The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
(www.etc.cmu.edu), but we liked to think of it as “the dream-fulfillment
factory”: a two-year master’s degree program in which artists and
technologists came together to work on amusement rides, computer
games, animatronics, and anything else they could dream up.
The sane universities never went near this stuff, but Carnegie
Mellon gave us explicit license to break the mold.
The two of us personified the mix of arts and technology; right
brain/left brain, drama guy/computer guy. Given how different Don
and I were, at times we became each other’s brick walls. But we always
managed to find a way to make things work. The result was that
students often got the best of our divergent approaches (and they
certainly got role models on how to work with people different from
themselves).
The mix of freedom and teamwork made the feeling in the
building absolutely electric. Companies rapidly found out about us,
and were actually offering written three-year commitments to hire our
students, which meant they were promising to hire people we hadn’t
even admitted yet.
Don did 70 percent of the work on the ETC and deserves more
than 70 percent of the credit. He has also created a satellite campus in
Australia, with plans for other campuses in Korea and Singapore.
Hundreds of students I’ll never know, all over the world, will be able to
fulfill their craziest childhood dreams. That feels great.
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