Stanley earns 2001 Hoover Medal

Jack Raplee
ASME NEWS

Each year, the Hoover Medal Board of Award recognizes an individual who advances the engineering profession and contributes to the broader community.

This year's recipient of the Hoover Medal is ASME member Richard H. Stanley, chairman of The Stanley Group and chairman and president of The Stanley Foundation, both headquartered in Muscatine, Iowa.

Stanley will receive the medal during the Honors Assembly at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition next month in New York City.

The Hoover Medal was last awarded to an ASME member in 1995, when the recipient was Dean Kamen (visit www.asme.org/congress/events/index.htm to access an interview with Kamen).

The medal was last awarded in 1998 to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who is an honorary member of ASME.

Under Stanley's leadership, The Stanley Group was ranked 101st in the Engineering News-Record's 2000 listing of the top 500 design firms and is the largest engineering firm in Iowa.

Hoover Medal winner Richard Stanley

Born in Muscatine, Iowa, Stanley received bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering from Iowa State University in 1955 and a master's degree in sanitary engineering from the University of Iowa in 1963.

The Stanley Foundation does programming in four strategic areas: global governance, U.S. foreign policy, global education and media. The foundation conducts more than 20 conferences a year.

Stanley's leadership efforts to promote thought and encourage dialogue about world affairs, as his nominator described on the nomination form, serve multiple constituencies, ranging from diplomats, scholars, and political and business leaders to preteen youth in rural Iowa.

The foundation focuses efforts on economic and social issues by producing a weekly 30-minute radio program called Common Ground, which airs on 110 radio stations in Canada and the United States, and by publishing World Press Review, a monthly news magazine with a global circulation of about 55,000. The foundation's stated mission is to "secure peace with freedom and justice through media and educational programs and through forums encouraging open dialogue among policy professionals, educators, students and citizens interested in world affairs."

Stanley has worked with human service institutions close to home. He served as the initial chair of the board of directors at Eastern Iowa Community College and chaired the task force that led to vertical integration of healthcare services in his community. He continues to serve as chairman of Unity Healthcare.

The Hoover Medal was created in 1929 to recognize engineers for great, unselfish, nontechnical services to humanity.

The Hoover Medal Board of Award consists of representatives of five national engineering societies: the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers Inc., the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

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