In a ceremony steeped in Carnegie Mellon pageantry, history and tradition, Subra Suresh was officially installed as the university's ninth president on Friday, Nov 15, the 113th anniversary of the university's founding.

The ceremony opened with a performance by Tony Award-winner Patina Miller (A'06). Several gave remarks welcoming Suresh to Carnegie Mellon, including Allan Meltzer, the longest-standing faculty member at CMU, Faculty Senate Chair Roberta Klatzky, Alumni Association President Toni Ungaretti (MM'70), Staff Council Chair John Lanyon and student representatives. English Professor Jim Daniels read a special poem he wrote for the ceremony, titled "Rivers."
 
Keynote speaker Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, praised CMU as "a mythical place of achievement" where the field of computer science was created. He called CMU a center of innovation, problem-solving and wealth creation, and said Suresh's background provides "the perfect combination to lead us forward."  He called Suresh "a great leader for a great institution."

In his inaugural address, President Suresh tied CMU's past with its future recognizing the presidents and scholars before him who shaped CMU's intellectual vitality, including the late Herbert Simon, for whom CMU's recently announced Simon Initiative is named.

And he reflected on Carnegie Mellon's history of philanthropists including founder Andrew Carnegie and David Tepper (TPR'82), whose most recent gift of $67 million will help build a new home for the Tepper School and the David A. Tepper Quadrangle (see story below).

President Suresh compared his life's journey to Carnegie's, but he had a different take on Carnegie's words,  which became the university's motto. "My work is from the heart," Suresh said.

Watch the investiture ceremony.
Read more and see photos from the event.

A $67 million gift from the charitable foundation of CMU alumnus and renowned investor David A. Tepper (TPR'82) will be used to create an academic hub on the Pittsburgh campus' Morewood parking lot site. The gift is the largest from a CMU graduate and for a CMU building project  in university history.

The "David A. Tepper Quadrangle" will include a 295,000 square-foot building that will be a new home for CMU's Tepper School of Business. The LEED-Gold certified facility will include a welcome center; a large auditorium and classrooms equipped with technology for teaching learning and communication; meeting and collaboration spaces; and a fitness center and café. It also will house the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation.

"This new building will strategically co-locate a variety of university-wide activities to tap into CMU's interdisciplinary culture, and it will integrate the rich heritage of innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship from all parts of CMU," President Suresh said.

Pictured above is an artist's rendering, not the final design.

Read more of the story.
Watch the video.

Teachers and parents like to use board games to teach skills that range from fair play to counting. But, when it comes to improving early number skills, a study by Carnegie Mellon and Boston College researchers sheds new light on learning numbers.

The researchers tested two counting methods in a study of 40 children who played a 100-space board game like Chutes & Ladders. In the first method, referred to as "count-from-1," children started counting from the number one each time they moved a piece. In the other method, students would "count-on" from their latest landing spot in the game. So a child who had moved her piece 15 spaces would "count-on" beginning with 16 during her next move.

Researchers found that the process of counting-on improved a child's ability to learn about numbers, while the standard "count-from-1" method led to considerably less learning.

Read the full story.

The Internal Communications team wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Look for the next 8.5 x 11 News on Thursday, Dec. 5.