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CORVALLIS- Retired Portland General Electric senior vice president Hilbert S. "Hib" Johnson has been named by the Oregon State University Alumni Association as the 1998 recipient of the Dan Poling Alumni Service Award.

Johnson will be honored in special ceremonies Friday evening, Jan. 23, at the CH2M HILL Alumni Center on the OSU campus.

The Poling award, given annually by the OSU Alumni Association, recognizes alumni for exemplary service to the university. The award is named in honor of Dan W. Poling, an OSU alumnus who served as a faculty member and campus administrator at Oregon State from 1937 to 1972.

Johnson, a native of Portland, graduated from OSU in 1936 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He served as president of the electrical engineering honorary, Eta Kappa Nu, and after graduation joined Portland General Electric as a lighting engineer.

He took a leave of absence from PGE during World War II to work for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in radar research. In 1942 he joined the Naval Reserve, serving as a lieutenant with the Navy liaison staff at MIT where he was placed in charge of a program for developing submarine radar for the Navy. One of the innovations he helped develop was radar equipment in periscopes.

After the war, Johnson returned to his former job at PGE, rising to the rank of vice president in 1956 and retiring as senior vice president in 1978.

Johnson has been an active supporter of OSU for over 50 years. He served as an Alumni Association board member for many years and was president of the association in 1962. He has been a member of the OSU Foundation board of directors since 1963, serving as president from 1975-77 and then as chairman of the board.

He has also been active in civic affairs in Portland and was president of the Portland Rotary Club, Junior Achievement, the Junior Achievement Foundation and Aero Club.