URI Convocation 2003
Professor Musa Jouaneh

President Carothers, Provost Swan, invited dignitaries, President of the URI Senate Beckman, President of the URI Foundation Pendergast, University officials, honored guests, faculty, staff, students, and fellow excellence award winners.

It is a great honor for me to be awarded the URI Foundation Teaching Excellence Award and be speaking to you today. When President Carothers asked me to speak at the convocation, I panicked. We engineers are not known for our speaking and writing abilities. To keep you interested, I will make my remarks brief.

I would like to start my remarks by thanking all the students, colleagues and staff who nominated me for this award. I am also thankful to the University of Rhode Island, which provided the environment for me to excel and to go the extra mile in my teaching. This environment is made up of the many outstanding engineering students that URI attracts every year plus the support and encouragement of colleagues in my department and college. The outstanding students make the class livelier by asking interesting and thought provoking questions. These students also make it easier for me to give challenging assignments and exams without hearing too many complaints. My inspiration to be a good teacher is Professor Frank White, currently Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and my colleague during my first eight years at URI. Professor White received the same award 26 years ago, and he was highly admired and loved by many students. I am happy to be joining today the league of faculty such as Professor White in getting this award.

I like to thank my father for one piece of advice that he gave to me as I was growing up: Give your best efforts to whatever you do in your life. I see this advice to be applicable in every aspect of life including our work and our relationship with spouses and children. I have certainly applied this advice in my teaching and I always try to tell my students that it is not enough to do the minimum, but you have to give your best effort to get the most of your time and work.

I became a mechanical engineer because I like to create and build things that move. Creativity and innovation are at the heart of all outstanding products and conveniences that we enjoy in our life today from cars and airplanes to having air-conditioning in Kingston in the summer. Creativity cannot be taught by equations and lecturing, but by actual observation, experimentation, and playing. To be creative, one's imagination should not be bound by rules and limits, but be allowed to roam freely. Children are very creative because they do not have any limitations on their thinking. Our society not only needs creative engineers, but also creative politicians, environmentalists, and planners to solve the ever-increasing problems that face our society and the world. The URI Honors Colloquium series that starts this evening will look at one of these challenging problems: Globalization.

As we start a new academic year, I hope that this year will be rewarding to all individuals associated with this institution. Our state and our university are facing many challenges. I hope that these challenges do not affect the quality of education for which this university is known.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank my wife for her encouragement and support. I would like to leave you with some quotes that I found inspiring and hopefully serve as an inspiration to all of us.

Thank you.