Tau Beta Pi (Engineering Honorary Society)

Tau Beta Pi was founded on June 15, 1885, at Lehigh University. The permanent national headquarters of this engineering honorary organization is on the UT campus—since 1963 in Dougherty Engineering, in a 2,000-square-foot office complex officially named the R. C. Matthews Headquarters of the Tau Beta Pi Association. Professor R. C. Matthews had been elected secretary-treasurer of the organization in 1905, and when he joined the UT faculty in 1907, he relocated the national headquarters to UT. Membership criteria for this Engineering Honorary Society are ranking in the top one-eighth of the junior engineering class or in the top one-fifth of the senior engineering class. Tau Beta Pi is the second oldest academic and leadership honorary society in the nation, founded when Phi Beta Kappa began extending membership only to liberal arts students. The UT Chapter (Alpha of Tennessee) was installed in 1929, when a charter was granted to local engineering fraternity Tau Epsilon. The first female members, Carol Anderson, Jane Black, Mary Ann Parks, Sabra Range, and Linda Wolfe, were initiated in 1969.