The Tau Beta Pi Association’s 125th Anniversary
June 15, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Dylan Lane 865/546-4578
The Tau Beta Pi Association’s 125th Anniversary
Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, is celebrating its 125 th anniversary on June 15th. Tau Beta Pi is the nation’s second-oldest honor society, founded at Lehigh University in 1885, and is also the world’s largest engineering honor society. There are now collegiate chapters at 236 colleges and universities, active alumnus chapters in 16 districts across the country, and a total initiated membership of more than 515,000.
It is the only honor society representing the entire engineering profession. Tau Beta Pi’s mission is to mark in a fitting manner those who have conferred honor upon their alma mater by distinguished scholarship and exemplary character as students in engineering, or by their attainments as alumni in the field of engineering, and to foster a spirit of liberal culture in engineering colleges.
Tau Beta Pi is proud to support collegiate engineering students with the most monetary aid of any engineering honor society through annual fellowships, scholarships, and available financial aid. This year marks the 77 th group of Tau Beta Pi Fellows and more than $5.1 million in stipends given by the Society to support engineering graduate students since 1932. In its 12th year, the Scholarship Program has awarded $1.9 million in scholarships to 960 undergraduate scholars.
The World Headquarters of Tau Beta Pi is located in Knoxville, TN, on the campus of The University of Tennessee, its home since 1907. The Nathan W. Dougherty Engineering Building has housed the Headquarters’ office and staff since 1963.
The culmination of Tau Beta Pi’s anniversary celebration will take place in October (7-9) at the National Convention in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Association members are returning to the site of Tau Beta Pi’s founding at nearby Lehigh University to commemorate the Associations’ founder, Dr. Edward H. Williams, Jr., head of the mining department at Lehigh at the time.
Special events have been planned for the Convention, including a keynote address by Dr. Alton D. Romig, Jr., executive vice president, deputy laboratories director, and chief operating officer, of Sandia National Laboratories (New Mexico). Dr. Romig is an alumnus of Lehigh University and was initiated into Tau Beta Pi as a materials science and engineering undergraduate student in 1973. He is a fellow and former president of ASM International and has received several awards for his work in Analytical Electron Microscopy and Solid Sate Diffusion.
NASA astronaut Terry J. Hart will also be a guest speaker. Dr. Hart is currently a professor at Lehigh University, was a mission specialist on STS-41C, has logged a total 168 hours in space, and is a member of Tau Beta Pi. As a special performance for members in attendance at the Convention, Tau Beta Pi will have Bill Landry perform his one-man play, Einstein the Man. Landry is well known in East Tennessee for his work as host/narrator and co-producer of The Heartland Series.
Notable members of Tau Beta Pi include the founders of companies that have become household names, such as Amazon.com, Bose, Dolby Laboratories, Google, Hewlett-Packard, and Yahoo. Locally, our talented members include the leadership ranks of TVA, ORNL, Bechtel, University of Tennessee College of Engineering and high profile citizens like Chancellor emeritus Dr. William T. Snyder, Dr. Terry Douglass, Dr. Ron Nutt, William B. Sansom, and Dr. Wayne Davis, Dean of UT College of Engineering, to name a few.
Tau Beta Pi is the engineering honor society, now with 236 collegiate chapters, 18 active alumnus chapters, and a membership of more than 515,000. Engineering students in the top eighth of their junior class or top fifth of their senior class scholastically are elected to membership on the basis of character. Graduate engineers may be elected on the basis of their eminent achievements in the engineering profession. The international Headquarters of the Tau Beta Pi Association is located in Knoxville on the main campus of the University of Tennessee.
