The Texas A&M University College of Engineering honored six alumni during the 2018 Outstanding Alumni Awards Banquet.
Receiving the Outstanding Alumni Honor Award were Quentin Baker ’78, Peter C. Forster ’63, Jay Graham ’92, Stephanie G. Hertzog ’96 and Carl F. Jaedicke ’73. Receiving the Outstanding Early Professional Achievement Alumni Award was Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Tucker ’12.
Outstanding Alumni Honor Awards
Quentin Baker ’78
Mechanical Engineering
President and Chairman of the Board
Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants, Inc.
Quentin Baker is president and chairman of the board of Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants, Inc., a company he founded in 2001. The company was recognized among the 2009 Aggie 100 as one of the 100 fastest growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world.
During his career, Baker has made significant contributions in the areas of explosion consequence assessments and the investigation of accidental explosions. He has also designed and conducted tests for recreational purposes in accident investigations and to evaluate functionality or performance of equipment recovered from accident sites.
Baker has authored more than 60 papers, and is co-author of two books, with a third currently being written. His work on predicting the risk of fatalities to building occupants is still an industry standard. He is the co-inventor of five patents and has participated in four standards writing committees.
He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, National Association of Fire Investigators, National Fire Protection Association and National Society of Professional Engineers.
Baker received a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1978 and a Master of Business Administration from The University of Texas at San Antonio in 1986.
He and his wife Jana have two children, Sean and Evan ’15.
Peter C. Forster ’63
Civil Engineering
Director
Clark Construction Group, LLC
As chairman and CEO of Clark Construction until 2013, Peter Forster was responsible for the overall operation of the company. Through his strategic vision and leadership, Clark has grown to perform more than $4.2 billion per year in general building projects. This work includes major convention centers, stadiums and arenas, high-rise buildings, government facilities, airport terminals, and other projects throughout the United States.
Prior to joining the organization, Forster was president and chief operating officer of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Blount International, Ltd., which he joined in 1968. He was promoted to president and chief operating officer of Blount Brothers Corporation, the company’s largest subsidiary, in 1978.
Forster is a member of the Knights of Malta and serves on the board of the National Capital Area Boy Scouts and Archbishop Carroll High School.
Forster earned a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering and a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1964 from Texas A&M, and then pursued graduate study in civil engineering at Northeastern University. He began his career in 1964 as a civil engineering officer with the U.S. Air Force, where he worked on construction projects in the United States and Thailand.
He and his wife Betsy have been married 54 years and have two children, Catherine and John, and six grandchildren.
Jay Graham ’92
Petroleum Engineering
Chairman, CEO and co-founder
WildHorse Resource Development Corporation
Jay Graham is the chairman, CEO and co-founder of WildHorse Resource Development Corporation (WRD), which operates premier assets in the Eagle Ford Shale and the over-pressured Cotton Valley in North Louisiana. Over the past year, WRD has consolidated several Natural Gas Partners-backed companies and acquired approximately $1 billion of assets located in the Eagle Ford Shale.
Previously, Graham was the CEO and co-founder of WildHorse Resources, LLC and WildHorse Resources II, LLC. WildHorse Resources was founded in 2007 and ultimately provided assets for three public companies: Memorial Production Partners, Memorial Resource Development Corp. and PennTex Midstream Partners. He served as CEO and a member of the board of directors of Memorial Resource Development Corp. from January 2016 until the merger with Range Resources in September 2016.
Graham has been in the oil and gas business since 1993, and serves on the Petroleum Industry Advisory Board, College of Engineering Advisory Council and 12th Man Foundation Board of Trustees at Texas A&M. He is also co-founder and advisor of the Petroleum Ventures Program at Texas A&M, which is a collaboration between the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering and the Mays Business School.
Graham received his Bachelor of Science degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M in 1992, and is a member of the Petroleum Engineering Academy of Distinguished Graduates at Texas A&M.
He is a recipient of the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ (SPE) Young Member Outstanding Service Award and is an inaugural member of the SPE Emerging Leader Program.
Graham and his wife are the founders of the April and Jay Graham Fellowship for Military Service Initiatives at the George W. Bush Institute. The couple has three children: April, Jacob and Jackson.
Stephanie G. Hertzog ’96
Chemical Engineering
Senior Vice President
Tally Energy Services
Stephanie Goettle Hertzog is senior vice president at Tally Energy Services where she is responsible for strategy, sales and marketing. She started her career as a process engineer at Celanese in Clear Lake, Texas. She also spent several years as an engagement manager with McKinsey & Co, a global consulting firm, and at PSC, an environmental services firm, where she was senior vice president of strategy. She later joined Exterran, a publicly held oilfield services company, and held several roles there, such as vice president of sales and marketing and vice president of strategy.
She has chaired the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering Advisory Council and served on the College of Engineering Advisory Council and Engineering Honors Steering Committee at Texas A&M. She has been president and board member of the Harvard Business School (HBS) Club of Houston and vice president of the HBS Alumni Board. She also chaired the Education Foundation of Harris County Board.
She received her Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering in 1996 from Texas A&M and her Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School in 2001.
Hertzog and her husband Ben have two children, Holden and Hudson.
Carl F. Jaedicke ’73
Nuclear Engineering
Philanthropic Consultant
Carl Jaedicke is a philanthropic consultant, providing consulting services to nonprofits, grant makers and individuals. Prior to this, he worked for 32 years for the Texas A&M Foundation, where he served several roles, including chief development officer for the College of Engineering, vice president for college programs and vice president for principal gifts. He was the first person to hold the position of vice president for principal gifts at the Foundation and was also the first development officer in the College of Engineering.
He served 19 years in this role for four deans and pioneered the college-based fundraising model now used by the Texas A&M Foundation. Jaedicke assisted in the establishment of the Engineering Advisory Council, which first met in fall 1988 and has become a primary source of major gifts for the college.
Prior to entering the development field, Jaedicke was employed by Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts, and Consumers Power in Jackson, Michigan. He is also a registered professional engineer.
As a student at Texas A&M he gave tours of the original Zachry Engineering Center on the day it was dedicated March 16, 1972.
He is a recipient of the Distinguished Former Student Award given by the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M.
He received his Bachelor of Science degree in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M in 1973 and his Master of Business Administration from Indiana University in 1979.
Jaedicke and his wife Shelby have two children, Elizabeth and Joshua.
Outstanding Early Professional Achievement Alumni Award
Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Tucker ’12,United States Air Force
Aerospace Engineering
Program Manager
Live-Virtual-Constructive Training Network
Air Force Life Cycle Management Center
Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Tucker, United States Air Force, is the program manager for the Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) Training Network in the Simulator Program Office of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. He is responsible for transitioning advanced technology and establishing the Live-Virtual-Constructive Training Network program of record for the U.S. Air Force. LVC provides advanced training for the combat air forces in dense threat environments. He is a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and a member of the AIAA Flight Test Technical Committee.
He has co-authored papers for many publications, including the International Journal of Engineering Modeling & Simulation and the Journal of Systems Engineering.
Tucker is a member of Tau Beta Pi and his awards include the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal, Aerial Achievement Medal and the 2010 Society of Experimental Test Pilots Herman R. Salmon Technical Publications Award.
He received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California in 1997. He earned his doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M in 2012.
Tucker and his wife Michelle have three children, Ashton, Alex and Andrew.
Photo (left to right): Jaedicke, Hertzog, Forster, Tucker, Baker and Graham.