GREENVILLE, PA—Dale W. Deist, president and owner of Bucks Fabricating in Hadley, Pa., will receive Thiel College’s 2008 Haller Enterprise Institute Entrepreneur of the Year Award at a ceremony at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 8, in Thiel’s Howard Miller Student Center.

Given annually to a business owner who has demonstrated entrepreneurial leadership, the award will be presented to Diest by Thiel President Dr. Robert C. Olson ’60 and Professor David Miller, executive director of the Haller Enterprise Institute.

Deist first began his business career as a small child working on his family’s farm and apple orchard. He took the lessons he learned there, as well as a talent for hard work and entrepreneurship, and turned them into 40 successful years in business and industry. In 1993, after 23 years working for a Fortune 100 company and earning an M.B.A. at the University of Pittsburgh, Deist struck out on his own by purchasing Bucks Fabricating, a metal fabricating company. Today, he and his wife, Barbara, still own the company and continue to grow its product lines as well as to develop a strong team of employees. 

Deist is active in many outside endeavors, including choir and leadership roles in his church, the Thiel Board of Associates, career education efforts in metal skills training at Mercer County high schools, the Board of Governors for the Manufacturers and Business Association in Erie, the Board of Directors for Governor Rendell’s Team Pennsylvania Foundation in Harrisburg, and numerous educational and charitable giving activities.

He and his wife are the parents of three children, Kristen, Carrilyn and David, who is currently a senior at Thiel College.

The Haller Enterprise Institute, originally named the Thiel College Enterprise Institute when it was organized in 1983, was renamed in 1996 when Pittsburgh residents Dr. Henry E. and Grace Mary Haller provided a $1 million gift to develop entrepreneurial education at Thiel College.      

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