Gary Butler receives Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award
3/13/2019
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Gary Butler, P.E., a Penn State industrial engineering alumnus, was recently named one of 12 recipients of the 2019 Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award.
Established in 1966, the award is the highest honor bestowed by the Penn State College of Engineering and recognizes graduates who have reached exceptional levels of professional achievement.
Butler was the first generation in his family to go to college. He always liked math and science, and with his dad’s encouragement that engineering might be a path that would be of interest to him, Butler only applied to one college: Penn State.
“My father worked in a manufacturing environment around engineers, and he frequently encouraged me to consider engineering as a profession because he understood what engineers accomplished,” Butler recalls.
He started his college career in electrical engineering, but soon discovered it wasn’t the best fit for his extroverted personality. After meeting with department heads from electrical engineering, industrial engineering and mechanical engineering to find out what each major was specifically focused on and the types of careers one entered into upon graduation, Butler decided to pursue his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering instead.
After graduating from Penn State in 1971, Gary joined Allis-Chalmers Corporation as a plant engineer, and advanced into various management positions within the company into the 1980s, when the business became Precision Custom Components (PCC). In 1993, Gary left PCC and moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to become general manager of an Ionics Corporation business unit.
Gary returned to PCC in 1997 as vice president and general manager and became president and CEO in 2001, a position he still holds today. In 2010, the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal named PCC Business of the Year, and in 2011, Gary was recognized by the journal as Executive of the Year.
“Without my industrial engineering education from Penn State, I would have no ability to be doing what I’m doing today,” Gary says. “When I was going through the IE program, the curriculum was very broad, which was extremely beneficial to me because I’ve been able to be involved in all aspects of the business. Industrial engineering was and still is very people oriented. If you’re going to be in management and help make decisions in a company, that people aspect in IE is extremely important.”
Residing in York, Pennsylvania, Butler, his wife, Susan, and two adult children share a passion for education. “In my view, the more educated people you have in a community, the better that community will be, because you can bring in more sophisticated work that is financially rewarding and also personally-satisfying,” Butler said. “Education is absolutely critical to success for the country, for companies and for individuals.”
Butler is a registered professional engineer in mechanical engineering in Pennsylvania and is a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers. He was past president of the Penn State Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Society and the Manufacturers’ Association of South Central Pennsylvania, past chairperson of the Penn State York Advisory Board, and is currently president of the York County Science and Engineering Fair.
Butler will be honored on April 8 at the College of Engineering’s annual Outstanding Engineering Alumni Awards ceremony at the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus.
Share this story:
Gary Butler
