't mind waving and at this time I would like to introduce Dr. Katie O'Connor to introduce our guest speaker. Thank you. Good evening. Tonight I have the distinct honor of introducing our 2016 convocation speaker Dr. Jonathan Mattingly. We can confirm that exactly 30 years ago when he wasn't Dr. Mattingly yet Jonathan sat here for his convocation when he was a junior entering in the fall of 1986. NCSSM was suggested by one of his science teachers in Charlotte and it was on his parents radar as well. Jonathan lived in Hill during his junior year and when construction was completed on a wonderful new residence hall which we now call Hunt he moved to Hunt for his senior year. Jonathan played soccer here at NCSSM and he recalls being 18 years old and he had completed a course a bus driving course so he was allowed to drive his teammates to their soccer games and he was allowed to drive his friends on day-long loops. Oh my how times have changed. Except for the buses Jonathan we probably still have those buses if you want to take one first then. I reached out to a few people who Jonathan named as mentors when he was at NCSSM. One mentor was Dr. Steve Warshaw who's in the front row with us here tonight and he explained that Jonathan was in the Jordan Lake research course during his junior year and people had speculated that polluted water from the Hall River might flow back up the lake and contaminate the areas where drinking water was obtained but no one had demonstrated that this back flow was actually occurring so Jonathan set out to test that hypothesis. He designed and built a flow meter and made a drogue that demonstrated water was indeed floating back up the lake. Dr. Colina was Jonathan's academic advisor and instructor. Dr. Colina remembers how excited Jonathan was about learning new concepts specifically about physics. He loved learning why things are and why things work the way they do and finally Dr. Teague had the pleasure of working with Jonathan. Dr. Teague was making up the teams for our first mathematical modeling competition. Of the six students that he had three worked very well together and three did not. Dr. Teague said he decided to put the three hard heads together. Miss Mattingly, which group do you think your son was in? He was in the hard head group. Yeah. Okay. So Dr. Teague figured that either way that group would or Dr. Teague decided that either that group would produce nothing because they couldn't come together in agreement or they would produce something absolutely amazing and Dr. Teague received a phone call from the head of the contest who said Jonathan's group had turned in the winning solution. But he was afraid that the team was not eligible since the rules specified that only undergraduates could participate in the contest. Dr. Teague explained you can't get more undergraduate than high school students. So the judges agreed and since then high schools have been allowed to participate. So does someone with all these successes ever experience defeat? Well, Dr. Mattingly said he kept a folder that has all of his rejection letters in it. He said the folder is thick and there are enough papers in it to wallpaper his bathroom. I'm sure it's a very, very small bathroom. But he mentioned that it's important to keep rejection letters to remind himself that not everything always works out and sometimes that can be powerful. We are grateful that Jonathan was grounded with a high school diploma from NCSSM, an undergraduate degree from Yale, a master's degree in non-linear physics, a PhD from Princeton, postdoc work at Stanford, and currently the chair of Duke's Department of Mathematics. But if you look beyond all of these NCSSM memories and remarkable professional accomplishments, what's most important when leaving a legacy are the words that people use to describe you. Jonathan is described as having an infectious laugh, having unwavering ambition, and most importantly, having warmth and extraordinary kindness. Please help me welcome Dr. Jonathan Mattingly. I have to say it's really amazing to be back here. It's a little bit overwhelming to look out and see so many old friends. Oh, can you not hear me? Is that better? I was just saying it's a little bit amazing to look out and see so many old friends. I have three things that I want to tell you. The first one is that someday this will happen to you. Other than that, I essentially want to make two points. The first is how did I get here? So you just heard the press release, but let me hit a few of the highlights. I grew up in Charlotte. As was just said, I was in the class of 86. That was 30. I was in the class of 88 and we entered here in 1986. That was 30 years ago. I participated in a physics mentorship, a Jordan Lake limnology project. I was on the team that won the mathematical modeling contest. I went on to get a degree in applied mathematics from Yale. I studied non-linear physics in France. I obtained a PhD in mathematics from Princeton and after some time at Stanford, I returned here to teach at Duke, where I'm now the chairman of the department. That's all true. Listening to it, it sounds like I had a singular path that took me from one point to the next point. That I'm exactly where I always thought I would be, that I had planned to do this, to become a professor of mathematics. Except that's not how it happened. I know I was there. I mean, everything I said was true, but there was no grand plan. I was in fact constantly wondering what would my passion be. We're all different and your mileage may vary, but let me tell you how I viewed my path. I repeated fourth grade. Yes, the entire thing. I waver constantly before committing to come to science and math. Some of you may have done the same thing just a few months ago. I waited till the last possible day to turn in my acceptance. I love my math classes here. They had a huge effect on my trajectory, especially my modeling class with Professor Teague. But I was not accelerated. Not very much. I took calculus my senior year. I also liked many of my other classes. I loved my biology, my physics class, my history class, my literature class, my government class. I was a dorm assistant in Hunt Second West for those of you who are curious. I was passionate about politics. We called it New Dorm, but I guess I'm supposed to say Hunt so you're not confused. I was passionate about politics. I played soccer. I did a lot of drama. I did a lot of photography. I like to think of myself as the guy who liked and found new music. My friends who are in the audience, please don't say anything. By the way, it was good new music. I never did well in the state math contest. For college, I wavered forever between Yale and Haverford because I decided that Haverford fit better my life philosophy insofar as I understood it at the time. In the end, I chose Yale because it had more lab courses. Of course, when I got there, I found out I really didn't like lab courses, and I only took two of them. I went to Yale with no major declared. I explored many directions. I explored urban planning, neuroscience, computer science, fluid mechanics, political science, but among everything, I always kept taking mathematics. Why? Because it was the hardest class for me, not the easiest, because it seemed relevant to all these paths I kept wanting to take. I was not the best math student at Yale. In fact, my lowest grade in college was a C in mathematics. I got a C. The world did not end. I went to France after graduating because, to be honest, I was burnt out and I wanted to be able to learn and to dream in another language, something I recommend to all of you wholeheartedly. I traveled Europe for a year with no return date. I lived off the money that I had earned living for six months at home and working jobs. I applied to the Economal de Lyon to study physics, to be honest, mainly because I wanted to stay in France for another year. But once there, I loved the ideas. I was taken by what I saw and I was hungry to learn more. I applied to graduate school and returned to the U.S. hoping to stay politically active, or to become politically active, I should say, once I got back in my own country. Of course, I ended up going to Princeton, which is a sleepy little town which is anything but politically active. In fact, the only reason I applied to Princeton was that my high school and college girlfriend, a woman who I fell for, not in this hall but in the halls across the street, was there studying biology. However, after being accepted, I realized that Princeton was exactly the right place for me. It's worth noting that I only got into two places of the six I applied. So Princeton was perfect for me, but nonetheless, the first person I asked to be my Ph.D. advisor, he said no. I ended up with an advisor who took me in a completely new direction, a direction which I hadn't initially wanted to head. I almost stopped graduate school at one point. I took classes in the public policy school and imagined a life mixing math and public policy. After graduate school, I almost went to work in industry, but drawn by living in San Francisco was enough to turn my head to taking a position at Stanford. I seriously considered jumping into a startup company in 2000, but then the first dot com bubble crashed. Viewed from a distance, my life looks like a straight line, but that's largely because you know where it started and where it ended so far. The press release of my version hides all the true meandering paths. Lives are windy, twisty things, experiences with many different acts. The path forward is rarely clear at the moment. I often heard, find your passion. That always stressed me out. To me, that implied that there was some light shining in the direction I should head. I really didn't feel like I was standing in the light. There also seemed attention with something else that people always said to me. You can do whatever you want. Well, that just encouraged me to open as many doors as I possibly could and then stand there petrified to go through any of them. I was afraid of the options that it closed off in front of me. These are cliches, but they're all truths. There are truths in each of these cliches. You must work hard. You must be passionate about your goals. You may not always see a clear path, but don't let that stop you from choosing doors to walk through. After all, you have to assume that there'll be doors in the next room also. Yes, the world is your oyster with so many possibilities, but you need to move in one direction at each moment, but always feel free to change your course. You are not a leaf blowing in the wind. You are more in control of your life than anyone else, but you are not in complete control. It is your job to keep dreaming and keep moving forward with your eyes open to the possibilities and realities which unfold in front of you. It is hard work, but the rewards of the journey are great, namely the journey itself. You never know in advance what is important. Many of the reasons I chose to go to Yale turned out to be completely unimportant in retrospect, yet Yale was a pivotal place in my life. In graduate school, I ended up with my second choice advisor, but in retrospect, he was the perfect advisor for me. I did not set out to be a mathematician, but here I am, which brings me to my second point. I am a mathematician. I am also a teacher. I enjoy teaching, but I am a mathematician first and foremost. I spend large amounts of my time developing new mathematics. Mathematics is everywhere around us. It drives many things in our life. It is the basis of the revolutionary algorithms that are the heart of a Google search. It is the cryptography that makes the internet safe to surf. It is the compression that makes videos small enough to send to your smartphones. It is how we can all use smartphones in the same room at the same time. Math is critical to understanding how cancer develops and how one could fight a pandemic plague. It leads to many professions. One of my friends worked for Netflix, figuring out what movies you probably want next. Another one of mine creates articles based on novel analytics for the New York Times. Still others work on finding how proteins fold, which is the heart of new drug development. Yet another friend works to detect art forgery by analyzing painting brushstrokes. Using related ideas, she even reconstructs how paintings looked hundreds of years ago before the paint faded over time. And as an aside, there will be an exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art later this fall highlighting exactly her work you should go. If you need help, call me. We'll find a way. Another friend was even a mathematician for the St. Louis Cardinals. He got a ring when they won the National League pennant in 2004. Another friend works at the NSA, which is reported to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country, if not the world. Mathematics is truly everywhere in modern society. But yet, for all of its practical prowess, mathematics is also a subject of delete, of deep, with a deep sense of beauty and aesthetics, where time is spent exploring the beauty just because it's there to find it. It is a truly intellectual frontier at the boundary of human knowledge. I was not joking when I said that I took mathematics in college because it was the hardest class for me. I could feel my mind stretching. It was an addictive feeling. There was something addictive about understanding something that six months earlier seemed impenetrable to me. I study randomness and how it affects everything from computer algorithms to the turbulence that surrounds airplanes. That may have shaped my worldview, I admit. But I do think our paths are best guided random walks. You never start moving and evolving. The path is not clear in each step, but somehow it moves in some direction. For example, a friend of mine recently returned to graduate school after 10 years as an architect. She became a mathematician and now works in a government lab. Who could have ever predicted that change? I have circled back myself to my political interests. Using mathematics, I have recently developed bipartisan ways to decide if political districts are gerrymanders in the hopes of improving our democracy and the responsiveness of our government. I picked to talk about mathematics today because it describes my journey. And thus, well, my journey so far. But it is just an example. The point is that I would have not planned or even known that such a career existed 30 years ago when I was sitting where you are now. Okay, I wasn't really sitting here. I was sitting in the laundry building across the way, because that's where we used to sit. The campus is generally more dilapidated now, but this was a magical place for me. And I think it can still be for you. Do not be afraid to explore and sample from all this place has to offer. Pursue paths forward and embrace the unforeseen turns and forks which they take you on. Challenge yourself. Relish your teachers. They are amazing here. Take some time to explore the totality of life here. I made many fantastic friends in science and math, many of them who still travel through my life with me today. I am sure that your path will be different than mine, but equally rewarding and fascinating. Mine in fact is still evolving. I wish us all the best of luck. Class of 2018, this is it. This is the moment you've been waiting for. Ever since you clicked the accept button and you need requests, you've been waiting for this moment. Whether it's because of the academic rigor you want to accept, the community that you will meet, or just to get away from home, it all starts now. So welcome and congratulations. NCSSM was built for rigorous higher level learning. So many things here are fast paced. If you wait until the last day, you won't get the help that you need. Feek out your teachers early on and find teaching assistants and classmates who can get you through your difficulties. Classes here are meant to be challenging and teachers want to push your limits of learning. This is the 17th campus of the UNC system. Your teachers won't treat you like you're still in high school and you have to stop acting like you are too. What you'll find however is that students greatest challenges often lie beyond the classroom. Through clubs, academic teams, and competitions, you can hone in your skills into areas that excite you the most. Finding the right clubs and competitions isn't easy, especially when you haven't heard of any of them before. That's why student government is preparing the first ever opportunities catalog, where clubs and their associated competitions will be listed side by side so that you can easily find where to cultivate your interests the best. Your first community will often be your hall. Through the pleasures of housekeeping, ping-pong matches, late night movies, intramurals, and food runs, you can find people to rely on who live just a couple doors down. As you take more classes, commit to clubs, and join sports, you'll find your niche in this community. To make your transition into our community smoother, student government's been working hard since May. If you tuned into our first ever webinar for incoming students, you've hopefully found our student panel's advice as well as the resources we've assembled helpful up to this point. On our rebuild website, you'll find new features that will make connecting to our community even easier. Our new calendar centralizes major campus activities and club activities so that you can find them easily. You can also easily add your own club, seminar, or campus activity. We're also excited about our first ever petitioning system on student government's website. It works just like the one for the White House. Get peers to sign your petition online, and it will come to our attention. To see more of what we can do for you, check out sg.ntssm.edu. A strong community requires healthy minds. That's why student government this year has a director of mental health advocacy for the first time. He'll launch de-stressing campus activities, educate us on mental well-being, and partner with counseling to help keep our community's mental livelihood on par with our academic livelihood. And if you're just here for a second home, be prepared. You've joined a family like no other. Student government and I could only have pushed for the new initiative I just mentioned and one that we're working on today by understanding all of you. That's why we plan to continue the open office hours that we started in May. Every few weeks right outside the PFM, you will find myself or another student government member waiting to hear about an issue affecting you. We can better serve your needs by knowing them. Find me at open office hours, tonight's reception, any senate meetings, or any time you see me around. Any student government member is open to a Facebook message. We want to hear and work on your thoughts, your concerns, your suggestions, and your feelings about anything at NCSSM. That's what we're here for. Look out for student government's new resources to help you up your academic rigor and make it easier to engage with our community. And remember, change can only happen when you're involved. Thank you, Josh. And again, thanks, Jonathan, for wonderful, wonderful talk. As we close our 37th convocation at NCSSM, I want to take an opportunity to thank all the members of our convocation committee and everyone who made this evening possible. Again, thank you to Dr. Mattingly's family for being here. I'm sure you're even more proud of him now. Thank you to all of our honored guests for being here this evening and for your tremendous support for NCSSM. And to our faculty and staff, thank you for all of your work in helping us get the 2016-2017 school year off to a great start. The start of the school year is always filled with great excitement and with possibilities that come with starting anything new. So students, as you experience, learn, wrestle with, and enjoy all that lies ahead of you this year, I want you to remember what got you here. Your commitment to learning, your motivation, and your drive to challenge yourself to your highest ability and beyond. NCSSM is not like other schools. You'll have greater opportunities and greater challenges than ever before. Every one of you has the talent and ability to be as successful here as you have been in school all these years prior to now. Every member of our faculty and staff are here to help you succeed, and you will find that there are no better and more committed professionals anywhere. However, it is your commitment to being successful that is most important more so than any other thing. We have spent a great deal of time over the past couple of years asking alumni and students how they would describe what their experience at NCSSM meant to them and how they believe we should best articulate that. One of the common threads of what we heard when we asked was that NCSSM provided them with opportunity and community. This is your opportunity to design your future, whether in the classroom, research labs on campus or off, on playing fields or on stage, out in the community providing service to others or on hall. Explore your interests, grow your passions, strive for your best while helping make those around you better. Make the most of your time and your community. I've been thinking a lot about community this past year, and I'm not sure if I've been thinking about it because of all the difficulties and tragedies taking place in communities across our country and around the world. The seeming inability of communities to find community. And thinking about this, I feel grateful to be a part of this our NCSSM community. One where we work to build each other up, one where we learn from and celebrate our differences, not separate and tear each other down because of them. Ours is a community where two people who may be hundreds of miles apart literally in where they live and worlds apart figuratively in their experiences prior to come into NCSSM can room together and become lifelong friends. Ours is a community where someone can get up and sing in front of 80 people at Coffee House, even though they've never sang anywhere other than the shower before. Ours is a community where someone can perform on stage in a cultural fest, a dance they did not know the name of before coming to NCSSM. So while I worry about the larger community around us, I marvel at our NCSSM community where for 36 years the people have made the place. I often get asked what's the special sauce at NCSSM. My answer is always the community, the learning and living environment that allows each of us to accept the greater challenge and be our best while helping those around us be better. So Unicorns, the 2016-2017 school year is yours. Yours for the challenges it will present, yours for the learning it offers, for the many opportunities before you, it's your community to build. So congratulations and I look forward to working with you on this year and to your great success over the course of it. Everyone will join us after we recess for a reception on the Bryan lawn and again thank you to everyone for being here this evening.