Contributors: Many, many friends of Ira A. Fulton.

Recipient: Val Hawks is the Ira A. Fulton Professor of Leadership.

Dr. Val Hawks has recently been appointed as the Director of the School of Technology. Dr. Hawks received his Ph.D. from Gonzaga University, M.S. from Lehigh University in Industrial Engineering and his B.S. from BYU in Design Engineering Technology. Prior to joining BYU, Dr. Hawks worked for 3M, Xerox Corp, and Ben Franklin Technical Center. Dr. Hawks has been serving as interim director of the School of Technology since June 2006.

Purpose: The Ira A. Fulton Leadership Professorship promotes and recognizes outstanding faculty efforts to implement aspects of leadership in curriculum and programs in support of college strategic objectives. The holder of this professorship seeks to develop faculty and students that have personal leadership characteristics, qualities, and skills and that are prepared to effectively assume leadership responsibilities. Those responsibilities include:

1. Building people, as a wise leader strives to utilize an eternal perspective and sound judgment, in working with people in any organization.
2. Understanding that relationships and vision are core to effective leadership.
3. Seeking to use influence positively and make decisions according to basic values and principles.
4. Knowing the importance of avoiding symptomatic solutions and realizing that poorly designed systems can be a larger problem than incompetence and avoiding faddish management models and techniques.
5. Awareness of leadership and organizational theories, identifying effective leadership resources, and knowing how to use tools of effective communication, including presentation and writing skills.

Contributors: Jim Abrams and Anita Schiller sponsor this professorship, along with the International Foundation of Telemetering, which funds only five universities to perform research in the telemetry field. Abrams is a 1978 BYU electrical engineering graduate. He is a former Vice President of Cisco Systems Inc., which provides networking for the Internet.

Recipient: Michael Rice is an Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He has published extensively in the areas of wireless communnications and telemetry systems. In addition to his teaching and research responsibilities, he has also served as the chair of the Utah Section of IEEE, Chair of the Signal Processing and Communications Society Chapter and as the Regional Student Activities Coordinator for IEEE. He has served on numerous conference organizing committees and was technical program chair for the International Telemetering Conference in 2002.

Purpose: The Jim Abrams and Anita Schiller professorship is intended to be used for furthering telemetry research at BYU. Professor Rice will use the funds primarily for student support in developing innovative curricula in wireless communications.

Contributors: Bill and Margaret Pope provide this professorship as a gift to the BYU community. Bill Pope taught for 20 years in the Chemical Engineering department and served as department chair. In 1966, he co-founded Megadiamond and later served as the first president of U.S. Synthetic Corporation. He has also been chairman of the board of U.S. Synthetic. Margaret Pope taught religion at BYU for 25 years. She has been actively involved in community and civic service, including three years as president of the Utah Valley Symphony Guild, Provo City Delinquent chairman and the Utah State Educational chairman of the American Cancer Society.

Recipient: Thomas H. Fletcher is a professor of Chemical Engineering. He is currently Director of the Advanced Combustion Engineering Research Center (ACERC). Fletcher worked for several years at the Combustion Research Facility of Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California. Since joining the Chemical Engineering faculty at BYU in 1991, he has been recognized for excellence in scholarly productivity, teaching, and service to the department and university.

Purpose: The Bill and Margaret Pope Professorship in Chemical Engineering is a non-renewable award made every five years to an accomplished faculty member or prospective faculty member in the department of Chemical Engineering. Its purpose is to provide significant and major enhancement to the research and scholarly output of the department by providing funds, prestige, and opportunity for the recipient to garner additional research funds, recruit quality graduate students, and to provide assistance for both graduate and undergraduate students.

Contributors: The funds for this professorship were provided in part from an endowment from the Thermochemical Institute, a campus-based research institute that has since been dissolved. The professorship is named after J.J. Christensen, a former Chemical Engineering faculty member who passed away while still enthusiastically working in the department. The name of the professorship is an honorarium to a beloved and valued member of the department.

Recipient: Larry Baxter is a professor of Chemical Engineering. He joined the BYU faculty in 2000 after working 14 years at Sandia National Laboratories' Combustion Research Facility. Professor Baxter teaches fluid mechanics, unit operations, and combustion courses. His research focuses on sustainable energy issues and his teaching and research programs involve students in hands-on applications of engineering. Professor Baxter collaborates with industrial and university research centers around the U.S. and in six foreign countries. He is a member of ASME's Board of Research and Technology and the U.S. delegate to two International Energy Agency tasks. Over 30 undergraduate and approximately 10 graduate students work in his group at any one time.

Purpose: The J.J. Christensen Professorship is awarded every five years to an established or prospective faculty member in Chemical Engineering, and is intended to provide resources for enhancing learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.