UW Hosts Engineering Society Conference

Up to 60 students from six states will attend the Tau Beta Pi 2016 District 12 Conference Feb. 26-27 at the University of Wyoming.  

Tau Beta Pi, the nation’s second-oldest honor society, is the only engineering honor society representing the entire engineering profession.

District 12 contains the nation’s largest land area of all districts. Participants from the following institutions will take part: Colorado School of Mines, University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado State University, University of Colorado at Denver, Air Force Academy, Idaho State, Boise State, Montana State, Montana Tech, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah State University and UW.

“The students get to participate in leadership activities that help them learn what qualities make a good leader, and that is the focus of Tau Beta Pi,” says Dakota Roberson, of Rock Springs, a doctoral degree student in electrical engineering who organized the regional conference. “It is really beneficial for students who attend.”

Kipp Coddington, director of the Carbon Management Institute at UW, will be the keynote speaker. He will discuss “500 Things You Can Do With an Engineering Degree, Not Including Engineering.”

The program includes chapter reports from each school, a campus tour, trivia session, interactive exchanges among members, an industry panel and a dinner on campus with alumni. The focus of district programming is to strengthen the collegiate chapters and to enlist the interest and aid of alumni in their work. Training student officers in chapter management, and overcoming the effects of discontinuity in chapter membership arising from rapid student turnover are examples of specific programming.

Nationwide, there are chapters at 244 colleges and universities; 42 active alumni chapters in 16 districts across the country; and a total initiated membership of approximately 564,000.

UW joins some elite company as a host school. Other institutions to conduct district meetings this year include Penn State, Virginia, Vanderbilt, Kansas State and Texas.