Today’s meeting was called to order by President Dawn and, accompanied by Jody Tull, we sang the patriotic song.

New member Rona Hu then delivered a moving inspiration:

Dear Rotarians, friends, and guests,

It is my honor to welcome you all to our Rotary luncheon today. I’m grateful to share a brief reflection from my own journey.

When I was younger, I tried very hard to control life — every goal, and every outcome. But the tighter I tried to hold on, the more lost I felt.

To find some calm, I began meditating at a small Daoist temple hidden in the mountains of Taiwan.

One day, as I sat in the temple, a sentence seemed to appear in my mind, as if someone had placed a card before me. It said: “You can never imagine something better than your imagination.”

That moment changed me. I realized we all live within our own “thinking frame,” and sometimes humility begins when we stop insisting we already know the answers.

“Is it the truth?” The first question from our Rotary’s Four-Way Test reminds me every day to stay open, open to truth, open to others, and open to grace.

Just last month, when my student visa was about to expire, I rented an Airbnb and became friends with the owner. After only three days, he said, “I think America needs to keep you here. I have a company and I’d love to hire you if you need help.” Who could predict such kindness? Thanks to his help, I stayed and eventually got my current job at the medical school. Life seems to be full of miracles.

Let me close with a few lines by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Go to the Limits of Your Longing”:

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

May we all keep going, and keep serving, with open hearts.

Thank you, and welcome.

Downs Herold led us in singing Smile, Sing a Song.

Guests and announcements

We welcomed several guests today including family members, an EMU Dean, UM advancement staff, a Rotarian from a Japanese club whose mother was a former member of our club, and a visitor interested in membership.  Thank you to the meeting coordinators: Roger Fraser, Bryn Mickle, Mary Sutton, Carolyn Hiatt, Tom Millard, Rob Shiff, Don Deatrick, and Pattie Katcher.

Announcements included:

• President Dawn noted the passing of Past President, Jim Cook (2008-09).
• Rob Shiff reminded us of the upcoming Send Hunger Packing event on Nov 8th at Pioneer HS from 9am-noon.  We have 7,000-8,000 meals to pack! 
• John White gave us an update on the Pennies for Polio initiative – bring in your pennies!  The deadline is next week.  The money raised thus far equates to about 3,000 polio immunizations! 
• Our new Rotaract Club is holding a charter dinner at Knight’s on October 27th at 7:30pm ($25).

U-M College of Engineering: Educating Visionary Leaders and Advancing Bold Discoveries 

Bob Mull then introduced our speaker, Karen Thole, Dean, University of Michigan’s College of Engineering.  Karen provided a little about her background, growing up in southern Illinois on a dairy farm, where the usual professions for women (teaching, nursing, etc) were not of interest to her.  Instead, she became interested in aviation and specifically/ultimately about the cooling of turbine engines which became her field of study.  She passed around a couple of examples of fan blades to show examples of those that were not ‘cooled’ properly and one that was.

Karen’s presentation provided loads of information about the College of Engineering (CoE).  To begin, the CoE has 11 graduate programs, brings in $369M in research funding and enrolls 12,211 students (23% of UMs overall enrollment).  Getting admitted to the College is tough!  From 28,000 applicants, they admit 1,700 students whose median GPA is 3.90!

Other interesting statistics include 89% graduating with a bachelor’s degree are employed or are continuing their education; 85% of masters graduates are employed and 95% of PhD graduates are employed in industry or academia.  The mission of the college to educate visionary leaders, advance bold discoveries and prepare engineers to solve great challenges.  Looking ahead, they are strategically planning to have students thrive in our ever evolving world by engaging with the CoE’s Leadership Center and to be exposed early in their college careers to AI-driven education.

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