Eric Schnur receives Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award
3/15/2019
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Eric Schnur, a Penn State chemical engineering alumnus, was recently named one of 12 recipients of the 2019 Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award.
Established in 1966, the award is the highest honor bestowed by the Penn State College of Engineering and recognizes graduates who have reached exceptional levels of professional achievement.
Schnur is the chairman, president and chief executive officer for the company he has spent his entire career with, The Lubrizol Corporation, a $7 billion global specialty chemical company headquartered just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. He began his professional journey at Lubrizol as a Penn State co-operative education student with the company. “I started as a co-op in the middle of my junior year,” Schnur said. “While sitting in class you learn a lot, but you learn a lot more when you're applying big parts of what you’ve learned in an actual work environment.”
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Penn State, he joined Lubrizol full-time as a development engineer in the R&D division. During his early career, he began taking night classes to earn an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University in 1994.
Armed with growing experience and his M.B.A., Schnur moved up the corporate ladder at Lubrizol. He held a variety of positions there, including technical and commercial roles, product manager, global business manager, vice president and general manager, and president of Lubrizol Advanced Materials. He was president and chief operating officer prior to assuming his current position in January 2017.
Under Schnur’s leadership and within the past year, Lubrizol has received two notable recognitions of corporate excellence. The first is being ranked #6 in Forbes Magazine’s America’s Best Midsize Employers 2018 list. He noted that Lubrizol has always been a good place to work, something he learned himself right from the start.
“You have to find a place where you feel really good about the company, who you work with and what they stand for, and how they do business,” Schnur said. “I distinctly remember the first day I walked into the company as a co-op student. I remember what door I went in, I remember the gentleman that I first ran into and it felt like home the first day I walked in the door and it has ever since. I just got lucky, as not everyone feels that way about their first job.”
In addition, Lubrizol was ranked #11 in Forbes’ America’s Best Employers for Diversity 2019 list. “Diversity in engineering is important. I think that everyone accepts that you're more successful if your company has more diverse perspectives, experiences and so forth,” Schnur said. “And it's far outdated if people think any other way. It's really a matter of business success whether or not you have a diverse perspective from leadership on down.”
Schnur said he is also encouraged by the College of Engineering’s focus on diversity.
“While talking to the College’s dean [Justin Schwartz] shortly after he arrived, I was encouraged to hear his targeted objectives for increasing diversity in the Penn State engineering program because that’s exactly what is needed,” Schnur said. “We are always looking for very talented graduates who bring great diversity of thought, perspective and experience.
“So I think that it’s great that College of Engineering is leading a diversity effort. A lot of schools are talking about diversity but I'm not aware of other who have set specific targets in the way Penn State has.”
Each year, Schnur returns to Penn State to share his career expertise with Penn State chemical engineering students in the CHE 300 Professional Development Seminar, taught by Phillip Savage, chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering. He ends his talk with five things that he knows now that he wishes he knew as a student.
“I learned very quickly in my career that no matter if you are in engineering or management, people skills matter,” he said. “The abilities to work with people, to influence, to communicate, are just as important as your engineering skills.”
Schur received his award at a special department luncheon held in his honor on March 1.
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