[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16176]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             DR. AL SIMONE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Kuhl) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KUHL of New York. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about Dr. Al 
Simone, an outstanding individual in the community of Rochester, New 
York. Dr. Simone retires this month from the presidency of the 
Rochester Institute of Technology. He was RIT's eighth president, the 
eighth in 177 years.
  Dr. Simone came to Rochester from a place where the weather is a 
little bit more predictable. He was the president of the University of 
Hawaii system and chancellor of the University of Hawaii at Manoa for 9 
years.
  Dr. Simone has led RIT to become the one of the Nation's leading 
career-oriented universities with 15,500 students from all 50 States 
and more than 100 foreign countries, 2,800 faculty and staff, and an 
annual operating budget of more than $490 million. RIT is now the tenth 
largest private university in the Nation in terms of full-time 
undergraduate enrollment. The endowment has climbed to more than $570 
million during his tenancy.
  Dr. Simone is a prolific writer and has written several books and 
numerous journal publications on the application of mathematics, 
statistics, and computers to economics and business. In fact, Dr. 
Simone is collecting data and information for a book right now on 
higher education, which he expects to write within the next few years 
during his retirement on the sunny shores of Keuka Lake.
  Dr. Simone is a real trailblazer. He was the first American 
university president, for instance, to officially visit North Korea, 
Vietnam, and Vladivostock when these areas were closed to the United 
States except for cultural and educational exchange.
  A native of Boston, Dr. Simone received his B.A. in economics from 
Tufts University and his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology. He has taught at Tufts, MIT, Northeastern 
University, Boston College, Boston University, University of 
Cincinnati, and the University of Hawaii.
  The community will certainly miss Al's leadership and I know I will 
miss working with him.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope you will join me in wishing him and his wife, 
Carolie, a long, happy, healthy retirement with their children and 
their grandchildren.

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