Dean, student earn national engineering awards

Paul Plotkowski, dean of the Seymour and Esther Padnos College of Engineering and Computing, and Joe Gibson, computer engineering major, were recognized at the American Society of Engineering Education’s Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration (CEED) annual awards ceremony. The conference took place February 4-6 in Palm Springs.  

Gibson, a senior from Walker, received the Cooperative Education Student of the Year Award. Gibson has completed co-op work at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, L-3 Communications in Grand Rapids and most recently at CERN, home of the world’s largest particle physics lab in Switzerland. 

Plotkowski received the Alvah K. Borman Award for his lifelong contributions to engineering cooperative education. Plotkowski established the cooperative education program at Grand Valley when he joined the university as director of the School of Engineering in 1991. He developed the James R. Sebastian Endowed Chair in Cooperative Engineering Education in 2005 as a faculty position that oversees the co-op program. 

Chris Plouff, interim director of the School of Engineering and Sebastian Endowed chair, nominated Plotkowski and Gibson for the awards. He said under Plotkowski’s leadership, the co-op program has grown from a handful of companies and 20-30 students per cohort to more than 200 companies and 120 student per cohort.