Nine Mississippi State alumni recognized as Distinguished Fellows
May 8, 2020
Leaders from a variety of industries are among the Mississippi State alumni who have been recognized by the Bagley College of Engineering for their accomplishments and commitment to the field of engineering.
Eight alumni were selected as Distinguished Fellows while one alumnus was selected as the second recipient of the college’s Emerging Leader Award.
The 2020 Distinguished Fellows are (top row, from left): Buddy Barnett, Van Chaney, Jason Goudelock, William Harris III, Maeghan Hudon, (bottom row, from left) Joseph Lauderdale, Michael McAnelly, and Jack Perkinson. The Emerging Leader for 2020 is Stuart Salters, pictured bottom row, far right.
“We are proud to recognize a group of outstanding alumni for their hard work, service and contributions to their communities,” said Jason Keith, dean of the Bagley College of Engineering. “The success of our alumni is a testament to the quality of engineering education you receive from Mississippi State.”
Civil engineering alumnus Stuart Salters was selected as the recipient of the college’s Emerging Leader award. Salters is vice president of government relations for the American Public Gas Association. He was previously with the American Petroleum Institute after having gotten his start as a design engineer with Chevron.
The Emerging Leader award was first presented in 2019 and recognizes Bagley alumni who are under 40 but who have already made a tremendous impact in their profession or in the community.
The eight alumni selected as 2020 Distinguished Fellows include:
K.L. “Buddy” Barnett
Barnett worked with Chevron during his entire career, retiring as a General Manager of Chevron Corporation. He developed the technique used to drill the first “mud cap” oil wells for Chevron and authored three Society of Petroleum Engineering technical papers.
Captain Van G. Chaney
Chaney is the acting chief test pilot for 777 aircraft for Boeing Commercial Aircraft Company. He received the Silver Award from the Royal Aeronautical Society and was awarded Best Paper at the 8th Annual Flight Test NW Symposium of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.
Jason Neil Goudelock
Goudelock is a gateway solutions architect for ExxonMobil. He is a certified SAFe 4 Agilist and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
William J. Harris III, MD
Harris is the chief of cardiovascular surgery at Mississippi Baptist Medical Center in Jackson. He is a fellow of the American College of Surgery and a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
Maeghan S. Hudon
Hudon is the director of product management in robotics at Amazon. She started her career at Boeing where she was selected as Engineering of the Year in 2013.
Joseph E. Lauderdale
Lauderdale is the president and owner of Sunbelt Sealing, Inc. He served as president of the board of directors of the Mississippi Roadbuilders Association and was selected as the Mississippi Engineering Society’s Engineer of the Year in 2001.
Michael L. McAnelly
McAnelly is the president and founder of Power and Control Systems, Inc. He holds four U.S. patents and serves as an adjunct graduate faculty member at LSU.
Jack Miller Perkinson
Perkinson is the president of J.M. Perkinson Engineering. He serves as a class mentor for the mechanical engineering senior design class and, along with his wife, is the namesake of the Jack and Betty Perkinson Senior Design Review Studio in Carpenter Hall.
The Distinguished Fellows program began in 1991 when 100 alumni were honored to celebrate the college’s 100th anniversary. Now, each spring, new alumni fellows are selected to recognize their accomplishments in the field of engineering as well as their service to the community.
Honorees are typically recognized at an end-of-semester awards banquet, but this year’s event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can learn more about the many impressive accomplishments of each of this year’s Distinguished Fellows and Emerging Leader in the awards banquet program.
The Bagley College of Engineering is online at www.bagley.msstate.edu and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube at @msuengineering.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.
By Philip Allison