Thomas's Graduation

Here are shots from the events of May 17, 2008. (http://picasaweb.google.com/MistyLaners/TPMGrad)
The day began early in Wayland with breakfast at 38 East Plain Street. Amy and tribe were visiting for Amy's XX reunion at Middlesex. Jon and Tiffany joined with their crew.
Later that morning, after the skies cleared and while the winds were blowing to dry things off, the ceremonies got underway. This was the 100th anniversary of the graduation of Robert Goddard, considered the father of American rocketry.
The invocation and benediction were, well, memorable. One of the honorary degrees was presented to Woody Flowers, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering who is renowned for his "Introduction to Design" course. He started with that course as a teaching assistant while a grad student. It required students to build a working machine and he intorduced a "friendly" competition among the machines. This evolved to the building of robots to perform specific tasks and was the beginning of robot contests now staged aroun d the world.
The speaker was Jeff Immelt, the chairman and CEO of GE. He was looking forward to the contributions the many newly-hired WPI grads would be making to GE as it continues to adjust and address emerging needs in the world.