Summit resident Eugene Eckel to receive Stevens Alumni Award, Oct. 9

HOBOKEN, N.J. — Eugene (‘Gene’) Eckel, a Summit, N.J., resident who is a graduate and former trustee of Stevens Institute of Technology will be honored by his alma mater on Saturday, Oct. 9, when the Stevens Alumni Association confers upon him the Stevens Alumni Award. The award will be conferred during the fall banquet held at Stevens by the Alumni Association.

The retired president and chief executive officer of AT&T Network Systems International, Eckel joins a small and distinguished group of alumni who have received both the Stevens Alumni Award and the Stevens Honor Award (in 1985).

Mr. Eckel has served the Stevens Alumni Association and the Institute in many capacities, offering his leadership and expertise in everything from alumni relations to academic affairs to fund-raising. He is a past president of the Alumni Association (1996–1997) and a former member of its Executive Committee.

As a Stevens trustee for 15 years (1988–2003) and former chair of the Institute’s Annual
Giving Council, Mr. Eckel was instrumental in ensuring the long-term success of the Institute, devoting much of his personal energy and expertise to two major Capital Campaigns that raised more than $200 million. He served on several of the board’s committees, including the Executive Committee, the Institute Development Committee, the Faculty Development Committee, the Alumni Communications Committee and the Committee for the School of Technology Management.

Mr. Eckel also served as chairman of the Edwin A. Stevens Society, the premier donors group at Stevens, and is a member of the Society’s prestigious President’s Circle. And he was a founding member of the Stevens Alliance for Technology Management, an industry-university consortium, and served on its advisory board.

His outstanding professional achievements—from which he gained knowledge and wisdom that have benefited Stevens—place him among some of the Stute’s most illustrious alumni.

He is the retired president and CEO of AT&T Network Systems International, based in Hilversum, The Netherlands, and enjoyed a long and prestigious career with the company (for-merly Western Electric), starting in 1942 as an equipment installer. As head of Network Systems International, which had revenues of more than $650 million through sales in more than 60 nations, Mr. Eckel directed engineering, manufacturing, marketing and support operations in the Netherlands, England, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and Italy. He was also, concurrently, executive vice president of AT&T Network Systems, before retiring in 1989.

Mr. Eckel graduated with honors in 1951 and then earned a master of science in production management from Stevens in 1956. As an outstanding young business executive in 1961, he won a Sloan Fellowship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a second master’s degree in industrial management.

He is a lifetime member of the National Eagle Scout Association and the Telephone Pioneers of America and a member of the advisory board of the Center for Leadership Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He also served in the Navy during World War II. As a Stevens student, he served as president of both the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity and Alpha Phi Omega, the service fraternity, and was a member of the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, Gear and Triangle and the Newman Club.

He and his wife, Darlene, live in Summit, N.J. They have two children and two grandchildren.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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