The St. Pat’s Celebration Committee at Missouri University of Science and Technology has announced its 2010 Honorary Knights of St. Patrick. The Honorary Knights are Robert Brinkmann, Jim Duncan, Jay Goff, Michael Gross, Kurt Kosbar, John Slowensky, Paul Worsey and Letha Young.

The new knights will be honored during Coronation, a free public ceremony at 9 p.m. Friday, March 12, in Leach Theatre of Castleman Hall on the Missouri S&T campus.

“The annual ceremony promises to be particularly entertaining this year as explosives expert Dr. Paul Worsey, known to his students as ‘Dr. Boom,’ will be knighted,” says Dr. Lance Haynes, faculty advisor to the St. Pat’s student board. “Although pyrotechnics and laser lights have always been part of the ceremony, rumor has it that this year will be uncommonly dazzling.”

Missouri S&T has been celebrating St. Pat’s since 1908, when a group of students declared that St. Patrick was the patron saint of engineers.

The 2010 St. Pat’s Parade begins at 11 a.m. on Saturday, March 13, on Pine Street in Rolla. Russell Perry, owner of Russell’s Town and College Shop in Rolla, will serve as the parade marshal.

Biographical information is as follows:

2010 Honorary Knight
Robert Brinkmann is president of Brinkmann Constructors, a company he founded in 1984. Brinkmann Constructors specializes in retail, commercial and industrial projects. Today, the company is a leader in the St. Louis building industry and ranks among the nation’s top general contractors. Notable company projects include the WorldCom headquarters in St. Louis, the Forsyth Center and The Crescent in Clayton. In 2001, Brinkmann received the Business Person of the Year award from the Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce. He earned a degree in civil engineering from Missouri S&T in 1971 and received a professional degree from the university in 2001. At S&T he is a member of the Academy of Civil Engineers and is an Alumni Association Achievement Award recipient. Brinkmann and his wife, Kim, are members of the Order of the Golden Shillelagh and reside in St. Albans, Mo.

2010 Honorary Knight
Jim Duncan is manager of custodial and landscape services at Missouri S&T. Duncan began working at the university 32 years ago as a custodian on the night shift. He has held several positions on campus since then, including lead custodian, greenskeeper at the university golf course, grounds foreman and grounds supervisor. His current responsibilities include managing custodial services of the academic buildings and the design, construction and maintenance of landscape and turf on campus. Duncan is a member of Phelps County Master Gardeners and the Christian Motorcycle Association.

2010 Honorary Knight
Jay W. Goff is vice provost and dean of enrollment management at Missouri S&T. He has served in that position since 2001. With more than 20 years experience in university enrollment, strategic planning, marketing and communication programs, Goff believes in building a team-oriented and data-driven workplace that stresses service-focused student success plans. This approach has helped the university achieve many records in terms of total enrollment (47 percent increase since 2000), student quality, student diversity and six-year graduation rates. Goff completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees in communication studies with a focus on organizational communication at Southeast Missouri State University and the University of Kansas, respectively. Goff and his family live in Rolla.

2010 Honorary Knight
Michael Gross is vice president of quality, environment, health and safety at Daicel Safety System America/Daicel Safety Technologies America in Kentucky. Gross graduated magna cum laude from Missouri S&T with a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering in 1988 and earned a master’s degree in metallurgical engineering at S&T in 1994. He was an active member of the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity and was president of the St. Pat’s Board. In 1988, Gross portrayed St. Patrick and received the Honorary Knights Scholarship. He lives with his family in Owensboro, Ky.

2010 Honorary Knight
Dr. Kurt Kosbar is associate chair for laboratory development in the electrical and computer engineering department at Missouri S&T. Kosbar also heads the International Foundation for Telemetering’s Telemetry Learning Center at S&T. He conducts research in communication systems, especially in the area of aerospace and telemetry applications. In 1996, Kosbar received a Fulbright teaching fellowship, which allowed him to lecture at the Technical University of Gdansk in Poland. Kosbar spent most of the 1980s in Southern California. During that time, he was employed by the space and communications group of Hughes Aircraft Co. (now part of Boeing). He participated in the design of the Galileo space probe relay receiver, the Space Shuttle Ku-Band radar and communication system and Intelsat VI communication satellites. He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1988 and joined the faculty at Missouri S&T in 1989.

2010 Honorary Knight
John Slowensky is head director of instrumental music for the Rolla Public School District. Slowensky earned a bachelor’s degree of science in music education (grades K-12) from Central Methodist University. During his tenure with the Rolla Public School District, he has had the privilege of traveling with the Rolla High School Band to the states of Hawaii and Florida. The Rolla students have also performed twice for the Missouri State Inauguration Ceremonial Parade in Jefferson City, Mo. Prior to his current position, Slowensky was director of bands with the St. James Public Schools. Throughout his career, he has performed and conducted in several U.S. states and in Europe. He has performed with the United States Marine Band and the United States Coast Guard Band. Slowensky has also been vice president of concert bands and vice president of jazz bands for the Central District Missouri Music Educators Association.

2010 Honorary Knight
Dr. Paul Worsey has a Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England. Worsey joined Missouri S&T in 1981 to perform explosives-related research. These days, he has become more involved in teaching. He has won numerous teaching awards and leads the explosives engineering curricula on campus. Missouri S&T offers the only explosives engineering minor in the country. Worsey hopes the university will soon offer the only master’s degree in explosives engineering in the Americas. You might have seen him on numerous television programs about blasting and demolition. He has appeared on TLC, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. He has also appeared on the front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and in the science section of the New York Times. Worsey recently co-hosted The Detonators series on Discovery.

2010 Honorary Knight
Letha Young has been in law enforcement for 18 years and has been working on campus at the university’s police department for 13 years. Young is a certified TIP (training interventions process) trainer who helps students avoid alcohol-related problems. She is also certified to teach Rape Aggression Defense classes and the use of various defense tactics. She is currently working on a black belt in martial arts. In 2008, Young volunteered to travel with the Missouri S&T Solar Car Team during the race from Texas to Alberta, Canada.

2010 Parade Marshal
Russell Perry has owned Russell’s Town & College Shop in downtown Rolla for more than 30 years. Perry is a past president of the Rolla Area Chamber of Commerce and also served two terms as chairman of the Planning and Zoning Commission for the City of Rolla. He is an active member of Kappa Alpha Fraternity and a member of Christ Episcopal Church. At S&T, he is a member of the Order of the Golden Shillelagh, an Honorary Knight of St. Patrick and an honorary member of the St. Pat’s Board.