NOTABLE MEMBERS

Notable members are those that have served the Philadelphia Section in one shape or another. Some notable members have only been a member of the Philadelphia Section while others have been a member of multiple sections, but have left a huge impact on our section. The list below is in no way a complete list of members that have made a difference on the Philadelphia Section.
	Betty Lou Bailey Betty Lou Bailey, SWE Pioneer, Fellow, and Life Member, was active in the Philadelphia Section from May 1961 through September 1969 when she worked at the General Electric Missile and Space Division in King of Prussia, PA. For much of this time she served on the Executive Committee in various positions that included Section President and Secretary. Betty Lou was committed to career guidance activities and often spoke with high school students, their parents, teachers, and counselors about what engineers do, their education and training, salaries, and the satisfaction you get from a job well done. She was elected to the SWE College of Fellows in 1985. Read More...
	Susan Best Susan L. Best, SWE Fellow and Life Member, has been an active in SWE since she joined the Society in 1975 as a civil engineering student at the University of Delaware in 1975. Her career took her to California and Illinois, where she was active in the Los Angelus and Chicago Regional Sections before coming to the Philadelphia area in 1984. She has served at the local, region, and national levels. Susan was Section Treasurer from 1991 to 1993 after which she became more interested in raising funds for the section than in documenting them and became Corporate Liaison from 1996 to 2000. In addition to serving as the section’s Engineers’ Week Liaison from 1987 to 2009 and the ETSCO (Engineering and Technical Societies Council) Representative from 1987 to 1989 and 1990 to 1993, she was a science fair judge and Certificate of Merit award presenter. After completing a term at the Society’s Tellers Committee Chair in 1989, Susan served as Region E Treasurer under four Region Directors. She was also the Region E By-Laws Chair. In 1984 she switched from chairing the national Membership Committee to the Procedures Committee, where she helped direct the preparation of operating procedures to implement SWE’s organizational change to a regional structure. She was elected to the SWE College of Fellows in 1996. Read More...
	Ruth Carolyn White Buggy Ruth Carolyn White Buggy, SWE Pioneer and Life Member, was an active member of the Philadelphia Section from when she transferred from the Washington, DC area in 1960 until failing health caused her to curtail her activities in the early 1990s. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she served in most Section offices, often for multiple terms. She was also an active career guidance committee member, science fair judge, and high school career day speaker. Carolyn was one of the two Section working delegates to the Engineering and Technical Societies Council (ETSCO) for most of 1964 through 1984. Many times her husband, Rodman Buggy, sat in for her and SWE at the ETSCO meetings. Carolyn established the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) in the Delaware Valley; she and Rodman ran most of the program for about two decades. She was named to the Philadelphia Section Hall of Fame in 1989. Read More...
	Nance Dicciani Dr. Nance K. Dicciani, SWE Achievement Award Winner and Life Member, has provided advice and counsel to SWE members and the Society over the years. She has served as a speaker at conferences and as a member of national committees. In 1987 she was the recipient of the Society’s highest honor, the SWE Achievement Award “For outstanding research management leading to the creation of important new industrial products.” Read More...
	Barbara Covolus Faust Barbara Covolus Faust, SWE Fellow and Life Member has been an active member of the Philadelphia Section since June 1964 when she began work at the General Electric Company Missile and Space Division in King of Prussia, PA. She had joined SWE in 1963 when she was a student at the Pennsylvania State University. At the time she was assigned Member-at-Large (MAL) status because Penn State did not have a student section and there was no nearby professional section. She went to her first SWE-Philadelphia event, a business meeting held at Doris McNulty’s house, and was nominated to be Vice President for 1964-1965. Since then she has served multiple terms in most positions on the Executive Council, as Newsletter Editor, science fair judge, workshop presenter, SWE Counselor for the Lehigh and Drexel Student Sections, and Certificate of Merit Program Chair. During the 1980s she also served on the National Ad Hoc Committee to Study SWE Regional Boundaries prior to regionalization, as New Section Coordinator, and on the Membership and Scholarship Committees. Barb was named to the Philadelphia Section Hall of Fame in 1991 and elected to the SWE College of Fellows in 1994. Read More...
	Isabelle French Isabelle French, SWE Pioneer, Past National President, Fellow, and Life Member, was an active member of the Philadelphia Section from the time she moved from the Boston Section in 1954 to take a position with Bell Telephone Laboratories in the Allentown area until she became a Charter Member of the Lehigh Valley Section in 1980. While in the Philadelphia Section she served as National SWE President from 1964 to 1966 and in some office on the Executive Council for the Philadelphia Section during the “musical-chair” years of officers in the 1960s and 1970s. She also served as national SWE Treasurer and Secretary. Isabelle was an avid participant in all section activities and events. She was elected to the SWE College of Fellows in 1981 and was named to the Philadelphia Section Hall of Fame in 1989. Read More...
	AW Grosvenor Alvah W. “Doc” Grosvenor, Jr., an Honorary member and a Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University), served as Faculty Advisor for the group of women engineering students who were meeting together in the mid-1940s and wanted to form a group that would be officially recognized on campus. New groups were “on trial” for three years before they could become a "campus reality" and be recognized for inclusion in the yearbook and listed with student groups. Mr. Grosvenor worked with the women and championed their group throughout the three-year trial period and for several years afterward. In remarks made on his behalf by his daughter at a SWE meeting on April 19, 1963, he recalled “that the initial members of the Drexel group, the nucleus from which grew the National Society of Women Engineers, were enthusiastic and hard working. They were determined to prove themselves in a profession dominated by men.” Read More...
	Dorothy Hoffman Dorothy M. Hoffman, SWE Fellow and Life Member, joined the Society in 1956 and was strong supporter of both the Philadelphia and New Jersey Sections. Though she lived and worked in New Jersey, she opted to be part of the Philadelphia Section. From the 1950s through the mid-1970s, a span of nearly 20 years, she served in some section office, including two terms as President. From 1980 to 1989 she served on the Society’s Board of Trustees. Dorothy was elected a SWE Fellow in 1984. In 1989, she was named to the Philadelphia Section Hall of Fame for her many contributions to the Section. Dottie was instrumental in having RCA become an early Corporate Member of the Society and providing funding for the RCA scholarships awarded by SWE for electrical engineering students. Upon her death, a bequest to the Society provided for the development of new career guidance programs and the funding for the Dorothy M. and Earl S. Hoffman Scholarship awards. Read More...
	Gloria Jean Hoppert G. Jean Hoppert, SWE Fellow and Life Member, was an active member of the Philadelphia Section for only a short time from 1978 to the early 1980s when she became a Charter Member of the Lehigh Valley Section that split off from the northernmost areas of the Philadelphia Section. However, she played a significant role in revitalizing the Philadelphia Section and energizing the Lehigh Valley Section. She used her experience as chair of the national Student Conference in 1977 to lead members from the Philadelphia, Lehigh Valley, and Twin Tiers Sections to work together to put on a joint professional development conference designed to address choices to be faced by women engineers during periods of transition in their careers. The outcome of this effort was the Career Conference: Transition to Management, or “the Pocono Conference,” that was held in April 1983 and open to all SWE members. At this time, Jean was also serving on the Society’s Long Range Planning Committee that was working out issues associated with restructuring the Society to a regional organization; several informal meetings held during the conference worked out the rationale for the number and composition of the regions. Read More...
	Ralph Klesius Ralph Klesius was the 1993 recipient of the Rodney D. Chipp Memorial Award given to men or companies that contribute greatly to the advancement of women in the engineering profession. Ralph Klesius was instrumental in the hiring and promotion of women engineers in his role as the Senior Vice President of Delmarva Power & Light Company, later Conectiv Power Delivery. Ralph worked to create the Conectiv Power Scholarship to encourage women and minorities to pursue careers in engineering. In addition, he worked closely with regional engineering universities to promote women in engineering programs and assisted women in obtaining summer jobs at Conectiv. Ralph donated the monies he received in conjunction with the Rodney D. Chipp Memorial Award to the SWE scholarship fund. When he retired a few years later he requested that, in lieu of other gifts, donations also be made to the SWE Scholarship Fund. These donations from individuals and companies were added to the original funds provided Ralph and together Conectiv and SWE decided to endow a scholarship in Ralph’s name. When the DelMar Peninsula Section split off, all of the Ralph Klesius Fund went to DelMar as part of the Treasury Split agreement. Sources: "Klesius Scholarship to benefit future engineers." INSIGHT. March 1999. SWE Archives - 1993 Rodney Chipp Memorial Award News Release.
	Nancy Redgate Nancy Redgate, a SWE Fellow and Life Member, joined SWE in 1968 and is a Charter Member of the University of Delaware Student Section. After graduating in 1970, she became a member of the Philadelphia Section, where she was an active member until she moved to Georgia during her term as Section President in 1977-1978. She also served as Section Representative from 1973-1975 and as a member of several national committees. She was elected to the College of Fellows in 1990. Nancy often referred to SWE as “a family affair,“ with three of the four family members involved in the Society. In 1977 she was a Senior Member, her husband Bill, an architect, has just been accepted as a Senior Member, and her daughter Diana, a physicist, was an Associate Member. As her son Bill was then studying engineering at the University of Delaware, she said that “there is still hope for a total commitment by the Redgates.” Read More...
	Helen Smith Helen Smith joined the Philadelphia Section in 1953 and immediately became involved as Membership Chair, an office she held for four years. She also served as Section Chairman in 1955-1956, Recording Secretary, and Programs Chair. Read More...
	Alice Stoll Alice M. Stoll, 1969 Recipient of the SWE Achievement Award and Life Member, has been in the Philadelphia area since she entered employment with the federal government in 1953 as a research physiologist in the Aerospace Medical Research Department of the Naval Air Development Center in Warminster, PA. She received the Society’s highest honor “In recognition of her significant contributions in the development of fire-resistant fibers and fabrics, based on her pioneering studies of heat transfer by flame contact.” In 2000 she funded one of the section’s scholarship awards for college students, and she made the presentation at the Awards Banquet held during the Society’s and the Section’s 50th Anniversary. Read More...
	Maria Telkes Dr. Maria Telkes, a SWE Pioneer, first recipient of the SWE Achievement Award, and Life Member, was active member in the Philadelphia Section from 1964, when she lived in Allentown and was Director of Research and Development for Cryo-Therm, through at least 1977 when she retired from the Institute of Energy Conversion at the University of Delaware. Maria was a lively conversationalist at Section dinner meetings at the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, and she frequently expounded on the virtues of solar power. Section members were treated to behind-the-scene technical tour of the solar-powered house that she developed at the University of Delaware. Sometime after retiring, she moved to North Miami, FL and remained active as a consultant until 1993. Read More...

Mission: Stimulate women to achieve full potential in careers as engineers and leaders, expand the image of the engineering profession as a positive force in improving the quality of life, demonstrate the value of diversity.