I would now like to present the Gordon Y Billard Awards, named in honor of an alumnus of the Class of 1924. One hundred years after his graduation from MIT, Gordon Billard’s legacy inspires us to recognize individuals who provide special service of outstanding merit for the Institute.
Our first recipient is Richard K. Lester, Vice Provost for International Activities and the Japan Steel Industry Professor. Richard has been a member of the MIT faculty for more than 40 years, and in that time, he has gone above and beyond in a daunting range of ways.
MIT President Emeritus Rafael Reif thinks of Richard as “MIT’s Secretary of State.” And we can see why. In the ‘80s and 90s, Richard became a leading force at MIT, and in the national conversation, for how the US could regain its economic vitality and competitiveness.
In 2015, he was advancing IT’s interests in its international academic engagements, with strategies that have been widely lauded in Congress and elsewhere as models for other institutions to follow.
But the crowning accomplishment of his career is his devoted, sustained, deeply thoughtful orchestration of MIT’s institutional response to climate change – a subject that appeared nowhere in his official job description.
As one colleague summed it up: “The MIT community has benefited in great measure from Richard’s thoughtfulness and thoroughness. He is the best possible thought partner.”