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Dean's message:
Berkeley and braving the new flat world
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PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO
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After more than a year on the New York Times best-seller list, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century continues to inspire heated debate. Tom Friedman argues that, because of the leveling of trade and political barriers worldwide and dazzling advances in digital technology, we now live in a “flat” world where it is possible to connect and do business instantaneously with anyone, anywhere on the planet.
As one reviewer says, “He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you’re going to be trampled if you don’t keep up with it.” With China and India now graduating more scientists and engineers than the United States, Friedman warns that our technological and economic preeminence is in jeopardy.
While globalization has enlarged the playing field and sharpened the competition, ironically, it has also enhanced the significance of one’s physical location on the map. I believe that our quality of life actually depends less on what happens in Singapore or Bangalore than on what we choose to do locally: how we care for one another, educate our children, create and attract new industries and high-paying jobs and invest in our infrastructure right here at home.
At Berkeley Engineering, our excellence—and so our ability to contribute significantly to the local, state and national economies—has always depended on attracting, recruiting and retaining the very best and the brightest students and faculty. While we continue to seek out the very best local talent, it is clear that many of the highest-potential people come from beyond our borders. While many other universities are building satellite campuses at remote locations around the world, I believe we at Berkeley must simply double-down on our efforts to identify and bring the best and brightest here to Berkeley, as undergraduates, graduates, postdocs, visiting scholars and faculty, in a strategy I call “intellectual insourcing.”
We must work harder than we ever have before to build upon and extend our regional lead as the most important cradle of discovery and innovation in the world by assembling a critical mass of talent right here in the Bay Area. Ultimately, I believe such a strategy is the most important way Berkeley Engineering can help create a sizeable “bump”—ideally a mountain—on this new flat world.
I welcome your thoughts at dean.forefront@coe.berkeley.edu.
A. Richard Newton
Dean, College of Engineering
Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering |
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