Each recalled how their tough years on campus prepared them to be leaders and connected them with people who made them better. 

“Georgia Tech taught me something very important. You don’t have to know everything; you just have to be willing to try and figure it out,” said Hall of Famer Jocelyn Stargel, IE 1982, MSIE 1986. 

Stargel was inducted moments before her husband, Bob, EE 1983, who she met in college. She worked for decades at Southern Company and then as a consultant after retiring. Stargel also has spent years serving on advisory boards for the College, the Alumni Association, and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. It’s an ongoing connection to Tech she treasures, she said, and it has reinforced what she already believed about the power of the institution.

“Georgia Tech is not just the university, it’s a community. I am especially grateful to the faculty and staff who make that mission possible every day. Your work changes lives — including mine,” Stargel said. 

Another Hall of Famer, Gail Panarello Smith, ChE 1978, praised the unsung heroes in her life — among them the high school calculus teacher who suggested applying to Tech and her dad, who tried repeatedly to teach her how to use a slide rule. She said reconnecting with the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering after retiring from a 40-year career at Procter and Gamble showed her she wasn’t done learning and could continue her lifelong mission of giving back.

Dean’s Awards

Alongside the 30 individual honorees, Williams presented two special awards. The Dean’s Impact Award went to mechanical engineering alumni Curt Lary and Nicholas Mulka. 

They’ve built a company called Hex that deploys fully automated stations to swap drone batteries without human intervention. Their system allows for longer operations, expanding access to aerial security monitoring and data collection for their customers. They also design software solutions for what they call a drone-in-a-box system.

“I can’t stress enough how much this award isn’t because of me, but because of people like Nick, and alumni and teachers at Georgia Tech who made me into who I am today,” Lary said. “An incredible amount of energy goes into each student at Tech, and I’m just one of them.”

The Dean’s Appreciation Award went to three people: Ann Dibble, William Wepfer, and, posthumously, Ward Winer, whose son accepted on behalf of the Winer family. The trio spent years building relationships with alumnus John Durstine that resulted in a $100 million estate gift to the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering last fall.

Dibble worked for two decades as director of gift planning at Georgia Tech. Wepfer and Winer are former chairs of the Woodruff School. All regularly visited Durstine, sharing their vision for mechanical engineering at Tech and learning about his career at Ford Motor Company.

“John Durstine was particularly special,” Wepfer said. “John was committed to Georgia Tech’s spirit of progress and service. So, as I think about this gift and his legacy, I think John might be smiling. And I view it as one big exclamation point behind our motto of Progress and Service.”

This year’s emcee was Engineering Hall of Fame member Jim Borders. He is president, CEO, and founder of Novare Group, an Atlanta-based real estate investment and development company that has overseen creation of more than 20,000 residential units across 66 communities.