Distinguished Alumni
The Distinguished Alumnus Award is the highest honor that the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering can bestow upon any alumnus. It’s given to department alumni whose contributions to their profession, community, and the department, college and/or university are notable and merit special recognition. There are very specific criteria for the Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Criteria for the Distinguished Alumnus Award
- The nominee must have graduated from the department with at least one of its designated degrees, which include: Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering (BSIE), Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering, Furniture Manufacturing (BSIE, FM), Bachelor of Science in Furniture Manufacturing and management (BSFMM), Master of Industrial Engineering (MIE), Master of Science in Industrial Engineering (MSIE), and the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
- The nominee must have graduated more than 20 years prior to the award year; must not be currently employed in the department, college or university; and must possess a continuous record of exceptional integrity and sound character. Noteworthy community and/or public service should be identified as well as meritorious service to the industrial engineering profession, including service to their Alma Mater.
Nominations of an alumnus may be made at any time. Award winners will be selected by the faculty at the first faculty meeting of the school year each August. An annual event will be held recognizing the new award winners.
To nominate an alumnus, e-mail isenominations@ncsu.edu or write to:
- Clarence L. Smith
- Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial Engineering
- Assistant Department Head
- Daniels Hall 407, Box 7906
- NCSU Campus
- Raleigh, NC 27695
Current Distinguished Alumni
Class of 2007
Rajendra K. Pachauri is Director-General of The Energy Research Institute (TERI), a non-profit scientific and policy research organization which focuses on global warming and its perils, based in New Delhi, India, with offices throughout the world. Dr. Pachauri also serves as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which earned the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace. Additionally, he has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's highest civilian award that recognizes distinguished service of a high order to the nation. He received his M.S.I.E. and PhD degrees from NC State in 1972 and 1974 respectively. His PhD was joint with NC State's department of economics and business. He has served as visiting professor at NC State University, Yale University and West Virginia University and as senior visiting fellow at Resource Systems Institute and at The World Bank. This year he was nominated for Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.
John V. Andrews is former president of the High Performance Metals Group of Allegheny Technologies, Inc. He received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1955. John held several executive positions with Allvac (a High Performance Metals Group company) including serving as company president from 1971 to 1999. A 30+ year member of ASM International (previously the American Society for Metals), he was recognized as ASM Fellow in 1990 and was elected organization president in 1994. A veteran of the US Army Ordnance Corps, he has served as a director of several organizations, including Branch Banking and Trust Company, United Carolina Bank and United Carolina Bancshares, and was a director of the International Titanium Association
N. Clark Hatcher, Jr. is former vice president of Masco Home Furnishings, whose subsidiary companies include Drexel Heritage, Henredon, Lexington Furniture and Berkline, among many others. Clark received his B.S.F.M.M. degree from NC State in 1952. He is a past president, director and member of the Executive Committee of the NC State Alumni Association, a past board member of the NC State Engineering Foundation and a past member of the NCSU Athletic Council. A member of the Lifetime Giving Society at NC State, he has served on the Selection Committee for the Park Scholarships program. He also served on the Board of Directors of the American Furniture Manufacturers Association. He is a US Air Force veteran with service in Korea and Japan. His four sons are all NC State graduates.
V. B. Lougee, III is former president and chief operating officer of American Brands, Inc (currently Fortune Brands). Simultaneous to his presidency of American Brands, he served as president of American Tobacco, having started there as an industrial engineer. VB received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1951. A WWII Navy veteran, he served as Machinist Mate 3rd class on the destroyer Norman Scott in the Pacific arena. He is a past board member of the Andrew Jergens Company, Master Lock Corp., Franklin Life Insurance, Sunshine Biscuit, Gallaher Tobacco (England) and Acushnet Rubber Corp. Since 1978, VB has been a member of the Chancellor’s Circle at NC State, and is a charter member of the Duke Homestead Education and History Corporation.
C. Robert Rhodes is senior partner of the law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, North Carolina’s largest law firm. Bob received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1960 and his J.D. from the George Washington School of Law in 1966. Prior to his association with Womble Carlyle, he was managing partner of Rhodes and Mason, a Greensboro law firm. A member of the Lifetime Giving Society at NC State, he is a past member of the NC State Engineering Foundation. For his work in intellectual property law, he was ranked multiple times among the nation’s best by Woodward/White Inc.'s The Best Lawyers in America rankings, including the most recent ranking for 2008. Prior to beginning practice as a patent attorney, he was employed as an industrial engineer with Western Electric in North Carolina and Boeing in Florida, and also worked with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, DC.
Thomas D. Pearson is president of Pearson Land Corporation, which, along with its affiliates, develops single family lots in the Charlotte, NC area. He graduated from NC State in 1965 with his B.S.F.M.M. degree and went on to complete a Masters of Business Administration at Emory University in 1967. Tom held numerous positions in the mortgage banking business, rising to the level of senior vice president of First Atlantic Corporation. After serving as chief financial officer of First Colony, a land development company, Tom formed Pearson Land Corporation in 1986. He and wife Tressa have endowed the Pearson Scholarship, given each year to a student in industrial and systems engineering at NC State.
E. Emory Enscore, Jr. is professor emeritus of industrial and manufacturing engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1965 (where he was named Outstanding Senior by the IE faculty), his M.S.I.E and PhD degrees from Penn State in 1967 and 1972 respectively. Emory served on the IME faculty at Penn State for 36 years, holding all academic ranks as well as administrative ranks of assistant head, graduate administrator and interim department head. He has been honored with his department’s outstanding faculty award 5 times, earned the College of Engineering outstanding advisor award 3 times, and earned the University’s Lineback Award for Teaching 2 times as the most outstanding teacher on campus. Within the Institute of Industrial Engineers, he has served in numerous local chapter as well as national roles, has been an ABET evaluator since 1988, and is an IIE Fellow. His other professional associations include ASME and ASEE, among many others.
Kenneth D. Franklin is vice president for Broadband for AT&T/Bellsouth. He received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1971 (where he was named Outstanding Senior by the IE Faculty) and has worked for BellSouth for 36 years. His many roles have included outside plant engineering and construction, senior director and network vice president. Dick has led teams of up to 6,000 personnel and budgets up to $600 million. Under his leadership, BellSouth DSL has consistently finished in the top 3 of J.D.Power rankings of Broadband Internet Service Providers and took top honors in 2002 and 2003. His region currently serves 3.9 million customers with $1.5 billion in annual revenue. He and his wife Wanda have recently endowed the Alpha Pi Mu Outstanding Sophomore Award for NC State ISE students.
Gayle S. Lanier is vice president and general manager of Nortel Knowledge Systems. Prior to joining Nortel in 1991, Gayle managed new product introduction and materials planning for Data General Corporation (currently EMC). She has held increasingly responsible positions in technology, business line management, product introduction and design and development, most recently serving as vice president of Global Corporate Operations. Gayle received her B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1982, and currently serves on the NC State Board of Trustees. Additionally, she has served as a director of the NC State Engineering Foundation, the NC State Minority Engineering Programs as well as the Kenan Institute of Engineering, Technology and Science at NC State.
Tim Scronce is president and chief executive officer of TelWorx Communications, a distributor to the wireless, wireline and government telecommunications sector. Prior to acquiring TelWorx in 2005, he was president and chief operating officer of Blue Rhino Corporation, the leading propane tank exchange company in America. In addition, Tim held executive level positions at Diageo as well as management positions with Continental Baking Company and Frito-Lay. Tim received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1987 and recently completed a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix. Tim currently serves as a director of the NC State Engineering Foundation and he and his wife Sandra have endowed a scholarship in the College of Textiles in honor of Tim’s father.
Class of 2006 – Inaugural Class
M. Tayfur Altiok, professor and chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rutgers University, received his M.S.I.E. and Ph.D. degrees from NC State in 1980 and 1982, respectively. His research interests are in capacity planning and performance analysis of transaction processing systems, manufacturing systems and bulk port operations, queueing networks and simulation; he has published 48 archival journal articles and five books on these topics. Dr. Altiok is a member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, the Institute for Operations Research, the Management Sciences Applied Probability Society and Alpha Pi Mu.
Worley “H.” Clark, Jr. is former president and CEO of Nalco Chemical. He earned his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1956. He received the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award from the NC State College of Engineering in 1993 and the Watauga Medal from the NC State Board of Trustees in 1996. Mr. Clark established the Worley “H.” and Callie Anne Clark Scholarship Endowment in Sales Engineering in the NC State College of Engineering in 1997, and the Worley “H.” Clark, Jr., Professorship in the NC State Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 1998.
Hugh M. Duncan, former president of SPS Co., Inc., received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1955. Over the course of his career, he held engineering positions with Industrial Piping, Inc., Pneumafil Corp., and Luwa Corp. In 1964, he purchased and revitalized Southern Precision Spring Co., Inc. (now SPS Co., Inc.). In 1997, he established the first endowed professorship sponsored by a single individual in the NC State College of Engineering the Dean F. Duncan Professorship in Mechanical Engineering, in honor of his father. Mr. Duncan has also endowed a merit scholarship for undergraduates majoring in industrial and systems engineering.
Edward P. Fitts, founder and former CEO of Dopaco, a global packaging company, received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1961. Before founding Dopaco in 1979, he rose to vice president of Sonoco Products Company. Mr. Fitts received the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award from the NC State College of Engineering in 2001 and the Watauga Medal from the NC State Board of Trustees in 2006. His gifts to NC State include the Edward P. Fitts Scholarship established in 1999, the Edward P. Fitts Industrial Engineering Professorship established in 2002, and a gift of $10 million that made the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering the first endowed academic department in the history of the University of North Carolina System.
Allen Fred Gant is former vice president of Key Pharmaceuticals. He received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1955. Mr. Gant held managerial positions with U.S. Vitamin and Miles Laboratories, corporate executive positions with Merck and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and, in 1980, he was named vice president of Key Pharmaceuticals. In addition, he held the position of senior vice president, and sat on the Board of Directors, of Granutec. He received the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award from the NC State College of Engineering in 1998 and has endowed numerous scholarships for undergraduates majoring in industrial and systems engineering.
James A. Hackney, III is former president and CEO of Hackney Industries, Inc. He received his B.S.M.E. and B.S.I.E. degrees from NC State in 1961 and 1962, respectively. He has served NC State University as Trustee and Chair of the Board of Trustees; General Chair of NCSU’s $230 million Century II Capital Campaign; Chair of the Board of Trustees of the NCSU Endowment Fund; an officer of the Alumni Association and Engineering Foundation; and Chair of the College of Engineering Advisory Committee. He is a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus, member of the University’s Lifetime Giving Society, a Scholarship Sponsor in the Wolfpack Club, and a recipient of the Watauga Medal.
Ross W. Lampe, Jr. is president of SMD Software, Inc., a property-management software firm. He received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1977 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1981 and 1983, respectively. While working for RCA and as a defense consultant (1984 - 1990), Dr. Lampe developed design equations for printed circuit antennas that are now widely used in industry. While working for Ericsson (1990 - 1996), he designed radio chipsets used in cellular telephones, supervised design efforts for integrated circuits, and obtained a number of patents in related technologies.
Leon McGinnis is the Eugene C. Gwaltney Professor of Manufacturing Systems in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his M.S.I.E. and Ph.D. degrees from NC State in 1973 and 1975, respectively. Dr. McGinnis is the author or editor of seven books and more than 110 technical publications. At Georgia Tech, he has held leadership positions in the Material Handling Research Center, the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems Program, the Manufacturing Research Center, and the Product/Systems Lifecycle Management Center. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers.
Richard Earle Nance is chief scientist of Orca Computer, Inc., and the John Adolphus Dahlgren Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. He received his B.S.I.E. and M.S.I.E. degrees from NC State in 1962 and 1966, respectively, and his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1968. Dr. Nance has held numerous editorial positions and was the found-ing editor-in-chief of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (1990 - 1995). Among his awards for service to professional societies, he was named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1996.
John B. Vaughan, former president of Vaughan Furniture, received his B.S.F.M.M. from NC State in 1952. He served Vaughan Furniture Company as vice president (1954 - 1955), executive vice president (1956 - 1976), president (1976 - 1995), CEO (1992 - 1999), and Board Chair (1997 - 2005). Mr. Vaughan served on the Board of the American Furniture Manufacturers Association, the Furniture Foundation, the American Furniture Hall of Fame, and the Advisory Board of the NC State College of Engineering. He was inducted into the American Furniture Hall of Fame in 2000.
Edward I. Weisiger, Jr. is president and CEO of Carolina Tractor. He received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1982 and has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the NC State Engineering Foundation. Mr. Weisiger endowed the Edward I. Weisiger Professorship in Construction Engineering in the NC State University Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering in honor of his father, Edward I. Weisiger, Sr.
Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. is former chair of the Board of Directors, president, and CEO of DuPont. He received his B.S.I.E. degree from NC State in 1956. He is a member of the Board of Telex Communications, Inc.; a former director of the New York Stock Exchange, Inc., Citigroup Inc., IBM, Apple Computer, Inc., and Bell Atlantic Delaware; and a former chair of the Business Council. In addition, Mr. Woolard is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Christiana Care Health System, the North Carolina Textile Foundation, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, and the Bretton Woods Committee.