Contact: Carla Anderson, Director of Public Relations, (973) 596-3436For Release: Immediate
Release Reference Number: 3376
New Jersey Institute Of Technology
To Honor Five Alumni For Outstanding Achievement
Newark, N.J., Oct. 3, 1998 – Five distinguished alumni, all leaders in their fields, will receive New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Distinguished Alumni Medal for Outstanding Achievement at the university’s annual Fall Awards Ceremony, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 1998.
Alumni honorees include Herbert A. Bernhard, ’49, of Beverly Hills, Calif., a litigation specialist and partner in the law firm of Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Mamaro, LLP; John D. McKenna, ’68, of Rocky Mount, Va., a leader in the pollution control industry and chief executive officer of ETS, International, Inc. Air Technologies, Inc., and Christel Clear Technologies, Inc.; Vincent DeCaprio, ’72, of Mountain Lakes, N.J., senior vice president and chief technology officer at Becton Dickinson and Company; Col. Ellen Pawlikowski, ’78, of Annandale, Va., chief of the Revolutionizing Training Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio; and Michael F. Smith, ’78, of Califon, N.J., founder and chief executive officer of M.F. Smith & Associates, a management, information technology and training consulting firm.
Bernhard received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from NJIT. His firm employs more than 100 attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco. His clientele includes some of the biggest names in the entertainment world, leaders in telecommunications and even a major league baseball team. He has been a judge pro tem in the Los Angeles Superior and Municipal Courts and a judge in the Beverly Hills Municipal Court. A member of the Los Angeles County Bar and American Bar Association, his professional affiliations include the National Panel of Arbitrators, and the Lodging and Leisure Industry Group. He also is a member of the Board of Overseers of Hebrew Union College, chairman of the Advisory Board of the Skirball Museum, and a member of the Board of Governors of the American Jewish Congress.
McKenna received a master’s degree in chemical engineering from NJIT. His firm specializes in toxic emission measurements and control, as well as infrastructure design, construction and maintenance. ETS, Inc., has been serving the air pollution control industry since 1973, and is emerging from more than a decade of successful research and development with commercial products, at a time when environmental legislation has been revised and expanded. ETS, Inc., owns the proprietary rights to a number of inventions, three of which have been sold commercially. McKenna is active in numerous professional groups, including the Air and Waste Management Association, the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. His awards include the Manhattan College School of Engineering Centennial Award for Outstanding Engineering Graduate. He also is a member of Tau Beta Pi and appears in "Who’s Who in America."
DeCaprio, who received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from NJIT, is responsible for Becton Dickinson’s overall technology strategy, exploratory research programs, and the establishment and nurturing of long-range technology planning processes for medical devices. As a member of the company’s Leadership Team, he plays a central role in fostering technological innovation and growth through the identification and acquisition of new technologies. He has one patent for a miniature catheter delivery system. DeCaprio has been recognized with the Distinguished Service Award of the University of Utah School of Engineering and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. He also is a member of the Institute of Electronic Engineers, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, NJIT’s Board of Overseers, and the Newark College of Engineering Advisory Board.
Pawlikowski, who received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from NJIT, is one of the youngest colonels in the Air Force. She has served in the Pentagon as deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for counterproliferation. In this position, she was responsible for implementing the president’s charge to the U.S. military to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Then Secretary of Defense William Perry, current Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and Gen. Hugh Shelton personally recognized her efforts. Her Air Force honors include a Research Award from the Defense Acquisition University.
Smith, who received a bachelor’s degree in computer and information science from NJIT, founded M.F. Smith and Associates in 1978. The firm, which has branch offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Chicago, Denver and San Francisco, has grown from a handful of employees to more than 150. M.F. Smith and Associates has enjoyed a 93 percent repeat business ratio and has been prominently featured on INC. magazine’s roster of the nation’s fastest growing privately held companies. Smith has assisted corporate executives across the nation in resolving a wide range of management and operations-related problems. He is a frequent contributing writer to the New Jersey news media and holds memberships in a number of professional associations, including the National Association of Corporate Directors, the New Jersey State Association of Municipal Planning Officials, the Association of Management Consultants, and NJIT’s Computer and Information Science Advisory Board..
NJIT is a public research university enrolling nearly 8,200 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students in 76 degree programs through its five colleges: Newark College of Engineering, School of Architecture, College of Science and Liberal Arts, the School of Management and the Albert Dorman Honors College. Research initiatives include multimedia, manufacturing, microelectronics, transportation, computer science, solar astrophysics, environmental engineering and science, and architecture and building science.
Yahoo! Internet Life magazine ranks NJIT the second "most wired" campus in the nation., U.S. News and World Report's "1999 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges" ranks NJIT among the nation’s top universities, and Money magazine's "Best College Buys 1998" rated NJIT as the sixth best value among U.S. science and technology colleges and universities.
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