Baltimore – On October 22, ABET installed the 2017-2018 Board of Directors. The new Board will lead the global accreditor of college and university programs in engineering, engineering technology, computing and applied and natural 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
Michael R. Lightner, Ph.D., is ABET president. 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 47 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 and two years as ABET secretary. 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
Wayne R. Bergstrom, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE., is ABET Past-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 39 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
Mary Leigh Wolfe, Ph.D., is ABET President-Elect. 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 27 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).
Secretary
Stuart Zweben, Ph.D., is ABET secretary. Zweben is professor emeritus of computer science and engineering at The Ohio State University. He holds a B.S. in mathematics from CUNY City College, a M.S. in statistics and computer science from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Purdue. From 2006 until his retirement in 2011, he served as associate dean for Academic Affairs and Administration in Ohio State’s College of Engineering. Prior to becoming associate dean, Stu served as chair of OSU’s computer science and engineering department for 11 years. He held a faculty position at Ohio State for more than 37 years prior to his retirement.
Stu is a fellow and a former president of ACM (The Association for Computing Machinery), a fellow and former president of CSAB, and a fellow of ABET. He began his accreditation-related work when CSAB first formed in the mid-1980s as the organization that accredited computer science programs, and he served on CSAB’s first accreditation commission. After computing accreditation became ABET’s responsibility, Stu continued his accreditation-related service activities. From 2009-2011, he chaired ABET’s Accreditation Council and from 2008-2009, he chaired ABET’s Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC). In 2012, Stu received ABET’s Linton E. Grinter Distinguished Service Award, ABET’s highest honor. Currently he serves on ABET’s Global Council and on its Grinter Award Committee.
Treasurer
Craig N. Musselman, P.E., will continue his second 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 STEM programs committed to the quality of the education they provide their students.
Based in Baltimore, we are a global company, with over 3,800 programs in 31 countries in the areas of applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology at the associate, bachelor and master degree levels.