Baltimore – On March 12, The ABET Board of Directors elected Michael R. Lightner, Ph.D. as its 2016-2017 President-Elect. He will be inaugurated during the Fall 2016 ABET Board of Directors Meeting in October.
2016-2017 President-Elect Michael R. Lightner, Ph.D., is Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he has been on faculty since 1981 and served as chair from 2006-2014. He currently serves as the Vice President for Academic Affairs for the four-campus University of Colorado System. Lightner earned his B.S. and M.S. from the University of Florida, and his Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University, all in Electrical Engineering.
Lightner is a Life Fellow of IEEE, holding many leadership roles during his 45 years as a member and volunteer, including IEEE President and CEO in 2006. He is also a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Some honors he has received include: College of Engineering Max Peters Award for Outstanding Service, John and Mercedes Peebles Innovation in Teaching Award, and the College of Engineering Hutchinson Award for Outstanding Teaching in the College.
A member of the ABET Board of Directors since 2008, he is a dedicated leader in our organization. His various positions include five years as ABET Director from IEEE, two years as ABET Secretary, and he is currently in his first year as Engineering Area Director. Committees that he has served on include: Audit (member, then Chair), Governance (Chair), ad hoc Governance Group, and ad hoc Rules of Procedure of the Board of Delegates.
In addition to Lightner, the following individuals will serve as officers on the ABET Board of Directors during the 2016-2017 term:
Wayne R. Bergstrom, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE., will become 2016-2017 ABET President. He is a Bechtel Distinguished Engineer at Bechtel Infrastructure and Power Corporation where he has served as a Principal Engineer on a wide variety of globally distributed power generation and transmission projects. He has 38 years of civil/geotechnical engineering experience in governmental, industrial, and private practice employment.
Bergstrom is a licensed professional engineer in multiple states and has been granted certification as a Diplomate, Geotechnical Engineering by the Academy of Geo-Professionals. He joined ABET as a program evaluator in 1993. Since then, he has filled a variety of ABET roles, including evaluation team chair and EAC Commissioner, where he served five years on its Criteria Committee. He is currently in his 6th year on the ABET Board of Directors and sits on its Executive, Finance, and Governance Committees.
Lawrence G. Jones, Ph.D., will become 2016-2017 ABET Past President. He began his work with ABET as a program evaluator and as a CAC Commissioner. He was previously Chair of the CAC and a Chair of the ABET Accreditation Council, which coordinates common efforts for all four ABET Commissions. Prior to his retirement as Distinguished Principal Researcher at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University, Jones led numerous research projects spanning software architecture, software product lines, and government and industry consulting to support SEI’s technology transition mission.
Jones also served a career in the United States Air Force in a variety of software development and management positions, ultimately retiring as the Chair of the Computer Science Department at the United States Air Force Academy. His program at the Air Force Academy was the first computing program to be visited by CSAB (predecessor to the CAC prior to its merger with ABET in 2001).
Mary Leigh Wolfe, Ph.D., will begin her second one-year term as ABET Secretary. Wolfe has represented the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) on the ABET Board of Directors since 2010. She is Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Systems Engineering (BSE) at Virginia Tech, as well as the 2015-2016 president of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE).
Wolfe has been involved in accreditation of educational programs for over 25 years. She was the chair of the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET for the 2007-08 accreditation cycle and past-chair for the 2008-09 cycle. She began volunteering for ABET in 1991 as a program evaluator, and has since participated at every level of ABET accreditation.
Craig N. Musselman, P.E., will begin his first year of his third two-year term as ABET Treasurer. Previously, Musselman was the Representative Director from the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) on the ABET Board of Directors for four years, as well as a member of the ABET Finance Committee for two years. He has 41 years of experience in planning, design, and construction administration of public works projects and is the President of CMA Engineers, Inc., a 30-person civil and environmental consulting engineering firm based in Portsmouth, NH.
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About ABET
ABET is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization with ISO 9001:2015 certification. We accredit college and university programs in the disciplines of applied science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology at the associate, bachelor, and master degree levels.
With ABET accreditation, students, employers, and the society we serve can be confident that a program meets the quality standards that produce graduates prepared to enter a global workforce. For more information visitwww.abet.org