Steve Betza
Penn State Alumni Fellow
Steven J. Betza, a former Penn State Altoona student and 1982 graduate of University Park, received the 2017 Penn State Alumni Fellow Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Penn State Alumni Association. Since 1973, the award has been given to select alumni who, as leaders in their professional fields, are nominated by an academic college or campus and accept an invitation from the president of the University to return to Penn State to share their expertise with students, faculty, and administrators.
Betza visited Penn State Altoona in October and offered the presentation “Lessons from a Lifetime of Engineering” to electro-mechanical engineering technology students.
Betza is corporate director of the Future Enterprise Initiative at Lockheed Martin in Bethesda, Maryland. He leads a futurist team that identifies emerging business and technology trends and high-impact capabilities in engineering, production, supply chain operations, and logistics for a corporation with more than 50,000 scientists and engineers and $47 billion in annual sales. Past leadership roles within the company include corporate director for advanced manufacturing, engineering director, program director, and chief information officer.
Betza currently serves on the board of directors of National Science Olympiad and the board of trustees for Guthrie Healthcare System in Sayre, Pennsylvania. In addition, he chairs the advisory board for the T.J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science at Binghamton University and sits on the executive committee for the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute in Chicago.
Betza periodically serves as an adviser to the Department of Defense, the Defense Science Board, the National Security Agency, and U.S. Congress on issues related to trusted electronics, manufacturing innovation, and the U.S. industrial base. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Manufacturing Leadership Council.
In 2013, Betza was recognized as an Eminent Engineer by the Penn State chapter of Tau Beta Pi and was honored by the Penn State College of Engineering with the Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award in 2002. He also serves as a member of Penn State Altoona’s Philanthropic Council and formerly served on the Industrial and Professional Advisory Council at University Park.
A native of Bellwood, Pennsylvania, Betza resides in Endicott, New York, with his wife, Barbara.