From the Sunday Gazette, Feb. 23, 2003
“Outlook 2003” supplement
Union College grads thrive in careers at IBM
“My father
worked for General Electric at the Research and Development Center in Niskayuna, so I was always exposed to technology, and
Union had a great reputation for that. But I also
found that there was such a tremendous liberal arts program there and that I
could also take world class courses in psychology and political science too,
which I did.”
John E. Kelly III
IBM senior vice president
By BRIAN McGUIRE
Gazette Reporter
SCHENECTADY – “What are you going to do with
that?”
It's a question every liberal arts
major has heard at least once – a rhetorical question that's meant to elicit
the following one-word answer: Nothing.
According to common belief, the
liberal arts are, well, worthless. Particularly for those who hope to
“make it” in the world.
And while famous exceptions exist –
former AOL Time Warner boss Gerald Levin earned his degree in philosophy;
master builder Robert Moses wrote poetry before reshaping the face of New York
City; and Bill Gates, the world's richest man, has no degree at all – the
perception that anything outside business or the hard sciences is a sure path
to penury or aimlessness is not likely to go away soon.
Unless, of course, business leaders
themselves begin to say otherwise.
Meet John E. Kelly III. A senior
vice president at IBM, Kelly attributes much of his success to a background in
science and the humanities. It's the type of training Kelly's alma mater, Union College, has pushed for years. And it's not
coincidental, Kelly and others believe, that three of IBM's 17 senior vice
presidents attended the Schenectady school.
Kelly graduated from Union in 1976 and was named a trustee at the
school earlier this month. As the senior vice president and group executive of
IBM's technology group, he directs thousands of employees and is closely
involved in IBM's work with Albany NanoTech.
Good reputation
A native of Albany, Kelly attended Bishop McCloskey High School (now Bishop Maginn) and earned a doctorate
in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Kelly joined IBM in 1980.
“My father worked for General
Electric at the Research and Development Center in Niskayuna, so I was always exposed to technology, and
Union had a great reputation for that,”
Kelly said. “But I also found that there was such a tremendous liberal
arts program there and that I could also take world class courses in psychology
and political science too, which I did.”
Other Union grads who hold
executive positions with the Armonk-based company are Steven Mills, '73, and
Robert Moffat, '78. Mills controls IBM's entire software operation, shaping a
budget of more than $13 billion and directing more than 30,000 employees in a
division that accounts for more than one-third of IBM's profits. His degree was
in psychology.
“At Union, I took a very broad range of courses in
history, political science and literature,” Moffat said. “The
experience helped me develop a strong set of organization and communication
skills. . . . My education at Union gave me a lot of basic skills that have
been invaluable.”
Moffat is senior vice president,
IBM Integrated Supply Chain, a job that puts him in charge of three divisions
at the company: Personal Computing, Retail Store Solutions and Printing
Systems.
Moffat joined IBM in 1978 and spent
most of his career on the personal computer side.
In 1999, he was awarded the Franz
Edelman Award for work on advanced fulfillment, co-location and channel
collaboration initiatives.
An All-American track star in
college, Moffat was the NCAA Division III 400-meter dash champion in his senior
year. He said the discipline of track and Union's academic program were ideal preparations
for his current leadership role. “Beyond the obvious academic preparation,
Union has a unique trimester program that
simulated the business environment very well,” Moffat said. “In a
10-week trimester, you always needed to stay on top of your work and manage
your time, which was exacerbated because of the training required to maintain
All-American athlete stature.”
Charlie Casey, Union's news director, said he thinks the
school's emphasis on interdisciplinary work molds good leaders.
“None of these executives were
engineering grads,” Casey said. “That's something we like to tout,
and I think that's our special niche – that our graduates will make good
managers and executives.”
IBM seems to agree.
According to company records, IBM
employs roughly 400 Union graduates, and as recently as last March, gave the
school $1 million for a new Converging Technologies program.
The initiative is meant to
encourage hands-on work in cutting-edge technologies while at the same time
promoting study in the humanities. Kelly, Moffat and Mills were all on hand to
present the gift.
Important relationship
Kelly said he thinks the relationship between Big Blue and Union is significant.
“It's a very special
relationship in that we believe the quality of students we get out of there is
high – that their track record at IBM is generally very, very good,” he
said.
Which is not to say that the
relationship is unique.
According to Donna Mattoon, an IBM
spokeswoman in Albany, IBM gave more than $36 million to
educational institutions worldwide last year alone. Over the past 10 years, the
company has handed out more than $150 million.
The most likely recipients are
schools that already boast a broad science and technology infrastructure and
which graduate a high number of graduates in applied sciences. Before the
technology boom of the past two decades, science and computing companies were more
willing to hire people from a liberal arts background. Today, the hiring
landscape is considerably more specialized.
“Thirty years ago, companies
like IBM hired people with general degrees, such as psychology, and then put
them through rigorous training,” Mills said. “Today, we look for
people with a range of skills. [But] there is more emphasis on knowledge and
experience around information technology as a requirement to being hired.”
Still, the number of schools
receiving awards from IBM was limited to 100 and, Mattoon said, that puts Union in very good company.
“It looks to me like Union is in an exclusive club,” she said. As
part of the Converging Technologies program, which focuses on bioengineering,
mechatronics, nanotechnology and pervasive computing, Union students have
access to an IBM RS/6000 supercomputer at the University at Albany.
The computer, which is used to
solve problems associated with the development of miniature computer chips, is
equipped to handle the type of work that will be done at the Albany NanoTech
facilities on Fuller
Road
and should therefore increase the likelihood that Union graduates will stay in
the area after graduation.
Bill Schwarz, Union's director of corporate and government
relations, was one of 30 area leaders to visit Austin, Texas, with the Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce in early
February. He said he hopes Union's academic offerings and its close
relationships with IBM and various other companies in the state will keep the
school's undergraduate population – 60 percent of which comes from states
outside New York – from leaving New York after graduation. Schwartz also said
the Capital Region's expected transformation into a technology center would be
compatible with a Union education.
“We are very confident that Union's blend of engineering and liberal arts is
a great preparation for that kind of environment,” Schwarz said.
Union's connection to IBM predates Kelly, Mills
and Moffat. Big Blue's founder, Thomas Watson Sr., delivered the school's commencement
address in 1953 and Watson's son, Thomas Watson Jr., gave the address in 1984.
Both Watsons have received honorary degrees from Union.
In 1963, John Irwin II, an American
ambassador to France whose mother was the sister of Thomas
Watson Sr., delivered Union's commencement speech.
Seniors at Union are eligible for a fellowship Thomas Watson
Jr., endowed at 25 small U.S. colleges in 1968. Today, the Watson
fellowships support one year of self-directed study abroad for students at 50
colleges in the country.
The Watson family has endowed one
professorship at Union, an engineering post. And IBM continues to
endow a scholarship for women and minority engineering students at the college.
According to college records, Union has received more than $1.6 million in
matching gifts from the company over a period of decades.
“At the risk of minimizing the
relationship Union has with other businesses, I would say the
IBM partnership is an important one,” Casey said.
IBM employs 319,876 people. Annual
revenue was $85.9 billion in 2001, with income of $7.7 billion. The company has
had five Nobel prize winners since incorporating in New York City in 1911. The most recent winners were in
1987.
As for Union's interdisciplinary approach, Casey said it
allows students to train in a science while at the same time gaining exposure
to the larger ideas and issues a manager will be expected to confront.
It's a philosophy that Kelly says
he learned over time.
“As I look back now, that was
a tremendous help to me,” Kelly said of taking classes outside his major.
“I had a much broader perspective than physics. I guess I'm living proof
of what they espouse.”