The Daily News-Miner (AK) recently profiled Bill W. Mendenhall Jr. (NY D ’48) a “community pillar” of Fairbanks, Alaska. He has been a teacher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for nearly 50 years. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering from Cornell University.
According to the article, Mendenhall “was influential in starting local chapters of the national engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, Phi Kappa Phi, and the Society of Women Engineers.” He served for two decades as an advisor to the Alaska Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Pi and was named the TBP Outstanding Advisor in 2000.
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Louis J. Lanzerotti, Ph.D (IL A ’60), is the 2017 recipient of the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Arthur M. Bueche Award. Dr. Lanzerotti was recognized “for leadership in understanding the Earth’s radiation environment and its effects on communications and space hardware, and for contributions to public policy on space-based research.”
He is a distinguished research professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Previously, Dr. Lanzerotti worked on the technical staff of AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1965-2002. Click here to read his full bio from the NAE.
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On January 5, 2018, John W. Young passed away at the age of 87. Young, GA A ’52, was a NASA astronaut who walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 and commanded the first space shuttle mission. After graduating with an aeronautical engineering degree from Georgia Tech, he flew fighter planes in the Navy.
Young was also an astronaut on Gemini III, Gemini X, Apollo X, STS-1, and STS-9 missions. He logged a total of 835 hours in space. Read the obituary from NASA for more biographical information.
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Tau Beta Pi 