Indiana State University LEAP Campus-Community Dialogue

Remarks by Timothy K. Sullivan, Vice President of Finance and Information Technology, Smiths Aerospace Components Fabrications--North America

In Thomas Freidman’s book The World is Flat he talks about China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and the impact it will have on the US with increased “offshoring.” Mr. Friedman quotes an African proverb to make his point on the pace of an expanding global market:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster then the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death
It doesn’t matter whether your are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.

With so many employees exiting the workforce over the next ten years (due to baby boomers) X & Y employees will be thrust into management positions with more responsibilities at a record pace and will need a wider breadth of skills and knowledge to fill that void. Students will have to enter the job market running armed with broad based knowledge coupled with a specialization or they will not survive.

Professional degrees alone are not the answer. However, partnered with a liberal education, they will allow employees to achieve the unthinkable, and thus assure this country’s success in the future.

Roger Smith, former CEO of General Motors stated the importance of a liberal education “may ultimately prove to be the most relevant learning model. People trained in the Liberal Arts learn to tolerate ambiguity and to bring order out of apparent confusion. They have the kind of sideways thinking and cross-classifying habit of mind that comes from learning, among other things, the many different ways of looking at literary works, social systems, chemical processes or languages.”

Mexico has started to loose jobs to Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America, not because the labor is cheaper in those areas of the world, but because China, Hungary, and Poland understand that the most important infrastructure must be present to succeed…literacy. Literacy rates and education investments are on the rise in those parts of the world. They realize they need to run faster then the fastest lion to survive.

So, can we, will we, shouldn’t we start today to reaffirm the importance and connection between a liberal education and effective citizens in a competitive global environment? Remember, it doesn’t matter if we are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, we better be running!