Virginia Tech® home

Geoff Vining Named ASQ Honorary Member

Professor Geoff Vining
Geoff Vining, Professor of Statistics at Virginia Tech, in March 2018

ASQ (formerly the American Society for Quality) announced on March 21, 2018 that Geoff Vining, Professor of Statistics at Virginia Tech, has been elected by the ASQ Board of Directors as an Honorary Member.  In its 72 years of history, ASQ has elected only 29 Honorary Members.  The statisticians so honored have included (in order of election):  Walter Shewhart, Harold Dodge, Mason Wescott, Eugene Grant, Edwards Deming, Harry Romig, George Box, Genichi Taguchi, Stu Hunter, Lloyd Nelson, Doug Montgomery, and Ron Snee.

Election as an Honorary Member requires a unanimous vote of the ASQ Board of Directors.  Honorary members are individuals who have made enduring contributions to the profession of quality and the allied arts and sciences. Election is restricted to individuals who are so well known and so clearly pre-eminent in the profession that there should be almost no doubt of their being worthy of such recognition.  Election does not require being an ASQ member.  There are only six Honorary Members currently alive today, four of whom are statisticians.

Previously, Dr. Vining received the 2010 ASQ Shewhart Medal, the 2015 European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics Box Medal, and the 2011 ASQ Statistics Division’s William G. Hunter Award, which generally are recognized as the top three annual career awards in industrial statistics and quality engineering.  Dr. Vining also received an Honorary Doctor of Technology from Luleå Technical University (Sweden) in November 2017.

Dr. Vining’s citation noted his leadership within ASQ at all levels of the society, his extensive contributions to the quality body of knowledge through peer-reviewed journal articles and books, and his efforts to promote industrial statistics in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.  Dr. Vining is the 29th person elected to this honor.

ASQ is the pre-eminent international society dedicated to the quality profession.  It currently has more than 70,000 individual, 48 Enterprise, and 208 Corporate members from across the globe.