Kurt Landgraf, President of ETS, Offers Advice to Graduates

   Kurt Landgraf, President and CEO of Educational Testing Service (ETS), delivered the 2008 commencement address to graduates of Wagner College on Staten Island, N.Y., today (May 16).

    Specially honored at this year’s commencement program was Margaret-Anne Milne, great-great-granddaughter of Wagner College’s founding benefactor John George Wagner Jr. Milne who was awarded, on behalf of her family, a thanksgiving commendation from the college.

    The Wagner Family commendation comes as the college marks its 125th anniversary this year. Wagner College was founded in Rochester, N.Y., in 1883; it moved to Staten Island in 1918. 

    A posthumous honor was given to the Rev. Lyle Guttu, the late chaplain of Wagner College (1972-2007), who died last December after being struck by a car. Guttu’s children, Allison and Mathias Guttu, accepted a special commendation on their father’s behalf for his long service to the college.

    The Rev. Stephen Bouman, the speaker at Wagner’s baccalaureate service, held the day before commencement, a member of the college’s board of trustees and former bishop of the Metropolitan New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was awarded an honorary doctoral degree along with Landgraf.

    Landgraf congratulated President Richard Guarasci and the Wagner College community for revitalizing the institution and for making it more dynamic and relevant than ever. He also credited Wagner’s approach to combining intellectual rigor with real-life experience.

    In his remarks to students, Landgraf recalled his years at Wagner and the state of the world in 1968, the year he graduated. He credited his love of learning and success in life to the faculty, and especially, Wagner’s late economics professor Bill Maher. He noted that Maher showed him the positive, even redeeming influence, of encouragement.

    “One of the most unreliable phrases in the English language is ‘I have to,’” Landgraf told the graduates. “I have seen more people sell out their lives and careers by convincing themselves that they have to do certain things: take a job, quit a job, abandon a passion, settle for less, aim low. In my view, you not have to do anything. You do not have to be anywhere. You choose your own path forward.”

    Landgraf concluded his remarks by offering the graduates 10 rules for professional and personal happiness which, he noted, are inherently “Wagnerian” in their commitment to the betterment of society. The 10 rules are:

• Do what you believe is right, recognizing short-term consequences may be unpleasant.

• Establish set of principles to follow in any circumstance. Then stick with them.

• In all relationships — personal and professional — recognize boundaries that cannot be crossed. Respect those boundaries.

• Recognize that we all have a personal responsibility to give back more to society than we take from it.

• Money and things will be of no value to you in total context of life happiness.

• Do one thing every day that scares you.

• Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

• Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life: The most interesting people I have met didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

• Be compassionate and kind to those less well-situated than you.

• Work for social justice and a better world, whether in small ways or big ways.

Landgraf began his career at ETS more than 30 years ago, when he served as Associate Director of Marketing. Before returning to ETS in 2000, he was Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer of the DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company, having previously held a
variety of leadership positions at DuPont and the Upjohn Company.

He is a member of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, a post to
which he was appointed by former Gov. Richard Codey; a member of the Washington
Higher Education Secretariat, American Council on Education, and is a member of the board
of directors of the American Association of Community Colleges.

He recently completed a term as president of the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for
Minorities in Engineering and Sciences, Inc., known as the GEM Consortium, and is a member of the Rock Institute of Ethics at Pennsylvania State University.