Legacy Awards, such as the Dr. William Wiley Award, the Dr. John Brooks Slaughter Award, and the Arlington Carter Award, have been presented in honor of the top winners of the BEYA STEM Conference since 2015.
In the summer of 2025, The Seattle Times published an obituary for Arlington W. Carter (Art). Carter, who was born on March 13, 1933, and passed away on May 28, 2025, was named Black Engineer of the Year in 1990. At the time, he served as the vice president and general manager of the Missile Systems Division at The Boeing Company, where he dedicated his entire career, advancing through various leadership roles. An electrical engineer, Carter's career at Boeing spanned decades, allowing him to rise to high-level positions in aviation and aerospace. He began working at Boeing in 1961, eventually becoming the vice president of Boeing Aerospace and serving as the deputy manager of the Defense Systems Division. His responsibilities included missile systems, systems for the Strategic Defense Initiative, and related support services. After retiring in 1998 as corporate vice president of facilities, capital investments, and continuous quality improvement, he remained active in civic life, serving on various boards. In 1998, Carter became the first African American member of Illinois Tech's Philip Danforth Armour Society. In 2025, Illinois Tech, his alma mater, announced its pride in honoring his remarkable accomplishments by awarding him the Alumni Medal posthumously.
BEYA 1980s
John Brooks Slaughter, Ph.D., passed away at home in Pasadena, California, on December 6, 2023, at the age of 89. On September 20, 2023, in a historic moment, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Center for Engineering Diversity was renamed the John Brooks Slaughter Center for Engineering Diversity, a fitting tribute to a man who dedicated his life to promoting diversity in engineering education. Slaughter was Chancellor of the University of Maryland when he received the Black Engineer of the Year award in 1987. In 1980, he was appointed to head the National Science Foundation (NSF) and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1982. Early in his career, he led a naval research team that contributed to the development of early theories for computer control systems in naval weapons research. He also headed a scientific team focused on underwater acoustics research and applications. In the late 1970s, Slaughter transitioned from engineering to higher education, serving as an assistant director at the NSF from 1977 to 1979, overseeing astronomical, atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences. Afterward, he became the academic vice president and provost of Washington State University and was later appointed by President Jimmy Carter to lead the NSF. Slaughter was named Chancellor of the University of Maryland in 1982.
He famously stated, "Certainly, with the advent of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation, the jobs that are lost are the jobs that Black individuals more largely occupy; consequently, technology does have a distinctive impact on the Black community."
This insight came decades before 300,000 long-term career Black women lost their jobs in the spring of 2025. The rise of automation and AI, along with job cuts in federal agencies heavily represented by Black women, such as the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, played significant roles in these losses.
Dr. William Wiley was honored as Black Engineer of the Year in 1994. He dedicated his life to finding ways to make technology beneficial for all people. His work involved research, development, and technology commercialization at the Pacific Northwest Laboratory and Battelle's Marine Sciences Laboratory. Wiley graduated from Tougaloo College with a degree in chemistry. After serving in the U.S. Army, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship, earning a master's degree in microbiology in 1960 and later a doctorate in bacteriology from Washington State University. He began his career at Battelle in 1965 as a research scientist. By 1984, he had advanced to the position of laboratory director, which he held until 1994, when he became a corporate vice president. Wiley passed away in July 1996 at his home after a brief illness. According to his obituary in The Lewiston Tribune, he was a former president of the Washington State University Board of Regents and was involved in numerous civic, scientific, and educational organizations, serving on several corporate boards of directors. He also served on the Board of Trustees of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He was 64 years old at the time of his passing.
