Commencement speakers often tell impending graduates to find their passion and make it their work. Michael Witherell says he views it the opposite.
Someone with his resume is worth listening to on the topic.
“Find something that you think is important to do and work hard at it and make it your passion,” is the message of Mr. Witherell, director of the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
The Toledo native and St. Francis de Sales High School graduate will give the keynote address Saturday at the University of Toledo’s undergraduate commencement ceremony. Since March, 2016, he’s led the U.S. Department of Energy facility, which is America’s oldest national energy research laboratory and is managed by the University of California system.
Mr. Witherell said he is speaking at the commencement, in part, because of how important public universities are to the country. After graduating from St. Francis when he was 15, he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his doctorate in particle physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Since the Great Recession, he said, states have cut back on aid to public universities, even though higher education is a prime driver of economic mobility.
“There's been a great disinvestment in these public universities in states all over the country, just at the time when we need them most,” he said in an interview last week.
That includes public universities big and small. The brilliance of the American education system, Mr. Witherell said, is that there’s not just one or two good schools, but universities providing quality education and conducting great research.
“Research not only helps us to discover new knowledge that advances all areas of study, but also instills critical thinking skills that our students can use to approach problems systematically and come up with solutions that improve everyday life,” UT President Sharon L. Gaber said in a statement. “We look forward to Dr. Witherell sharing his insights with our graduates, especially since he grew up in Toledo and has since made tremendous contributions through research.”
Where Mr. Witherell is not seeing disinvestment is in scientific research, at least not at his lab, something he says people are at times surprised by. His lab is starting to devote more resources to algal blooms, something he knows affects the Toledo area greatly.
“To some extent, no matter what you read in the paper about all the things going on, the government and the taxpayers through the government are supporting our research very well," he said.
He still has deep ties to Toledo because of a large extended family, though he doesn’t get back to town as often as he did when he was director of the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. Still, he knows his way around, he said.
Mr. Witherell was one of four sons born to the late Thomas Witherell and Marie Savage Witherell, and the nephew of Bob Savage, a former UT trustee.
First Published December 9, 2018, 10:36 p.m.
