UT-Knoxville College of Engineering 2006 Commencement
Dean Way Kuo and Dr. Jeffrey Wadsworth
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The University of Tennessee College of Engineering (COE) held its third annual spring commencement on Friday, May 12th at 3:00 p.m. in the Knoxville Convention Center, Exhibit Hall B. The college conferred bachelor of science degrees on 206 spring and summer graduates.
Masood Parang, Associate Dean of Student Affairs, presided over the ceremony. Additional ceremony participants included COE Dean Way Kuo; college department heads and representatives; and Roger Parsons, director of the Engineering Fundamentals Division, who served as announcer during the presentation of the degrees.
Adam Christopher Hetzler, a nuclear engineering major, was recognized as the College of Engineering's top graduate at the event.
Keynote speaker for the event was Dr. Jeffrey Wadsworth, Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and CEO and President, UT-Battelle LLC.
Wadsworth was named as the director of ORNL on August 1, 2003. He was previously a senior executive at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, where he focused on Department of Energy science programs, technology transfer and homeland security.
Prior to joining Battelle in August 2002, he served as deputy director for science and technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He has B.S., Ph.D. and D.Met. degrees in metallurgy from Sheffield University in England.
In 2003, Dr. Wadsworth was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his distinguished contributions in developing advanced materials and superplasticity and in determining the history and origins of Damascus and other steels and for broad scientific leadership supporting national security.
In 2004, Dr. Wadsworth received an honorary doctorate in engineering from Sheffield University. In 2005, he was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Wadsworth is also a Distinguished Research Professor in the College of Engineering's Department of Materials Science.
Colleges at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville began holding individual spring ceremonies in 2004. The university’s commencement activities took place at 8:30 a.m. in Thompson-Boling Arena.
For more information, contact Kim Cowart, Communications Manager, (865) 974-0686/kcowart@utk.edu.