Personnel notes

In Memoriam: Chet Giermak

Eriez, Erie, Pennsylvania, has announced that Chet Giermak, who served as the company’s president and CEO from 1971 to 2003, died March 16, 2015.

“Chet was a great man who has left an indelible mark on Eriez’s business, people and culture,” says current Eriez President and CEO Tim Shuttleworth. “His legacy lives on at Eriez every day.”

In a news release summarizing Giermak’s career, Eriez says he “blended lessons from his days as a two-time All-American college basketball player at William and Mary together with his business acumen and applied them successfully during his 33-year tenure as Eriez president and CEO.”

Eriez reports that when interviewed in 2012, Giermak said the greatest legacy he left to Eriez was the team he left behind to succeed him—a commitment he said he made to Eriez’s board of directors.

“Chet’s active, hands-on managerial style led him to walk through the offices and plant on a daily basis, talking with as many employees as possible,” says Charlie Ingram, Eriez vice president of sales and marketing. “Able to address every employee by name, he maintained an ‘open door’ policy that encouraged any company employee to come in and discuss any issue with him at any time.”

Along with the respect he accorded every employee, Giermak treated everyone with an uncommon degree of trust, according to Ingram. He ordered time clocks removed “as a way of saying to our people that we trust them to arrive and leave at designated times,” says Ingram. He then removed all bells and buzzers that signaled start and quit times and coffee breaks “in Pavlovian fashion.” In addition, he eliminated the mandatory vacation during summer shut-down, opting to trust each individual to determine his or her own vacation schedule.

Giermak introduced a variety of improvement programs, including first-aid instruction, blueprint-reading classes, financial planning sessions and preretirement seminars. He also initiated a 10-year program first to limit and then to eliminate smoking at Eriez. Under Giermak, the equipment company became a completely smoke-free environment by July 1, 1992.

During Giermak’s time with Eriez, the company developed a variety of products for more than 80 industries. Eriez’s product line grew to hundreds of types of permanent magnetic, electromagnetic, vibratory, conveying and metal detecting equipment, ranging from simple plates, grates and traps to highly sophisticated devices, such as rare earth roll separators, eddy current separators and superconducting high-gradient magnetic separator systems.

When Giermak joined Eriez in 1960, sales were $800,000. Sales were about $8 million when he accepted the reins as president in 1971, and they rose to $80 million in 2003.

Giermak was active in industry organizations and community groups. A past president of the Processing Equipment Manufacturers Association (PEMA), he also served as a director of the National Association of Manufacturers.

ISRI executive director joins JASON Learning board of directors

Robin Wiener, president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington, has been selected to serve on the board of directors of JASON Learning. ISRI says her appointment represents an expansion of the partnership between the two organizations that was formed in 2012 to educate school-aged children about recycling, focusing on the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) behind it, as well as encouraging them to consider future careers in the recycling industry.

“It is an honor to be named to the JASON Learning board of directors, where I can represent the recycling industry in the innovative delivery of STEM education throughout the country,” Wiener says.

“Over the last few years, ISRI has worked closely with JASON Learning to develop a K-12 recycling curriculum, launch pilot programs across the country and hold an annual educational art contest to teach the science of recycling. Through this work we have reached millions of students, many of whom will one day become scientists, engineers, policymakers and more.”

ISRI and JASON Learning have developed lessons that teach the “science of scrap” and introduce students to a growing industry that needs trained chemists and chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, metallurgists and other degreed professionals. The lessons include standards-based, K-12 curricular experiences; interactive Web-based experiences to enhance student engagement; classroom posters featuring key educational messages; a leveraged national distribution network; strategies for school visits to ISRI facilities; age-appropriate lesson plans based on life cycle for each commodity; and more, ISRI says. (See the March 2014 issue of Recycling Today for an article on ISRI’s partnership with JASON Learning.)

“JASON Learning is proud to name ISRI President Robin Wiener to its board of directors,” says Eleanor Smalley, president and CEO of JASON Learning. “Her leadership as an active board member underscores the recycling industry’s commitment to STEM education. With ISRI’s help, we can ensure that the next generation of citizens and leaders appreciate the economic and environmental benefits recycling provides, and understand the underlying STEM concepts that make it possible.”

Joining Wiener on the board are representatives from the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the New York State Council of School Superintendents, ProEventa, as well as an international at-large board member. The National Geographic Society and Sea Research Foundation continue to be represented on the board as well.