Dr. Harold T. Conner Jr., a Chemical Engineering industry icon who built a stellar reputation leading a vital nuclear facility through a challenging period of American history while serving as a guiding beacon for three generations of professionals, is most deserving of the 2022 AIChE Management Award.
A product of the civil rights era of the 1960s, Harold is the son of schoolteachers. He attended segregated schools in west Tennessee through high school and later became the first African American student to participate in the University of Tennessee (UT) Martin engineering co-op program. He continued to break barriers as his professional career advanced, being named the first African American to be honored as a graduate of the University of Tennessee Knoxville Chemical Engineering Program.
It was the UT co-op program that launched his impressive 55 years of service on Department of Energy and nuclear-related projects. Most of his career was spent in Oak Ridge where his decades of leadership and community service earned him the East Tennessee Economic Council’s prestigious Muddy Boot Award, named after the gritty pioneers who slogged through muddy terrain to create the City of Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project.
Today, few people in any industry can claim the remarkable length of service or extraordinary level of achievement that characterize Harold’s career. Despite detours to work at other DOE locations, Harold ended his five-decade career at the same place it started – the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge. Harold recently retired as Senior Advisor to the President of UCOR, an AECOM-led partnership with Jacobs responsible for cleanup of the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) and other parts of the Oak Ridge Reservation. He is currently Senior Engineering Advisor for Strata-G Corporation, a UCOR small business partner, and serves on the company’s board of directors.