The Tau Beta Pi Association, national engineering honor society, was founded at Lehigh University in 1885 by Dr. Edward Higginson Williams, Jr., then head of the mining department. Williams established Tau Beta Pi in response to Phi Beta Kappa’s decision to restrict membership to those pursuing degrees only in the arts and sciences. Williams sought to offer technical men as good a chance of recognition for superior scholarship in their field as that afforded by Phi Beta Kappa in the liberal arts and sciences.
After defining the rules, badge, and internal government, Williams selected the valedictorian of the 1885 class, Irving Andrew Heikes, to be the first initiated member. Thus, on June 15th, 1885, Tau Beta Pi (Pennsylvania Alpha) was brought into existence. Other members were chosen from that same class, but Williams wanted to have a student member to help initiate them a year later in 1886.
Seven years would pass before another chapter, this time at Michigan State University (Michigan Alpha), would be founded. The organization has greatly expanded since then, moving its headquarters to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1905, when R. C. Matthews went to the University as a young instructor in 1907. R. C. Matthews served as Tau Beta Pi's Secretary from 1905 to 1912 and as Secretary-Treasurer from 1912 until his retirement in 1947. Professor Matthews' long service to Tau Beta Pi and the University of Tennessee has made the university the permanent headquarters of the Association. Shortly after Matthews’ retirement, Tau Beta Pi was incorporated under the laws of Tennessee on December 1, 1947.
On January 1, 1974, Sigma Tau merged into The Tau Bet Pi Association. Sigma Tau was founded at the University of Nebraska in 1904 as an engineering honor society. At the time of the merger, Sigma Tau had 34 colleges and 45,000 member, all of whom were made members of Tau Beta Pi when their collegiate chapters merged into Tau Beta Pi.
Recent amendments to the society's constitution have made it an international organization, but no chapters outside the United States have been founded. As of 2008, there are 235 chapters of Tau Beta Pi throughout the United States.
The Ohio Alpha chapter of Tau Beta Pi was founded May 19th, 1900 at what was then the Case School of Applied Science, now Case Western Reserve University. This makes us the oldest chapter in the state of Ohio, and the seventh oldest nationwide.
Ohio Alpha prides itself on being one of the more “progressive” chapters in its early history. Tau Beta Pi was originally open only to white males. Ohio Alpha elected an African-American, Francis Gregory, to membership in 1927, but could not be initiated at the time. This policy was changed after World War II, and Gregory was initiated into Ohio Alpha in 1949. Women faced similar restrictions on their membership and were only eligible for the “women’s badge” between the years of 1936 and 1969, at which time they were granted full status. Ohio Alpha awarded two women’s badges in the period prior to 1969.
Since its founding, our chapter has initiated a number of significant projects on the campus. Tau Beta Pi was the first campus group to organize formal tutoring sessions. The tutoring program began in 1946 to provide “refresher courses” for veterans returning from World War II, but records suggest Tau Bates provided tutoring as early as the 1920s. While tutoring is now provided by the university, the spirit of Ohio Alpha’s tutoring program lives on in the Engineering Core Cram hosted every semester.
Another service project initiated by Ohio Alpha is the course evaluation program. The practice of evaluating courses at the end of the semester began as early as 1950. As with tutoring, this program has now been taken over by the university. Also in the 1950s and 1960s, Tau Bates organized and distributed review pamphlets for major courses and organized symposia and seminars on topics of local and national interest.
In 1982, Ohio Alpha launched the Bookswap, under the leadership of Vance Van Doren. As with other service project, the Bookswap sought to fill a void in student life, by providing CWRU students the ability to buy and sell textbooks from one another instead of through the bookstore. In its early years, the Bookswap was not a profitable venture for Tau Beta Pi, but has since gone on to become our primary fundraiser and service project.
Ohio Alpha almost disappeared in the early 1990s, with its only major activity being the initiation of new members. By 1994, the chapter’s finances had dried up, and Ohio Alpha was in dire straits. Thanks to the leadership of Heidi Martin (then a grad student, now a faculty member in the department of Chemical Engineering) and teams of dedicated officers, Ohio Alpha was brought back to life. The Bookswap was reinstated in 1994, and Ohio Alpha hosted the 90th convention in 1995.
In 2003, Ohio Alpha moved from Wickenden to its current home in Nord, and the Bookswap was relocated from Bingham to Nord 310. Textbooks are now displayed on shelving obtained with the generous help of the Case Alumni Association, and students are able to purchase books using their campus ID cards.
For many years, Tau Beta Pi presented an award acknowledging those members of the engineering faculty that show an exemplary commitment to undergraduate teaching. In establishing the award, Tau Bates sought to acknowledge those faculty overlooked by the university-wide Wittke teaching award. In 2005, the award was renamed the Srinivasa P. Gutti Memorial Teaching Award, in honor of Srinivasa P. Gutti, an exceptional member of the Case community and Corresponding Secretary of Tau Beta Pi from 2003-2004. He passed away shortly after graduating, and Tau Beta Pi’s teaching award was renamed in his honor.
History information adapted from: