Chancellor Dorothy Leland
"Education Powering the Green Economy"
Central California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Gala
Fresno, CA
March 9, 2012
[As prepared for delivery]
Good evening. Buenas noches. It is such a pleasure for me to be here tonight with you.
My roots run deep in California, where my mother crossed the border from Mexico and my father from Texas. Both found this great state to be a place where their children could hope for a better future through hard work, perseverance and an abundance of educational and employment opportunities.
Now, so many years later, I am grateful to be back in my native state and in the agricultural heartland of California. Although my parents did not live to see the day when their middle daughter became Chancellor of the University of California's youngest campus, they would have surely recognized the faces of our students.
UC Merced serves a larger percentage of minority, first-generation and low-income students than any other University of California campus. Our students are enormously bright, wonderfully resourceful and also grateful for the opportunity to study at one of the world's most acclaimed research universities. For me, these students are a constant source of delight and inspiration.
These students will also power California's "green" future. Their campus — and please visit if you haven't already — reflects that future in so many ways, beginning with its architecture and buildings.
UC Merced is the only university in the United States to have all of its buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. Every building has been constructed to take advantage of new energy-efficient technologies. We cool our buildings with water drawn from nearby canals, chilled by the night air and circulated through underground pipes during the heat of the day. We supply over 20 percent of our electrical needs from fields of solar panels. We eat on plates created from recycled materials. And, perhaps most importantly, we strive to teach our students to respect the earth's natural resources — gifts of life from God that must be cherished and sustained for future generations.
Before I delve into explaining the importance of education in our region's emerging "green" economy, I thought it would be helpful to take a step back briefly and consider: "What do we mean by a green economy? And why should we care about it here in the Valley?"
Last month, the organization Next 10 — a nonpartisan group focused on the innovation and intersection between the economy, the environment and quality of life issues for all Californians — published a study titled, "Many Shades of Green: California's Shift to A Cleaner More Productive Economy."
The study revealed that the state's "core green economy" showed greater resilience at the height of the recession, and outperformed the overall economy by retaining a greater percentage of its workforce. In other words, certain "green" jobs and sectors fared better than other business sectors when it came to retaining jobs and businesses in California.
Those "green" sectors include businesses that provide products and services related to alternative energy sources, energy and natural resource conservation, pollution reduction and waste repurposing.
Think about it. "Green" businesses survived the recent recession better than many other economic sectors in large part because advances in "green" technology were attractive to businesses and public-sector entities seeking solutions that would help them cut costs, become more efficient and emerge stronger from the economic downturn. The good news is that the "green" economy is still in its infancy, and it holds vast future potential for the creation of new business and industries.
That potential could provide the much-needed diversification and strengthening of our economic base here in the San Joaquin Valley.
These new "green" businesses and industries will most likely be fueled by university-based research in the sciences, engineering and management.
And that's where the University of California comes into the picture. Despite its current fiscal struggles, the State of California is still recognized globally as a cradle of innovation, entrepreneurialism, social justice and cultural advancement.
The Golden State's economy is larger than the economies of almost all of the world's countries. And, the University of California is widely regarded as the premier public research university in the world.
All 10 UC campuses have distinguished themselves as powerhouses of invention, discovery and creation. Their scientists and engineers have generated contributions that have spawned new industries, created rewarding jobs, and brought increased prosperity to their regions and state.
Indeed, nearly all of the industries in which California is a world leader emerged from university-based research. And this will be true also for California's emerging "green" economy.
UC Merced, the newest campus of the University of California, was placed in the San Joaquin Valley to raise levels of educational attainment and also to provide one of the poorest areas of the state with the research-fueled economic engine long enjoyed by the state’s coastal regions.
And I am happy to tell you that, despite UC Merced's youth, our faculty and students are already making discoveries and inventions with great potential for positioning the San Joaquin Valley as a global leader in the emerging "green" economy.
I'd like to give you a few examples of those discoveries and inventions.
Our campus is home to the University of California's Advanced Solar Technologies Institute, which supports faculty, students and postdoctoral researchers who are dedicated to designing and developing innovative solar energy generation technologies that are more efficient, more affordable and the first choice for California and the world.
Recently, a team of researchers redesigned luminescent solar concentrators to be more efficient at sending sunlight to solar cells. The advancement could be an important breakthrough for solar energy harvesting.
Yet another research team at UC Merced has designed and developed a novel system that uses heat from the sun to generate thermal energy that can be used for solar heating and cooling. The design is unique because the solar collectors are stationary and do not require tracking mechanisms that are costly to install and maintain.
Not to be outdone, our nanotechnology group is focusing on the development of a novel non-tracking and inexpensive platform to allow solar energy harvesting based on nano-structured materials that will enhance the performance of traditional silicon and other thin-film solar panels.
In addition to this important research in solar technology, we have scientists working in a variety of other areas vital to the "green" economy such as water quality and conservation, air quality, biofuels and energy management.
Make no mistake. This research — as it matures and is brought to the marketplace through practical applications — has the potential to make the San Joaquin Valley an industry leader in the "green" economy.
The challenge will be to bring the necessary venture capital to the Valley, to keep these new businesses local, and to produce the skilled workforce that will be needed to fill the green-tech jobs that newly spawned businesses will surely create.
And that's where everyone in this room tonight has a role to ensure that the San Joaquin Valley is ready to capitalize on the emerging "green" economy.
Everyone — business and industry leaders, state and federal government officials, philanthropic foundations and individuals — will all have to pull together to attract that much-needed venture capital and to produce the skilled workforce to fill those jobs. As educators, we must redouble our focus on efforts to ensure that the Valley's children—from all walks of life, cultural circumstances, and economic backgrounds—develop higher-level analytical, quantitative and communication skills, and also emerge from the educational process with nimble imaginations and an entrepreneurial spirit.
At UC Meced, our role is to produce the research and innovation, which are the critical underpinnings of the "green" economy, and also to educate students who will be the leaders of its related new industries. But we cannot do this alone, and we will continue to need your help and support. We need your help convincing the state and other funding partners to support the growth of UC Merced's research infrastructure. We need your contacts and connections to help bring the innovations and inventions of our scientists and engineers to market — right here in the San Joaquin Valley. And we need your support for our talented students, many of whom benefit enormously from scholarships and paid internships, to ease their financial burdens.
As I conclude my remarks, I want to introduce someone from UC Merced who is here tonight, sitting at our table. I arrived at UC Merced eight months ago, and I have to tell you that I've been greatly impressed by the talented people at our campus. Dr. Juan Meza is one of them.
Dr. Meza joined our campus community last fall as dean of the School of Natural Sciences. Like many of our students, Juan was the first in his family to attain higher education. The son of Mexican immigrants, he studied at Rice University where he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and a Ph. D. in computational and applied mathematics.
Dr. Meza's research interests lie in the area of high-performance computing and mathematics. He builds mathematical models for large-scale scientific problems in energy and the environment. One area he's working on involves understanding the robustness and vulnerabilities of the electric power grid. His research is yet another example of the sustainability angle of much of the research and teaching conducted at UC Merced.
Our campus is absolutely thrilled to have Juan and will greatly benefit from his expertise.
With your continued support, I can say with perfect confidence that it is people like Juan Meza and our world-class professors and our immensely talented students who will lead the emergence of a vibrant "green" economy here in the fertile heartland of California.
Thank you so much for offering me this opportunity to be with you tonight.
