Section Twenty-Two
KEYNOTE AND LUNCHEON ADDRESSES
93    KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Quincalee Brown, Executive Director
Water Pollution Control Federation
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
Thank you! It is really an honor and a delight to be here. First it is a delight because I love to come
back to the Midwest where 1 grew up. My home was Kansas and 1 always enjoy going back to my
roots.
It is also nice to be back on campus. For a while yesterday, after 1 arrived, 1 wandered around
Purdue. Having spent 12 years teaching on various campuses, its always nostalgic to return, taking me
back to my professional beginnings.
It is also an honor to be asked to address such a prestigious group. I must say that my initial
reaction, when Dr. Bell's letter arrived inviting me to give this address, was that there must be some
mistake. I was assured that was not the case. My concern was over not having a technical background,
and so could not imagine what I would have to say that might be of value to you. I considered calling
Dr. Bell and offering one of the WPCF officers who has expertise in the industrial waste field, but was
told that John Bell had a reason for inviting me, so talk to him about it. We agreed that, with some 90
technical papers being presented, I did not need to be technical, too.
In thinking about these remarks, I recalled my past experience with the field of science and
engineering and I had to laugh at some of recollections. I taught public speaking for many years,
particularly at Wichita State University, where there was a large aeronautical engineering school. The
engineering students were all required to take public speaking for graduation and virtually all of them
would end up in our class at the end of their senior year. Now, most of them did just fine and some
liked it far better than they ever imagined. The irony is that someone like me waited until the last
semester of her senior year to take the required physical science course, and was lucky that the guy I
was dating at the time was a science student, and a good tutor.
Lately, 1 must say, as I talked to WPCF audiences about the organization and where we are headed
in the field of water quality, I feel a lot like Alicia Williston, whom you might remember as the last
survivor of the famous Johnstown floods. After Alicia passed on and entered heaven, she told St.
Peter her story. He agreed that it was remarkable and would make a good talk to the multitudes. So he
called together the throngs of heaven, gave her a glowing introduction, and just as he turned the
podium over to her said, "but remember —Noah's in the audience." I have this feeling, as I have talked
to audiences about WPCF, that there are a lot of Noahs in the audience.
My field has been communications and more recently association management, the management of
non-profit, tax-exempt organizations. 1 approached your field of environmental issues and water
quality as an outsider, truly a stranger in a strange land in terms of the content of this organization.
During this past six months as I have been managing the Federation, I have also been an observer and
have had to become a student of your field. Today I would like to share some observations, some
insights if you will, a kind of personal/professional odyssey of what I have observed these last six
months and relate these learnings to my understanding of communications. Then, I will address the
issue of communicating the messages of an organization to the broader public.
I feel that I have learned a lot about you as a scientific and engineering community, about you as an
individual dealing with issues that are among the most critical that we will face on this earth over the
next 20 years, and about you as a profession that sometimes does not communicate these concerns
effectively. One of the issues I discussed with the people who hired me was their perception that as
engineers they do not often communicate well the messages that they have. Of course, it seems ironic
that some of these same individuals are among the most articulate people I have ever known, and
certainly some of the brightest. But their sense is that the scientific/engineering community is insular,
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