Baltimore – On October 29, ABET installed the 2016-2017 Board of Directors Officers. The new Board will lead the global accreditor of college and university programs in engineering, engineering technology, computing and applied science.
The ABET Board of Directors has 13 members, including our Executive Director and CEO (non-voting), five Officers, four Area Directors, two At-Large Directors and one Public Director.
President
Wayne R. Bergstrom, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE., is ABET President. 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 holds civil engineering degrees from Michigan Technological University, Purdue University, and the University of Michigan. A Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, he is also the 2013 recipient of ASCE’s Excellence in Civil Engineering Education Leadership Award.
President-Elect
Michael R. Lightner, Ph.D., is ABET President-Elect. He 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 46 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.
Past President
Lawrence G. Jones, Ph.D., is 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).
Secretary
Mary Leigh Wolfe, Ph.D., is ABET Secretary. Wolfe has represented the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) on the ABET Board of Directors since 2010.
Wolfe has been involved in accreditation of educational programs for 26 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.
Wolfe is Professor and Head of the Department of Biological Systems Engineering (BSE) at Virginia Tech. She is also president-elect of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and served as president for 2015-2016. She is a member of the ASABE Foundation Board of Trustees and has previously served on the ASABE Nominating Committee, Board of Trustees and Board of Directors. She is a fellow of ABET, of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Treasurer
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 25-person civil and environmental consulting engineering firm based in Portsmouth, NH.
About ABET
ABET is a forward-thinking, purpose-driven organization recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. All over the world, ABET accredits college and university technical programs committed to the quality of the education they provide their students.
Based in Baltimore, we are a global organization, with over 3,700 programs in 30 countries in the areas of applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology at the associate, bachelor and master degree levels.
Additional information regarding ABET, its member societies and the accreditation process can be found at www.abet.org.