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Transitions: Moving From Military to Civilian Success

Embry-Riddle boasts many prominent military alumni, including war heroes and astronauts.

Among the warriors are Scott O'Grady, the Air Force pilot shot down over Bosnia, then rescued after eluding capture for days, and Michael Durant, the Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot shot down and held prisoner in Somalia, then rescued. Raymond Frank and Clifton Wolcott, who were killed in the Somalia action and were recently immortalized in the movie Black Hawk Down, also received degrees from Embry-Riddle.

The university educated several astronauts when they were in the military. They are Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Burbank, who was a mission specialist on space shuttle Atlantis' 12-day mission to the International Space Station in September 2000, Maj. B. Alvin Drew, Maj. Ronald Garan Jr., and Capt. Terry Virts Jr. Two other Embry-Riddle alumni are also astronauts: Susan (Still) Kilrain, who piloted space shuttle Columbia in 1997 for the first mission of the Microgravity Science Laboratory, and Nicole Stott.

Nine members of the Thunderbirds Air Force demonstration team are also Embry-Riddle students or alumni.

The university's alumni database also lists 117 alumni who are addressed as colonel or general. Some serve on active duty, while others have retired and are now civilian leaders.

Three who have achieved success recall that their Embry-Riddle education taught them to be broad and flexible and to learn how to learn.

Joseph Wolfson, fresh from duty in the U.S. Army, was sitting in an Embry-Riddle classroom three days after leaving the military in December 1970. "It was the perfect thing for me," says Wolfson, who recalls that "a lot of guys like me" were taking classes on the Daytona Beach campus at the time.

"It had a major impact on my life," says Wolfson, who graduated with an associate's degree in professional pilot technology in 1972. "Part of being young is not having confidence in yourself. Embry-Riddle got me on the right track."

And he hit the track running. After building the world's first, and largest, shared electronic banking service, he sold the company and started two more. He's now CEO of Cartel Network and mentors second- and third-generation heads of family-run companies.

Like Wolfson, Joseph Martin headed straight to the Daytona Beach campus after two tours as an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

"I didn't know where I wanted to go with my life," he recalls, "whether it would be airport management, the left seat in a 727, or aeronautical engineering. Embry-Riddle let me address that question in an aviation environment. It was the bridge that allowed me to enter the civilian market with a competitive advantage."

After graduating in 1974 with a B.S. in aeronautical studies, Martin added an MBA from the University of Maine, then went to work for the company that became Fairchild Semiconductor. Today, he's chief financial officer of the $2 billion corporation. "If it were not for Embry-Riddle, I wouldn't be here," he says.

When Mike McDuffie came to Embry-Riddle he'd been an Army officer for five years and had seen combat in Vietnam. "I already had three years of college, so when the military gave us a one-year sabbatical, I went to Embry-Riddle because they gave us credits for our previous experience." He earned a B.S. in aviation administration in 1977.

Although the "hard-core courses" like chemistry, physics, and statistics were challenging, he says it was the university's "academic rigor" that really made a difference for him. "The interaction I had with my professors was a broadening experience," he says. "They taught me how to think, not what to think."

As McDuffie moved up in the Army to his final rank of lieutenant general, he saw firsthand Embry-Riddle's growing relationship with the military. "My officers went through the university's Extended Campus, most of them as aviators," he says. "Now we're seeing younger officers who have gone through Embry-Riddle's ROTC programs and come out with all kinds of degrees."

His 31-year military career culminated with a three-year stint as director of logistics for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last year, he joined Anteon Corp., a leading information technology and engineering company, as group vice president for defense programs and systems.

-- Robert Ross