Keystone Central Foundation Hall of Fame inductees’ event set for Feb. 18; Royer among new class
BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP, PA – The Keystone Central Foundation this month announced the six members of its 2023 Hall of Fame class. They will be recognized at the organization’s hall of fame induction ceremony on Saturday, Feb. 18 at the Central Mountain High School cafeteria.
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The Record and therecord-online will be running periodic stories on the new inductees in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 18 event. Among the inductees is Dennis “Jack” Royer, Bald Eagle-Nittany High School, Class of 1958.
The Keystone Central Foundation provided this information on inductee Royer:
Jack Royer graduated from the Bald-Eagle Nittany high school in 1958 and then proceeded to earn Chemical Engineering degrees in college. After receiving a B.S. degree at the Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA in 1962, he then received a M.S. degree at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA in 1963, and finally a Ph.D. degree back at the Pennsylvania State University in 1967. Later he completed “condensed” business management training at the Pennsylvania State University and the Harvard Business School.
In service to the community for a chemical engineering education, many career paths were available to him: e.g., teaching, design, research, and production operations of manufactured materials to name a few. Jack combined the latter two commercial business paths to help produce many familiar products that commonly benefit us. A few product examples that he dealt with ranged from improved household detergents, film and packaging materials, storage containers, lubricants and flow drag reducers, automotive and airplane parts, to exotic materials used in space.
He first advanced to Director of Engineering Research operations with a staff of up to 125. This included the technical work necessary to translate the chemists’ inventions from the benchtop through pilot plant scale tests, the commercial design stage, then followed by start-up and operation of manufacturing processes. Overall, this activity most efficiently produces the required quality product at lowest cost to the manufacturers and thus to consumers.
Later as Research Fellow, his focus and greatest technical successes were in quickly correcting many dozens of costly unresolved manufacturing process problems, some even after years of expensive basic research. In each case, it was shown that these corrections could not have been made based on purely chemical and engineering analyses with our current level of scientific knowledge. The correction process that he developed involved specialized pilot plant tests, followed by his applied pioneering use of advanced mathematical analyses of those test results. In every case, the recommended process modifications solved each plants’ problems.
One major example of the preceding successes was as follows. Unfortunately, after a multi-$100 million plant capital investment had been made, that also required many additional millions of dollars in operating costs, no specification product had been produced in over a year of start-up difficulties. After one week of small-scale tests, the data analysis indicated that only a single, but unusually critical operating control set-point should be readjusted in the plant process. After that simple manufacturing change was completed at no cost, the desired product was immediately produced.
His honorary society awards include Tau Beta Pi, Phi Lambda Upsilon, and Sigma Tau membership. Professional society memberships include the American Chemical Society, as an associate, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Workplace recognition include four Engineering Excellence honor awards from the DuPont Engineering Department and a Six Sigma “Blackbelt” certification. A community service award was also received from the United States Bicentennial Anniversary Committee.
Jack worked for the Chemstrand Corporation in Pensacola, FL, Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY, ConocoPhillips in Ponca City, OK, and DuPont in Wilmington, DE. He received 12 patents from these organizations.
After retirement from DuPont in 2004, he provided engineering consulting services as the Managing Member of C 2 Consultant, LLC, in Kennett Square, PA. Jack and Mary (Rice) Royer currently reside in the preceding location.
Other foundation 2023 inductees are:
Mary Louise Ilgen, Sugar Valley High School, Class of 1943
Robbie Gould, Central Mountain High School, Class of 2001
DuWayne Kunes, Bald Eagle-Nittany High School, Class of 1976
Thomas “Doc” Sweitzer, Lock Haven High School Class of 1971.
William A. Rishell, Bald Eagle-Nittany Class of 1958
