After receiving his B.S. in Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech in 1982, Kenton Meland became the first student in Tidewater to earn a M.S. through the university's televised off-campus program. While an undergraduate, he served as President of the Virginia Tech Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Chairman of the ASCE Virginias Conference, and was one of a select group of students sent to Europe to visit engineering schools in Munich, Vienna and Budapest.



Mr. Meland began his career at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) as a summer intern in 1981 and returned as a full-time employee after graduation. During his career with NNS, he has worked on the design and construction of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers and Los Angeles-class and Seawolf-class submarines. He was responsible for the development, implementation and support of NNS ship design software, computer modeling technologies, digital data exchange methods, and Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Machine (CAD/CAM) procedures. He also led a NNS team in evaluating commercial ship design practices and technologies in Denmark. In 1993, he received a M.E. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia.



Today, as Program Administrator of Engineering Subcontracting Management for NNS, Mr. Meland is responsible for engineering, design and technology subcontracts for the company's aircraft carrier and submarine programs. He also manages the aircraft carrier engineering services contracts.



A life-member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME), Mr. Meland has served on the Executive Committee for the Hampton Roads Section of SNAME for the past 15 years and is Chairman for 1998-99. He is the Executive Committee Chairman of the 2000 National Ship Productions Symposium and Expo to be held in Williamsburg, and has presented numerous technical papers in the area of product model technologies for ship design.



Before Ben Blanchard retired from Virginia Tech, Kenton gave an annual lecture to Ben's Systems Engineering graduate students. Mr. Meland also has served on the graduate committees of four colleagues pursuing their Master's Degrees in Systems Engineering, and has organized three undergraduate scholarship programs: the Kenton and Liliana Meland Endowed Scholarship for Civil Engineering, Shipbuilding Endowed Scholarship for Civil Engineering, and Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Board Scholarships. In addition, he is a member of the College of Engineering Committee of 100, past co-Chairman of the Peninsula Campaign for Virginia Tech, and a former member of the CEE Alumni Advisory Board.



Kenton also has family ties to CEE. His brother, Mark, is a 1980 CEE graduate, and his brother-in-law, Rob Szukelewicz, received his CEE degree in 1982. He also reports that his parents, who live in Roanoke, buy season tickets every year for Virginia Tech football.



In 1996, Mr. Meland married Liliana Alexandra Angel from Bogota, Colombia. They have a son, Tallak Edward, and reside in Newport News, where the family is active at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church. Currently, Liliana is trying to teach Spanish to Kenton, but he confesses that two-year-old Tallak has a more extensive Spanish vocabulary.