Alleyne: Doctoral graduates have new responsibilities

1/25/2017

  MechSE’s Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor Andrew Alleyne gave the keynote remarks at the university’s doctoral hooding ceremon

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MechSE’s Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor Andrew Alleyne gave the keynote remarks at the university’s doctoral hooding ceremony on December 10, held at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
 
Led by the Graduate College, the focus of the ceremony is the formal “hooding” of doctoral degree recipients, including 13 from MechSE who recently earned their degrees in mechanical engineering or theoretical and applied mechanics. 
 
Alleyne has been honored numerous times for his teaching and mentoring work throughout his tenure at Illinois. In 2015, he was a recipient of the Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring, which honored him for the quality and depth of impact of his mentoring on MechSE’s graduate students. His philosophy on mentoring hinges on understanding each student’s life goals, and former graduate students said he is “a dedicated mentor who recognizes that personal success is just as important as professional success.” 
 
In his remarks, he offered to the degree recipients the idea that their responsibility now is to clear the path for others to achieve the same greatness while also creating new paths into the future.
 
“As a collective, your responsibility is to push forward the boundaries of knowledge, building upon the foundations you have laid so far,” he said. “Your responsibility as PhDs from the University of Illinois extends beyond finding the next major intellectual discovery. You also have the responsibility to ensure that the paths that we have worked so hard to open do not become closed and grown over. You have the responsibility to ensure that the pursuit of knowledge is understood to be noble by all sectors of society. You have to be knowledge advocates and ambassadors outside the ivory towers of academia. This responsibility has never been more important.”
 
 
 

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This story was published January 25, 2017.