Dr. Robert Metcalfe will present “Startups: Innovating with the Machinery of Free Enterprise,” at  William Jewell College’s Everett P. Truex Economic and Financial Forum at 7:30 p.m. October 30 in Yates-Gill College Union Room 221 on the William Jewell campus in Liberty, Mo. The lecture is free and open to the public; tickets or reservations are not required.

Metcalfe is Professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. An MIT-Harvard-educated engineer-entrepreneur, Metcalfe was a pioneer of the Internet starting in 1970. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he invented Ethernet, descendants of which are today's industry standard Internet plumbing, of which more than a billion new ports ship annually. In 1979, Metcalfe founded the Internet company 3Com, which raised venture capital in 1981, IPOed in 1984, hit $5.7B in annual revenues in 1999, and in 2010 became part of HP. Since 3Com, Metcalfe worked 10 years as publisher-pundit at InfoWorld, and from 2001-2010 he was a venture capitalist specializing in enertech at billion-dollar Polaris Venture Partners. Metcalfe is a Life Trustee of MIT, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a recipient of the National Medal of Technology.

The Everett P. Truex Economic and Financial Forum brings nationally recognized business persons and economists to the William Jewell College each year. Funding for the endowed forum is provided by the Everett Truex Trust, and the event is hosted by William Jewell’s Department of Business and Leadership. The late Truex was a Liberty (Mo.) High School graduate and a 1942 William Jewell alumnus who later returned to the college as an economics and statistics professor.

William Jewell College is committed to bringing together talented students and gifted faculty mentors within a vibrant community sparked by a rigorous and intentional liberal arts curriculum. A full range of personal and professional development experiences are presented by the selective national liberal arts college’s location within the Kansas City metroplex of more than 2 million.