Tau Beta Pi Announces 2003 Laureates

Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honor Society, has named two Laureates in the Association’s annual program to recognize gifted engineering students who have excelled in areas beyond their technical majors.

The 2003 Tau Beta Pi Laureates are: Erin E. McIntyre, who graduated this year with a degree in mechanical engineering from Rutgers University, and Patrick D. Schmid, a 2003 computer science graduate from Lehigh University. In addition to their scholastic accomplishments, the Laureates are lauded for their athletic and diverse achievements, respectively. They join 54 other outstanding Tau Bates who have been named Laureates since 1982.

The Laureate Program exists to further Tau Beta Pi’s second basic purpose as stated in the Association’s Constitution: “ . . . to foster a spirit of liberal culture in engineering colleges.” The primary concern of the Society is to recognize students of superior scholarship and exemplary character and to honor eminent practicing engineers. The Society also encourages excellence in engineering education and in the ethical practice of engineering.

The Tau Beta Pi Laureates will be honored on October 25, 2003, at the 98th annual Convention to be held in Lubbock, Texas. Tau Beta Pi President Matthew W. Ohland, Ph.D., will present each winner with a $2,500 cash award and a commemorative plaque. Their biographies follow:

Erin E. McIntyre was nominated by the New Jersey Beta Chapter at Rutgers University for her All-American efforts in swimming, achieving many “firsts” in just four short years.

She swam with two club teams in her native Colorado during her 16 years of pre-college competitive swimming, winning the state championship in the 500-yard freestyle and earning honorable mention All-American three other times. Not long after being recruited for the Rutgers women’s swim team, she began breaking records. By the end of her freshman year, she accumulated five individual and two relay records, was the top performing Rutgers female swimmer at conference championships, and was named MVP and co-rookie of the year. While working as a summer engineering intern with the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, she continued her training and qualified for the 2000 U.S.A. swimming Olympic trials.

In her sophomore year she qualified for the Big East Conference championships, winning the 1650-yard freestyle event. At the NCAA Division 1 championships, Erin—the first woman from Rutgers ever invited to attend this event, placed in the top 16 in the 400-yard individual medley, and was named All-American honorable mention, as well as MVP and Division 1 female student-athlete of the year by the New Jersey Collegiate Athletic Directors. She would again be named both MVP and student athlete of the year as a junior, and qualify for the NCAA championships each subsequent year.

While her swimming was on track, her academic achievement was also in the fast lane. The mechanical engineering major remained on the dean’s list each semester and completed an honors project in which she acted as ambassador in a partnership with USA Swimming to research biomechanics as it relates to swimming.

In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, she and fellow teammates assisted in a campus-wide blood drive and loaded barges in Jersey City with supplies for use by rescue workers. She assumed a larger role in campus life, serving on the student athletic advisory board and becoming involved in engineering groups; she was president of Pi Tau Sigma and Tau Beta Pi representative to the engineering governing council.

At the NCAA championships, Erin placed 8th in the 1650-yard freestyle and was named All-American, the first woman swimmer from Rutgers to achieve this national distinction. She was named Academic All-American, and in the fall of 2002, Erin received the Sonny Werbling award for achieving national collegiate recognition in athletics. Later that year, she became the inaugural recipient of the Athletic Directors Award for Excellence, given to the student who achieves both athletic and academic distinction at Lehigh. This past February, she was named Big East Scholar Athlete in her conference—the first on campus to receive this award and the first female swimmer in the Big East to be so honored.

Her recent accomplishments are even more remarkable considering that she suffered a broken clavicle in a bicycle accident in September 2002. She sat out four meets in the fall but returned to help the women’s team place second at the Big East championships.

This fall, Erin will pursue a masters degree in mechanical engineering and help coach the swim team at the University of Denver. There is little doubt that her legacy will continue to inspire both swimmers and engineering students at Rutgers.

Patrick D. Schmid Pennsylvania Alpha '03, is a Tau Beta Pi Laureate in recognition of his diverse contributions to campus life at Lehigh University— as President of the Pennsylvania Alpha Chapter; as president of the second-largest campus organization, the Global Union; and as a member of the world student organizing committee for the “E-ducation without Borders” 2003 conference held in Abu Dhabi.
A graduate of the German Widermüth-Gymnasium in Tubingen, he served his required 11 months of civil service in the computer department of a hospital and was involved with Y2K activities in the medical-devices field. He administered the computer network, and became certified in Microsoft systems. His knowledge of programming languages, operating systems, and applications led to a computer science major at Lehigh, starting in fall 2000.
Patrick became representative of the German Club to the Global Union—an umbrella organization for campus groups having an international/global/intercultural focus, including all language clubs and groups formed on the basis of cultures. He was elected president of the union, which conducts 60 annual events. The U.S. State Department recognized the union as one of the most active organizations in the nation. During his tenure as president, Patrick re-wrote its constitution, organized the first leadership seminar, and, with other campus leaders after September 11, 2001, helped students respond and later to memorialize the events. He invited a producer for Arab news station Al-Jazeera to campus and visited the Iraqi United Nations ambassador to question him about events. The visit was featured in a New York Times article and on CNN International.
Patrick was awarded a scholarship to represent his university and Germany at the 2002 Global Village for Future Leaders in Business and Industry, a six-week intensive international summer program held at Lehigh’s Iacocca Institute—one of 78 participants from 36 countries. This fall, Patrick is a chapter advisor while pursuing a master’s degree in computer science as a Lehigh.University presidential scholar.