Senator Bob Bennett Visits Innovation Campus

Senator Bob Bennett Visits Innovation Campus — Encourages Utah to Embrace Change

Sen. Bob Bennett visited Utah State University's Innovation Campus July 1, where he met with President Kermit L. Hall and others in a working luncheon prior to a public presentation by the senator. The luncheon was held at the Space Dynamics Laboratory.

Sen. Bennett met with Utah State University and USU Research Foundation employees and Cache Valley residents in a session that covered topics from Washington to Cache Valley. Issues involving American aerospace research were also on the agenda. Sen. Bennett opened the floor to a question-and-answer session as well.

"This is a time of enormous change," Sen. Bennett told the assembled group. Humans, he continued, like things to slow down and adapt to what's around them, but technology and education are progressing so quickly they have no choice but to face change.

He said Americans are successful today because we know how to deal with and work around change. Years from now, he told the crowd, today's professions may no longer exist. Bennett compared the change to 1904, when farming represented 69 percent of America's employment. Today it represents 2 percent.

"It's the impact of the industrial revolution," Bennett said. "Now we face the information revolution."

The world works closely now, and that impacts change as well, he said.

"The Berlin Wall brought down symbolic walls all over the world," Bennett said.
Some in the Islamic world are frightened of change but many Muslims "desperately want the walls to come done," he said.

The war on terror, whether won or lost, will affect change, he said. "Either way, the world is going to be a different place."

During his visit, President Hall presented Sen. Bennett a copy of Water Wise: Native Plants for Intermountain Landscapes, a book published by USU Press. The book is a comprehensive volume providing specific information about shrubs, trees, grasses, forbs and cacti native to most states in the Intermountain West. The book can be used in landscaping to conserve water, reflecting and preserving the region's landscape character.