John Hennessy: The Godfather of Silicon Valley - A Tau Beta Pi Profile | Study Guides, Projects, Research Engineering

24 FALL 2016 THE BENT OF TAU BETA PI

EW UNIVERSITY presidents receive

such accolades as John Hennessy

when he retired from Stanford

University this past August.

During his 16 years as president,

his school rose to become one of

the world’s top universities, and its under-

graduate program supplanted Harvard’s

as the nation’s most selective. Thanks to

generous financial aid, most students graduate debt-free.

Equally important, Hennessy embedded Stanford—

and its faculty and alumni—into the innovation economy

in ways that few other schools could match. There, he

worked closely with such future Silicon Valley icons as

Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Yahoo’s Jerry

Yang. Renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen

called him “the godfather of Silicon Valley.” When Presi-

dent Barack Obama toured the Valley in 2011, Hennessy

was the only non-industry leader to meet with him. With

ties like that, no wonder Hennessy was able to double

Stanford’s endowment.

Perilous Test

Yet in 2008, eight years into his tenure, Hennessy faced

a perilous test. In a matter of weeks, the Great Recession

erased $5 billion of Stanford’s $18 billion endowment.

That left a budget gap of hundreds of millions of dol-

lars. Hennessy had been in a similar position before. In

1984, he had had co-founded MIPS Computer Systems to

develop high-speed computer processors. The company

attracted venture capital and grew to 120 employees.

Then hard times hit.

by Alan S. Brown

“Sometimes, you have to just get up

and lead,” Hennessy said. “We brought

in a new CEO and we decided that we

had to lay off one-third of the company to

survive. After the pink slips went out, I

had to get up at the local TGIF and inspire

everyone that was left. We had shed some

people, but not our stars. But we worried

that the stars might conclude it was time

to leave ship. We didn’t want to lose any of them.”

Hennessy stood up and laid out the facts. MIPS’s

technology outperformed conventional microprocessors.

Several large companies were interested. The layoffs

were painful, but they ensured MIPS would have the

resources to grow. It apparently worked because MIPS

thrived.

Stanford was much larger. It had a multi-billion-dol-

lar budget, 2,000 faculty members, and more than 15,000

students. Yet Hennessy believed the same principles

applied.

“If you have to go through a dark time, the faster

you act, the better,” Hennessy said. “We could either cut

student aid or lay off staff and faculty. We decided to do a

layoff, and do it fast. This is counter-intuitive to univer-

sity culture, which likes to plan for months or years. We

did it in six months.”

Stanford bounced back. Its endowment has grown

to more than $22 billion and its influence is greater than

ever. It was another achievement for John Hennessy,

who started out as a bookish child and never thought

much about leadership.“I was probably what you would

call a nerd today,” he recalled. “I was a big reader and I

liked science, espe-

cially blowing things

up with chemistry

sets—they used to

have lots of chemicals

kids can’t get today.”

Hennessy grew

up in Huntington, a

suburban Long Island

town 40 miles outside

New York City. His

father, an engineer,

worked graveyard

shifts on Cold War

electronics projects

at Sperry Rand. His

What does it mean to be a

leader? In this series “Profiles

in Leadership,” Tau Beta Pi

is exploring that essential

question through the lives

of member engineers who

attained leadership positions

in their fields.

John L. Hennessy III, Ph.D., Pennsylvania Theta ’73, president, Stanford University, 2000-16

John Hennessy:

The Godfather of Silicon Valley

Profiles in Leadership #9

Hennessy, center, with President Obama and Apple

CEO Tim Cook at the 2015 White House Summit on

Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford.

Partial preview of the text

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EW UNIVERSITY presidents receive such accolades as John Hennessy when he retired from Stanford University this past August. During his 16 years as president, his school rose to become one of the world’s top universities, and its under- graduate program supplanted Harvard’s as the nation’s most selective. Thanks to generous financial aid, most students graduate debt-free. Equally important, Hennessy embedded Stanford— and its faculty and alumni—into the innovation economy in ways that few other schools could match. There, he worked closely with such future Silicon Valley icons as Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Yahoo’s Jerry Yang. Renowned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called him “the godfather of Silicon Valley.” When Presi- dent Barack Obama toured the Valley in 2011, Hennessy was the only non-industry leader to meet with him. With ties like that, no wonder Hennessy was able to double Stanford’s endowment.

Perilous Test Yet in 2008, eight years into his tenure, Hennessy faced a perilous test. In a matter of weeks, the Great Recession erased $5 billion of Stanford’s $18 billion endowment. That left a budget gap of hundreds of millions of dol- lars. Hennessy had been in a similar position before. In 1984, he had had co-founded MIPS Computer Systems to develop high-speed computer processors. The company attracted venture capital and grew to 120 employees. Then hard times hit.

by Alan S. Brown

“Sometimes, you have to just get up and lead,” Hennessy said. “We brought in a new CEO and we decided that we had to lay off one-third of the company to survive. After the pink slips went out, I had to get up at the local TGIF and inspire everyone that was left. We had shed some people, but not our stars. But we worried that the stars might conclude it was time to leave ship. We didn’t want to lose any of them.” Hennessy stood up and laid out the facts. MIPS’s technology outperformed conventional microprocessors. Several large companies were interested. The layoffs were painful, but they ensured MIPS would have the resources to grow. It apparently worked because MIPS thrived. Stanford was much larger. It had a multi-billion-dol- lar budget, 2,000 faculty members, and more than 15, students. Yet Hennessy believed the same principles applied. “If you have to go through a dark time, the faster you act, the better,” Hennessy said. “We could either cut student aid or lay off staff and faculty. We decided to do a layoff, and do it fast. This is counter-intuitive to univer- sity culture, which likes to plan for months or years. We did it in six months.” Stanford bounced back. Its endowment has grown to more than $22 billion and its influence is greater than ever. It was another achievement for John Hennessy, who started out as a bookish child and never thought much about leadership.“I was probably what you would call a nerd today,” he recalled. “I was a big reader and I liked science, espe- cially blowing things up with chemistry sets—they used to have lots of chemicals kids can’t get today.” Hennessy grew up in Huntington, a suburban Long Island town 40 miles outside New York City. His father, an engineer, worked graveyard shifts on Cold War electronics projects at Sperry Rand. His

What does it mean to be a leader? In this series “Profiles in Leadership,” Tau Beta Pi is exploring that essential question through the lives of member engineers who attained leadership positions in their fields.

f

John L. Hennessy III, Ph.D., Pennsylvania Theta ’73, president, Stanford University, 2000-

John Hennessy:

The Godfather of Silicon Valley

Profiles in Leadership #

Hennessy, center, with President Obama and Apple CEO Tim Cook at the 2015 White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford.

This Leader In Brief Full professional name: John L. Hennessy. Most recent position: President, Stanford University, 2000-retired September 2016. Birthplace: Huntington, NY, 1952. Highest degree: Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, State Uni- versity of New York, Stony Brook, 1977. Major career highlights: Stanford University, rising from assistant to full professor of electrical engineering, 1977- 1986, director, Computer Systems Laboratory, 1983-93; founder, MIPS Computer Systems, 1984; chair, Computer Science at Stanford, 1994-96, dean, School of Engineering, 1996-99; co-Founder and chairman, Atheros Communica- tions, 1998-2010; provost, Stanford University, 1999-2000; president, Stanford University, 2000-16. Board memberships: Alphabet (formerly Google, lead independent director), 2004-current; Cisco Systems, 2002-current, Daniel Pearl Foundation, 2002-current, Gor- don and Betty Moore Foundation, 2012-current. Honors: IEEE John von Neumann Medal, 2000; Ameri- can Society for Engineering Education Benjamin Garver Lamme Award, 2000; Association for Computing Machinery Eckert-Mauchly Award, 2001; IEEE Seymour Cray Com- puter Engineering Award, 2001; NEC C&C Prize for lifetime achievement in computer science and engineering, 2004; American Academy of Arts and Sciences Founders Award, 2005; and IEEE Medal of Honor, 2012. Hennessy is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Association for Computing Machinery, and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences. Greatest accomplishment: Making Stanford affordable to everyone, regardless of family income. Family: Married to Andrea Berti, 1974. They have two grown sons. Hobbies: Golf, bicycling, gardening. Favorite books: Histories and biographies. If you could do one thing over: I would have really liked to have created a satellite campus in New York City.

mother, with whom he was close, instilled in him a love of reading. Hennessy liked building things as well as blowing them up and gravitated towards engineering. In fact, he and a friend won a local science prize with a computer he built from spare relays and other parts. “It played tic-tac-toe. If you know the game, you can never lose. So we built a machine that could play the game and it turned out to be rather successful,” Hen- nessy said. He liked his first taste of computing. Since there were no computer science majors in 1969, he entered Villanova University as an electrical engineering major. The school had a good engineering program, and it also promised to provide the young Hennessy with a broader liberal arts background, something his father thought was important. Hennessy liked the campus, and its sub- urban Philadelphia location was just far enough for him to feel independent and still vist home easily. Hennessy excelled in his first semester and loaded up on classes for the second semester. Then, in February, his father asked him to come home. When he arrived, his mother was on her deathbed. “I knew she had been ill, but never thought it was that serious,” he said. “Clearly, they wanted to shelter me from what was happening.” It was a difficult time. Hennessy returned to school, but stumbled through his classes. He attended summer school to get his studies back on track. While there, he landed a job at the computer center helping students debug their programs.

Love of Teaching “That’s where I discovered my love of teaching. Then I got involved in a computer research project in my junior year and resolved to get my Ph.D.,” Hennessy said. He also discovered Tau Beta Pi. “I like to be around other people who are intellectually curious and have dif- ferent experiences and they can share.” After graduating in three-and-one-half years, he applied to State University of New York, Stony Brook. It was the only graduate school that would admit him in January and provide financial aid. This allowed him to marry Andrea Berti, whom he had dated since his high school prom, even though their colleges were more than 300 miles apart. Hennessey describes himself as “really blessed” as a graduate student: “I was handed a research topic in my first year that turned into my Ph.D. thesis—software for real-time systems. This involved creating control sys- tems for microprocessors, which in 1974 was an area that was just exploding,” he said. Even though Stony Brook had not yet achieved a national reputation, Hennessy’s research turned heads. It earned him interviews at 16 universities when he graduated in 1977. He chose Stanford and moved to Palo Alto just as the barest outlines of Silicon Valley were beginning to emerge. Hewlett-Packard was building minicomputers. Intel was starting to make microprocessors. Apple was just emerging. And there was little traffic.

systems laboratory, a research and teaching center. He chaired the computer science department from 1994 to 1996, when he was named dean of the school of engineer- ing. In 1999, he succeeded Condoleezza Rice as provost. One year later, Stanford chose him as president. “When I was considering the dean of engineering job,” Hennessy said, “the current dean told me, ‘This is a service job. You’re serving the faculty and the students.’ That sunk in deeply. I’ve always felt that I’m here to help them thrive.” One of the ways he did that was through fundrais- ing, raising a record $6.2 billion through the Stanford Challenge. But it was fundraising with a purpose. His own experience had taught him that Stanford faculty and students could have an impact on the world. He inspired the faculty to play a larger role in such global issues as the environment and sustainability, globalization and de- velopment, and engineering and medicine. He built new centers focused on these issues to bring together faculty from different departments and encourage multidisci- plinary research. Hennessy strengthened Stanford’s humanities, which he called “good but not great,” and built studios and performance spaces. He also continued to nurture the school’s symbiotic relationship with Silicon Valley. He leaves behind not only one of the world’s best universities, but a wealthier campus poised to invest in the future. Yet, when asked about his proudest accom- plishment, Hennessy talks about making Stanford acces- sible to everyone. Students from families earning $65, or less receive free tuition, room, and board. Those whose families earn less than $125,000 receive free tuition. Two out of three students receive financial aid, and most graduate debt-free. “We attract students from more modest means, and we were able to hold the course even through the reces- sion,” Hennessy said. At 64, John Hennessy is still young. After he leaves, he plans to spend time on Stanford’s new Knight-Hen- nessy Scholarships, funded by Nike founder and Stanford MBA Philip Knight, which will give 100 civic leaders from around the world a Stanford graduate education. He says he misses the excitement of growing a busi- ness and may re-enter industry. Yet there is one thing of which Hennessy is sure: “Engineering is the place to be. It gets back to the skills I brought to business and to Stanford. Engineers are using those skills to solve problems, to invent things, to change the world—and it’s intellectually exciting and challeng- ing,” he said.

Above: President Hennessy teaches a Sophomore College seminar, “The Intellec- tual Excitement of Computer Science” in 2002. Center: Hen- nessy and his wife Andrea arrive at parents’ day on campus in 2006. Below: Hennessy speaks at the 2015 convocation.

Alan S. Brown has been an editor and freelance writer for more than 30 years and lives in Dayton, NJ (insight01@ verizon.net). A member of the National Association of Science Writers and former co-chair of the Science Writers in New York, he graduated magna cum laude from New College at Hofstra University in 1974. He is an associate editor of Mechanical Engineering and contributes to a wide range of engineering and scientific publications.

John Hennessy: The Godfather of Silicon Valley - A Tau Beta Pi Profile, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Engineering

Partial preview of the text

Download John Hennessy: The Godfather of Silicon Valley - A Tau Beta Pi Profile and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Engineering in PDF only on Docsity!

24 F^ ALL^2016 T^ HE^ B^ ENT^ OF^ TAU^ BETA^ PI

by Alan S. Brown

f

John Hennessy:

The Godfather of Silicon Valley