A swan song (or a fanfare): some thoughts of an institute director after 30 years of service.

S everal years ago, Prof. Randy Pausch, a young superstar in computer science, gave a much-discussed lecture at Carnegie Mellon. In an address that was advertised as his last, Pausch entertained a packed hall with his stories about his fulfillment of some rather spectacular childhood dreams (e.g., experiencing zero gravity; becoming an Imagineer for Disney). A leader in the creation of virtual realities (the stuff of which movie special effects are made), Pausch knew how to grab an audience’s attention. His depiction of his childhood aspirations and their mostly adult fulfillment was sufficiently entertaining and the insights were sufficiently touching that the genre of last lecture became the focal point of much conversation. Indeed, the Carnegie Mellon lecture itself has been viewed by about 15 million people on You Tube. Fortuitously, Pausch’s purportedly last lecture actually was the first in a series of “last” lectures, and he made the round of talk shows to promote