ALUMNI PROFILE
Ann McDermott ’81, a M utstan g Al din
n H C O
A MUDDER’S PRIVILEGE: PURSUING THE TRUTH
A Written by STEVEN K. WAGNER
s a freshman at Harvey Mudd College, Ann McDermott’s interest in science began to flourish, eventually evolving into a fluid curiosity about “molecules of life” and enabling her to become an esteemed professor of chemistry at an Ivy League university. Certainly, she
had no idea of the journey that lay ahead, much like the students she addressed during HMC’s 2011 fall convocation. With that in mind, Ann ’81 brought hope and encouragement to stu-
dents eager to leave their mark. “This experience is likely to redefine you by the company you keep,”
Ann, a professor of chemistry at Columbia University, said of the group’s unfolding college years. “Not just the social network you walk away with, but the ways you learn and the ways you achieve success—think- ing not as an individual but as a community. It’s inherently a privilege.” Ann, an expert in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, has
not taken that privilege lightly, rising to become a member of the National Academy of Science, winner of the American Chemical Society Award for Pure Chemistry, and recipient of Harvey Mudd College’s 2011 Outstanding Alumni Award. Her success began with a small seed, she said—the seed of listening. “Listening to what your colleagues have to say is the first step
toward scholarship,” she said. “Not just hearing what you were thinking before they started speaking, but capturing what they mean and re- sponding in an authentic way. That is the beginning of community, the beginning of deep friendships, and the beginning of finding your own authentic voice as a scholar.”
Not only is listening important, Ann said, but so is accepting the responsibility inherent in attending an elite college. According to Ann, graduates have a responsibility to lead, discover and achieve in order to improve the world they inhabit. “The poet [W.B.] Yeats said that we should find responsibility through
our own imagination,” she said. “I see in that the importance of develop- ing a thrilling, compelling vision for something that is new, something that doesn’t exist. We have a responsibility to pursue such visions in preference to ignorance and inaction.” By learning to listen, by embracing responsibility and by translating
those skills into accomplishment, graduates can achieve great success, Ann said. It’s the legacy of a Harvey Mudd College education. “More than at any other institution, you’re here to gain enabling
skills—to act on your vision,” she said, adding that those skills include observation, analysis, scholarship and conceptualization. By effectively utilizing those skills, science and engineering students will have an opportunity to grasp meaningful achievement. “We have, as science and engineering students at an elite school,
the extraordinary opportunity to participate in the generation of brand new information, to construct things that haven’t been constructed be- fore. That’s the pursuit of a certain kind of dream: to be a real explorer and to pursue the truth with freedom and a premium on novelty. This is our special privilege.”
FALL/WINTER 2011 Har vey Mudd College
31
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na and professor of chemistr
y at Colum
bia University, said
her success began with “the
seed of listening.”
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