FEATURE
THE PHI TAU ENGINEERS:
Building the Future Inspiration is born out of a number of things. There’s no telling what moment, series of events, or experience will set you on a path that determines the course of your life. It could be a trip to the local fire station when you’re young, then your whole life is headed on a path to becoming a firefighter; playing a video game for the first time, being immersed in the world and lost in the story, and you dream of creating these worlds for others; maybe you decided to run for student government as an undergraduate, and now your life is dedicated to politics. While this could go on for pages, the point is—whether it comes early or late—most can trace the origin of their passions and drive to a few moments in life. For Chad Thrasher, Centre ’88, a passion for understanding how things were made was always present, but it wasn’t until he witnessed the tragedy of the Challenger accident in in 1986 that this passion found an end goal. Now working for NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center, Thrasher is one of the many accomplished engineers within our organization. Each of the nine alumni in this feature made the decision to set out on the long and difficult journey to become an engineer, knowing full well that this would mean a strenuous academic life with hours and hours of studying, a mastery of problem-solving skills and creativity, and countless other traits needed to be successful in this field. Each one had the
motivation, skills, and know-how to make it to the top of their field—creating and building the future. With limited space and no shortage of accomplished alumni in the engineering field, finding a way to highlight all those deserving men in our organization was no easy feat. There was the option to list out all the alumni, paragraph by paragraph and give the bullet point summary of each individual’s careers, but that seemed a little cut and dry. Fitting each into an overarching story was a viable route, but had the potential to lack the respective spotlight these brothers warrant. The answer became glaringly apparent; keeping in line with our Hall of Fame feature, we are going to build out a veritable All-Star Team of Phi Kappa Tau engineers. For all those who are not basketball fans, I apologize, but our number of alumni perfectly reflects a five-man team with four players coming off the bench (and honestly, that’s where my expertise lies). Now, a quick disclaimer before revealing our team, an individual being denoted as a bench player has nothing to do with the career achievements or successes but is a necessary part of this exercise and of every team. We as an organization are equally proud of all our alumni in the engineering field, and even those not included in this piece are worthy of just as much praise. With that out of the way, lets meet our team.
BY DALTON LEE, BALDWIN WALLACE ’11
[14] THE LAUREL || MAY 2022
