Five UD alumni to receive 2009 Presidential Citation
David Bullock
Faye (Harper) Corman
Louis Honick
Scott Rosas
Rob Van Etten

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12:14 p.m., Oct. 23, 2009----Five University of Delaware alumni have been awarded the 2009 Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement, which honors graduates of the past 20 years who exhibit great promise in their professional careers and/or public service activities and also recognizes the honorees' continued engagement with the University.

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The recipients will be honored during a ceremony at 4:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 30, in the Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts. The event is part of UD's Homecoming celebration.

The alumni selected to receive the Presidential Citation are as follows:

David Bullock received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1990 and is now president and CEO of White Bullock Group, Inc., a business development firm in Murfreesboro, Tenn., that helps businesses increase sales through the use of various tools, including social media. He also serves as chief marketing officer at Social Media Connection. In addition, he is the co-author, with UD alumnus Brent Leavy, of Barack 2.0, which has been referred to as “a field manual to social media.”

After graduating from UD, Bullock began his career with engineering positions at Mobil Oil, DuPont and Fanuc Robotics North America. Bullock then moved into sales, where he reached sales totaling $100 million over seven years by applying an engineering approach to running his region. He brought this approach to his own firm, which he founded in 2006. The firm specializes in maximizing efficiency of sales-oriented Web pages, while reducing costs and increasing sales and market response.

Bullock has been named one of “50 most powerful and influential men in social media” and one of the “top 100 most influential marketers of 2008.” He has also been featured or quoted in such magazines as Black Enterprise, Who's Who Magazine-Nashville, Entrepreneur and Direct Marketing News.

Faye (Harper) Corman received a bachelor's degree in agriculture in 1997. She is currently a global product stewardship specialist for DuPont, where she is responsible for following more than 200 industrial and consumer products from beginning to end to ensure that the chemicals do not harm people or the environment. This year she has worked with a pilot team for corporate regulatory social networking to get the word out on environmental stewardship.

After graduating from UD, Corman began working in contracting with DuPont Pharmaceuticals, conducting research on drug carrier compounds, gene mapping and tumor tissue isolation. She then moved to H.L. Yoh Scientific as a science and technology contractor. She returned to DuPont in 2000 as a research associate and then moved to her current position in DuPont Chemical Solutions Enterprise.

A passionate advocate for children, Corman is a dedicated volunteer with The Little Rock Foundation for visually impaired and blind children. She works with many programs at the foundation, most notably the annual summer camp program, Camp Little Rock, where children ages 7 to 16, with visual impairment, get a chance to experience a traditional summer camp program. Corman has been the camp's director since its creation in 2001.

In recognition of her dedication to bettering the community, she has received corporate volunteer recognition from DuPont in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Louis Honick graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer and information sciences in 1998. A successful entrepreneur, he co-founded HostMySite.com in 1997 as a remedy for dissatisfaction with customer service at Web hosting companies. He served as chief executive officer, until its sale to Wachovia Capital Partners in 2008. Today, Honick is still involved with HostMySite.com as chief strategy officer, ensuring that its key value -- “great customer service builds a great business” -- is upheld.

He recently founded 302 Properties LLC, a real estate investment company that buys distressed properties and renovates them for sale.

Honick was recognized as the Small Business Association's Delaware Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004 and was included on Inc. Magazine's “Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30” list in 2006. HostMySite.com received Marvin S. Gilman Awards of Excellence in 2004 and 2005, and was twice included in Inc. Magazine's annual list of the nation's fastest growing companies, as well as among Philadelphia's fastest growing companies.

Active at his alma mater, Honick has been a frequent guest speaker on the campus, lecturing in an entrepreneurship class and to members of the UD Entrepreneurship Club. He also served as a guest judge for the Lerner College Small Business Plan Competition in 2007.

Scott Rosas received a bachelor's degree in history, a master's degree in individual and family studies and, in 2002, a doctorate in family studies, and is currently a senior consultant with Concept Systems Inc., where he has a national impact on the lives of children and families.

After receiving his master's degree, Rosas became director of the Office of Prevention and Early Intervention in the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families. Recognizing the importance of research and data-informed decision making, he returned to the University to work toward his Ph.D. while keeping his full-time job. For his dissertation, he developed new methodology to assess program outcomes of family support community-based programs in Delaware.

He then took a new position as a leader in the Nemours prevention initiative to prevent child and family problems, later becoming the senior scientist for the company's Center for Children's Health Innovation in Delaware. Rosas also served as an associate faculty member at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, and he joined the American Evaluation Association, where he serves as a leader within its ethics committee.

Today at Concept Systems Inc. in New York, Rosas provides national consultation built on the research methodology he developed as a graduate student at UD and has used concept mapping in several child and family services projects.

Rob Van Etten graduated in 2003 with a double major in finance and marketing, and is now president of Brighton Cromwell. He joined the family business in 2004, when his father turned it from a consulting firm into a supply chain integrator for the defense industry. After his father's unexpected death the following year, Van Etten took over the company and doubled its revenue within a year.

Recently, he partnered with both the New Jersey Department of Labor and the Veterans Administration Hospital to provide jobs to military veterans, and the company has a “Hire Veterans First” initiative for many job openings. Brighton Cromwell has been named the 21st fastest growing business in America, as well as the fastest growing company in New Jersey.

Van Etten has been named by Inc.com as one of the top 30 entrepreneurs under the age of 30, and he has been ranked among the top entrepreneurs in New Jersey and the nation. He also has been featured on Yahoo, AOL and Fox Business, and Ernst and Young named him as a finalist in New Jersey for entrepreneur of the year recognition, the most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs.

Van Etten maintains close ties with UD, serving as a member of the Lerner College of Business and Economics Alumni Board. He also recently spoke on “Taking the Entrepreneurial Risk” at the University's second annual President's Forum on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

For more information, contact Sandra Tilford in the Office of Alumni Relations at (302) 831-3629 or [stilford@udel.edu]. To view the 2008 Presidential Citation ceremony, see UD Podcasts.

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