2006 Honorary Degree
Jack R. Kelble
Doctor Of Engineering
|
He retired in February as corporate vice president and president of Space and Airborne Systems, the largest business unit of Raytheon Company, a major supplier of defense and aerospace systems and commercial electronics technologies. He was responsible for 13,000 employees and sales of more than $4 billion annually for the California-based company. He now lives in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Kelble came to Purdue from Berwyn, Ill., and earned a bachelor of science degree in engineering in 1965. He was a member of the HKN Electrical Engineering Honor Society.
He worked for 14 years at RCA in Moorestown, N.J., in various areas including hardware design, radar system engineering and engineering projects while earning a master's degree in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also was in the graduate business management program at the Wharton School.
Kelble joined Raytheon in 1979 as director of Data Acquisition Systems and quickly rose through the ranks, leading numerous divisions, departments, areas, programs, businesses and companies within the corporation and gaining experience in systems engineering, program and engineering management and business unit leadership. Throughout his career, he championed causes critical to maintaining effective communications between employees and management. He was a vital part of RaytheonŐs senior management team.
With 80,000 employees worldwide and $21.9 billion in revenues in 2005, the company is an industry leader in missile defense, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, precision strike technologies and homeland security. In 2005, Kelble received Raytheon Management Club Executive of the Year Award.
He also serves on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Boy Scout Council and received the 2005 Tom Harmon Memorial Award for outstanding service from the Boy Scouts of America.
Kelble assists his alma mater on the campaign steering committee for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Previously, he received the Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering Award in 2000 and was named a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus in 2003.