McClendon was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2015 for strategic, technical, and managerial leadership resulting in widespread accurate and useful geographic information.

He and his wife Beth Ellyn McClendon established the McClendon Engineering Scholarship at the university in 2007, donated computer tablets for electrical engineering and computer science students, and provided a Google Liquid Galaxy interactive display at the University's Eaton Hall.

[16] McClendon received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the University of Kansas, "for outstanding contributions to the fields of electrical engineering and computer science."

He has been recognized by the United Nations as a Champions of the Earth in 2013, which is its top environmental prize, "for harnessing the power of technology to support conservation and green economic development.

"[17] McClendon holds 41 issued patents,[18] including thirteen relating to KML,[19] the XML-based language schema for expressing geographic annotation and visualization in two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers.