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Selçuk Güçeri, dean of Drexel University’s College of Engineering, has been named the 2010 Delaware Valley Engineer of the Year by the engineering and technical societies of the Delaware Valley, through the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia.The award, which is bestowed yearly upon a Delaware Valley engineer whose work and support of the engineering profession has had a significant impact on the region and profession, will be presented to Guceri during Delaware Valley Engineers Week, which will take place February 12-20.Nominated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Philadelphia Section, Guceri was chosen to receive the coveted award by his peers who represent the many professional, technical and scientific engineering societies in the Delaware Valley. The Delaware Valley Engineer of the Year Award has been granted yearly to an exemplary engineer since 1953. As Engineer of the Year, Guceri will serve as an engineering ambassador in 2010. As such, he will be required to serve on the Engineers Week committee of the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, speak at technical society meetings, make public appearances and work with members of the press to highlight engineering issues and events as they occur throughout the year. Guceri joined Drexel in 2000 after having served for seven years as Department Head of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to this, Guceri served for 17 years on the faculty at the University of Delaware, during which time he was engaged in a variety of activities including serving on the Board of Directors for the Center for Composite Materials (CCM). CCM was one of the original six Engineering Research Centers established by the National Science Foundation. During the past thirty years, Guceri has developed innovative models for education, mentoring and outreach that have enhanced the reputation of his institutions. He formed and led teams that achieved important accomplishments thought to be unattainable at these institutions. His commitment to teaching was recognized with an Excellence in Teaching Award in 1985.Guceri has led major efforts to develop programs for engineers that embrace cultural, social, and global perspectives, ethics, professional development and life-long learning. He inspires students to move beyond the concept of studying engineering as a profession to studying engineering as an education. Under his guidance the number of engineering students exploring courses in other disciplines of social sciences, economics, and humanities through Drexel’s Honors Program has increased by a factor of two. In addition, he has developed effective recruitment and mentoring programs that have increased enrollment from 2,500 to more than 3,600 students in the College of Engineering while increasing the average SAT scores by more than 90 points. In 2007, Drexel University was ranked sixth in the nation for awarding the highest percentage of PhDs to women candidates. With Guceri’s leadership and the help of many engineers and business leaders in the Delaware Valley region, Drexel’s College of Engineering is consistently ranked in the top 50 private universities whose highest degree is a doctorate by U.S. News & World Report. A native of Turkey and born to parents who are both engineers, Guceri received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Middle East Technical University in Turkey. He received his doctorate from North Carolina State University. He is a Fellow of ASME and the founding editor of two professional journals: Journal of Thermoplastic Composite Materials and Journal of Materials Processing & Manufacturing Science. He has organized several important internationally attended conferences on breakthrough technologies, including the conference on Transport Phenomena in Materials Processing that brought leading academic and industry researchers to develop advanced materials for the defense industry. He organized a NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on Engineered Nanofibrous Materials that helped to implement new research topics on biomaterials and opto-photonic materials using nanoscale engineering. He organized a second NATO ASI in on Plasma Decontamination that has implications for environmental remediation and wound healing for battlefield applications.Guceri is author/coauthor of over 100 technical publications, including several chapters in reference books. He has served as a consultant to many organizations in China, Korea and Turkey and as a technical expert for the United Nations. He has served on numerous national panels, was a member of the Advisory Board of the United Arab Emirates University and of the accreditation committee to American University of Sharjah (UAE). Guceri’s personal interests include playing and listening to classical piano, collecting vintage model airplane engines and vintage radios from the early 1900’s, and marine studies.For more information on the Delaware Valley Engineer of the Year Award, contact Patti Gibson, at 610-459-7905 or pgibson@aroraengineers.com. News Media Contacts:Elizabeth Brachelli, College of Engineering 215-895-6454, 267-357-2527 (cell) or ebrachelli@coe.drexel.eduStephanie Simon, for Delaware Valley Engineers Week 215-699-7863, 215-264-2194 (cell) or alhancom@comcast.netNoah Cohen, Office of University Relations 215-895-2705, 267-228-5599 (cell) or noah.cohen@drexel.edu