 Welcome to everybody that is on this call. We are delighted to have our Purdue Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series today. I'm Donna Riley. I'm the head of the School of Engineering Education here at Purdue, and we're delighted to be a partner with the college in hosting President Lisa Crumpton Young from Texas Southern, as well as Attorney Glenn Austin, who will be joining her for the lecture today. So I am going to first introduce Executive Associate Dean Arvin Rahman, who is the Robert V. Adams Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Engineering by courtesy here in the College of Engineering at Purdue. And so without further ado, I will turn it over to Arvin to do the introductions of our speakers. Thank you so much, Donna. And again, thanks also to the School of Engineering Education for helping nominate and host this event. It's really been a lot of fun. It gives me a real honor and pleasure today to introduce our distinguished lecturer, Dr. Lisa Crumpton Young. She is the president of Texas Southern University. She received her BS, MS, and PhD in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M, where she was the first African-American female to receive a PhD in engineering. Prior to that, Dr. Crumpton Young held the positions of Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Morgan State University. Some of you may know that we have now an institutional partnership with Morgan State. And that pretty much began at the time that Dr. Crumpton Young was a Provost at Morgan State. So we really thank her for her support in getting us started on that as well. In fact, when we invited her, she was there. And she agreed to join us, even though it's her very first year as president of Texas Southern. So thank you very much. Prior to Morgan State, she was Vice President for Research and Institutional Advancement at Tennessee State University. She's been a program director at NSF, Associate Provost at Texas A&M University, Associate Dean of Engineering at Mississippi State University, Professor and Department Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida and Department Chairman at UCF as well. Dr. Crumpton Young is an experienced, innovative and accomplished leader with a firm understanding of higher education who has strategically positioned the institutions by implementing transformative initiatives and working collectively to achieve unprecedented success at an accelerated pace, which as you'll see is listed as the subtitle here on the opening slide. Dr. Crumpton Young is an active researcher in modeling human systems, under dynamic conditions and is the recipient of the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, with more than 150 scholarly publications to date. Accompanying her today in this lecture is going to be a Tony Glenn Austin Jr. who serves as the Executive Director of Government and Community Relations for Texas Southern University as an executive at the institution, Austin coordinates and implements Texas Southern's local, state and national legislative advocacy of efforts. Additionally, Austin works to cultivate and maintain relationships and strategic partnerships with local and national nonprofits, chambers of commerce, community organizations and other public and private stakeholders. Prior to joining Texas Southern, Austin served as a staff member during multiple Texas legislative sessions and managed several successful political campaigns. Austin also spent time as a property tax and school finance attorney for government entities and school districts. Austin enjoys giving back to his community by volunteering with several organizations including the State Bar of Texas's Legislative Committee, Houston Young Lawyers Association, Houston Lawyers Association, International Cannabis Bar Association and Houston Black Leadership Institute. Austin intended Texas Southern's Thurgood Marshall School of Law where he earned his Juris Doctor degree as well as a certification in government law. Austin also earned mediation certifications from the University of Houston Law Center and a psychology degree from the University of Central Arkansas. Austin attends Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church and enjoys training in jujitsu, fishing and mentoring. Now, welcome, attorney Glenn Austin. Without further ado, over to you, President Crumpter Young. Thank you so much. Good afternoon to everyone. I always like to begin by thanking the individuals that have actually worked to help today be a success. So I certainly wanna thank Dr. Rahman for the introduction, especially for reading the entire bio of attorney Austin. I wanna thank him for that. For sure. He did an outstanding job as mechanical engineer. And I also wanna thank Dr. Donna Riley for inviting us to be here and for taking the time to text me and make sure that I had all of the information to make today a success. You know, when they asked me to come, they didn't realize that it was an easy request because I'm a person who absolutely loves coffee and conversation. I remember when I used to teach my classes, many of my engineering students, many of the engineering faculty would always say, yes, we wanna have coffee and conversation as well. And so it became an opportunity for us to have, to share a wealth of information and a venue for us to exchange ideas. And so that's why I'm here today. I'm excited about having coffee and conversation with you all as we think about a very important topic and that societal change. Now, of course, Arvin mentioned that my research background is in the area of modeling human systems under dynamic conditions. And I will tell you as we have conversations about how higher education has been a catalyst for change, a catalyst for societal change, it in many of these examples is the perfect example of how humans are being modeled under dynamic conditions. Because if we think about what's happening in our society, we know that there's been a human response that we all need to understand and we need to be intentional with. And so that's what our conversation is about today. So it is connected to my area of research. Just a very broad discussion of that research. I will tell you it starts with understanding that at Texas Southern University and in many other universities of higher education, the focus is on transforming lives. It is beyond just discussing how we help students earn degrees. We do more than that at our institutions. And we really are individuals that stimulate change through having very thought provoking conversations and also through implementing very strategic initiatives. And so as you'll see on the slide that's in front of you, we really are in an era of transformation in higher education. So while we're in this era of transformation, you've read all of the articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, you've read articles and inside higher ed, you've read a number of things that have said to us is time to disrupt higher ed. Well, I think we've answered that call. The pandemic assisted us in answering that call. So now we're at a point where we're really in an era of transformation. So part of this conversation is really to serve as food for thought that will say to us, assess to us in higher ed, this is our time. And that we really need to carpe diem. We need to seize the day. There's so many issues being discussed. There's so many initiatives being planned. It's time for us to be major contributors to how we shape societal change. On this next slide, before he starts, I think he's gonna move to the next one. Before we start this video, I have this here for you because I would like to use this video as food for thought. Whenever I used to teach my classes, I would always bring in something that didn't appear to be absolutely specifically relevant to the topic. And so my students and my colleagues will say, what does this have to do with today's discussion? But I want you to look at it because it serves as an inspiration to all of us about the issues that we need to discuss in today's conversation. So it's a one minute video. Indulge me by looking at it for one minute and then we will continue our discussion. So here we go, hot spot, a revolution. You are experiencing history's highest rate of change, disruption, ambition, and opportunity. There's never been a better time for you to innovate. And you're capable of more than you think. You're capable today of anything you could dream. But most people don't realize this is a new era. This is not the time to preserve the status quo. It's the time for action, for ambition, for taking risks. This is the time to push yourself because nobody else will, because nobody else controls you. So be bold, pursue your dreams, design your own future. Now is the time to push your limits, to get out of your comfort zone, to make change happen even if it seems hard. Because I need you to take the leap. I need you to break your own rules. I need you to push harder, attack sooner, to never give up. If you want to get better and faster, be curious, be insatiable, be willing to destroy. And remember, you don't need a big idea, you need a little idea that you can make big. Be revolutionary. And so as we look at the next slide, it's just a reminder that societal change requires us to be revolutionary. It requires us to be innovative, to be transformative, to be disruptive. It's going to require us to have conversations that we have not always had. It's gonna require us to encourage difficult dialogue. It's gonna require us to think about new solutions. It's gonna require us to design new research methodologies, to gather new data and to begin to look at things with a new lens, a different lens. And through that effort, then we can begin to think about how we can influence societal change. So I chose to use this image of superheroes because I've always talked to my engineering students, my engineering colleagues, about how we, because we're engineers, because we're so well-trained, because we have so many skill sets that we learn. It's important for us to understand that we can use those, certainly within the day-to-day work we do in the academy, but as members of the academy, we are armed to make significant change. We actually have the opportunity in the academy to truly become the superheroes that can serve as the catalyst for societal change. There have been so many examples of that, and we're going to cover a number of the examples of when higher education has really been that catalyst for change. And so what I then want us to do is have a conversation about what we can continue, what we should continue to do. So it's absolutely critical that we have this conversation. And I know at this point, I want to make sure that Attorney Austin also has time to share his thoughts. But as we think about why this conversation is critical, I sort of said a few of those with move to the next slide. We know that within higher education, we have a group of enlightened decision makers, right? And the word enlightened for us has been defined as decision makers who are informed by data. They're not necessarily data-driven decisions, but they're data-informed decisions. One of the things we say on campus is that we want decision makers, but we want them to be enlightened. We want them to be able to think critically. We want them to be able to listen to conversations, understand the implications, understand the important items being discussed, but then think critically about how do we then respond to that? Or is that the correct assumption being made? Do we have the right hypothesis that will help to shape what we need to do? We also know, and I'm gonna invite E. Austin to come in here, we also know that critical thinking is important. He has done an excellent job of explaining why we, and thinking some thoughts on abandoning the ego-centric decision-making. So please, E. Austin? Yes, so it's very important right now, especially because there is so much information out there right now. We are bombarded by all kinds of information every single hour of every single day. And some of that information is correct, some of it's incorrect. And it's very important for us as the Higher Education Institution to make sure that we are late in the community know what's real and what's not real. So it's very critical for us to keep that at top of mind. So now that we know we're armed with the information, we're armed with the strategies that are necessary to ensure societal change, we also know that we need to be keepers and guardians of, as E.D. Austin said, factual information. We need to, as a body, we need to prevent the proliferation of improper information. I think sometimes things are being discussed and we may be in those rooms and we know that's incorrect. So we wanna make sure that we assume our role as members of the Academy in making sure we don't continue to proliferate that improper information. Next slide, please. We also know that it's critical to have the conversation, it's critical for higher education to ensure that democracy continues to thrive. And but we know there's some really vanishes to having these kind of conversations. And just in just a moment, we're gonna show you some examples of how humans in dynamic systems and in dynamic conditions and institutions of higher education have actually served as catalysts, have actually served as catalysts for societal change. We'll show you some examples. Because we know that the advantage of having this kind of conversation in your classrooms, on your campus and encouraging people to be revolutionary, encouraging them to act as superheroes, we know that that helps to influence policy decisions. I mentioned that I had breakfast this morning with Congresswoman Garcia. We need to be able to have those conversations that influence policy because those policies impact our society. We also, we're gonna show some excellent examples of how engineers have been critical to societal change by designing solutions to problems that impact us and by providing information and data. We know it's also important because in higher education, we can become a force for amplifying certain voices. I remember when I was in Florida and we were having a conversation about the Brianna Taylor issue, an incident. It was perfect. I was walking through this very, very affluent shopping area. I had just finished having lunch. I overheard a conversation with a young lady who said she was in college. She said, I heard her say that she was a junior. She was actually an engineering major. She was home and she was in that shopping plaza with her parents and there was someone there kind of protesting and discussing what was happening real time with the Brianna Taylor incident. And the father said, I cannot believe this person is on this corner making so much noise and interrupting the day. And it was a pleasant, beautiful Sunday. And I love the way this junior was courageous enough to look at her father and say, but dad, he's discussing what just happened with Brianna Taylor and then she went to explain what happened. The father looked at her and said, oh my God, I didn't know that, that should never happen. And then the young child who was looked like he was a nephew or the grandchild said, oh my God, I would never do anything like that. And just that one conversation by that courageous junior who was an engineering major began to change the thoughts and the opinions of certain cases and certain issues in our society. So that's a very small example of how as members of the academy, as students, as faculty, we can be the catalyst for societal change. We also know that we need new systems, we need new methodologies to understand issues in our society associated with health disparities or urban disparities, rural disparities. And we know as engineers, we can be the driving force behind making sure that those systems and methodologies are developed as well. So as you'll see on the next slide, what we have to do and what we're called to do, we're called to think about, is to make sure that as we think about societal change, we think about how we can be part of that change. One of the things I just wanna remind you of is that good industrial engineer, I wanna remind you that those changes that you think of, they need to be strategic and they need to be intentional. We know that it's important to focus on strategy because we wanna do those things that are effective and efficient, but we know we need to focus on intentionality because we need to do those things that are transformative and that have a significant impact. So I am hoping that right now, the first part of our discussion that we've given you some food for thought so that you can take a moment and think about how you can be that catalyst for societal change. What, I won't hope you'll have a minute to think about what revolutionary idea would you like to input? Would you like to bring to fruition? So at this point, Edie Austin, as food for thought, is going to share some examples of how individuals within academia, within higher ed, how they have been strategic and intentional to ensure that societal change occurs. Next slide, please. Thank you, Madam President. And yes, we have some examples of how higher education has changed society in a positive way. And the first one I wanna go over is very recent with the COVID vaccine. And one of the things I really enjoy about higher education is the intersection between higher education, government and industry. And we saw that a beautiful example with the development of the COVID vaccine. University of Pennsylvania kind of spearheaded the development of the technology behind that vaccine but they partnered with obviously the federal government as well as the biotech industry to roll that out in record time to make sure that globally we beat this pandemic and made progress. And then on the next slide, on the next slide, you'll see how critical race theory is a big topic, especially here in Texas but also nationwide. Critical race theory started at Harvard Law School and as you can see, now it's being used nationwide for different political purposes, social purposes, but definitely to change society depending on how it's interpreted. So, and even here in Texas in our home state, you can see our Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, has recently developed an institute at the University of Texas called the Liberty Institute. And the goal of that is to push a certain understanding of this theory. And again, it's for a promotion of a certain societal change. And what's been interesting about that discussion is faculty members have now said, well, wait, we didn't realize that this institute was formed for this purpose. And so now faculty members are starting to speak up and to discuss the importance of making sure that they are not used in any way other than the point of view that they are interested in making sure the research reflects positively. So once again, it is higher ed, once again, it's faculty members who are once again trying to make sure that societal change occurs. That's exactly right. And on the next slide, we'll see another example of higher education's role specifically in foreign policy. And I recently read a very good book called How to Hide an Empire. And in that book, it talks about post-World War II, we had several occupied territories. And in order to begin the peacemaking part of the post-war progress, what they did, what the military did was make sure that they taught English to these occupied territories. And the idea was the better communication we have, the less conflict we'll have. So you can see that that idea is still happening now with foreign international university training instructors to teach English throughout the world. So again, the better communication we have, hopefully the less conflict we have. And then the next example we have is an organization called Spark. And again, post-World War II, one thing that we did was we would provide scholarships to individuals in war-torn countries to attend university, especially in America and especially in Europe. But what they found was that created a brain drain. These kids would go to school in these other countries and they would stay there. They would build families, they would, their network was there so they just stayed there and created a brain drain. Well, to counteract that, instead of offering scholarships to leave, Spark is offering scholarships and opportunities to stay in your home country. You can see some of the countries that they work with. So what they do is they provide educational opportunities to students to stay in their home country, study at their home universities and that helps them build up that country even faster. And also it boosts the productivity of those universities. And then below you see Cuba and Russia are entering diplomatic talks right now. And one thing that they're using as a bridge towards diplomacy is higher education. It's one of those bridges where they can find common ground and say we all agree that higher education is something that's important to both of us. So always, always good when higher education can help opposite sides come together. I think there's next slide. Next slide, please. All right, and then here is an example from our own university, Texas Southern University. During the civil rights era, we had 13 students go and have a sit-in on a street called Almeda which is just a couple of miles away from campus and they were going to integrate this lunch counter and they were inspired by another university across the country in Greensboro, North Carolina and they were successful. And you can see this monument here which is still on campus here today to commemorate the courage and the effort that these students took to undergo this activity. And they were, this was not popular. They took a lot of risk and they in fact had legal consequences. Legal consequences, a lot of them were put in jail. They had just negative outcomes because of this but they knew that this is something that they needed to do and it's just interesting throughout the course of history students have shown a lot of fearlessness in driving societal change because they know and they understand that it's gonna be for the greater good and for future generations. And I'll add to that as you all know I'm the new president of Texas Southern and I'm learning about the history in many of these stories. Yesterday when we were honoring the lifetime and legacy of one of our professors who truly has been an example of African American history and black excellence, I learned the story of how we have what's called the Tiger Walk. It's a famous area that we're very well known on our campus. Well, I learned that the Tiger Walk actually came into existence. It used to be a freeway and well, individuals treated it like a freeway and literally they would just speed through campus and one of our students was injured in an accident and the other students came and decided it's time for a change that this should no longer be a street through our campus as individuals are trying to cross the street to get to class. And so what they did, they were not able to be successful in convincing the city to do so. And it's my understanding that what they did when they couldn't prevail, they decided that they were just going to take shifts and they were going to literally lie down in the street so that the cars could not pass by. And after doing that, several times, they successfully convinced the city to close the street and now it's called the Tiger Walk. People walk through our campus from the community. It's a wonderful walking trail, if you will, as well as a nice avenue through our campus. But just one more example of how students and how individuals in the academy came together to influence societal change. All right, and now I'd like to talk a little bit a little bit about how faculty has been change agents. You can see here, this is a scholarly article that was written, it's from the UK, and it talks about how societal change really starts in the classroom. And when teachers teach the students, the students take those ideas, proliferate those ideas throughout the community and then society changes as a whole. So teachers really are the catalyst in higher education, it really is the catalyst for societal change. I had to include Purdue here. We also have a noted Purdue professor who explained that idea to recent graduates how they are the next thought leaders, they are the next catalyst for change within their communities and it's incumbent upon them to remember that and keep that at top of mind as they go forward and advancing their careers. And then we will see how students have led societal impact as well on the next slide. And you can see there an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that talks, it's from 2008, note the date please. This is when, yes, this is when this is during President Obama's rise to power and students played a key role in his rise to power and the Chronicle noted that. So certainly we had shown a number of examples. There are a plethora of other examples but since Dr. Rahman only gave us a few minutes, we didn't want to share too many, that was a joke. I think he's still there. We didn't want to share all of the examples but there's so many examples of how individuals individuals in the academy have been successful change agents and they truly have encouraged us to make some significant changes but they've also encouraged us to do it at an accelerated pace in responding to some of the needs in society. Now of course, there are probably other examples where individuals have been interested in doing this but they haven't decided to be that type of change agent and there are many challenges to being change agents. I know that and I hope we'll have a chance to talk about them. I just want to share a few that I have found in my research in having conversations with some of these humans that I've modeled under dynamic conditions. Many of them have talked about if you're thinking about being a change agent, if you're thinking about helping society, being transformative, that one of the things you have to do is you have to confront the challenge of not having the courage. And I had someone who explained this to me very similar to a scene out of the whizz, right? When the lion was looking for some courage. I love the way it was explained. And so I do think it's important we do have to find the courage. And sometimes it means just searching for it, talking to others, but we have to find that courage because without finding the courage then the impetus for change just doesn't happen. We also, similar to those students, we have to be persistent and we have to persevere. The first time we try to impact change it probably won't happen. I think we know as engineers that almost the first time you design a solution that's not always the first one you wanna go with you need to have multiple solutions when you're in your solution space. So we know then the importance is to be persistent and to persevere. I know Edie Austin is the one who gave insight to the third one on this chart in terms of challenges. So I wanna give him a chance to share his thoughts on that. Yes, you've got to overcome the naysayers. There will be naysayers anytime, anytime you're doing something monumental or new or innovative there will be naysayers. So you just have to expect that. You've got to overcome that. A lot of times when people can't see something for themselves or maybe they don't think that they can do it they wanna project that on you and you can't let that be your reality. You've got to know what you're there for and get it done and just understand that's gonna be there and get past it. Absolutely and you know those naysayers and one of the things I always say I love this song I don't know how many of you get inspiration from music the way I do but Whitney Houston was outstanding songstress and one of her songs says that whenever someone tells me no I'll show them that I can and I think it's important to have that type of resolve when you're thinking about societal change because people need the transformation. They are waiting for individuals to do those things that transform their lives. So we do have to overcome those naysayers. I also think it's critical that we use our voice as individuals in the academy. We are the intellectual capital. We are the scholars. We have the information. We know the knowledge. We are prepared and we have to use our voice when it's being asked of you and sometimes you have to do something different. Like I'm giving a totally different lecture about modeling humans under dynamic systems and dynamic conditions. You sometimes you have to use your voice in the way that you believe as all of the researchers have shown about leadership that one quality of importance is authenticity. So use your voice in the way that you think will help to promote societal change. And then of course these next two on the slide I wanna let Eddie Austin speak too because he shares those points better than anyone else. Thank you. I'll kind of take these two together, especially the last one, embrace the grind. So anytime you're doing something that's transformative and innovative, disruptive, it's going to be difficult and it's gonna be hard. I'm a big fan of mixed martial arts and boxing and just combat sports in general. And there's a mantra that's on that scene and that mantra is embrace the grind. And it's a mentality of enjoying the process. It's gonna be a difficult process, but you have to enjoy it. When you're training for a fight, you are taking bumps and bruises, you were getting headaches, long hours. But when you feel that pain, that's a sign that you're on the right track. If you can't get to, when you hit those speed bumps, when you hit those hurdles, that means you're not stationary. So embracing the grind, being comfortable with that discomfort, it's gonna be critical to confronting those challenges. And this morning when I was with Congresswoman Garcia, the co-host, her name is Sophia Androlli. She is, and they're just amazingly accomplished women. One of the things that they discussed this morning as it relates to being a catalyst for societal change, they said that you have to think about grit, grind, gravitas, and being grateful and gratitude. So it's critical that as we embrace the grind, that we understand that resilience and grit is also necessary, but then also making sure that we are grateful for the small wins, for those small things that occur, that really do propel you to work on those larger things, those, the more grand challenges. So we do have to stay in a position where we continue to keep ourselves encouraged as we're working on these confronting challenges. And then I think our next slide, I'm so impressed with us in terms of our time. Of course, I'm an industrial engineer, so I know you all expected that. But we are, as we get to this next slide, this is actually our last slide. I am a person who believes that when you have a thought-provoking conversation, as I said to you all earlier, that we also need to end that conversation with a call to action. And so I'm looking forward to the Q&A session and I have a chance to actually hear what you all are thinking about doing as your call to action. But there are a couple of points that we wanna encourage you to think about. The call to action is your call to action. That's why you see nothing there on that slide other than a group of people being mobilized and pointed in a direction that we believe will be a direction of collectivism that achieves something significant. And then you see that there are a few people out there on the, out there in front. So we just wanna remind you that in higher education, we have to lead the change that we believe should happen. We have to lead the change that we believe should happen, even if it's different from what someone else believes. We have to lead that change. I'll tell you a story of when I was a, an intern at Northern Telecom, they gave me the project to work on a mobile cellular switch. And many of the individuals in the engineering team at that time said, Lecia, don't spend much time on that. That project's never going to amount to anything. No one is ever going to use a cell phone. Well, I think we now know that is not true. So thank goodness I didn't listen to them and I worked on the project to lead the change that I believed would come to pass. So just remember, we do need people to lead change. I think it's also important to remember that we have to conduct the research. We have to deliver the data sometimes that tells the story that will serve as the impetus for change. We have to collect that data. We have to be compelling. We have to make the argument. I also think we have to convene the conversation. Sometimes we have to just say, let's have that critical conversation. Let's sit everyone down. Even if we have opposing views or opposing, appear to have opposing thoughts. I think that's critical. And then I know that there are a few things that Edie Austin would like to add to this last slide as well. Sure thing. A couple of things. When I think about a call to action, sometimes it's hard to know how do I get started? Where do I fit in? And one of my mentors said to me, the best thing you can do is awesome where you're planted. And wherever you are, you have the opportunity to make impact. And if you think about a higher education institution, there's so many different divisions and departments. We've got athletics, academics, faculty, staff, students and all those parts play a role in the overall goal which I think is promoting education. So remember to blossom while you're planted. Do what you can from where you are and that's your contribution. And then also, it's up to us. If not us, then who? We're the ones that have the degrees. We're the ones with the connections. We're the ones with the skills and the knowledge to make things happen and drive change. So it's up to us. We can't leave it up to the next person because they're blossoming where they're planted. We're equipped to do this. So make sure that you don't leave that responsibility to someone else. If you can do it, you should do it. And just make sure you're doing your part to drive society's changes in a positive way. Absolutely. So I will tell you, we've had an opportunity to think about this topic, to share examples, to gather information, hopefully to encourage you to become the change agents that we know higher education has been for many years. And we're encouraging you to continue to be those change agents so that we can see the change that society needs for many, many, many decades to come. So we would love to stop here and answer any questions that you have. Right, thank you. So if we can get people to do their reactions, I'll do mine, except I don't have the right reaction. Sorry, I was gonna do a little reaction on Zoom, but I lost my applause reaction. So I'm applauding. So thank you so much. And I hope that folks are gathering ideas for questions. You can type them in the chat or you can potentially raise your hand. I think I'll be able to see raised hands on here if you have such a capability on your reaction to chief there, you can raise your hand or type something in the chat, I'll let people type. And meanwhile, as we're typing, I think I might talk a little bit about some recent conversations at Purdue. I think there's been a lot of recent student activism and I'm wondering about folks who might have been part of that, who might have something to say. Everybody would have done it. Our screen has gone dark, unfortunately. So can you hear us, Dr. Riley? Yes, yes, we can hear you just fine. So let's see. I don't know if Ed can help. Yeah, Dr. Riley, if you can hear us, I'm going to say my normal statement that technology is always fantastic when it works. Yep, exactly. Oh, we give you fantastic. So we can hear you fine. Can you hear me? That's why I can. I do have a question for you. Okay, great. So I do have the question. I can see you. So you might not be able to see us, but we can still see you fine. So I'm going to proceed to ask a question, which is in particular when there are naysayers, what are some strategies that you have used in those circumstances? You know, I heard a very good. I saw a tweet recently. It was a gentleman that was trying to sell something. And people were making jokes about this person. It looked kind of awkward. It looked kind of clumsy. But one of the comments said, if you don't buy your own hype, how is anyone else going to? So whenever people say those things, you just have to have ultimate confidence in yourself. The president says, have crazy faith. You got to have that crazy faith in yourself. And that's at least my strategy for overcoming the naysayers. Just try to have ultimate confidence. Yeah. I do think that confidence is extremely important. And one of the things that I do as an engineer is I like to try to show people examples. Because sometimes the naysayers are, they have that position or they have that lens because they haven't seen anything else. So I try to show them relevant examples. Try to find the, you, this is really gonna sound like an engineer. Try to find the primary contributor to why they are naysayer. And then use that. Once you know that primary contributor, then you have an opportunity to address it through an engineer problem solving approach. Excellent. All right, so I've got another question for you, which is about the kind of social media environment that we're in right now and the amount of disinformation or misinformation that's out there. And how can we best both determine what's factual and what's not, but also, how do we help our students do the same? How do we teach that? I'll start. Yeah, I just think you have to question everything. And you have to, sometimes you can trust, but always verify. Anytime you get a piece of information, you just have to consider the source, where did this come from? What kind of agenda is attempting to be pushed by the expansion of this information? Just verify, do your own research and just understand that it's easy to be misled if you don't and you don't want that to happen. And I'll just add to that the one thing I say in my team on campus is I say, in God we trust and in all others bring data. I think it's absolutely critical. I see Rahman laughing. Use that one, you go ahead and use that one. I say this in all of my meetings, in God we trust and in all others bring data. So I think it's important that we communicate from a data-centric perspective as well. All right, excellent. Other questions, folks can use the, you can use your hand-raising icon or you can type in the chat. Or one of the things I always say is they can just unmute themselves and talk. Yeah, we can also do it that way. Our speakers are comfortable. So if you want to unmute, feel free to do that. Hello, this is Shauna, I'm a first year PhD student in engineering education. And one of the questions I have with following up on the response for lead with data or use data, what do you do or do you have any recommendations for those, especially when trying to motivate and inspire a group of people who may not be connected to the data? How do you, what are some ways or possible ways of motivation so that they can be comfortable with receiving the information from data? Cause some people may say, oh, you're trying to speak above me or you're not connecting to the issues that we may fill in the community. So with the data-driven approach, how do you balance data with empathy and with acknowledgement of maybe the opinions that may be in rebuttal to the express information that's being presented? You know, I think that's an excellent point. In fact, one of my conversations yesterday was about empathy. And if we approach a conversation where it's 100% data-driven or it sounds like a statistical analysis, sometimes that does omit the factor of empathy. And so it is important that we balance both in the conversation. And it's also, as we think about empathy, we also have to think about that not everyone is as comfortable with a data-driven discussion as we are as engineers. And so I've had to teach myself to have the conversation about the concept first and then just use the data to support it. As opposed to when I was in graduate school, I would start with the data. Well, you know, 40% of the people think and they say, well, I know. So it's important to start with the context and then use the data to support it. I also think that when we're in those conversations empathy matters, and we have to find a way to connect in the conversation before individuals sometimes become receptive to hearing opposing points of view. So I always look for a way to make a connection in the conversation first. I don't mind giving this example, I don't think he would mind. On my campus this week, I had Senator Cruz here. And I've been away from Texas for many years, 30 years in fact, and I've been back seven months. It was absolutely important for me to sit down as president of the university and have a good conversation with my senator. So I started that conversation because most people said, oh my gosh, what are you all going to talk about? I said, we're gonna talk about the university, we're gonna talk about students, the faculty, the facilities, resources, research. Those are things you talk about in higher education. But before starting that, I looked for a place to make sure we had a connection, a common area, a common framework that we could establish. And that strategy worked very well, we had an outstanding visit. So that's what I wanna encourage you to do, Shawna. And I'll also add to that. I'll give you two examples from two of my previous lives. First, when I was just out of law school as a practicing attorney, I had a divorce case. And for me, it was all about knowing my audience. And the audience at that time was the judge. The judge was gonna make that decision. So I researched. I researched as much as I possibly could, found out everything I could possibly find out about the judge. I find out that this judge is an affisherman. So I tell my client, I'm preparing my client, and I say, you just wanna say that you just wanna take your son fishing. That's all you wanna do. You need custody so that you can take your son fishing. And when you connect with a judge like that, it really makes a difference. And then also when I was doing political campaigns, when you run a campaign, you have a different message for every single audience. And again, you're doing lots of research. So when you're talking to, you're gonna have a different message when you're talking to faith leaders, something else when you're talking to Greek organizations, something else when you're talking to students, grassroots organizations, the business community, every single organization is gonna get a different message crafted towards their interests. So you just have to really know your audience, take the time to research them, find out what motivates them, what makes them tick, and then target that. Thank you for both, for all of those responses. Excellent, all right. We have a few more minutes. We've got about seven more minutes for Q and A if folks have further questions. If you all don't have questions, I have a question actually. Please. I'd love for students, faculty, anyone on the call to tell me some of the societal changes you'd like to make or you'd like to see. That's excellent. So feel free to unmute yourself or type in the chat. What are some changes you'd like to see society make? And I'm an auditory learner. So just feel free to unmute yourselves. I'd love to hear you. And don't be shy. This is Sean again. One of the things I would like to see is the universal health care in a way that that can be implemented fairly for all. I remember one of my experiences when I was in an internship, it was right when the Affordable Care Act was being, right when Affordable Care Act, Affordable Health Care Act was being implemented. And one of the responses I got at my internship, I was listening to some of the senior engineers talking. I was silent, but one of things that was said I don't understand why they implemented that law. Now when I got to go to a doctor's office, those people who haven't been able to go to a doctor are gonna be taking up my time. So now I won't be able to go to the doctor and actually see my physician. He said, if they've been living with this element for all this time, what hurts for them to continue to live with it now? And I sat in my desk and just was mortified by that conversation with the little regard that people have for other people and their ability to have access to healthcare. And the conversation was more about privilege than about something that everyone should have as a human right. So that's something that I would love to see implemented as a catalyst for a change. But I think it also impacts education, it impacts housing, it impacts a lot of different factors with access to healthcare. But I think that's an excellent point. And I also think, Shauna, in that conversation, you discovered something that I used to talk about in my classes a lot and I speak about with my leadership team. I think at one time we called it ego-centric decision-making. But I'm not sure it's quite ego-centric decision-making in the classical definition. So I call it self-perspective decision-making, right? So what is it that from my perspective, I would like? And since we now know that that is very prevalent among most individuals, I think it's critical as change agents that we learn how to educate or have great conversations when someone is using self-perspective decision-making. Because if we don't help them change their frame or change their perspective, then we won't be effective in creating societal change. So I think to know that now is to be armed with understanding what has to be done as a change agent. And so now we're, once you know that, then you become less shocked by the self-perspective and then armed to respond to it. Excellent, thanks. There's two more that have been posted in the chat. One is from Dr. Tolson to use lots of good data to understand students' potential rather than just using test scores and grades. Dr. Tolson, I am looking forward to him serving on the panel. He is just a wealth of information, but I agree wholeheartedly. And I think as engineers, we've always seen the data to show that there's a low correlation, I'm not using the word poor, a low correlation between some of those standardized test scores and student outcomes. And we've known that for a very long time, but when the pandemic disrupted the ability for the students to take those exams, and then in higher ed, naturally we had to continue to admit students. So many of our institutions made that admissions criteria optional because the students couldn't take the test. And so I think now we have an opportunity to demonstrate through a data-driven approach that we really have seen students perform well who traditionally may not have been expected to have good standardized test scores. Thanks. And then another one posted by Dr. Rahman was alleviating extreme poverty, understood multi-dimensionally, and I might add my own climate justice, something that I'm passionate about as an engineer. I try to work on. Well, we would love to actually work with both of you on that topic. I'll tell you, Dr. Riley, we have somebody on our faculty named Dr. Bullard, and he has written 80 books. Yep. And his work is in the area of climate and environmental justice. And so we would love to do a joint research project with you or something related to that. He has been an advocate for that work for many, many years. And then we also have someone working on poverty disparities and doing research to understand it, I guess, synonymously to how we always describe the social determinants of health. Right? And we, of course, we know poverty is one of those. But to really start to look at the factors that continue the cycle of poverty, and then how do you break that cycle and how do you ensure advancement of individuals from low socioeconomic conditions? So I would love, those are two very important questions. Now, we have developed a new center on our campus, and the name of that center is the catalyst. We just formed that, and so we're going to begin building renovations and all of those things, but the catalyst for us is the name of our Center for Urban Transformation, and poverty will be one of the factors we're looking at, as well as climate and environmental justice. So we'd love for you all to be partners with us at the catalyst. I know when I was at Morgan, I formed the partnership to look at academic programs. So maybe now Texas Southern will form a partnership to look at, to do research together through our center of urban transformation. That's fantastic. I dropped a link to Dr. Bullard's website for folks that are interested in learning more, and I've been a fan for, since about 1989. So it's about just a couple years after that report, the first report came out on environmental justice is something that's inspired my life as an engineer. So I'm very appreciative of your mention of him. So we're at time, so we'll continue this conversation in about 10, no, five minutes, right? We're sort of starting right away. We have about a five minute break, if I'm not mistaken, before the panel will commence. So hold your thoughts. If you had more you'd like to talk about, we've got an amazing panel lined up and we'll be introducing those folks shortly and we'll continue this conversation along many of these same lines with a view to the practicalities of how we operationalize these ideas from this fantastic talk. So thanks everybody and stay tuned. Thank you.