College named for wireless pioneer
Adherence to values marks career
AU seeks leadership role in wireless
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AU REPORT |
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| Headlines College named for wireless pioneer Adherence to values marks career AU seeks leadership role in wireless |
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An Auburn graduate wants his $25 million gift to vault his alma mater into the top ranks of wireless communication and related engineering research and teaching.
Samuel L. Ginn, a pioneer in wireless communication, announced on Friday, Feb. 2, his gift and plans to spearhead an additional $150 million in new support for the Auburn University College of Engineering, which was renamed the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering in his honor.
Ginn's gift is the largest single gift in the 145-year history of the university and is believed to be the largest single cash gift in Alabama higher education.
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As a condition of the gift, Ginn has requested that AU raise an additional $100 million in endowment and that the university recruit another 25 donors to generate a minimum of $50 million for 25 new endowed chairs in engineering.
He also asked that the College of Engineering develop an undergraduate degree in wireless engineering.
Ginn said the college can expect to receive additional support from him in the future, based on improvements in the college as measured by its ranking in U.S. News & World Report and similar ratings.
Ginn, whose hometown is Anniston, Ala., is now senior partner of the Freemont Group, managing telecommunication investments in San Francisco. He said he decided to make the gift to the college after reflecting on his meteoric career in telecommunications that began following his graduation in 1959 from Alabama Polytechnic Institute, as Auburn was known then.
"As I began to think about my own life and how rewarding my own career has been and how much fun I've had, I asked myself what's been important to me, and Auburn was among the things I immediately thought of," he said. "I want the young men and women in Alabama to have a shot in an industry that's likely to grow and be fascinating in the years to come and I see Auburn as the vehicle for background and training to give them that opportunity.
"One of my own personal objectives is to help the College of Engineering not only be a top-tier engineering school, but also allow the students to participate in what I think is going to be a fabulous industry over the next several decades.
"I think that one of the things we have to do at the College of Engineering is make sure that we have the kind of faculty that can do wonderful research, but also teach students to go out to industry and make valuable contributions to wireless in the technical arena. As the research drives more capability into wireless devices and comes up with systems to make wireless more affordable, I would like for Auburn students to be leaders in that revolution."
Meanwhile, AU leaders expressed their appreciation for Ginn's gift to the college.
"Auburn University is fortunate to have alumni like Sam Ginn who have the capability and desire to help their alma mater," said President William Muse. "Our College of Engineering, with the assistance of Mr. Ginn's gift, will be able to move into the top-tier of engineering schools nationally."
"This is a truly historic day in the lives of Auburn University and our College of Engineering," said Jimmy Samford, president pro tem of the AU Board of Trustees. "Since this institution's founding 145 years ago, engineering has been a mainstay of its curriculum, and Auburn's reputation in engineering has been and remains solid.
"But Sam Ginn is a visionary. With the help of his gift, his leadership and his eye for the future, Auburn engineering will excel at the national and international levels by the time that Auburn University marks its sesquicentennial in 2006."
AU Provost William Walker, who has known Ginn since 1989, said he is "absolutely thrilled" with Ginn's decision. "I don't know of anyone who is more deserving of the success he has achieved," said Walker. "He is a visionary. He is the sort of person people love to have as a boss. I really believe he personifies the words in the Auburn Creed -- every sentence in that document spelled out."
Larry Benefield, dean of the College of Engineering, added: "Sam Ginn's commitment to the College of Engineering will make a tremendous difference in our ability to work toward a top-ten ranking among engineering institutions nationally. His vision for Auburn engineering reflects our own faculty's perception that we must move from a leadership position among the South's public engineering programs into an arena where we are perceived as a quality program on the national level, second to none.
"Dr. Ginn's dedication to Auburn University will go a long way in moving the College of Engineering's vision of excellence into a reality for our students today -- and for promising young scholars of tomorrow. His challenge to the College of Engineering's alumni and friends is to respond in a way that will augment his own gift to Auburn engineering."
Ginn, 63, resigned in May 2000 as chairman of Vodafone AirTouch Plc, which is the largest wireless communications company in the world. He became chairman in 1999 after the merger between Vodafone and AirTouch.
Ginn, whose degree from Auburn is in industrial management, was chairman and
CEO of Pacific Telesis Group, the West Coast telephone and communications giant,
from 1987 until December 1993, when he spun off AirTouch Communications. The
new company was created to concentrate on commercial development in the
emerging field of wireless technology.
Creation of AirTouch was the second major communications company spin-off in which Ginn played a major role. He was a member of the divestiture team at AT&T during the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s; the Pacific Telesis Group, which included Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell, was a product of that divestiture.
Ginn has spent his career in the telecommunications field, starting with AT&T shortly after graduating from Auburn. In 1969, he was a Sloan Fellow at Stanford University's School of Business, and he subsequently rose fast in the AT&T ranks.
He became vice president of network operations for AT&T Long Lines in 1977, and
one year later he was sent to the company's Los Angeles network as vice president
of network operations. His last position at AT&T before the divestiture was vice
chairman, strategic planning
and administration for what would later become Pacific Telesis Group.
Ginn was president and chief operating officer of Pacific Telesis Group before becoming chairman and CEO, a post he held until leading AirTouch into the corporate arena.
Adherence to values marks Ginn's career, life
From Anniston to Auburn to AirTouch, Sam Ginn's path has been marked with the same guiding characteristics -- virtues that come up time after time in conversations with his friends and former coworkers. Honesty. Integrity. Fairness. Competitiveness.
These are the values instilled in him by a family he still holds dear, a family that has its roots in the tough times right after America's Great Depression in rural Anniston.
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Ginn's hometown is Anniston, Ala. He was born in 1937. His father worked a series of rugged jobs on a railroad, a pipeline, hauling gravel and operating a rolling store.
"My family was poor and I think the idea of escaping that was one of the drivers of my life," Ginn says. "But at the same time, the value system of my parents was extremely important to me as far as building discipline. They were poor economically, but rich in values. They set high standards and put a premium on always representing the family well."
Ginn began his career as a student worker at AT&T and worked his way to the chairmanship of Vodafone AirTouch Plc, one of the biggest international wireless companies in the world. He now serves as senior partner of the Freemont Group, managing telecommunication investments. He has represented his family well, and, along the way, he shared with and exhibited to others the values his family cultivated within him.
"Sam has the highest set of standards of anyone I've ever seen," says Don Adams, who worked with Ginn as a sales representative at AT&T and for him later with Pacific Telesis. "I mean, that guy doesn't have a dishonest bone in his body. And he makes anybody that works for him accept and operate under those same values."
Success hasn't come easy for Ginn. In fact, his path almost took an unexpected turn when, as a high school senior, he went to see Anniston High Principal John Nash. Ginn needed a letter of recommendation from Nash to attend Auburn.
"When I asked (Nash) to sign it, he said he wouldn't because I would just go down there and flunk out and waste my daddy's money," Ginn recalled. "I said, 'Mr. Nash, if you'll sign it, I won't disappoint you.' He signed it and I'd have to say that he was one of the lights of my early life."
It was a vow that Ginn didn't take lightly. Though Ginn confesses to early academic struggles at Auburn, he eventually had enough academic success to be inducted into several honor societies, including Blue Key, the engineering honorary.
"Auburn was the first opportunity I took to become academically strong," Ginn said. "Academics were not a priority for me in high school, but Auburn reinforced the need to focus on academics and in the beginning was tough for me because I had to learn how to study.
"I made a lot of good friends at Auburn and I have always been grateful for my education there. Auburn prepared me to go out into the business world and have a chance for success."
Ginn's AU roommate and fraternity brother Bryant Crutchfield, now director of strategies with Georgia Pacific in Atlanta, recalls Ginn's days at Auburn a little differently, saying he was "organized from day one."
"As roommates, we were kind of like an odd couple," Crutchfield said. "He was kind of a neatnik and I always piled my clothes in a pile on the floor. He always said that he was going to straighten me out, but I think I had more influence in making him a little more sloppy.
"Sam was one who was always very aware of how to act in any situation. He was always neat, clean and organized and he dressed right. He was appropriate and it was something he worked at. To be quite honest with you, I never saw Sam struggle."
> Crutchfield, who said Ginn always "had the ugliest cars in the Delta Chi parking lot," would later live with Ginn in Atlanta, site of Ginn's first assignment with AT&T. Ginn met his wife, Ann, there and introduced Crutchfield to her roommate, Virginia, who Crutchfield later married.
After a stint in the Army Signal Corps, Ginn went to work for AT&T out of Auburn. He was sent by the company to Stanford University as a Sloan Fellow in 1969 and began to move rapidly up the corporate ranks, becoming vice president of network operations for AT&T Long Lines in 1977.
George Fender, now retired in Jacksonville, Fla., was a co-worker of Ginn's at the time he left on his Sloan Fellowship.
"I knew when he left to go to Stanford that Sam was moving in the right direction and headed for success," Fender said. "The impression that Sam made upon people I'll never forget," Fender added. "He was very well liked, very considerate, very fair, but very competitive. I guess that competitiveness is what led him to what he achieved in the corporate world."
While with PacTel Companies in 1984, Ginn spearheaded the company's networking of the Los Angeles Olympics with cellular phones, at that time one of the most extensive cellular projects to date. He became chairman and chief executive officer of AirTouch in 1993 and spun the company off from the Pacific Telesis Group in 1994, eventually growing it into one of the international giants of the wireless industry. AirTouch merged with Vodafone in 1999 and Ginn was made chairman of the new company, Vodafone AirTouch Plc -- a post he held until his resignation in May 2000. He is now senior partner of the Freemont Group, managing telecommunication investments.
Through all the successes, friends say Ginn has changed little. Guise Potter, a friend of Ginn's in Anniston, remembers Ginn from his high school days, but never developed a friendship with him until a high school reunion in 1985. Since then, Potter has been Ginn's golf guest at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., and attended as Ginn's guest a retreat sponsored by the Bohemian Club, an exclusive group that includes Ginn, Secretary of State Colin Powell and former secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger.
"It always amazed me that he could hobnob with those kinds of people and then
hobnob with me," Potter said. "But he's always had the same basic qualities of
friendship, sharing and enjoying experiences with others, being open and accessible.
A lot of people who've achieved what he has develop barriers around them, but
Sam is just the opposite. He's always trying to find a way to get back and reconnect
with friends."
AU seeks leading role in wireless technology
Ask Sam Ginn about the future of wireless communications and listen to his voice. Listen as he talks about "the ingenuity of the human spirit," and how that well of possibilities is the only limit of the technology he helped make accessible and affordable to populations worldwide. There is discernible excitement in Ginn's voice as he discusses this exciting technology.
Having witnessed the first-wave of the wireless revolution firsthand, Ginn offers a unique perspective on where wireless technology is going in the future. He believes what we now know as cell phones -- he calls them "terminals" -- will soon replace hardwired phones as our primary means of communication.
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"What is evolving here is really a change in the way people live and work," Ginn said. "In the future -- and already, to some extent -- I see the cell phone as a personal communicator. Each of us will have a personal wireless device and we will program that terminal for the kinds of things we want to be involved in or notified of. For example, you could program your terminal to give you the political headlines at 8 a.m. or to update you on the prices of stocks in your portfolio when the market closes each day. You will be able to program all of the phone numbers you want to use in it and, through voice recognition, call whomever you want whenever you want from wherever you want.
"The point is that it will replace the generic telephone device we're accustomed to using in our homes because it will be personally engineered for the way the particular user lives and works. In fact, it will afford you infinite possibilities."
Retired since May as chairman of Vodafone AirTouch Plc, Ginn has seen communications from all perspectives -- from his days as a student engineer with AT&T to his chairmanship of Pacific Telesis Group to his founding of AirTouch, which he grew into a global wireless giant.
And even after his retirement, Ginn continues to look toward the future of wireless communications. On Friday, he announced a gift of $25 million to Auburn University's College of Engineering, which will be renamed the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. Ginn, a 1959 Auburn engineering graduate, earmarked a portion of that gift to go toward creating an undergraduate degree program in wireless engineering.
"I want the young men and women of Alabama to have a shot in an industry that's likely to grow and be fascinating for years to come," Ginn said. "I see Auburn as a vehicle for providing them the background and the training to get that opportunity. One of my own personal objectives is to help the College of Engineering become a top-tier engineering school, but I also want to allow the students to participate in what I think is going to be a fabulous industry over the next several decades."
Many of the possibilities of wireless that Ginn mentions are akin to functions users are accustomed to from their personal computers. But, according to Ginn, there's a problem with PCs that make wireless more desirable -- they're "tethered."
"If you think about the history of how we, as a society, communicate, for the most part it has been tethered," Ginn said. "What fascinated me early on in the wireless revolution was that, for the first time, it gave people the opportunity to conduct affairs while on the move. Since we were and are living in a society that is more and more on the move, I thought it would result in an explosion of wireless devices. Indeed that has occurred.
"Soon, I believe that your wireless terminal will serve as your primary access point to the Internet. With increased data rates in the coming generation, you'll be able to access video, maybe even watch a movie. And I think that what you now recognize as a cell phone will move toward more specialized devices. If you're primarily a voice user, your terminal will likely look a lot like it does today. If you're mainly a data user, the space that's now given to a keypad will likely be a screen and, if you need a keypad, you will bring it up on that screen. If you need even more screen space, your terminal can serve as a docking station into a notebook PC."
Ginn says the wireless terminal will also be able to serve the user financially and medically as well.
"I think one of the most interesting and vital possibilities of the future of this technology is the ability to monitor and communicate medical issues. Your doctor could actually monitor certain conditions remotely, respond with whatever medications he might deem necessary for you without you even having to go to a doctor's office. As far as finances are concerned, your terminal can become an ATM machine. There are already systems where banks can download cash to a cell phone and these, I'm sure, will become more sophisticated and widespread in the future."
As much as he's excited about the technology, Ginn is also excited about the coverage wireless terminals will provide in the future. In the near future, he says, a wireless user will be able to use his phone or terminal from 90 percent of all the locations on the planet.
"I see wireless terrestrial systems working with satellite systems to cover almost the entire earth," Ginn said. "If you think about the social implications of that, they're enormous. If you think news travels instantly now, imagine being in a remote part of the world and having the ability to be notified of a stock price, reminded of an appointment or whatever the case might be. That also means that, since there will be location devices in these terminals, you will have the ability to access instant information about your environment. Where is the nearest police station or pizza parlor? You'll be able to find out almost instantly."
With all the possibilities the future of wireless technology will offer and with the cost of the services becoming cheaper as competition grows, what will happen to telephone land lines? Ginn says they will still fill a desired niche in the communications world.
"I don't see land lines becoming obsolete, but I think they will become a secondary
method by which to communicate," Ginn said. "There is an MIT professor who has
done extensive studies on this and I tend to agree with his conclusion that voice and
individual data services will move to wireless and things like your television
programming and your home internet service will be increasingly accessible over
improved fiber optic lines. To some extent this is already happening.
The land line fiber optic network is very efficient at delivered high- speed
entertainment."
Though his visions of the future of wireless communications are impressive, Ginn says the reality of that future will likely be even more so.
"I think the fascinating part of this is that, if you look over the past 25 years and our ability to communicate and the cost of communications and what has happened in that time span, it's almost inconceivable that such a change could have occurred," Ginn said.
"With the pace of change in wireless, I don't think we have any real conception of how much it's going to change our life in every way. Think about the doctor and the patient that we've already discussed, the fisherman who will be able to have his catch sold before his boat even gets to port, the ability of the stock broker to transmit key information to his client wherever he may be. The ability, immediacy and accuracy afforded by wireless is going to change everything.
"What I'm really saying is that you haven't seen anything yet."
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AU Report
Editor: Roy Summerford. Contributing editors: Bob Lowry, Janet McCoy and David Granger. University Relations Executive Director: Pete Pepinsky. The AU Report is the faculty/staff newsletter of Auburn University and is published by the Office of University Relations at Auburn University. Direct correspondence to AU Report, 23 Samford Hall, Auburn University, Ala. 36849-5109. Telephone 334/844-9999. Electronic mail: summero@auburn.edu |