Tom Haggai delivers the commencement address.
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Posted 5-6-11
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Tom Haggai warned new graduates not to lose sight of what is really important in life. And that, no matter how wealthy we may become, we can never buy a loving connection with others.
To drive home his point, Haggai, a High Point businessman whose foundation has funded education at UNCG for nontraditional students retraining to teach school, told the 2,624 UNCG graduates assembled Friday morning in the Greensboro Coliseum a story. The story of J.-Robert Ouimet and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Ouimet, a wealthy Canadian meat packer, went to India to help establish a safe, sanitary food process. He went on the condition that he worship with Mother Teresa.
Ouimet and Mother Teresa spoke for three hours, Haggai said. Ouimet told her he was bored and he wanted to find joy – should he go back to Canada, sell his business and give her the millions to feed the starving people of Calcutta?
“Robert, you asked me to help you and that won’t help you. It’s the easy way out,” she told him, although the people of Calcutta were starving and desperately needed his financial help. “I want you to go back to your business and make your profits, but I want you to manage your business for God.”
When Ouimet questioned her, she answered that managing for God meant managing with love. To understand love, he had to make human connections. Every day he was in the office, she told him, he should talk to an employee for one hour.
It was laborious, Ouimet later told Haggai. “Yet when I finished I felt for the first time that I really knew an employee.”
“Remember, Facebook tells you a few details, but it doesn’t tell you about a life,” the octogenarian Haggai concluded, leaving graduates with a thought from Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City: “In God we trust. Everything else is data.”
UNCG Chancellor Linda P. Brady awarded Haggai an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
The university awarded 1,839 undergraduate degrees Friday. Master’s degrees went to 706 graduates, specialist in education degrees went to 20 graduates, and 59 graduates received doctorates. Of those degrees, 65 went to international students.
Zimuzor Ugochukwu speaks for the Class of 2011.
Katie Marshall, UNCG’s student body president, contrasted UNCG’s “Spartan” graduates’ plight with that of the historical Spartan warriors depicted in the movie “300.”
“For them, failure was not an option, Spartans were not allowed to fail,” Marshall said. “For us, failure is one of our greatest teachers…. For us, unhappiness is not an option. Go out and be happy.”
Zimuzor Ugochukwu, speaker for the Class of 2011 also offered hope and advice for graduates struggling to find their niche in the world and the workplace.
“Life is all about timing, where the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable become available, the unattainable... attainable. Someone once told me that our generation, Generation Y, creates jobs.
The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. Had I entered college in 2003, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter wouldn’t have existed, and WordPress would have been brand new. All of these founders were under the age of 30,” Ugochukwu, who will soon head off to Asia as a Luce Scholar, told her classmates.
"We have the power to make this generation the best one yet. We’ve toppled governments, won presidential elections, started revolutions, created successful ventures, walked hundreds and thousands of collective miles for what we’ve believed in. We are changing the face of what it means to be young. We could not have come at a better time.”
She offered three pieces of advice for fellow graduates. First, never underestimate the back door. Be persistent and creative in your efforts to find opportunities. Second, expect the unexpected. And third, be humble. Ugochukwu defined humility as being “coachable and teachable.”
The Class of 2011 includes a number of remarkable graduates.
Margaret Carpenter, an honors graduate in the School of Music, is off to England as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. There she will pursue her master’s in choral studies.
Samantha Kilsdonk, who graduated Friday with a master’s in Community Youth Sports Development, wasn’t winded by the walk across the stage to receive her diploma. Kilsdonk ran the Boston Marathon in April, finishing 83rd among women.
Patrick Lee Lucas, professor of interior architecture, received the UNC Board of Governors’ Teaching Excellence Award during Friday’s ceremony. The award goes to a faculty member at each UNC System campus each year.
Faculty Marshal and mace bearer was Dr. Daniel Winkler. Chief Student Marshal was Katie Skawski.
Tassel Turner was Michael Tuso, former student body president.
Mary Katsikas, who majored in chemistry at Woman’s College and who has worked in the chemistry department since then, represented the Class of 1961 as alumni bell ringer. Sabrina Epps rang the university bell for the Class of 2011.
