Association Events & Honors, May 2014

On May 16, the Missouri Epsilon Chapter of Tau Beta Pi held its spring initiation. Eugene “Gene” F. Kranz was initiated as an eminent engineer. Kranz is a retired NASA Flight Director and manager who served during the Gemini and Apollo programs and “is best known for his role in directing the successful Mission Control team efforts to save the crew of Apollo 13.”

In addition to joining Tau Beta Pi, Kranz also gave a presentation at the engineering pre-commencement to students and guests at Saint Louis University (MO). He graduated from SLU’s Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology in 1954. Finally, he helped unveil the new Tau Beta Pi Bent monument at SLU with the plaque inscribed with his quote, that is so well known at NASA, “discipline, morale, toughness, competence, commitment, teamwork.” (See images below)

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The Alameda Patch Editor recently highlighted the winning high school teams of the annual Pioneers in Engineering (PiE) Robotics Competition, which “is the culmination of an 8-week program in which college-age mentors teach weekly hands-on STEM lessons to area high school teams to help prepare them for the spring event. The program is run entirely by the UC Berkeley chapter of Tau Beta Pi.

The California Alpha students “mentor and create the robotics kits for each team, design and build the competition field, and fundraise each year to make it all possible.” According to the article, the competition was started in 2008 by Xiao-Yu Fu, CA A ’09, a current CA Alpha Chapter advisor, and has grown to include more than 300 high school students and 100 collegiate engineering student mentors.

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