Awards and Recognition, Past & Present

This October, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is celebrating 175 years of civil engineering. As part of the celebration, Dr. James K. Mitchell, NY G ’51, will receive the 2010 Davies Medal Award. For more information click here

This is the highest recognition awarded by RPI’s School of Engineering for distinguished achievement by an engineering alumni. Dr. Mitchell is a distinguished professor emeritus at Virginia Tech.

Two other Tau Bates are taking part in the celebration as speakers: Dr. G Wayne Clough, (VA B ’64) Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, and Kathy J. Caldwell, P.E., (TN A ’85) President-Elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Τ

Tau Beta Pi remembers Don Backer, Ph.D. (NY D 1966), who recently passed away at the age of 66.

Dr. Backer was a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, “and a world leader in the field of radio astronomy.” An expert in both engineering instrumentation and radio astronomy techniques, Dr. Backer also “made seminal contributions to the study of pulsars.”

Read the release from UC Berkeley to learn more

Β

The Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) announced this week that Scott Desmond, NY Q 2011, has been selected as one of only six ECAC Scholar-Athlete Award winners.

Desmond is a rising senior on the Clarkson University Men’s Soccer team, the only male in Div. III to win the Scholar-Athlete Award in 2010, and an interdisciplinary engineering and management major with a 3.82 GPA.

Read the full news release for more information on Desmond, a three-year captain of the soccer team.

Π