‘No food in the gas tank’

While some graduation ceremonies focus on the broad spectrum of the future, UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering had a specific goal in mind at its commencement ceremony Friday morning.

“No food in the gas tank,” said guest speaker Robert Liebeck, a professor at UCI, MIT and the Manager of the Blended-Wing-Body Airplane Program for Boeing, referring to the challenge for engineers to develop new ways to create energy.

With an unstable economy, gas prices rising and a job market that is getting narrow, it isn’t the most comfortable of situations to be graduating in, but it didn’t stop UCI students from celebrating or being ambitious about tomorrow.

“I am not scared. I am glad I am graduating,” said John Johnson. “I am going to work for the government to try to alleviate traffic congestion.”

Johnson added his goal was to engineer consistent improvements for society through sustainable resources and projects.

According to Liebeck, the challenges the world faces in the future will be the challenges engineers will tackle.

“These problems won’t be solved by [master’s of business administration students], attorneys or sub-prime lenders,” Liebeck said. “They will be solved by you.”

It was fitting that at the year’s end, one of the first ceremonies for undergraduates at UCI’s 43rd commencement began with the School of Engineering, as some of the school’s major accomplishments in 2007-08 have been its eagerness and action in creating new buildings to expand the university.

The school has invested more than $1 billion into the campus and medical center. The New University Hospital is almost complete, and the school was recently given $27.2 million to create a new stem cell facility.

Another of the year’s highlights was when the School of Engineering hired Rafael Bras as the new engineering dean. Bras previously worked at MIT and will begin at UCI Sept. 1.

UCI will continue its commencement ceremonies throughout the weekend at the Bren Events Center. The School of Social Ecology also had its ceremony Friday, while the School of Humanities, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, the School of Physical Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences will pass out degrees today to the deserving students.

Sunday will end the undergraduate ceremonies with the Paul Merage School of Business and the School of Social Sciences.

The university will award degrees to 6,508 students over the course of all its ceremonies, including doctoral degrees, master’s, bachelor’s and doctor of medicine degrees.

TOTAL DEGREES: 6,508

BACHELOR’S DEGREES: 5,183

MASTER’S DEGREES: 884

DOCTORAL DEGREES: 351

DOCTOR OF MEDICINE DEGREES: 90

DANIEL TEDFORD may be reached at (714) 966-4632 or at daniel.tedford@latimes.com.