Carl D. "Denny" Avers

Denny Avers received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from West Virginia University. During his long career at IBM Federal Systems, he has held a number of technical and executive positions related to national defense, commercial systems development, and international programs. 

As a member of the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, he was an important contributor to the new practices necessary to implement Criteria 2000. He was the primary author of materials used to train all ABET engineering program evaluators. He is the training coordinator for the IEEE Committee on Engineering Accreditation Activities and has facilitated numerous workshops here and abroad. He is a consultant to several engineering colleges. 

He is member of the Tau Beta Pi, and Eta Kappa Nu. He is past president of the WVU alumni chapter in Washington, DC, and the WVU College of Engineering Visiting Committee. He was Vice President of the Potomac State College Board of Advisors and has been a board member of West Virginia Special Olympics and the Software Valley Foundation. 

 Mr. Avers is a Fellow of the IEEE (1996) and ABET Fellow (2001). He was inducted into the Keyser High School Legion of Honor in 1990 and was recognized by the Governor of West Virginia in 1996 as a Distinguished West Virginian. He received the 1998 Alumni Achievement Award at Potomac State College. In recognition of his extensive research and many contributions to the local knowledge of regional history, the Mineral County (WV) Historical Society awarded him the Order of Crozet in 2019, the same year his book This is our Home – A History of Trinity Lutheran Church, Keyser, West Virginia was published. The West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History named him a WV History Hero in 2021. Potomac State College honored him as a Whitmore-Gates Scholar in 2025.