The award, created in 1951, recognizes an individual "whose contributions to the organization have been outstanding." The award is dedicated to the memory of George Baugh Heckel, who served as temporary chairman when the Federation was organized in 1922 and as secretary for many years afterward.

Dickie joined the FSCT in 2000, following his retirement from Ford Motor Co. He was a member of the Federation's Publications Committee for many years, and delivered the prestigious Joseph J. Mattiello Memorial Lecture at the FSCT's 1994 Annual Meeting. He was chairman of the Mattiello Committee in 1999.

At Ford, Dickie's research interests included automotive paints, polymer blends and composites, structural adhesives, and related areas of polymer science. His technical contributions included new approaches to a range of automotive coatings, including corrosion-resistant primers, waterborne topcoats, electron-beam-cure coatings, and fundamental investigations of coating adhesion and degradation mechanisms. He is the author of more than 100 publications, has edited four books, and has been awarded 42 U.S. patents.

Dickie is a former chairman of the American Chemical Society's Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE), and was recently honored with the division's Distinguished Service Award. He received the division's Roy W. Tess Award in Coatings in 1992.