Advisory board member mentors young engineers

Edmonds Community College advisory board member George Parker was featured in an article in BlackEngineer.com. He will be honored with a 2010 Black Engineer of the Year Award for Corporate Promotion of Education at a ceremony in Feb. in Baltimore, Maryland. Parker is a lead engineer/senior chemist at The Boeing Co. where he's worked for 21 years. He's on the advisory board for the college's Materials Science Technology Program and has helped the program obtain donations of equipment from Boeing including a scanning electron microscope, which allows students to examine materials at the molecular level. He also created the Boeing Educational Exposure Internship Program, which serves eight to 10 materials-science students each year. He also helps students explore the materials science lab at annual YMCA Young Black Achievers events and supports a NSF National Resource Center for Materials Technology Education located at Edmonds Community College. Parker holds a Ph.D. in Polymeric Composite Technology Engineering from the University of Washington. He began his postsecondary education by earning a bachelor's of science in chemistry at St. Martin's College in Lacey and then earned master of science in organic/analytical chemistry at the University of Virgina and a master of science in Industrial Management from the University of Washington/Lille School of Business, Lille, France.