Missouri Tau Lambda

In the fall of 1954, Dr. Aaron 1. Miles, chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy with five student, Ed Clark, Truman Anderson, Arthur Baebler, John Miles and Frank Paladin, organized a group of undergraduate students who qualified for membership in Pi Tau Sigma and petitioned the National Council of Pi Tau Sigma.

Missouri Tau Lambda Chapter was installed April 16, 1955, by National Vice President C. M. Leonard, National Secretary-Treasurer D. S. Clark, Professor Miles, Professor R. L. Scorah (Chairman of the M.E. Department of Missouri University), and a delegation from Missouri Epsilon Chapter.

The Missouri Tau Lambda Chapter since its inception has taken a leading role in various departmental activities and has taken pride in the strong social and academic ties created among its members. The chapter currently is among the largest in membership and anticipates even further growth in future years.

ANNUAL SUMMARY REPORTS

2019-2020 Mohak Laad - President

There were two new activities the chapter participated in this fall that we had never done before. The first activity was Minerama, which is an event that many different organizations attend at the beginning of the fall semester in order to spread awareness of their group and give prospective members an opportunity to ask questions. We set up a booth and overall had a fair amount of success in reaching out to young students. As expected, the main challenge for our society was that we could not simply send out emails and invite interested students to join since they have to meet several requirements first. Nevertheless, the event helped many younger mechanical engineering students gain awareness about the society, and these students may very well be enthusiastic to join when they are eligible in the future. 

The second event that we participated in for the first time was Miner Mingle. This was a unique event that had not been held before in our school’s history. It took place the day before career fair. In this networking event, students set up tables to represent their organization, and employers had the opportunity to approach them to learn more. This greatly benefited our members by giving them the opportunity to make connections with employers and show them that they are amongst the brightest, most honorable students in the department as they are part of such a prestigious organization with such high ideals. Like previous semesters, Pi Tau Sigma members had additional opportunities to network with employers during our meetings. This semester, guest speakers from Marathon Petroleum Company and Hunter Engineering came to present. At these meetings specifically, members from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers were also invited in order to increase the size of the audience.

Pledges had various volunteer opportunities to help out in the department as well. The first included helping with setting up tables and serving guests and presenters at our senior design presentations. With hundreds of students, faculty, and sponsors to serve, the assistance provided by our Pi Tau Sigma pledges helped the event run very smoothly. The pledges also served guests at our new student orientations, which is a less formal event but is still attended by a large number of guests. They also set up decorations inside and outside the building at different times during the semester, such as Halloween and before the Holidays, and helped out in a few other similar activities. One of the activities specifically tied to our organization involved updating a key display in the building that has names of our executives as well as our most recent pledge class. Due to COVID-19, there were no major activities or initiation ceremony in the spring semester.

2018-2019 Megan Potthast - President

For the fall semester, we tried a new activity for pledges and members called Lunch with Professors. This included a group of students sitting down and eating lunch with professors from the mechanical engineering department while getting the opportunity to ask any questions they had and get to know that professor a bit more personally.  We brought in various speakers, such as a professor who spoke on his rechargeable battery research, to present to our members.  

For the spring semester, we were fortunate to work with our aerospace honor society, Sigma Tau Gamma, to co-host a Mechanical and Aerospace (MAE) Department Honors Banquet.  This was an inaugural event for our society which required ample planning and discussion to ensure participation from both societies and the department as a whole.  This was exciting because it was a way to get our name known on campus while also giving back to our department. The speaker we brought in was Dr. Kevin Wise, a senior technical fellow at Boeing.  He presented on Autonomous vehicles and how controls were active in the fields of mechanical and aerospace engineering. The event ran smoothly and it is our hope to continue to host it in the coming years, to grow the event and continue to bring high level speakers.  This semester we also had many speakers present at meetings from industry such as Boeing and professors from our university on their industry and academic experiences.  

2017-2018

The Missouri Tau Lambda had a good year. The selection process for the Missouri Tau Lambda Chapter begins with obtaining a roster of current Mechanical Engineering students from the department office.  The list is then sorted by the President and Vice President to find the top 25% of both the Junior and Senior classes.  The Missouri Tau Lambda Chapter initiated 16 members in Fall 2017 and 23 members and Spring 2018. This year, we had several guest speakers from different companies come in to speak with our members. Students had the opportunity to ask questions to these speakers.  Additionally, we had some other social events to improve camaraderie between members, including a welcome picnic with games. We also sent two members to the National Convention to represent our chapter.  This year we also had to alter some wordings of our local Constitution to comply with campus standards and continue to be recognized as a registered organization.