Sheffield Goizueta Announcement

Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta is the First Recipient of the
Sheffield Fellowship and the Sheffield Medal, established
To Honor Historic Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University

New Haven, CT -- Roberto C. Goizueta, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of The Coca-Cola Co., presented the inaugural Sheffield Fellowship address at Yale University on Thursday, Feb. 22. His talk was titled "Why Would Anyone Want to Go to Engineering School?" Following the lecture Yale President Richard C. Levin presented the Sheffield Medal to Mr. Goizueta.

The Sheffield Fellowship was established to honor the Sheffield Scientific School, which produced some of the greatest inventors and industrial leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries from its founding in 1852 until the mid-1940's, when its engineering courses were absorbed into the growing Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

"As an illustrious chemical engineering graduate from the Class of 1953, Roberto Goizueta is the embodiment of the qualities Yale University strives to impart to its engineering majors," said D. Allan Bromley, dean of Yale Engineering and the Sterling Professor of the Sciences. "In addition to his impressive scientific skills, he has called upon his broad and rigorous education in a number of fields to make him one of the greatest industrial leaders in the world today. Yale is proud of producing not just good engineers, but great leaders like Mr. Goizueta."

The Sheffield Fellowship brings to Yale leaders and innovators in business, industry, and government who are at the forefront of important developments in their fields. In addition to presenting a lecture, the Fellow tours laboratories and classrooms, and meets with faculty and students, providing an opportunity for informal discussions with members of various student organizations about career perspectives in engineering and related fields, Dean Bromley said.

Mr. Goizueta joined the technical department of Coca-Cola's Havana-based subsidiary in 1954, a year after graduating from Yale with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering. He held various leadership positions prior to being elected a vice president of the company in 1966. He became senior vice president of the Technical Division in 1974, executive vice president in 1975, and was elected vice chairman of the company in 1979. In May 1980, Mr. Goizueta was elected president and chief operating officer and a director of the company. He became chairman and CEO on March 1, 1981.

Mr. Goizueta is a director of Trust Co. of Georgia, SunTrust Banks Inc., SONAT Inc., Ford Motor Co. and Eastman Kodak Co. He is a trustee of several educational institutions and business associations and serves on the boards of a number of national charitable and civic organizations.His honors include his election as a Gordon Grand Fellow by Yale in 1984, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1986, and a Doctor of Laws degree from Emory University and the Service to Democracy Award Private Sector from The American Assembly, both in 1990. He received a Doctor of Business Administration degree from Boston College in 1992.

In 1994, he was presented the Distinguished Public Service Award by the Advertising Council, and in that same year the business school of Atlanta's Emory University was renamed the Goizueta Business School in honor of his many contributions to the university. In 1995, Mr. Goizueta was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame.

The Sheffield Scientific School, which was founded as the Yale Scientific School, had its roots in the close interaction between engineering education and industry and business. Its benefactor, New Haven industrialist Joseph Sheffield, recognized the young Republic's need for skilled technologists as he built the nation's first railroads to the American West, including the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad.

The School acquired a world-wide reputation as one of the foremost engineering education centers, awarding the first engineering Ph.D. in 1861 to Josiah Willard Gibbs, who is considered to be the father of thermodynamics and one of America's greatest scientists. His greatest contribution was the discovery and interpretation of the relation of heat to the energy of chemical actions. Another famous Sheffield Scientific School graduate was Lee De Forest, who has been called the father of electronics. He developed the audion, an amplified vacuum tube that was the primary component of radios, televisions and computers until they were replaced by transistors.

"Yale's engineering graduates, faculty and students have shaped significant contributions to technology, making possible remarkable improvements in such fields as transportation, health care and biotechnology, electronics, communications, computer science and other areas vital to the nation's economic competitiveness and quality of life," Dean Bromley said. "Yale's commitment to the education of engineers has continued to produce a highly diverse and eminent group of alumni, which includes prominent engineers, politicians and leaders in almost every branch of American life."

While the Sheffield Fellowship serves to acknowledge the historical links between Yale Engineering and business and industry, it also provides a top rank of business figures with an appreciation of the scope and quality of Yale's programs in engineering and the applied sciences, he said. It offers Yale Engineering an opportunity to engage business leaders with the research and training taking place, and encourages a higher level of cooperation and interaction among business, industry, the public sector and the University.

"The Fellowship serves as the starting point for new dialogues on such issues as current and future areas of research and collaboration, the changing global environment in a range of fields, fresh approaches to major societal problems, and continuing modifications of curricula -- both undergraduate and graduate -- to more effectively match them to a rapidly changing social and technological environment," Dean Bromley said.

[Sheffield Fellowship]