The Executive Council of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society welcomes a new member to replace Executive Councillor Scott E. Fable, CA Tau ’96, who stepped down effective November 30, 2021. Ronald M. Hickling, CA Epsilon ’80, will finish out the remainder of Scott Fable’s three-year term. New officers have also been elected for the 2022 Executive Council: President, Mennatoallah M. Youssef, Ph.D., VA Gamma ’04; Vice President, Rachel K. Alexander, CA Upsilon ’15; Secretary, Michael L. Peterson, IA Alpha ’89; and Treasurer, Russ W. Pierce, WA Alpha ’70.
The ΤΒΠ Executive Council is comprised of nine members with each member serving a three-year term. The Council names its officers, including President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer, while the remaining five serve as Councillors. The Executive Council guides the programs of Tau Beta Pi through Executive Director, Curtis D. Gomulinski, MI Epsilon ‘01.
Short biographies and images of the new member and officers are below:
New Council Member: Ron Hickling, CA Epsilon ’80, has served as Tau Beta Pi’s Permanent Convention Chair 28 times since the late 1980s and as Parliamentarian to the Convention before that. He has been an Assistant Director and Director of District 15, which then included all of California and Nevada (1980-1992), an Engineering Futures Facilitator (from its inception through 1999), and Director of Engineering Futures (1995 – 1999). He has also more recently been an Advisor to the California Epsilon Chapter. He is currently a Senior Systems Engineer at Interconnect Systems (Camarillo, California) a subsidiary of Molex, LLC where he is involved in the development of hardware for instrumentation and RF bandwidth ADCs and DACs coupled with FPGA processing. Ron is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a licensed radio amateur. He lives with his family in Newbury Park, CA, where he enjoys the Santa Monica Mountains and plays music in his spare time.
President: Mennatoallah M. Youssef, Ph.D., VA Gamma ’04, resides in Virginia Beach and is a 2004 graduate of Old Dominion University where she earned a bachelor of science magna cum laude and an M.S., both in electrical engineering. She was a chapter president of VA Gamma and has served as a volunteer for 16 years with ΤΒΠ, first as an advisor for the VA Gamma Chapter and including her two terms as a Councillor, since 2016. Dr. Youssef completed her Ph.D. in 2011 at the University of Dayton, focusing her research on pattern recognition and computer vision applications for human activity recognition. She was a Graduate Student Research Program fellow and Virginia Space Grant Consortium fellow at NASA Langley researching electromagnetic propagation in aircraft fuselages. She interned for NATO working on passive radar scenario testing. As an instructor at Old Dominion, she developed a strong interest in STEM and education reform that led her to work on developing initiatives in rural communities in the Middle East and North Africa region. Dr. Youssef joined the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2014 and serves as a supervisory patent examiner.
Vice President: Rachel K. Alexander, CA Upsilon, ’15, began serving as a ΤΒΠ Executive Councillor in 2019 and graduated from California State University, Sacramento, with a degree in civil engineering. She is a civil engineer for Sacramento County Department of Airports. Previously, Rachel worked at an architectural engineering firm performing forensic investigations of structures. Rachel held positions of social chair and president of her collegiate chapter (CA Upsilon) and has served as president and in other capacities for the Sacramento Valley Alumni Chapter. She looks forward to building the Association’s image and reconnecting with alumni.
Secretary: Michael L. Peterson, IA Alpha ’89, received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Iowa State University. He earned a joint master’s degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Leaders of Global Operations program (MIT-LGO). Peterson served as a ΤΒΠ chapter president, District Director for the Association, and ΤΒΠ Engineering Futures Facilitator. The Peterson family has a legacy with Tau Beta Pi, beginning with Peterson’s father who was an alumnus of the Sigma Tau society which merged with ΤΒΠ, and his two sons are members of ΤΒΠ through the Michigan Gamma Chapter at the University of Michigan. Peterson is also a member of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu and currently, teaches business statistics at nearby Oakland University and is the co-owner of Challenge Island in Oakland County, Michigan.
Treasurer: Russ W. Pierce, began serving as a ΤΒΠ Executive Councillor in 2019 and is a graduate of the University of Washington with B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering. He also earned an MBA from the Florida Institute of Technology. Prior to retiring in 2006, he had a distinguished management career in aerospace, telecommunications, and consulting. Russ worked with AT&T Fixed Wireless Company, managed a boutique consulting company, and taught business classes for the University of Phoenix. He also founded his own company, USBrit Consulting. Russ has continuously served Tau Beta Pi as a volunteer official since he was appointed as an Engineering Futures Facilitator in 1992. He still serves in this role and previously served as a District 5 Director (1995-99), and as an Executive Councillor (2002-06).
To read more about our Executive Councillors, visit: http://www.tbp.org/about/EC.cfm
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