UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Wes Dickson, a senior industrial engineering student, has been selected to receive the S. Balachandran Service Scholarship by Alpha Pi Mu, the industrial engineering national honor society.
The scholarship was established in 2016 by Swaminathan Balachandran, a longtime professor of industrial engineering at the University Wisconsin-Platteville, who contributed much to both the profession of industrial engineering and to Alpha Pi Mu during his career.
Dickson is president of the Alpha Pi Mu Honor Society chapter at Penn State and a co-corporate chair of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) student chapter.
He is a research associate this semester for Associate Professor Gordon Pang’s research in improving health care efficiencies.
“We are utilizing patient physiological data to improve the transition process from intensive care units to downstream beds,” Dickson explained.
In 2016, Dickson was presented with the Harold and Inge Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering’s Jackie Livella/IISE Award for Service. He also previously worked as a teaching assistant for EDSGN 100 Introduction to Engineering Design.
He was a recipient of the Marcus Scholarship and the Harold A. Johnson Scholarship in 2015-16, and also served as the webmaster of the IISE student chapter during that time. He was also a recipient of the IISE Dwight D. Gardner Scholarship in 2016.
Dickson completed an internship over the summer with Siemens’ Operations Leadership Development Program in Greenville, South Carolina, and completed co-ops with Ingersoll-Rand in Tyler, Texas, during the spring and summer of 2015.
A native of Wayne, Pennsylvania, Dickson is a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and is scheduled to graduate with a bachelor of science in industrial engineering in May.