Research Express@NCKU - Commentary (Volume 4 Issue 3)

Thank you very much, Dr. Bonnie Dunbar (CEO of Museum of Flight and former astronaut) for your introduction. Standing next to you gave me the sudden urge to paraphrase the old saying “you cannot soar with turkeys” into “how can you not soar with an astronaut!”

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Da Hsuan Feng. I am the Senior Executive Vice President of National Cheng Kung University. Today, I am here representing my boss, Academician Michael Lai, president of NCKU. Michael truly wants to be here to participate in this historical event for Boeing Corporation and NCKU. Unfortunately, because of a family medical emergency, he could not.

Dr. Bonnie Dunbar (CEO of Museum of Flight and former astronaut)

With 130,000 highly successful alumni dotting the globe, 22,000 highly selected students, 1250 faculty members, and with 9 colleges, from Medicine to Engineering to Humanities, it is unquestionably one of the two most research intensive comprehensive universities in Taiwan. Actually, I would go as far as to say that it is one of the most research intensive universities in Asia Pacific!

Let me take this opportunity to invite all of you to come to visit this fascinating place called Taiwan where NCKU is located. Only 7 months ago, I began my association with NCKU. Since I did not grow up in Taiwan, nor was I educated there, nor did I lived there for any length of time, I felt like a “paratrooper,” just dropped into the university.

As an “outsider,” until fairly recently, I saw something fascinating about Taiwan. So I hope you will allow me to give you an anecdote which underscores this fascination. You probably are thinking that what I will tell you will be how beautiful the landscape of Taiwan is or that it went through an economic transformation, from agriculture to silicon. Well, no, I will simply tell you that the people in Taiwan are truly fascinating.

For those of you who follow world events, you must have learned about the recent presidential election in Taiwan. As a new comer to Taiwan, I watched in awe that the months leading to the day of the election, the debates were, to say it mildly, cantankerous. Yet, on the next day after the election, people everywhere behaved as if nothing serious had taken place. Life went on. The only signal that such a profound event did take place was, on television, the hot debate among so-called “political experts” was about the pros and cons of whether the wife of the newly elected President should take a public bus to work in the morning, as she had done for decades before this new found notoriety!

The calmness on the next day signals a deep maturation of democratic process that is now part of Taiwan’s DNA. It signals the profound transformation of the people! With such transformation, how can Asia Pacific not be a fascination place to visit?

On behalf of the 11 members of our NCKU delegation and all our alumni in the greater Seattle area, I want to thank our friends in Boeing Corporation, from Philadelphia and Seattle, and Museum of Flight, the so-called “Smithsonian of the West,” for your day long hospitality and for this heart warming ceremony for NCKU to present to Boeing Corporation and Museum of Flight the complete lecture notes by Mr. Wong Tsu, delivered to some 500 bright students of NCKU on aerodynamic engineering between 1955 and 1965, the last ten years of his legendary life.

Of course, Mr. Wong was the first aeronautical engineer hired by Mr. William Boeing in 1916!

Ladies and gentlemen, when one thinks of Wong Tsu, linking him with Mr. William Boeing, your founder of this great company, is a must!

Ninty-two years ago, yes, nearly a century ago, as a young man of 25 of age and armed with a Master degree in aeronautical engineering from MIT, Wong Tsu was hired by Mr. Boeing. Such a historical occurrence conjured up a great deal of mental images!

Imaging that just 13 years before Wong Tsu was hired, in 1902, the very concept of flying was in doubt.

Imagine how the Chinese, or for that matter, all minorities, were treated in the United States in the beginning of the 20th century.

Imagine that nearly half a century before that, the United States had to fight a bitter and bloody civil war to free slaves!

Imagine.

Then imagine, ladies and gentlemen, there was Mr. Boeing, a gentleman not especially technically trained, was able to pronounce to the world that to build any human organization, especially a high technology company, (and certainly building a company whose products can and must fly in a robust manner would undoubtedly qualify it as, using today’s vernacular, “high-tech,”) to have the best and the brightest was not negotiable. In hiring Mr. Wong, Mr. Boeing created a solid and profound foundation for the company and pronounced to the world that for him, it was not in the least important what a person looked like in the exterior. The only asset that should be counted was in the interior: passion, knowledge and creativity.

Getting the best and the brightest should and must always be the unshakable foundation of the company.

What impact did hiring Wong Tsu, and having a foundation of going after the best and the brightest for Boeing Corporation, had on the company?

Ladies and gentlemen, today we are on the verge for Boeing Corporation celebrating its centennial in 2016. How many companies in the world, especially in high-technology, can claim to survive and flourish for such a long time? For Boeing Corporation to be in this enviable position, I am convinced that it was because this foundation. Thus, despite the changes in technology and the rapid transformation in how business were conducted in the last century, Boeing is still here today, 92 years later, striving and flourishing.

I have no doubt that if this foundation remains as Boeing Corporation’s fundamental, it will be here not just to celebrate its centennial, but many centuries to come!

Thank you very much.