Commencement speaker talks life, success

Bert O’Malley graduated from Pitt 50 years ago with a bachelor’s degree in science. He grew up… Bert O’Malley graduated from Pitt 50 years ago with a bachelor’s degree in science. He grew up in East Liberty, went to Central Catholic High School in Oakland, then stayed at Pitt for both his bachelor’s and doctor of medicine degrees.

Now he’s an award-winning scientist who specializes in endocrinology, the study of hormones. He’s also the chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

O’Malley will return to Pitt on April 26 to address Pitt’s graduating class at the commencement ceremony. This will be his first graduation address.

The Pitt News: When was the last time you were back in Pittsburgh and visited Pitt? And what do think of it now?

Bert O’Malley: I go back to Pittsburgh at least once a year or so to visit relatives. The last time I was at Pitt was two years ago.

It’s grown an awful lot. When I went to school, it was a good school, more or less a street-car school. The undergraduate school was very much centered in that inverted mineshaft (the Cathedral of Learning). Now, it’s spread all over the city. It’s just exploded.

TPN: You’re speaking at a graduation with quite a few liberal arts majors. How do you translate what you do into something all students can relate to, and not just speak to ones who work with science?

BO: I won’t be giving a lecture on science. I’ll be talking on success.

I think I’m a pretty good observer of what distinguishes the successful from the unsuccessful people. These are lessons for life. They’re not lessons for particularly just science.

TPN: How could you sum up the impact you’ve had on the biological sciences and medicine?

BO: In science, I did two things, I developed a new field of what’s called molecular endocrinology, this is really how hormones work. That was a major thing we get credit for and some call me the father of molecular endocrinology, but you know, at least I was the person who pushed that discipline.

The second thing I would say is to devise a sort of approach to team science that involved the center concept. We had one of the first centers the [National Institutes of Health] supported. Centers are generally different than departments, like the department of biochemistry works only on biochemistry. A center crosses department lines.

TPN: How do you assess how science is taught in higher education? Are we preparing our undergraduates for innovative work?

BO: I think it’s erratic. Some schools do it well and other schools don’t. At the universities and the professional schools, they do a good job. They have up-to-date teaching, they have the depth of teaching and are able to integrate across different kinds of science.

I think our failure is in the grade school and the high school range. We do not emphasize science specifically, and many students feel afraid of science — that it’s too elusive or too difficult to grasp or not really exciting.

We need teachers who bring biology to life in the classroom, and we need them earlier. We’re losing people, and I’m afraid the affluence of our society provides too many people a goal of money.

There are a number of occupations — science is one of them — where you can build a vocation in, and in the end you’re very happy with your life’s work.

I wonder if a young person, if they really think about it, would like to be remembered for how much money they make. I just don’t think so, but that tends to become our standard too often.

TPN: What else would you critique of the graduating generation?

BO: I think there are a few things that hold them back. One thing: The affluence of our society provides a culture of entitlement rather than, ‘I really have to work my butt off to get this.’ I think you never really learn and become an expert without an intense input of effort.

Another thing is that many young people let their insecurities govern their actions. In the teenage years and early 20s, you never know what you can do in life.

What I try to tell people is do not limit yourself. Don’t settle.

Wherever you’re going — whatever direction — go for the stars. Maybe you won’t reach the ultimate stars, but at least you’ll reach your capacity. If you settle for a job or moderate success, you’ll be sure you can never get more.

TPN: But the reality is that the economy isn’t great. A lot of people will be settling for jobs this year.

BO: There may be something temporary you have to do. But about the economy, it’s the old mafia line, ‘Forgeddaboutit.’

When you’ve been around awhile, you see the alternating cycle of economics, you see it in science, and you see it in all of life. If you look at the history of our country and Europe, the times of greatest imagination, discoveries and inventions came out of the nadirs of economics.

The inventions of machines, computers, they came after downturns in the economy and when things were rather tight. When money flows like water, you can get by on ‘me-too’ stuff or copies. You can make the same movie, open the same kind of restaurant across the street or make the same clothes.

But when money tightens up, we’re reduced to our greatest values, our brains and thinking about what people want and how to do something better. I’m very sympathetic for job losses and people who are having hard times, but every economy has to reset, or it’ll explode and destroy the value of money.

It’s hard to think about it, but everything has to reset in life. Good times are ahead, I guess that’s the message. If we get caught up in the current and lose our spirit or our hope or our sense of invention, then we’re making a mistake.

TPN: Why do you think Pitt chose you as the graduation speaker this year?

BO: You’ll have to ask the chancellor that. He just called me up and asked me.

TPN: Did he give you any tips?

BO: No. He said, ‘I have confidence you’ll do a good job, and do it the way you want to do it.’ He didn’t tell me what to talk about or give me a relatively short time. I don’t like these half-hour, 45-minute talks. It’ll be under 15.

It’s a long day and people have other things on their mind. So I’ll make a deal with them: Listen to what I’m saying, and I’ll make it short.