WEBVTT 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:03.907 Hi I'm Laurie lesson. As of june 1st I will be the president of Worcester 00:00:03.940 --> 00:00:09.517 polytechnic institute in Worcester Mass. And I graduated from CSU in 1987 00:00:09.550 --> 00:00:13.017 with a degree in chemistry. I have a very vivid memory of being a 10 year 00:00:13.050 --> 00:00:17.127 old in my mother's kitchen, seeing the pictures from the viking Landers on 00:00:17.160 --> 00:00:20.727 the surface of MArs in the mid seventies and wanting to reach out and 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:24.337 touch those rocks. I think it's partly because I grew up here in the 00:00:24.370 --> 00:00:28.346 desert that that environment on MArs felt very familiar to me and I really 00:00:28.379 --> 00:00:31.497 wanted to be a part of that. And so that's one of my earliest memories 00:00:31.530 --> 00:00:37.607 about loving space and loving science. So the real, so after I saw the 00:00:37.640 --> 00:00:41.336 pictures from MArs when I was 10 years old I actually kind of forgot about 00:00:41.369 --> 00:00:45.487 it. I had a lot of different interests and uh a lot of things I was 00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:48.967 thinking that I might want to do. But when I was here at A. S. U. I was 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:52.567 fortunate enough through the help of a professor here to get a summer 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:55.766 internship at Nasa between my sophomore and junior years. And when I got 00:00:55.799 --> 00:00:59.307 to do space research and I actually got to study MArs that same mission 00:00:59.340 --> 00:01:02.446 that I had seen the pictures of as a 10 year old. And so it was a 00:01:02.479 --> 00:01:05.846 fantastic opportunity for me to get to see what real research was like. 00:01:05.879 --> 00:01:08.596 And for me it was like a lightning bolt that was it. That was what I 00:01:08.629 --> 00:01:12.566 wanted to spend my scientific career doing after I came back from my 00:01:12.599 --> 00:01:16.307 summer at Nasa when I was a junior here first I was thinking I might have 00:01:16.340 --> 00:01:18.967 to change my major because most of the people who I worked with were 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:22.777 geologists not chemists and I had never taken any geology courses. So I 00:01:22.810 --> 00:01:27.126 but instead of extending my time here as a student I stayed in chemistry 00:01:27.159 --> 00:01:30.826 and started to do research and realized that issue was actually one of the 00:01:30.859 --> 00:01:34.796 few places that had professors who were jointly appointed in chemistry and 00:01:34.829 --> 00:01:39.557 geology. So even back then in the mid eighties the interdisciplinary cross 00:01:39.590 --> 00:01:43.316 disciplinary trans disciplinary sense of a issue was coming through and I 00:01:43.349 --> 00:01:46.277 got to take advantage of that doing research for the chemistry professor 00:01:46.310 --> 00:01:50.777 but learning about geoscience and Space science and doing it. So as a 00:01:50.810 --> 00:01:54.417 scientist when I came back from my Nasa experience as a summer intern as 00:01:54.450 --> 00:01:57.986 an undergraduate I started doing that undergraduate research. I needed to 00:01:58.019 --> 00:02:01.837 go to grad school. I knew I wanted to get a PhD and so I chose to go to 00:02:01.870 --> 00:02:05.777 caltech which had a wonderful program in geochemistry. Again crossing 00:02:05.810 --> 00:02:08.936 those boundaries between chemistry and geology that I could apply to space 00:02:08.969 --> 00:02:12.036 science. So I studied meteorites which is kind of a place where 00:02:12.069 --> 00:02:15.967 geochemistry and space science come together. Um and then did a very 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:19.247 traditional academic path. Actually did a postdoctoral fellowship at U. C 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:23.987 . L. A. Came back to you as a professor which was such a thrill to get to 00:02:24.020 --> 00:02:28.156 come home to me um here on the campus where I was able to do research in 00:02:28.189 --> 00:02:30.957 space science and ended up as the director of the Center for Meteorite 00:02:30.990 --> 00:02:36.436 Studies here. So again a space scientist but also an academic. Um so so it 00:02:36.469 --> 00:02:40.786 was a great path for me but a very traditional academic path up to that 00:02:40.819 --> 00:02:45.207 point. And that is the opportunity for me came actually when Michael Crow 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:48.846 first came to us, you and I was a faculty member here. One of the very 00:02:48.879 --> 00:02:51.816 first senior federal officials he brought to campus was the Nasa 00:02:51.849 --> 00:02:55.177 administrator who at that time was Sean O'keefe. So I got to interact with 00:02:55.210 --> 00:02:59.867 the head of Nasa during that visit. And long story short partly as a 00:02:59.900 --> 00:03:03.126 result of that, I was asked to serve on a Presidential commission on the 00:03:03.159 --> 00:03:07.446 future of Nasa in the future of space exploration. While I was still a 00:03:07.479 --> 00:03:11.057 professor here and that experience was incredible. I was working with lots 00:03:11.090 --> 00:03:14.967 of different people from different sectors, public private government um 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:21.166 nonprofit and got to realize that my fairly traditional academic path um 00:03:21.199 --> 00:03:24.816 maybe it wasn't serving me as well as it could. I needed to broaden my 00:03:24.849 --> 00:03:28.057 experience if I really wanted to help people in the way that I thought I 00:03:28.090 --> 00:03:32.017 could. And so during that experience, several other people on the 00:03:32.050 --> 00:03:34.147 Presidential commission said, you know, you should think about going to 00:03:34.180 --> 00:03:37.136 work in government for a while. And so when the right position came along 00:03:37.169 --> 00:03:42.726 at Nasa even that was very hard to leave my you know my home S. U. Uh to 00:03:42.759 --> 00:03:46.186 go work for the government. I did I I ditched my tenure and went and 00:03:46.219 --> 00:03:48.786 joined the government, worked for Nasa for six years. You know research 00:03:48.819 --> 00:03:52.327 professors or professors who teach and do research and serve the 00:03:52.360 --> 00:03:55.677 university. I used to describe it as sort of like being an entrepreneur, 00:03:55.710 --> 00:03:59.066 being a small business owner even though you're within the umbrella of 00:03:59.099 --> 00:04:03.166 this very supportive institution. We have to raise capital through writing 00:04:03.199 --> 00:04:06.777 research grants. We have people working with us who are students and 00:04:06.810 --> 00:04:10.177 postdoctoral fellows and lead managers and such. So our team that we have 00:04:10.210 --> 00:04:13.517 to manage, we have to produce a product which is new knowledge in the case 00:04:13.550 --> 00:04:17.577 of a scientist which we published in scientific journals in order to get 00:04:17.610 --> 00:04:20.697 more capital flowing in. So there's very much of an entrepreneurial 00:04:20.730 --> 00:04:25.426 mindset there and I think that leadership that is leadership even if it's 00:04:25.459 --> 00:04:29.077 on a smaller scale of a of a research group and so you learn how to lead 00:04:29.110 --> 00:04:35.726 people how to inspire people to work harder and better and smarter and how 00:04:35.759 --> 00:04:39.337 to run an operation and all those things served me really well in Nasa 00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:43.296 leadership. So I say I'm a university brat, I literally grew up on the S. 00:04:43.329 --> 00:04:47.996 U. Campus. I grew up four miles from here. My mother came back to school 00:04:48.029 --> 00:04:50.647 here when I was nine years old. I used to come to classes with her, she 00:04:50.680 --> 00:04:53.746 started working on the campus, used to run a S. U. Metro center which is 00:04:53.779 --> 00:04:57.726 the forerunner of a sus. And so I literally grew up on the campus, I 00:04:57.759 --> 00:05:01.116 started answering phones in the registrar's office when I was 16 years old. 00:05:01.149 --> 00:05:06.056 I love being on a university. Being in universities is in my blood. So 00:05:06.089 --> 00:05:09.656 even though I left a. S. U. As a faculty member to go get that experience 00:05:09.689 --> 00:05:12.976 in the government, I always knew I wanted to come back to academia and I 00:05:13.009 --> 00:05:18.467 was just after six years at Nasa after doing a lot of amazing things I 00:05:18.500 --> 00:05:21.056 started really missing the students, missing the opportunity of 00:05:21.089 --> 00:05:25.717 interactions with students and faculty. And so I um just started again 00:05:25.750 --> 00:05:28.856 keeping my eye open for the right opportunity to come along. And and so 00:05:28.889 --> 00:05:31.926 when I was asked to apply for the deanship at Rensselaer polytechnic 00:05:31.959 --> 00:05:36.517 Institute which is America's oldest technological university it seemed 00:05:36.550 --> 00:05:40.017 like a great transition back into the academic world. Yeah I mean it's 00:05:40.050 --> 00:05:43.827 exciting going to W. P. I. With your polytechnic it's uh we're just going 00:05:43.860 --> 00:05:47.517 to start celebrating the 150th birthday and to be the first woman leader 00:05:47.550 --> 00:05:52.507 there is is a is a real honor and it's going to be very exciting. Um I 00:05:52.540 --> 00:05:55.726 mean I think you learn leadership from wherever you are. I'm always a 00:05:55.759 --> 00:05:58.606 person who believes you can lead from anywhere. I was a faculty member 00:05:58.639 --> 00:06:03.697 here at a. S. U. I lead the the team that formulated and created the 00:06:03.730 --> 00:06:07.127 School of Earth and Space exploration. But as a faculty member not as 00:06:07.160 --> 00:06:10.806 someone who was appointed a leader but just as someone who was asked to 00:06:10.839 --> 00:06:14.426 step into a role. And so I think you can get that experience from almost 00:06:14.459 --> 00:06:18.627 anywhere. Um And to me it's all about learning how to interact with people 00:06:18.660 --> 00:06:24.127 , how to get the best out of people, how to listen to their ideas, marry 00:06:24.160 --> 00:06:28.127 their aspirations and the institutions aspirations with the broader world 00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:32.096 and what it needs and seeing where those things intersect and carrying it 00:06:32.129 --> 00:06:36.027 forward. So that's just something I've learned over the years of all the 00:06:36.060 --> 00:06:39.426 various kinds of leadership opportunities I've been given and that's what 00:06:39.459 --> 00:06:42.036 I'll try to do with WP. So the great thing about space science is there's 00:06:42.069 --> 00:06:44.996 a lot of different ways to get into the field. You can actually do it with 00:06:45.029 --> 00:06:48.166 almost any kind of scientific undergraduate degree whether it be sort of 00:06:48.199 --> 00:06:52.486 physics and astronomy, geology, chemistry or even biology increasingly as 00:06:52.519 --> 00:06:55.527 we think about life in the universe. You can be a biologist and be a space 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:59.286 scientist. So there's in addition obviously to engineering, there's a lot 00:06:59.319 --> 00:07:02.746 of jobs for engineers. So there's many different paths and there's many 00:07:02.779 --> 00:07:05.406 different places that you can work as someone who's a space scientist. you 00:07:05.439 --> 00:07:08.717 can work at a university, you can work for Nasa, you can work for 00:07:08.750 --> 00:07:11.957 aerospace companies, you can work for museums. All of these different 00:07:11.990 --> 00:07:15.676 places have people working in the sciences related to space. So, so 00:07:15.709 --> 00:07:18.556 there's a lot of different options and if people are interested in the in 00:07:18.589 --> 00:07:23.610 the career path, there's a lot of different ways in which is a good thing.