Mines Magazine Turns 100 - the Timothy and Bernadette Marquez ...

Clockwise from top left:Bement is welcomed tothe South Pole, Jan. 2007(courtesy: Peter Rejcek,NSF); Bement is nominatedas director of the NSF byPresident G.W. Bush (GettyImages); Bement and thechairman of the KoreanScience and EngineeringFoundation sign a memorandumof understandingto promote cooperation,Aug. 2006 (courtesy:Jim Crawford, NSF).still in an emergent state. And it’s still not clear whether our societyis willing to adapt to take a longer view, but I think we can be happywith a lot less; I could be happy with a lot less.We are educating people better, which means that young peoplehave more opportunity, more choice. There’s less hunger in the worldtoday. There are more opportunities for women in the world, eventhough there are still areas where they are highly oppressed. Manyargue that if you educate women and give them opportunities, it addsmore to the stability of the world than anything else because of theirsocial outlook.But I’m optimistic about the younger generation. Children now aremore excited about the future. They are less risk-averse. They are morewilling to accept the future on its own terms. I think they take lessfor granted.Why did you decide to come to Mines?During my senior year in high school in Pennsylvania, my father wasrecruited to be the chief electrical/mechanical engineer at ClimaxMolybdenum Mine. After I graduated, I went to work at the mine aswell. My supervisor, Prentice Gain, was a [1920] graduate of Mines,and we got to know each other because we were both reading Nietzsche.Someone had donated a set of German philosophy books tothe reading room: As you can imagine, this was an unusual additioncompared with the other books. So I’d be reading Nietzsche during thebreak in the midnight shift, and he was reading another of Nietzsche’sbooks, and we started talking. It was he who encouraged me to goto Mines. In fact, he helped me fill out the admission form, and thenmade a life-changing covenant with me. He agreed to put up the firstsemester’s tuition. If I made it beyond the first semester, I wouldn’towe him a dime. If I didn’t make it, I could pay him back out of mywages. As an in-state student, I didn’t have to pass the entrance exam.They allowed me to attend for one semester to see if I could make it.If I didn’t, I was out. So I had those two challenges in front of me.That first semester was a killer. If Colorado School of Mines taught meanything, it was how to succeed in spite of indomitable challenge.Once I got through the first semester, I wasn’t going to leave.The school has changed a great deal since then. How do you feel aboutthe Mines of today, versus the institution you knew in the early fifties?The school has done remarkably well. Mines has kept faithful to itsniche, in terms of the natural sciences, mineral science and earth science,while other schools were moving away from these fields. Rightnow, we’ve gained perhaps the highest level of recognition for excellenceamong top-tier universities that wouldn’t have accepted theschool as a peer a few years ago. As an undergraduate university, itstands alone, and the graduate research program is very much strongerthan it was in the past. Mines turns out a very special product.When the interview ended—much too soon for me—I shookBement’s hand and took a last look around. A recently completedportrait sat on an easel in the corner—a stately full-body renderingof the director standing in his office. It was skillfully painted andlikely composed to complement other portraits of his predecessors,but something didn’t fit. It wasn’t until later that I put my finger onit—he was standing still. Based on all that I had learned about theman, his life has been spent in motion. You can’t achieve all that he’sachieved standing still. And he still isn’t.Colorado School of Mines 29