News Releases
AAES
Honors Outstanding Engineers and Recognizes Top
Engineering Reporting
Contact: David Gately
Te: 202-296-2237, ext. 16
Email: dgately@aaes.org
Washington, DC (May 6, 2002) What do a top-tier university president, a female engineer from Texas, a New York magazine writer, two brothers from West Point, and the former head of the National Aeronautics Space Administration all have in common?
Each will receive top honors today at the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) 23rd annual awards ceremony. The awards are being presented at the National Academy of Engineering.
Dan Goldin, former NASA administrator, receives the prestigious John Fritz Medal. Goldin, currently a senior fellow at the Council on Competitiveness in Washington, D.C., receives the award for pioneering unparalleled development in America's space program during the 1990s. The Fritz Medal was established 100 years ago in1902 as a memorial to the great engineer whose name it bears. The award honors scientific or industrial achievement in any field of pure or applied science.
"Goldin presided over the first American on a Russian space station, the first Russian on an American space shuttle, and the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid," said NAE President Wm. A. Wulf. "Under his direction, NASA aircraft made 250,000 takeoff and landing cycles with no loss of life."
G. Wayne Clough, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the winner of the National Engineering Award, AAES's highest honor. Clough is being recognized for his outstanding contributions as a great educator, university administrator, and statesman for the engineering profession. Under Clough's watch, Georgia Tech's expenditures, research funding, and enrollment have ballooned. Last year, Black Issues in Higher Education cited Georgia Tech as the first university to graduate the largest number of African-American engineers at the bachelors, masters, and doctorate levels.
The National Engineering Award was established in 1979 to honor engineers whose leadership and accomplishments benefit humanity. Past winners include Stephen Betchel Jr., William Pickering, and Neil Armstrong.
Two brothers who are both engineers, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and now head engineering departments at West Point, Colonels Stephen J. Ressler and Eugene K. Ressler, will receive the Norm Augustine Award for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Communications. The brothers are recognized for developing the West Point Bicentennial Engineering Design Contest, an innovative nationwide engineering design contest for high-school and middle-school students.
The Norm Augustine award is presented annually to an engineer who communicates the excitement of engineering to the public. AAES's Executive Director Tom Price said Stephen and Eugene Ressler are "wonderful examples of how good engineers can be great communicators."
James E. (Tom) Sawyer, former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, won the Kenneth Andrew Roe Award. Sawyer is being honored for his contributions in promoting cooperation and unity among engineering societies in the United States and abroad. The Roe Award was established in 1986 to honor AAES founder Kenneth Andrew Roe. The award recognizes leadership and dedication to those who strive to create a unified engineering community.
Victoria Rockwell, a mechanical engineer at Air Liquide America Corporation in Houston, Texas, will receive the AAES Chair's Award. Rockwell is recognized for her enduring drive and leadership as chair of AAES's Committee on Public Awareness of Engineering. With its Chair's Award, AAES honors engineers whose leadership and dedication to the engineering community helps advance engineering in the United States.
AAES and the National Audubon Society jointly present William Carroll with the Joan Hodges Queaneau Palladium Medal, for his vision, energy, and spirit, which has brought worldwide attention to the importance of environmental issues and methods to remedy them.
The American Association of Engineering Societies is a federation of engineering societies dedicated to advancing the knowledge, understanding, and practice of engineering. AAES's membership represents more than one million engineers in the United States. For more information, go to www.aaes.org.