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Lehigh UniversityI had not visited the campus for quite some time. My eight years of service as a member of the College of Engineering advisory board ended a few years ago when I was engulfed in my doctoral journey. The visit this week was to lay the groundwork for a lecture on campus this Fall about Health Attitude. I met with the dean of the engineering college and then visited Kappa Sigma Fraternity where I lived from 1964 to 1967. I was greeted by the Grand Master, the fraternity’s name for the house president. It was a bit hard for me to imagine that I had been the Grand Master in 1965, a mere fifty years ago. Could I possibly be that old? I would rather think of it as being that young.

A few dozen brothers and I gathered in the chapter room of the fraternity house. I gave a brief summary to the brothers about my career since graduating in 1967 and then opened it up for Q&A. I was impressed with the maturity and depth of the questions the students asked. They were quite interested in my career at IBM and the challenges I faced. Although they are not active consumers of healthcare, they had insightful questions about the healthcare system. They also probed about the beginnings of the Internet and, in particular, the proper role of government and its ability to read our email. They asked tough questions that have no easy answers. I left the fraternity house with a positive feeling that this new generation of graduates would ask these same tough questions in their impending roles as new employees in government and industry.