Yesterday was an awakening of memories for me, as I attended freshman orientation at UT — this time, as a parent.

I was struck by how proudly the University touts their partnership with, or management of (depending on who was speaking) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and what fabulous research opportunities this affords their students — even undergraduates. The undergraduates part seemed like it might be a bit of a stretch, but the truth is that I don’t know. Maybe they’re counting Co-Op opportunities.

One could not miss, however, their new emphasis on globalism. In a session for parents of engineering majors, it was noted that foreign language is not required for a degree but that they strongly encourage it as an elective. One mother asked which language would be best, and I whispered to a friend next to me (jokingly, I hoped), “Mandarin.”

I know that I probably have a skewed perspective, having grown up in Oak Ridge in a family of engineers, then married into another family of engineers, but I have to admit feeling a bit of apprehension about the slightly competing interests of global commercialism and US national security.

Then this morning, the News Sentinel reports the following:

A retired University of Tennessee professor is under investigation of potentially violating a federal law barring the transfer of sensitive technology to other countries, according to interviews and documents obtained by the News Sentinel.

J. Reece Roth, 68, an electrical and computer engineering professor who still teaches and does research at UT, had his laptop computer seized by agents from the FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Department of Commerce when he arrived in Knoxville from China on May 26.

I do not know whether Prof. Roth did anything wrong (intentionally or inadvertantly), or whether homeland security got overzealous in a big way. Neither one is good. Still, having a Chinese national working on the project, and having inquired about the possibility of including an Iranian grad student, doesn’t strike me as an idea worthy of a brilliant plasma engineering researcher.

Yes, it’s forward-thinking for the University to move students toward interacting with people from other parts of the world; there’s no question that the marketplace of goods and ideas has greatly expanded since I wandered around UT as a 17-year old, trying to find my schedule, books and classes without getting too lost. At the same time though, the security challenges we face have also shifted and broadened; instead of worrying only about the Russians, we now have to be concerned with a much larger spectrum of people who might want to learn more about our technologies in order to use them against us.

I’m sending my firstborn into the very department affected by this incident. Truthfully, I know she’ll be fine, and my biggest worries are that she will lose her student ID card (which now works like a meal card and debit card as well), get lost trying to find her classes, and the usual Freshman concerns.

My other observation from yesterday was that there’s a marketing genius hard at work inside the Big Orange, with all kinds of extra “stuff” for parents to buy — fundraising mechanisms disguised as services or necessities. That’s a whole other entry though, and I want to be fair and finish my part of orientation before drawing my conclusion.