Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Vol. 100, No. 3, Fall 2024
“It was super important to me to have a legacy for him so that his story is still out there.”
— Helen Wade, on Charles “Dutch” Brembs, IM 1948
Charles “Dutch” Brembs, IM 1948, was an accomplished athlete, a successful businessman, and a beloved member of his community. After graduating from Georgia Tech, he began his nearly 50-year-long career as an insurance agent at Allstate. Helen Wade, Brembs’ stepdaughter, deeply respected and admired him. “He was my stepfather but more of a second dad,” she said. George Wade, Helen’s husband, echoed her admiration for Brembs’ dedication, kindness, and warmth. “I loved Dutch and I was very impressed with the way he handled himself all the time,” George said. “He was a guy you could always look up to.”
While at Georgia Tech, Brembs was a star football player in the leather helmet days. Despite his recordsetting successes on the field, Brembs was not one to boast of his collegiate athletic triumphs. “He was a live-in-the-moment kind of guy, and super humble,” Helen said.
The Wades determined that a football scholarship for Georgia Tech students would be the perfect way to preserve Brembs’ legacy on and off the field. Through a living trust provision, they have established the Dutch Brembs Athletic Scholarship to perpetuate Brembs’ example of sportsmanship.
To celebrate her husband’s own love of football and many years as a high school football coach, Helen surprised George upon his 60th birthday by including an additional provision to establish the George Wade Athletic Scholarship, honoring his lifelong involvement in sports, as well as his hard work, integrity, and passion. This football scholarship also supports student-athletes, with preference given to students from Pinellas County, Florida.
Each of these endowed football scholarships will honor Dutch Brembs and George Wade in perpetuity while providing much-needed support for some of Georgia Tech’s hardworking and talented student-athletes.
I DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN?
IN 2015, I was one of the 40,000 people who saw the legendary Rolling Stones perform at Bobby Dodd Stadium. It was the first concert held at Bobby Dodd since 1994, and plenty of cameras recorded every moment of Mick Jagger’s strut across the stage. One piece of the story that people might not know is that part of the preparations ahead of hosting the rock ’n’ roll band included adding black-out curtains to the windows in the Wardlaw Center. That’s where Jagger performed his pre-concert exercises without anyone seeing.
Truly, you can investigate any story from Georgia Tech’s long and rich history—even a more recent one like this—and find something new! There are plenty of historical curiosities, short-lived traditions, and mysterious happenings from the Institute’s past that are begging to be told.
Some of the stories in this issue have been passed down through generations of Yellow Jackets until they’ve gained an almost mythical or legendary status. I think about the unbelievable black-and-white photos of Joe Auer’s lion cub, which lived on campus with him briefly during the 1960s. And there are the stories I’ve heard from fellow alumni about being bound and thrown into a pool for Drownproofing in the old gym. Then there’s the famous George P. Burdell, who despite an outstanding
record of attendance at events remains one of the most mysterious—and mischievous—figures in Tech’s history. I even heard Burdell paged on my recent flight to watch our Jackets play football in Ireland. All these “history mysteries” and more make the Institute’s past as special as its future. They capture our imagination and connect us back to the place and people where it all started. As we enjoy long-standing traditions like Roll Call and Homecoming, it’s also exciting to witness the start of new ones, such as the 40 Under 40 program. Now in its fifth year, “40 Under 40” recognizes the work of Yellow Jackets who are pushing boundaries and changing the world for the better. Their incredible stories are adding new chapters to the evolving story of Georgia Tech and its impact. We are proud to bring their stories into the spotlight and give them the recognition they deserve.
The Alumni Association is also proud to serve as your front door back to the Institute. Whether you have a question about Homecoming (page 72), the masked T-Man (page 53), or the story behind the Mickey Mouse clock (page 51), we’re here to help you find the answers. Go Jackets!
DENE SHEHEANE, MGT 91 PRESIDENT GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI MAGAZINE
VOL. 100 | NO. 3
PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER
Dene Sheheane, Mgt 91
VP STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
Lindsay Vaughn
EDITOR
Jennifer Herseim
ART DIRECTOR
Steve Hedberg
COPY EDITOR
Barbara McIntosh Webb
STUDENT ASSISTANTS
Riddhi Bhattacharya, Sadie Mothershed, Alisha Tan, Levi Waterhouse, Grace Langan
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Chair
Tommy Herrington, IM 82
Past Chair/Vice Chair of Finance
Betsy Bulat, IAML 04
Chair Elect, Vice Chair/Roll Call
Rita Breen, Psy 90, MS IE 92
Vice Chair of Engagement
Jimmy Mitchell, CE 05
Member at Large
Anu Parvatiyar, BME 08
Member at Large
Amy Phuong, IA 05, MBA 14
Member at Large
James “Jim” Sanders, IE 88
Member at Large
Sam Westbrook, IE 99
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Latanza Adjei, IE 98; Thomas Antonino, BA 15, MSA 22; Sybrina Atwaters, EE 94, MS HSTS 09, PhD HSTS 14; Donald Beamer, Econ 05; Matt Bishop, CmpE 06; Michael Bogachek, IE 00; Alexia Borden, IE 01; Jasmine Burton, ID 14; Jacky Cheng, IE 17; Kimberly (Kilpatrick) Civins, Mgt 92; Catherine Cooper, IE 90; Aurélien Cottet, MS AE 03; Cynthia Culbreath, IE 93, MS IE 95; Adam Fuller, Mgt 93; Siddharth Gore, ME 17, MS ME 20; Craig Hyde, CmpE 05; Joy Jordan, ChE 92; Brandon Kearse, ME 09, MS CE 10; Olivia Langevine, IAML 13; Randolph McDow, IE 95, MS PP 03; Meredith Moot, Mgt 08; Susan (Sutherland) Piña, IE 93; Kyle Porter, Mgt 04; Jacquelyn Renée Schneider, BC 06, MBA 18; Greg Sitkiewicz, IE 00; Courtney Robinson Smith, Mgt 00; Kamau Smith, IE 99, MBA 09; Miya Smith, IE 03; Russell Smith, Cls 98; John R. Spriggle, ME 02; Peter Stewart, CE 97; Casey Swails, Mgt 07; Maurice Trebuchon, IE 86; Paul Trotti, ME 00; D’Andre Waller, ME 17; Kourtney Wright, CS 15, MS CS 23
POSTMASTER Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313
Joe Auer and “Clifford” the lion
LOST & FOUND
While the missing Ts might be the most visible example, there are plenty of objects that have vanished over the years.
THE “T” FILES
Calling all Georgia Tech sleuths to solve some of the Institute’s greatest mysteries, such as “T-Man” pictured above.
THE MUSIC MAN
The story of 1960s hit-maker Harry Middlebrooks.
DEPARTMENTS
ENGINEER ON THE CASE
For 54 years, Georgia Tech engineers received a “Bachelor of” degree instead of a “Bachelor of Science” degree. Al Clary was one of them. He went in search of answers to solve this history mystery from Tech’s past (page 94).
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
STREAKERS WITH SNEAKERS: ANOTHER GEM FROM 50 YEARS AGO
APART FROM HOSTING 1974 band concerts, Georgia Tech was no doubt a magnet to a variety of stage acts, some homegrown, some politically spherical, most with novelty. On one occasion, First Amendment proponents had a heyday comprehending numerous people removing all their clothes and running as fast as possible within the public’s domain. The phenomenon was known as streaking, without trademark, just guts. Techwood Drive’s pedestrian population collected and surged through an unusually warm Winter Quarter evening. An olfactory setting emerged, steeped with unbathed fragrance of the student body cramming for finals. To move outdoors and release that pressure had a certain attraction that broke the study lock.
A little while later, it was time for me to be bold and hop down from an observation tree branch to join the fray. No need to present credentials since we were already and entirely drafted. I proceeded to store my possessions, then pretend I had a date with destiny, as a streaker!
Within one of the mini-legions of the evening’s dalliances, we proceeded according to a sketchy plan to migrate operations from Techwood (Area 1) to Fitten Dorm (Area 3). We forged ahead in nothing but running shoes—albeit a good pair of running shoes—and donned optional T-shirts on our skulls, leaving holes for vision. Along the way, it was the perfect time to check our PO boxes and savor the odd thrill of climbing the main interior stairway of the Student Center in our birthday suits. We stood there looking at each other in full building light. No one else outside our group was naked...others could be and would not; we could and did. Strength in numbers emboldened us, giving us a short-lived freedom, whether or not we deserved it. Here’s to those who pulled it off. Cheers! It was fun to know we did it. —JOHN EVINS, ARCH 77, M ARCH 84
REPEAT IN 1975 Kathleen Copeland, Bio 79, commented on Facebook: “I’d like to know who streaked across the grassy lawn near the Area 3 dorms in 1975.” Was it you? Email editor@alumni.gatech.edu to tell your story.
KUDOS FOR THE SUMMER ISSUE
THE SUMMER 2024 EDITION is in my opinion the best in my many years of reading this publication. The content was outstanding!
—B. KEITH HARRISON, CHEM 69, MS IM 71, MS CHE 77
ONE MAP TO RULE THEM ALL
I WANTED TO TELL YOU how much I enjoyed your two feature articles in the Summer 2024 issue: “Hidden Gems of Georgia Tech” and “Spend the Perfect Day at Georgia Tech.” I learned many things that I didn’t know about Tech. I was wondering if anyone has compiled ALL these tour spots into one easy to use map, either online or paper. My wife and I would LOVE to walk around campus on our next trip to Atlanta and hit all these spots. She used to work in the Tower in the Registrar’s Office. I imagine that some of them are not open to the public (but I would love to see the room in the Tower!). Thanks again for the great article.
—DAVE STOTZ, CHE 80, OF HOUSTON, TEXAS
EDITOR’S NOTE: Check out gtalumni.org/ homecoming for a list of campus tours this Homecoming, Nov. 7–9. Our Student Ambassadors are incorporating stops from the Hidden Gems features. For an online, printable version of the itineraries, visit gtalumni.org/magazine.
The streakers made the 1974 Blueprint
DID YOU REVEAL THE HIDDEN GEM ON THE COVER OF THE SUMMER ISSUE?
THANKS TO THE GEORGIA TECH IMAGINE LAB, WHICH CREATED A 3D MODEL OF TECH TOWER, OUR SUMMER MAGAZINE INCLUDED A HIDDEN FEATURE. WHEN VIEWED THROUGH OUR INSTAGRAM FILTER, TECH TOWER APPEARED TO GROW OUT OF THE COVER.
A MILESTONE IN TECH SPORTS HISTORY
YMCA: HOME AWAY FROM HOME
IN THE SPRING 2024 ISSUE of the Alumni Magazine, the story “The Big Moment” looked at Georgia Tech’s role in the 1956 Sugar Bowl, the first integrated bowl game played in the Deep South. The story inspired Bill Hardin to share his memory of another important moment in Tech’s history. Hardin, AE 70, MS ME 73, swam for Georgia Tech from 1966 until 1970, becoming co-captain his senior year. In 1969, he remembers Georgia Tech had a swim meet at Emory University against Morehouse College. To his knowledge, it was the first time that a Tech athletic team competed against a historically Black college. “We won the first meet against Morehouse, but then they won the second,” Hardin recalls. “They brought their band and cheerleaders, and you couldn’t hear yourself think because there was so much cheering. The place was vibrating; it was so loud.”
GEORGIA TECH RECOGNIZED WITH TWO CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE AWARDS
THE GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION was honored with two 2024 Circle of Excellence Awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The annual awards showcase exceptional achievement in advancement services, alumni relations, communications, fundraising, and marketing.
THE SUMMER ISSUE of the Alumni Magazine featured “Hidden Gems” and memories of the campus back in the day. I would like to recognize a “gem” that was not necessarily “hidden” which played a big role in my four years at GT from 1950 to 1954. That was the YMCA located across North Avenue from Bobby Dodd Stadium. It is now the home of the Alumni Association. I lived off campus and the YMCA was my “home away from home.” It was where I went to relax and spend my lunch hours and other breaks between classes. It was where I made many friends and learned to play Hearts and Bridge and played pingpong in the auditorium. The barbershop in the basement corner was where I got my hair cut. And I probably did some studying there occasionally (the current library did not exist at this time). Returning to this building before the home football games brings home a lot of pleasant memories.
—FRED EHRENSPERGER, ME 54, MS NE 60
TWO TECH ROCK STARS
ON PAGE 94 [Summer 2024, Vol. 100, No. 2 “Rock ‘N’ Roll Gem”], you have Gene Simmons of Kiss. His actual American name is Gene Klein, who graduated from Newtown HS, Elmhurst, N.Y., in 1968. That was one year before I graduated from the same school. Unfortunately, with a school population of over 5,000 students, I don’t remember our paths crossing. Looks like we both made it to Tech, although by different routes.
—DAVID TURK, IE 77
GOLD AWARD FOR SINGLE TOPIC/SPECIAL EDITIONS: F+ Failure Issue [Winter 2023, Vol. 98, No. 4]
BRONZE AWARD FOR DIGITAL CAMPAIGNS (ALUMNI-ORIENTED):
“Wrecks at Work” Social Media Campaign
AROUND CAMPUS
RAT EDUCATION
Learning what’s the good word, signing your RAT cap, and maneuvering a tricycle around a parking lot are a few of the useful skills new “Recruits at Tech” master at the start of the fall semester.
HOT TAKES
NOTES FROM THE DESK OF GEORGIA TECH’S PRESIDENT.
1
RESEARCH IS ESSENTIAL TO WHO WE ARE.
When I heard about this issue’s focus on history, I thought of the long and rich history of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which just celebrated 90 years this summer. What began as the Engineering Experiment Station in 1934 has grown into a powerhouse research institution. Just think: GTRI’s annual research awards surpassed $100 million for the first time in 2000. Today, they’re nearly $1 billion.
3
2
THE INCOMING CLASS IS HISTORIC.
We now have the largest incoming class in the history of the Institute. Beyond its impressive size, this class also includes a 5% increase in female enrollment over 2023 and a 36% increase in Georgia enrollment since 2020. We’re excited to boost our recruitment efforts in rural areas with a new strategic national partnership. This summer, Georgia Tech joined 31 other top universities in the Small Town and Rural Students (STARS) College Network.
SCIENCE SQUARE HAS THE BEST SKYLINE VIEWS.
The opening of Science Square, a new mixed-use development dedicated to the life sciences, is one recent example of how our growing campus is helping revitalize our city and create one of the most vibrant innovation districts in America. Construction also continues on the Scheller and George towers in the heart of Tech Square, the Ferst Drive cycle track, and the Thomas A. Fanning Student-Athlete Performance Center. And we’re about to start building a new student residence hall. If all this construction affects you in any way, pardon our progress!
Researcher Jim Hubbard with the EM200 Electron microscope, purchased for $13,000 in 1946.
RECORD $5.3 BILLION ECONOMIC IMPACT
IN THE LATEST STATE IMPACT REPORT, GEORGIA TECH UNDERSCORED ITS LEADING ROLE IN DRIVING GEORGIA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH AND JOB CREATION.
BY SIOBHAN RODRIGUEZ
IN FISCAL YEAR 2023, Georgia Tech reached a record state economic impact of $5.3 billion, the highest of any public university in Georgia, according to a report by the University System of Georgia (USG). The report was conducted by the Selig Center for Economic Growth in the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. Check out the following numbers on Tech’s economic impact.
Georgia Tech contributed $5.3 BILLION of a total $21.9 billion contributed to the state’s economy by USG’s 26 institutions.
33,929
Georgia jobs were created by Tech, the highest employment impact of all USG institutions.
17.7% change in Tech’s growth in FY23 from FY22, the highest of all USG institutions.
USG and its institutions create about the same employment impact as Georgia’s TOP FIVE EMPLOYERS COMBINED.
TECH WELCOMES LARGEST INCOMING CLASS
Approximately 5,326 new undergraduate students joined the Georgia Tech community this summer and fall. This group includes over 1,440 transfer students and 3,880 first-year students, taking Tech’s total undergraduate population to more than 20,000 for the first time.
CYBERSECURITY TEAM WINS $2 MILLION
TEAM ATLANTA, MADE UP OF YELLOW JACKETS, WON THE DARPA AI CYBER CHALLENGE SEMI-FINAL COMPETITION. THEY’LL COMPETE NEXT YEAR FOR THE $4 MILLION GRAND PRIZE.
BY JOHN POPHAM
FFOR THREE DAYS, a cybercriminal unleashed a crippling ransomware attack on the futuristic city of Northbridge. The attack shut down infrastructure and severely impacted public services, until Georgia Tech cybersecurity experts stepped in to stop it.
This scenario played out at the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) semifinal competition held at DEF CON 32 in Las Vegas Aug. 9–11. Team Atlanta, which included the Georgia Tech experts, was among the contest’s winners.
Team Atlanta will now compete against six other teams in the final round that takes place at DEF CON 33 in August 2025. The finalists will keep their AI system and improve it over the next year using the $2 million semi-final prize.
The AI systems in the finals must be open-sourced and ready for immediate, real-world launch. The
AIxCC final competition will award a $4 million grand prize to the ultimate champion.
Team Atlanta is made up of alumni and Tech students and was put together with the help of Professor Taesoo Kim in Tech’s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, who is a vice president of Samsung Research.
“This achievement is the result of exceptional collaboration across various organizations, including the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), industry partners like Samsung, and international academic institutions such as KAIST and POSTECH,” Kim says. “Our team, deeply rooted in Atlanta and largely composed of Georgia Tech alumni,
embodies the innovative spirit and community values that define our city.”
The team tested their cyber reasoning system (CRS), dubbed Atlantis, on software used for data management, website support, healthcare systems, supply chains, electrical grids, transportation, and other critical infrastructures. Atlantis is a next-generation, bug-finding and fixing system that can hunt bugs in multiple coding languages. The system immediately issues accurate software patches without any human intervention.
AIxCC is a Pentagon-backed initiative that was announced in August 2023 and will award up to $20 million in prize money throughout the competition.
THAT’S SO TECH: DE-BUGGING THE CYBER COMPETITION
Not only did Team Atlanta secure a spot in the final competition, but they also found a flaw in the contest itself. After noticing discrepancies in the AIxCC score board, the team investigated, discovered, and reported a zero-day vulnerability. These vulnerabilities are known as zero-day vulnerabilities because they are typically discovered after being exploited, meaning vendors have zero days to fix the issue. While the discovery didn’t earn Team Atlanta additional points, DARPA officials acknowledged their finding during the closing ceremony.
SKYDIVING CLUB REACHES NEW HEIGHTS
FOLLOWING ITS REVIVAL IN 2020, GEORGIA
TECH’S SKYDIVING CLUB IS BREAKING RECORDS AND INTRODUCING THE THRILL-SEEKING HOBBY TO THE TECH COMMUNITY.
BY STEVEN GAGLIANO
IN APRIL, six members of the Skydiving Club—Victor Batistela, Jack Broadhead, Alex Broering, Beck Bruch, Yiming Guo, and Brandon Yu—set state collegiate records for the highest exit altitude with a jump at 14,300 feet and the largest formation. The accomplishment was published in Parachutist magazine.
The club, which dates back to 1969, had been dormant for several years before skydiving enthusiast Jack Broadhead, EE 23, arrived on campus in 2019. After finding his passion for skydiving working at a jump site in high school, Broadhead and a classmate revived the club, seeing an opportunity to introduce a new generation of Yellow Jackets to the thrill-seeking hobby.
“The freedom is a huge part of what makes skydiving so exciting. Through the club, we meet people from other schools, and while we may be studying different things, we all come together over this shared experience of jumping out of planes and taking a break from the stress of schoolwork,” he says.
The record-breaking jump, which originated at Skydive Atlanta in Thomaston, Georgia, took place during finals week. Broadhead said the club members saw it as the perfect way to clear their minds.
In addition to the adrenaline rush often associated with skydiving, Broadhead, who now has over 400 jumps under his belt, was initially drawn to it through the eyes of an engineer—a point of view that he feels other Georgia Tech students can relate to.
“I was initially interested in the equipment, so my first jump wasn’t necessarily for the thrill or the adrenaline. It was more about wanting to see this incredible equipment in action. Like so many, I had the impression that parachutes were thrown together by skydivers, but the engineering that goes into them is truly special,” he says.
STUDENT LEADS RESEARCH ON TOOL TO DETECT PARKINSON’S THROUGH A PHONE CALL
ANU IYER, A DEAN’S SCHOLAR, IS THE LEAD CO-AUTHOR ON A PAPER ABOUT A NOVEL VOICE-BASED DIAGNOSTIC TOOL FOR THE DISEASE.
uate majoring in biology with a pre-med focus, worked with researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) to develop a novel voice-based diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s disease.
“Through a three-second phone call, our machine-learning model recognizes patterns in data to detect Parkinson’s with a 97 percent accuracy rate,” says Iyer.
Iyer, who conducted the research while still in high school, published her first research article as a first-year student at Georgia Tech. She is the lead co-author of the paper published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal.
“Parkinson’s disease is a nervous system disorder that primarily affects the elderly population, and one of the many issues with detection is that symptoms must be analyzed in person,” explains Iyer. “In Arkansas, 75 percent of our population resides in medically underserved areas—it can be hard for them to access health facilities. Our research addresses the need for convenient detection via telemedicine.”
—LAURA S. SMITH
GEORGIA TECH BREAKS GROUND ON NEW HANGAR
THE NEW STATE-OF-THEART FACILITY WILL BOLSTER RESEARCH IN ADVANCED AVIATION TECHNOLOGIES.
BY MONIQUE WADDELL
THE DANIEL GUGGENHEIM School of Aerospace Engineering kicked off the construction of “The Hangar” with a groundbreaking event in the heart of the North Avenue Research Area. The 10,000 square-foot facility is expected to be completed in the fall of 2025, marking a new era in advanced aeronautics research for Georgia Tech. The Hangar will house specialized laboratories, including an electric powertrain laboratory, a propulsion
system test cell, an avionics lab, composite fabrication areas, and an area for integrating prototype aircraft with wing spans up to 20 feet. A particular focus area for the facility will be electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft and other novel types of electric aircraft.
One of the most exciting ventures coming to The Hangar is the Research
PARDON ME, FOOD ROBOT COMING THROUGH
Aircraft for eVTOL Enabling technologies (RAVEN) project. This collaborative effort with NASA is focused on designing, building, and flying an “open” eVTOL research aircraft in the half-ton weight class, with the goal of disseminating data about the aircraft to the broader aeronautics community. The integration of the RAVEN aircraft will be a significant milestone for The Hangar, marking the beginning of its research activities and the next steps in a major partnership with NASA.
GEORGIA TECH BRINGS AUTONOMOUS FOOD DELIVERY BOTS TO CAMPUS.
Georgia Tech got a taste of the future this fall with new autonomous delivery robots. The robots from Starship Technologies are equipped with advanced sensors, cameras, and AI capabilities, allowing them to navigate safely and efficiently in pedestrian areas. To place a robot delivery order, students, faculty, and staff use the Starship Delivery app to order from a campus restaurant.
Brian German, AE 99, MS AE 00, PhD AE 07, and Mitchell Walker sign a beam that will be used in The Hangar.
Renderings from Perkins & Will and subject to change
Like maybe to 11?
Like maybe to 11?
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You got out —
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SOLVING MYSTERIES OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY FOR 90 YEARS
LOOK BACK AT THESE GROUNDBREAKING ACHIEVEMENTS FROM THE GEORGIA TECH RESEARCH INSTITUTE OVER THE LAST NINE DECADES.
BY JOHN TOON AND JENNIFER HERSEIM
INVESTIGATING PILOTS’ STRANGE SIGHTINGS
For years, pilots reported seeing mysterious bursts of lightning that instead of striking toward Earth, burst upward into space. The phenomenon known as “gigantic jets” occurs when powerful bursts of electrical charge—as much as 10 times larger than ordinary lightning—fires out of the tops of clouds and into the lower portion of where Earth’s atmosphere transitions into space. The massive energy bursts could affect satellites, communications, and radars. With a new three-year study funded by the National Science Foundation, GTRI researchers will attempt to understand how these mysterious lightning jets and other cloud top discharges affect the atmosphere and critical technologies above the storms. By analyzing thousands of these bursts, they’ll be able to understand what’s happening above the storm clouds and ultimately what drives lightning into space.
BASELINE the $941 MILLION 8 1984 3,000
CURRENT GTRI EMPLOYEES
LABORATORIES IN MULTIPLE LOCATIONS AROUND THE COUNTRY
IN 2023, GTRI WAS CLOSE TO REACHING THE $1 BILLION MARK IN SPONSOR AWARDS.
YEAR THE ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT STATION CHANGED ITS NAME TO THE GEORGIA TECH RESEARCH INSTITUTE
AAT ITS CORE , research helps explain mysteries in the world around us, applying science and technology to shed light on the previously unknown. The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has pushed the boundaries of technology across a wide range of disciplines to answer unsolved questions and find practical solutions for government and industry. Since its start as the Engineering Experiment Station (EES) in 1934, GTRI has grown to nearly 3,000 employees, and in 2023, neared a record $1 billion in sponsor awards. In addition to the alumni who work at GTRI, the organization is the largest employer of Georgia Tech graduate and undergraduate students. On the next few pages, learn about GTRI’s impressive legacy over the last 90 years.
2010s
PROTECTING MILITARY AIRCREWS
GTRI developed the Angry Kitten family of jamming systems more than a decade ago that can scramble radar signals and send back a different signal that mimics the original. The pod version has been flying on multiple aircraft, including F-16s, F-18 test jets, and the MQ-9.
2020s
HACKING DNA TO STORE OUR DATA
DNA data storage uses the four bases that make up biological DNA to store data in a way that is similar to the zeroes and ones of traditional computing. GTRI researchers developed a microchip for growing synthetic DNA strands that has the ability to store 3D archival data at ultra-low costs.
2000s
ADVANCING QUANTUM COMPUTING
For the past two decades, GTRI researchers have been advancing the ability to control and measure quantum states of ions, one of the most promising quantum computer architectures. They’ve developed ion traps, quantum sensors, atomic clocks, and other state-of-the-art devices that advance quantum computing, which has the potential to solve problems exponentially faster than modern computers.
1990s
BUILDING THE ULTIMATE MAP
FalconView is a mapping system developed by GTRI for the U.S. Department of Defense. Today, it’s used by the military for a variety of mission-planning, intelligence, and operational tasks. Combined with a GPS receiver, it serves as a navigation system, providing real-time information, such as satellite imagery, elevation, and weather conditions for several airborne, land, and sea platforms.
1980s
TRAINING MACHINES TO MONITOR POULTRY
As part of their work to support Georgia’s poultry industry, GTRI researchers applied machine vision—specialized cameras, lights, and interpretation algorithms—to agriculture production lines, examining everything from chicken nuggets to hamburger buns. Since then, GTRI researchers have broadly applied their machine-vision expertise, most recently by developing a digital train inspection portal that examines train cars moving at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour.
1970s
HARNESSING THE SUN’S POWER
For more than 40 years, GTRI researchers have been developing improved ways of capturing the sun’s power. In the 1970s, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy, they built a 325 kW, 500-mirror solar thermal test facility that was then the second largest of its kind in the United States.
1960s
MIMICKING LONG RANGE RADAR WAVES
To accurately measure the radar cross-section of targets or the characteristics of large antennas, a test range must mimic the distance between the test antenna and the target. In the late 1960s, EES researcher Richard C. Johnson invented the compact range, which uses a parabolic reflector to alter a radar wave to make it seem as if the wave has traveled a long distance. In 1989, GTRI built the world’s largest outdoor compact range.
1950s
DEVELOPING A RADAR THAT OPERATES UNDER ANY WEATHER CONDITIONS
In the 1950s, EES researchers built the first millimeterwave direction-finding system for the U.S. Department of Defense. Researchers also studied which frequencies for millimeter waves worked best for specific applications and conditions.
PIONEERING HELICOPTER AND AUTOGYRO RESEARCH
1930s–1940s
Montgomery Knight was director of Tech’s School of Aerospace Engineering and a longtime EES researcher. He conducted research into the aerodynamics governing the flight of helicopters and autogyros—a type of aircraft that uses an unpowered rotor instead of a wing. Other researchers at this time pursued work of interest to Georgia, including developing new uses for raw materials such as cellulose produced from trees, cotton grown in the state, and kaolin clay mined in middle Georgia.
ON THE FIELD
GAME-WINNING MOMENT
Georgia Tech claimed its second victory on Irish soil, beating Florida State 24-21 in Dublin for the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. Kicker Aidan Birr scored a field goal as the clock ran down.
HOW THE 1996 OLYMPICS CHANGED GEORGIA TECH
GEORGIA TECH WILL ALWAYS HAVE A STRONG CONNECTION TO THE GAMES.
BY JENNIFER HERSEIM
TTHE EYES OF THE WORLD were on Atlanta and Georgia Tech when the Olympic Games opened on July 19, 1996. The 16-day event was the culmination of five years of preparation that transformed Georgia Tech’s campus into an Olympic Village that housed athletes and the site of two venues for athletic events. Take a look back at how the ’96 Olympics forever changed the Georgia Tech campus.
The Kessler Campanile served as a gathering point during the games.
The aquatic center was one of two Georgia Tech sites that served as athletic venues. The other was McCamish Pavilion, then known as the Alexander Memorial Coliseum.
TECH SHINES AT PARIS OLYMPICS: NINE YELLOW JACKETS, FOUR
MEDALS
THESE IMPRESSIVE ATHLETES REPRESENTED GEORGIA TECH ON THE BIGGEST STAGE IN THE WORLD.
AT THE TURN of the Men’s 100-meter breaststroke, USA swim team captain Nic Fink, MS ECE 22, was less than half a second behind the leader in a competition that could be won by a fingernail. As he surfaced for the final stretch across the pool, Fink closed the gap, pulling himself into a pack of five close contenders vying for a podium finish. He pushed through the final meter and touched the electronic board at the exact moment that Great Britain’s Adam Peaty did, securing a tie for silver and Fink’s first Olympic medal. It wouldn’t be his last. A few days later, he earned his first Olympic gold medal with the fourperson mixed 4x100-meter medley
HELLUVA OLYMPIANS
SWIMMING
IMANE EL BARODI, ME 23
Morocco 100m Breaststroke
NIC FINK, MS ECE 22
USA 100m Breaststroke
BERKE SAKA
Turkey (Student-athlete) 200m Backstroke
ELA NAZ OZDEMIR
Turkey (Student-athlete) 4x200m Freestyle Relay
relay and then another silver the following day for the men’s 4x100m medley. Making this Olympic medal haul even sweeter for Fink was that his wife, Melanie Fink, herself an Olympic swimmer and gold medalist, was expecting their first child, due in early September.
Georgia Tech was well represented at the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer with a total of nine Yellow Jackets, including five alumni and four studentathletes competing in the Games. In addition to Fink’s medals, alumna Julia Bergmann, ALIS 23, was Georgia Tech Volleyball’s first Olympian and first medal-winner, taking home bronze with Team Brazil.
ARIANA DIRKZWAGER
Laos (Student-athlete) 200m Freestyle
Georgia Tech’s swimming and diving coach
COURTNEY HART was at the Olympics as Dirkzwager’s coach.
GIOVANA REIS
MEDEIROS
Brazil (Student-athlete) 4x400m Freestyle Relay
1
2 1
Mixed 4x100m Relay Swimming
Men’s 100m Breaststroke Swimming
Men’s 4x100m Medley Relay Swimming
Women’s Volleyball
CHRIS EUBANKS, CLS 18
USA
JULIA BERGMANN, ALIS 23
Brazil
JOSE ALVARADO, LMC 21
Puerto Rico
JULIA BERGMANN | BRAZIL
NIC FINK | USA
CASSIE MITCHELL: FOUR-TIME PARALYMPIC ATHLETE
HOME KICKING
CASSIE MITCHELL, PHD BMED 09 , competed in her fourth Paralympic Games earlier this fall, representing Team USA in the women’s discus throw.
Mitchell, a World Para Athletics medalist, is an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and principal investigator of the Laboratory for Pathology Dynamics. She has two silver medals (2020, 2016) and a bronze medal (2016) from previous Paralympic Games. She finished in fourth place in Paris in the women’s discus throw F53 event.
DAVID SHANAHAN WAS THE HOLDER ON TECH’S GAMEWINNING FIELD GOAL AGAINST FSU THIS AUGUST. IT WAS THE FIRST TIME THE IRISH NATIVE PLAYED IN HIS HOME COUNTRY.
DAVID SHANAHAN first sensed something was up when Brent Key called him over in the middle of a spring practice in 2023. Head coaches never talk to the punter during practice.
Key started peppering him with questions about stadiums in Ireland, the rugby scene there, and other seemingly offbeat topics about his home country. Shanahan answered them all earnestly. But after a while, curiosity took over. “I finally caught on to it after about five minutes and realized the direction he was going,” he says.
Who else but Shanahan deserved to know first? For a second time Georgia
Tech would open its season in Dublin, Ireland, facing No. 10 Florida State in the 2024 Aer Lingus College Football Classic at Aviva Stadium. And with it, the native of Castleisland, County Kerry (pop. 2,536), three hours southwest of Dublin, has a most unlikely homecoming: Already believed to be the first Irish-born player on a full college football scholarship, he got the chance to play on native soil to begin his senior year.
“I knew that there was going to be a game in Dublin. I knew they hadn’t announced the teams. It was probably wishful thinking that maybe we
245 NAMED TO ACC ACADEMIC HONOR ROLL
THE ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE
recognized 245 Georgia Tech studentathletes for their achievements in the classroom last academic year at the annual Academic Honor Roll this summer.
Eighty-four Yellow Jackets made the list for at least the third time in their collegiate careers, including 46 earning the recognition for the fourth or fifth time. A total of 12 Yellow Jackets received the prestigious honor for the fifth time in their careers.
The ACC Academic Honor Roll is comprised of student-athletes who participated in a varsity-level sport and registered a grade-point average of 3.0 or better for the full academic year.
could be one. I was definitely blown away when I knew I would get the opportunity.”
Or to borrow the Gaelic phrase he tried in vain to teach Key this summer: “ar mhuin na muice.”
“Basically, it means, I’m extremely happy to be here. But the direct translation is, I’m on the pig’s back,” Shanahan explained.
—ANDY DEMETRA
D O N A T E N O W t o t h e a -t f u n d
IN THE WORLD
A YEAR ON “MARS”
If you thought sharing a dorm room was tough, try spending 378 days inside this simulated Mars habitat with three other people. A Yellow Jacket was part of the first of three year-long NASA studies on how humans might live and work together on the Red Planet.
A YELLOW JACKET ON MARS
TO HELP NASA PREPARE FOR THE MYSTERIES OF LIVING ON MARS, THIS TECH ALUM SPENT ONE YEAR IN A SIMULATED MARS HABITAT AT THE JOHNSON SPACE CENTER IN HOUSTON.
W
BY STEVEN GAGLIANO
WWHEN THE DOOR CLOSED behind the crew members of the first Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) mission, Ross Brockwell, CE 99, was transported 140 million simulated miles to the Red Planet.
For the next 378 days in the Mars Dune Alpha habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Brockwell and three other crew members participated in the first-of-its-kind study designed to gain insights into the challenges of deep space exploration and its effects on human health and performance. The crew performed robotic operations, habitat maintenance, agricultural activities, and simulated surface walks in the “sandbox” with the assistance of virtual reality, while enduring intentional resource limitations, isolation, and confinement.
A structural engineer by day, Brockwell has always dreamed of space travel, and when a fellow Yellow
Jacket alerted him to the application for the CHAPEA mission, he seized the opportunity.
“Sometimes, you get chances in your lifetime, and if I don’t get a chance to actually go to Mars, if I can take this chance to help us get there as a planet, I’m honored,” he says.
Once inside the habitat, Brockwell’s role as the CHAPEA mission’s flight engineer focused on infrastructure, building design, and organizational leadership. As much as he learned from his tasks throughout the mission, like anticipating possible failure points and contingency planning, NASA learned even more through physical and cognitive monitoring.
“There was a lot of science, but some of the science was focused on us as the participants—our physiology and our performance—to make the mission as realistic as possible,” he says.
Communication is a key element in space travel. Getting a message from Mars back to family and friends or mission control on Earth took 20
Brockwell (left) used materials inside the habitat to design parts for mission challenges.
QUICK FACTS
Mission: NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog mission
Brockwell’s role: Flight Engineer
Habitat specs:
1,700-square-foot
3D-printed structure made of lavacrete
Time spent in habitat: 378 days
minutes on average for the crew inside the habitat, testing their ability to isolate. Without constant communication with the outside world, the crew fostered camaraderie through team activities and celebrated birthdays and holidays together. Brockwell’s ingenuity wasn’t limited to official tasks; he used a 3D printer to create a bracket for mounting a mini-basketball hoop.
Meals inside the habitat mirrored the shelf-stable food system of the International Space Station. While cultivated crops like tomatoes supplemented their main supply, Brockwell says there is a common misconception about astronaut food. “I say with all sincerity, it was delicious.” His favorite dish was a peanut chicken and wild rice mix, but the crew often got creative by mixing soups and proteins to create new dishes.
Other than the food, the biggest surprise to Brockwell was how quickly the mission was completed.
“I hoped and thought it would be that way, but we proved that a well-comprised crew can have a good time while doing this. There were a
lot of clichéd expectations that there would be issues that we just didn’t have. I think we demonstrated that a mission like this can be a huge success and an enjoyable, positive experience, not just something to be endured,” he says.
Brockwell says that his time at Georgia Tech allowed him to learn the fundamentals of engineering principles and taught him to keep an open mind when exploring how things work. After receiving a master’s degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology and completing the CHAPEA mission, he believes systems engineering can aid deep space exploration efforts for the next generation.
“Thinking about the effect of every component on every other component and the emergent properties from complex systems is crucial. I think that systems thinking is going to become increasingly important. Ecology and ecological thinking need to be part of it, especially for aerospace. If you’re thinking about deep space exploration, an understanding of ecological principles and closed-loop systems
MARS SIMULATION SCHEDULE
Brockwell participated in the first of three planned simulations that will inform NASA’s Artemis campaign. Artemis will explore the moon for scientific purposes and prepare for human missions to Mars.
Analog Mission 1: June 25, 2023 – July 6, 2024
Analog Mission 2: Starting 2025
Analog Mission 3: Starting 2026
will be key,” he says.
At the end of the mission, Brockwell savored the sights and smells of Earth for the first time in over a year, saying that’s what he missed the most. But if the opportunity arose to take the 140-million-mile flight to Mars, he’d be on the first ship out.
Brockwell (center) and the three other members of his crew emerged from the habitat on July 6.
SEARCHING FOR 81,500 AMERICANS MISSING IN ACTION
BY JENNIFER HERSEIM
MORE THAN 81,500 AMERICANS remain missing around the world from past conflicts, including World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Gulf Wars.
Double Jacket Kelly McKeague directs the agency that sifts through archaeological sites around the globe, connecting witness accounts with historical archives and using science and technology to investigate, recover, identify, and return home remains of missing Americans.
“This is a national commitment,” McKeague says. “I look at our mission as a sacred obligation, simply because these are men and women who answered the call of duty, fought for their country, preserving our freedoms and liberties, and did not come home,” he says. “It’s also a moral imperative that we owe not just to them but to their
Kelly McKeague, director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, visits an excavation site in Vietnam.
“IN A SMALL WAY, I SEE THIS AS PAYING BACK A DEBT THAT NONE OF US AMERICANS CAN TRULY REPAY BECAUSE OF THEIR SUPREME SACRIFICE,” M c KEAGUE SAYS.
families.”
The figures are daunting, and many factors—including strained diplomatic ties, environmental conditions, development at recovery sites, and the loss of critical witnesses as time passes—can complicate recovery efforts, but McKeague isn’t deterred. “We estimate there are 38,000 Americans who are recoverable. We have been able to identify 200 a year. One might think that’s just a number, but absolutely not. Every single one has a unique story.”
One of those stories is the discovery of the remains of Captain Lawrence Dickson, who was one of 27 Tuskegee Airmen unaccounted for from World War II. When Dickson went off to fight in the war, he left behind a 2-year-old daughter named Marla. When the agency and its partners (the University of New Orleans, University of Innsbruck, and the World War II Museum) recovered his remains 75 years after he went missing, they also found his harmonica and his wedding ring. His daughter wore his wedding ring on a chain around her neck when she was able to finally bury her father at Arlington National Cemetery.
“In a small way, I see this as us paying back a debt that none of us as Americans can truly repay because of their supreme sacrifice made in war,” McKeague says.
IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting
Agency’s historians and analysts pore over historical records and artifacts to find clues to hopefully narrow down the search for a missing American to a specific area. “We don’t have easy cases, or they would have been found before,” McKeague says. “We are usually dealing with the hard cases that are difficult to find.”
The agency works with 46 countries around the world to get access to these sites. Once an area is identified, the agency sends a small team to investigate. If they find evidence that correlates with the records, they’ll send a team led by an anthropologist or archaeologist to excavate the site, sifting through soil for any evidence
such as dog tags, uniforms, or remains. Remains are sent back to one of two forensic laboratories, where they use seven lines of evidence to find a match.
“Our forensic scientists are preeminent in the world and together with renowned DNA scientists, they are able to identify individuals despite bones that have been subject to environmental degradation for decades,” McKeague says.
One line of evidence the agency uses is isotope analysis that pinpoints a person’s country of origin. This method has been critical for quickly segregating commingled remains and repatriating those remains from other countries, McKeague says.
McKeague returned to Georgia Tech at the invitation of the College of Liberal Arts in April 2024 to speak to alumni, faculty, students, and staff about the agency.
IN THE WORLD
“What you eat and drink as a child stays with you for life. We’re able to take a tiny bone cutting and run it through an isotope analysis to determine where someone grew up,” he says.
The agency also uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data sets—in some cases to analyze hundreds of thousands of scanned handwritten records from the 1940s and ’50s. AI has also expedited underwater searches by helping excavation teams map the ocean floor and identify anomalies faster than human teams have done in the past, McKeague says.
“Really, we’re just scratching the surface with this technology,” he says.
“[TECH]
TEACHES YOU PROBLEM-
SOLVING AND HARD WORK, BUT WHAT I VALUED THE MOST WAS THE RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING.” –M c KEAGUE
‘snow,’” he jokes.
Besides academics at Tech, he dove into extracurricular activities, becoming president of his fraternity, Sigma Nu, as well as president of the Interfraternity Council and ANAK. He was vice president of the Ramblin’ Reck Club and mentored elementary students through Big Brothers. “Tech teaches you critical thinking. It obviously teaches you problem-solving and hard work, but what I valued the most from my education and extracurricular activities was the relationship-building,” McKeague says.
A FOUR-YEAR COMMITMENT
McKeague, who was born and raised in Hawaii, realized early on that the military would be his ticket to an education outside of Hawaii. With an Air Force ROTC scholarship, he chose Georgia Tech for its reputation for industrial engineering. Atlanta’s mild winters might have swayed him, too. “I wasn’t too sure about this thing called
He was commissioned in 1981 through the Air Force ROTC at Georgia Tech. He served in a variety of assignments throughout his distinguished military career, including as the first deputy director of the newly established Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and as commander of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam in Hawaii. He retired at the rank of major general in 2015 after a 34-year career in the U.S. Air Force.
“The skills I learned at Tech
translated well into the Air Force,” he says. “Although I initially thought I would serve only my four-year commitment to the military, good opportunities led to great jobs, and I missed my mark by 30 years.”
NO ONE LEFT BEHIND
The relationship-building skills that he honed at Tech are key to his current position, McKeague adds. Aside from the technological and diplomatic aspects of his work, a core component to the agency’s work is communicating with the families of missing Americans.
“Families know the basics of their loved one’s loss in combat, but not having their remains created uncertainty that has exacerbated their grieving that they also carry generationally,” he says.
The agency holds family meetings throughout the year to provide updates about the search for their missing loved ones and for those families to come together to share with each other.
“Our nation is fulfilling a promise made to those it sent off to combat who did not return home as well as to their families and to veterans who lost their comrades-in-arms,” McKeague says. “This fulfillment also instills confidence in those serving in the military today to never leave a fallen comrade behind.”
McKeague meets alumni veterans in the audience after his talk at Tech this April.
Digging Data Analytics
Scott Cardinal, senior project manager and museum scientist at the New York State Museum, has dedicated his career to archaeology. Recognizing the potential synergy between archaeology and data analytics, he began Georgia Tech’s Analytics: Essential Tools and Methods MicroMasters.® Wanting to delve even deeper into the world of analytics, he applied to the Online Master of Science in Analytics (OMS Analytics).
Q
A
What courses in the OMS Analytics program did you find most helpful as a scientist?
Classes in simulation, deterministic optimization, Bayesian statistics, and computational data analysis dramatically changed my research methodology and provided powerful new tools and perspectives to allow me to analyze archaeological data with greater depth and precision. They enabled me to approach my archaeological research from a variety of new analytical angles.
Q
What was your biggest surprise or challenge in the program?
• Top-5 nationally ranked program
• 100% online and self-paced
• Complete in 24-36 months
• Same faculty and curriculum as on-campus program
• 3 specialized tracks:
- Analytical Tools
- Business Analytics
The biggest hurdle was my limited background in advanced mathematics. It took some extra work to get up to speed in calculus and linear algebra, but I did it!
My biggest surprise was the very active OMS Analytics community of students, faculty, and alumni. I felt part of a true community and had more interactions with my online OMS Analytics peers than I did in my previous in-person graduate experience at another institution. I made great friends who I’m still in touch with.
A Q A
How has earning your master’s in analytics impacted your career?
The OMS Analytics program significantly transformed my professional work. The curriculum equipped me with advanced problem-solving skills that I now apply in my research, allowing me to extract more information from archaeological data than ever before. Its strong mathematical and algorithmic foundation has expanded my ability to employ computational approaches in the social sciences.
The OMS Analytics degree broadened my professional horizons and allowed me to bridge traditional archaeology approaches with modern data analytics. That in itself has propelled my academic research and career in exciting new directions.
- Computational Data Analytics
• Total tuition under $11,000
• No GRE/GMAT required
FROM THE BOOKSHELVES
ADD THESE NEW TITLES FROM GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI TO YOUR READING LIST.
HISTORICAL
MERCHANTS OF INIQUITY
JOHN D. CRESSLER, PHYS 84
Much of modern Spain was under Muslim control for nearly 800 years, and an exceptional period of peaceful coexistence among Jews, Muslims, and Christians occurred during the 10th and 11th centuries. Georgia Tech professor and alumnus John D. Cressler’s fourth and final release in the Anthems of al-Andalus series breaks open the fascinating history for modern readers. The series revolves around love stories set at pivotal moments in medieval Islamic Spain.
FICTION
FLY WITH THE FALCON
ED COBLEIGH, ME 66
Ed Cobleigh’s newest novel follows three troubled aviators as their intertwined lives unravel. The novel delivers romance, moral dilemmas, aerial action, and peregrine falcon lore. Cobleigh has been a fighter pilot with the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Royal Air Force, Imperial Iranian Air Force, and French Air Force. After his flying career, he worked as an air intelligence officer with the CIA, FBI, and MI6.
MEMOIR EVIDENCE
KEITH BENNETT, CHE 79
Bennett shares 30 personal stories of how God redeemed hurts, restored broken relationships, and used traumatic events for Bennett’s eventual good. There is even a chapter about Bennett’s time at Georgia Tech during the ‘70s, when the infamous drownproofing class was still a requirement. His stories address faithfulness despite the storms and challenges of life.
THE LOST FAMILY ROBINSON ALAN PRIEST, EE 90
Family travel is never easy, but family time travel is the worst. When the four Robinson brothers—Fred, the astrophysicist, Ernie, the martyr, Jack, the jokester, and Will, the peacekeeper—along with their wives and children, are pulled back into northern Nevada’s gambling and mining past, they will have to learn to set aside their issues with each other to get back home.
THE FBI MURDERS
LEE GIMENEZ, ID 74
This page-turning mystery is the ninth novel in Gimenez’s highly acclaimed J.T. Ryan thrillers. In 2024, The FBI Murders became a Featured Novel of the International Thriller Writers Association. The ITW is the largest and most prestigious organization of mystery and thriller writers from around the world. Gimenez was a finalist for the Author Academy Award and is a U.S. Army veteran.
UNBUNDLING THE ENTERPRISE
STEPHEN FISHMAN, EE 92, MS MGT 94, AND MATT M c LARTY
Authors Stephen Fishman and Matt McLarty argue that the world’s most successful companies don’t just get lucky—they’ve learned how to get lucky over and over again. Drawing on decades of experience guiding global enterprises, they reveal the methods today’s top companies are using to thrive in the digital economy, using case studies and the real-world experiences of over 20 top executives.
COMPUTER SCIENCE PRINCIPLES
KEVIN HARE, MS CS 21
If you’ve used a computer, you have a basic understanding of what happens when you click the mouse—and how fast it happens! Computer Science Principles introduces the creative side of computing. Once you’ve made your way through this updated book, you’ll be editing photos, designing websites, coding JavaScript, and getting organized with spreadsheets.
THE HALF-LIFE OF CARSON HOOD CHUCK CARTER, IM 74
Former Marine Carson Hood grapples with paradoxes—he’s a loner navigating crowded rooms and a boater fearful of bridges. Life with new love Claire Markham turns nightmarish when they discover a buried body, unraveling a deep-secret government plan. Research for the book included insights from a former Secret Service agent and a PhD with expertise in medical technology, crafting a chilling tale with unnerving parallels to reality.
A PARABLE AND A WARNING
MICHAEL O’SHEASY, IE 70
Michael O’Sheasy’s newest novel is a page-turner about three diverse families marooned together on a deserted island. Will they be rescued? If not, will they be able to sustain and survive indefinitely by adequately sacrificing today and living for both today and tomorrow?
THE ENTREPRENEUR’S DILEMMA
PARKER H. “PETE” PETIT, ME 62, MS EM 64
A serial entrepreneur in the healthcare industry, Petit started his first company, Healthdyne, in 1970 as a result of his second son’s unexpected crib death. Over the next decade, he grew Healthdyne into four publicly traded companies. In The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: Should I take my company public?, Petit provides decades of knowledge and experience for those who wish to manage and lead in today’s public company environment.
THE HEDGEWITCH OF FOXHALL ANNA BRIGHT, IAML 10
Bright’s fourth book is a young adult fantasy set in medieval Wales. The story follows Ffion and Prince Taliesin and the quest to restore magic to the kingdom. Bright didn’t learn creative writing at Georgia Tech, but she says she sure learned from Tech how to dig in and not quit.
Through the years, more than just Ts have gone missing from campus. Some of the disappearances were just student pranks; others owed to bureaucratic oversights. But the true mystery is not how these things were lost—but how they somehow miraculously found their way back. Maybe George P. Burdell is looking out for us.
BY TONY REHAGEN
Former Tech sportswriter picks up a historic football he didn’t know was lost.
Ryan Schneider couldn’t believe it. It was 2014, and the Buckhead patent attorney was scrolling through a sports memorabilia auction website when he came across a photo of a 98-year-old football. Schneider, ME 90, immediately and intimately recognized the item, even though he hadn’t seen it in nearly 40 years. The ball was faded, stained, and misshapen, with two laces missing from more than a century of being passed around the country. Schneider didn’t even have to read the inscription emblazoned on the ball in thick black lettering:
GA. TECH. 222
CUMBERLAND U 0
OCT. 7th. 1916
This football, possibly this very photo, had been emblazoned in Schneider’s memory since he was 7 or 8 years old, growing up a sportsobsessed kid just outside of Philadelphia in Wilmington, Del. He had first seen it in the Guinness Book of World Records, a relic of the biggest blowout in college football history, Georgia Tech’s 1916 home-turf shellacking of poor Cumberland College. At the time, the Yellow Jackets were coached by John Heisman, who had also led the Tech baseball team when Cumberland ran up the score on them 22-0 earlier that same year.
A legendary lopsided victory
HERE WAS THE ACTUAL BALL? NO WAY IT’S ON THE MARKET! I THOUGHT FOR SURE THAT TECH HAD IT OR IT WAS IN THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME OR SOMETHING. THIS WAS NUTS,”
—Ryan Schneider
Heisman and his Georgia Tech footballers were out for revenge. “I was into sports numbers and statistics—all the stuff on the back of the baseball card,” says Schneider. “And while I wasn’t big into college sports as a kid—always more of a Philadelphia pro sports fan—that lopsided score and that ball were seared into my mind.”
Coincidentally, Schneider’s father had graduated from Georgia Tech. And when Schneider’s own love of numbers led him toward mechanical engineering, the son became a second-generation Yellow Jacket. (His daughter, Lily, became a third-generation Jacket in 2022.) He brought with him a passion for sports, writing about Tech baseball, football, basketball, and golf for the Technique for four years between 1986 and 1990. He remained in Atlanta after graduation and eventually fell into intellectual property law—a career that provided him with the means to indulge a penchant for collecting memorabilia. But even this experienced auction-goer was shocked to see this particular pigskin up for bidding. “Here was the actual ball? No way it’s on the market! I thought for sure that Tech had it or it was in the College Football Hall of Fame or something. This was nuts,” says Schneider. “But this was taking me back to when I was 8 years old. It’s my alma
Tech’s football team trounced Cumberland after the baseball team’s loss to them earlier in the year.
mater. There was no way I wasn’t going to get this ball.”
Since the online bidding was anonymous, Schneider had no way of knowing whether he was bidding against another alum or even an Institute representative, but he wasn’t taking that chance. After five or six bids, he submitted a late-night offer for $33,657 ($40,388 with the buyer’s premium). He woke up the next morning, owner of a piece of Georgia Tech history. Elated, Schneider held on to the ball for about a week to share it with his kids, who were around the age he was when he first learned of the record. Then he contacted Tech and arranged to donate the artifact to the school for display. “I’m not so much into what the ball stood for—beating the hell out of another team and piling on,” says Schneider. “And I don’t worship items. But holding that ball, it was hard to breathe. Maybe now, when an 8-year-old or someone walks through and sees the ball, they’ll have the same feeling I had.”
Wisconsin woman was compelled to return father’s class ring to his family.
Item No. 49
Perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of random things tend to get left behind at a convenience store— credit cards, keys, even articles of clothing. In four decades of working on-and-off at the Mobil filling station in Fredonia, Wisc., Liz Wedereit has seen it all. But in those years, there’s one item from the quick stop lost-and-found that she will never forget—a class ring all the way from Georgia Tech.
The ring had been found in the men’s bathroom about 42 years ago. It was a patinaed gold with a grayish blue gemstone ringed with these words: Georgia Institute of Technology. The year on the side was 1975; the initials inscribed on the inside were RTB. In her spare time at work, Wedereit would periodically pick the ring out of the box to examine it and wonder how it came more than 800 miles from Atlanta to Fredonia (population: ~2,200), how it was lost, whom it belonged to, and why no one had claimed it in more than four decades.
Then in the summer of 2023, Wedereit began to feel a sudden onset of urgency. “I felt something drawing me to that ring,” she says. “It was really strong the last time I picked it up. Something told me I had to find this person.”
I FELT SOMETHING DRAWING ME TO THAT RING,” SHE SAYS. “IT WAS REALLY STRONG THE LAST TIME I PICKED IT UP. SOMETHING TOLD ME I HAD TO FIND THIS PERSON.”
—Liz Wedereit
Wedereit turned to a Facebook page for lost class rings and posted a picture and description of the ring. Within minutes, researchers Ben Daniel and Kim Koop had scoured online yearbooks to track down the owner, Richard T. Bray, ME 75, only to discover he had died in 2017. They also found Bray’s daughter and her contact info—but that wasn’t the end of the quest.
“She was skeptical,” says Wedereit. “People think it’s bogus or a scam. They don’t want to give out too much information over the phone. I don’t think she even knew about the ring.”
Wedereit was politely persistent, eventually convincing the family to accept her gesture. Bray’s son said that his father used to work for the Miller Brewing Company in Milwaukee, perhaps explaining how the ring made its way to Fredonia, just 30 miles north. Wedereit took the ring to a local jeweler to get it cleaned up, bought a box, and sent it to the grateful family.
Their gratitude wasn’t Wedereit’s only reward. She also got the satisfaction of fulfilling what had become something of a spiritual quest. “When I held it that last time, I had the strongest feeling I had to find its owner.”
A treasure hunter persists in finding a lost ring’s owner.
In 2017, Timothy Rall was scouring the ground at GE Park in Springdale, Ohio, with his metal detector when he heard a beep. This is the moment every treasure hunter, whether a pro or hobbyist, lives for. The newfound booty could be anything: a coin, a bottle cap, a piece of old memorabilia, or just a chunk of junk. Rall bent down and dug in the dirt, gradually unearthing a bright magenta jewel set in a class ring. The gem was wreathed in the words “Georgia Institute of Technology” and the side said 1958. The jewel also featured faint gold-leaf markings, which turned out to be the Greek letters Theta and Xi.
of his find on social media and on TV, in both Cincinnati and Atlanta, where Rall’s brother lived. He also contacted
the president of Theta Xi fraternity. Within two weeks, Rall tracked the ring to its owner, Charles Anthony Freck, of Hilton Head, S.C. Apparently, after graduating from Tech, Freck, ME 58, got his master’s in Florida, and then went to work as a mechanical engineer for GE Aerospace and GE Aircraft, and he often visited the park in Springdale, where he lost his ring.
Freck died three years later— but not before he was reunited with his Georgia Tech keepsake. On a metal detector enthusiast website, Rall reported the reunion with a blurry
Tips on reuniting a class ring with its owner.
Whether they’re searching in the dirt or in a gas-station lost-andfound, true hunters find class rings to be an especially tantalizing treasure—not because of any material value, but because each ring is a compact trove of clues as to its origins. Once you’ve gleaned the name of a school, a graduation year, and any other info from the ring, here are four tips on how to use that info to get the memento back to its owner.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Post photos of the ring and info on where you found it. There are also entire Facebook groups dedicated to reuniting rings with their owners, where experienced researchers hang out looking to help.
ONLINE YEARBOOKS
Many of those researchers take advantage of the pages and pages of college yearbooks now scanned and available online. These can be helpful if you have a first name or initials along with the school and year.
TRADITIONAL MEDIA
You can also take your find to the local TV station or newspaper, or the school the ring came from.
THE MANUFACTURER
If you can discern the maker of the ring, you might contact them to see if the jewel was under warranty, and they might be able to track down the owner.
Renowned sculptor Julian Hoke Harris, Arch 28, left an indelible mark at his alma mater through 34 years of teaching in the School of Architecture and a vast collection of artworks that still adorn campus. Students today recognize the stunning stained-glass window in Brittain Dining Hall, as well as the 10 limestone busts of great engineers and scientists on the building’s columns. But around the Arch building, Harris is known almost as well for a work that’s gone missing—or at least half of it has.
Item No. 74
Pygmalion Art Relief
A Greek muse is missing his other half.
After the Price Gilbert Memorial Library was built in the early 1950s, P.M. Heffernan, head of the School of Architecture, urged Harris to create a sculpture to beautify the building’s plain brick outside wall. He took as his muse Pygmalion, the sculptor from Greek mythology who was so enamored with his depiction of a woman that he prayed to Aphrodite to make her real. Harris created two aluminum maquettes, or scale models, of what would have been a much larger art relief, one of a nude Pygmalion on bended
Bolt holes outside the Arch building before the relief was moved inside for safekeeping.
knee beholding the rigid sculpture of a female in his hand; the other a mirror-image of him, except in his palm lies the body of a living human.
Harris’s commission fell through. “Mrs. Price Gilbert did not want nude men on her husband’s namesake building,” says Robert Craig, professor emeritus of the College of Design, who has studied Harris and his work. Left with the maquettes, he kept one to display on his studio, just off campus at 177 5th St. He gave the other to Heffernan, who mounted it on an exterior wall on the rear of his house across 5th St. at 166. The secluded location of Heffernan’s
maquette probably helped make it an easier target for pranksters to steal for a day or two before somehow returning it to its mount—a caper that was replayed more than once through the years. Eventually, Heffernan’s figure was moved to the more visible front wall of the Arch building, and then, finally, installed inside near the Dean’s Office, where it hangs to this day. The real disappearing act was Harris’s maquette, which was removed from his studio after his death in 1987. “It remained in the Harris family after his death and was offered for sale,” says Craig. “I don’t know who has it now. But the two need to be together.”
THE T FILES
One hundred and thirty-nine years is a lot of history, and during that time Georgia Tech has produced a fair number of fascinating mysteries, legends, and curiosities. Here we dive into the past and learn the stories behind everything from campus dogs and the Institute’s best pranks, to fake students and UFO sightings.
FURRY FRIENDS AT GEORGIA TECH
As the managerresident
for a Georgia Tech dorm in the early 1960s, Bob Gaha- gan, IE 64, had to expect the usual student shenanigans. Still, he was quite surprised when he stepped out of his room one day to investigate some com- motion: A lion cub was chasing three football players down the hall.
The lion’s name was Clifford, and he belonged to footballer Joe Auer. Ga- hagan recalls a rumor that Auer bought Clifford from a fraternity at Emory. (But that was hearsay, and he was never sure if it was true.)
“I remember seeing Joe Auer riding around with the lion in his car, the lion’s head and paws hanging out the back of it like a dog,” Gahagan says.
“Everyone thought it was the funniest thing.”
The cub lived in Cloudman Hall, where residents would occasionally walk to the lavatories late at night, half- asleep, only to be startled fully awake by Clifford’s hot breath on the back of their legs. According to a 2014 issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, the cheerleaders for the Northside High School Tigers painted stripes on Clifford and used him as a fill-in for their mascot.
The day Auer brought Clifford to Gahagan’s dorm, two other football players joined in on the fun. Clifford re- peatedly chased Auer, Billy Lothridge, and Doug Cooper down the hall. But the boys rounded a corner that was too tight a turn for the lion cub, and he kept crashing into the wall.
“My thought was, ‘I’m enjoying watching this, but I’m going to lose my job,’” Gahagan says.
Another visit banished Clifford for good. Gahagan’sDuring time at Tech, a house- keeper came into the dorms to make up the beds and clean. Gahagan was in his room when he heard the maid screaming, “Mr. Bob! Mr. Bob!” He came out of his room to find the housekeeper rushing toward him.
“There’s a lion in that room!” she yelled. It turns out the football players had put Clifford in Cooper’s bed for the housekeeper to find.
And that was the end of the lion in Gaha- gan’s dorm. He never saw the lion again.
One source says that as Clifford got older, he began growling at night—a problem that eventually led students in the hall to sign a petition to send him away.
“If nothing else it provided me with great stories for years afterwards,” Gahagan says. “All three of the footballers have passed away, but they provided great entertainment both on and off the field.”
During the second quarter of the 1929 Rose Bowl game, a University of California player picked up a fumble made by Georgia Tech’s “Stumpy” Thomason, and then ran 65 yards in the wrong direction. The mistake led to Tech’s two-point safety on the ensuing punt, and Georgia Tech went on to win the game, 8-7. Somehow, the outcome of this victory was a bear named Bruin coming to Georgia Tech. While some sources claim Bruin was a gift from an adoring fan, others say the bear was given to Tech alumnus Chip Robert from the Rose Bowl committee, who then gave it to Stumpy.
In the days
Either way, Bruin became known as Stumpy’s bear and was a familiar face around campus. A March 1929 issue of the Technique says Stumpy brought the bear to a fraternity house shortly after he got it to show off some of the stunts Bruin had learned. All was going well until Stumpy started a wrestling match. Bruin grabbed Stumpy with his claws, and Stumpy had to get three stitches in his hand.
Dean of Students Emeritus George Griffin once described the 400-pound Bruin “as smart as most Tech students with all the bad habits of modern youth.” The bear rode in the backseat of Stumpy’s car, and drank beer and Coca-Cola, often consuming as many as 20 Cokes at a time at the local drug store. Bruin was arrested for scaring residents, as well as for drunk and disorderly conduct.
Later in 1929, the bear went with Stumpy to Buffalo, N.Y., where Stumpy had earned a coaching position with a team called (fittingly) the Bears. It’s not known what happened to him after moving north.
before Buzz, there was an unofficial mascot of the student body that attended classes from 1945 to 1947. Her name was Sideways, and she was a white terrier with a black patch over one eye who walked with her shoulders about 15 degrees out of line with her hindquarters. This interesting gait was due to injuries sustained when, as a puppy, she was tossed from the window of a moving vehicle in front of The Varsity. A local boarding house owner, Annie Schofield, nursed her back to health, and when Tech students saw the dog’s walk, they named her Sideways.
Sideways attended classes and athletic events, sampled food from the dining hall, and slept in different dorms each night. Once, a Tech man found her in the middle of the dance floor at the Delta Phi Epsilon’s fraternity house in Athens, apparently kidnapped by students from the University of Georgia.
In August 1947, Sideways accidentally ate some meat laced with rat poison outside one of the dorms. “She was buried by a group of students in the plot between the Textile Building and the Post Office,” according to the Technique. The student council, along with a special committee, were able to secure a donated marble stone from the McNeel Marble Company of Marietta, Ga., which was then sent to Chicago, where an engraved likeness of Sideways could be placed on the monument. A dedication ceremony was held in March 1948 to honor what one Technique staffer called “one of the most beloved figures ever to set foot on the Georgia Tech campus.”
Today, it’s said that placing a penny on her grave will bring good luck.
PRANKS
It’s unclear when exactly the student body began to poach the Tech steam whistle. The Georgia Tech Living History Program notes the first “whistlenapping” occurred in either 1902 or 1903, “when two rival campus factions literally battled to determine which group would steal the whistle.” The lucky leader of the winning group was lowered out of a window to unscrew it. The whistle was returned anonymously the next day after a stern warning from the administration.
A 1964 issue of the Alumni Magazine does not mention this incident, instead claiming the first theft occurred in 1905, engineered by a student named L.A. Emerson. According to the Atlanta Constitution story following the whistlenapping, “The members of the faculty were almost frantic for a while, as they did not know how to summon the students. The wildest confusion prevailed.”
In this case, the culprits so feared the administration’s retaliation that the whistle was not returned until 1949. In a letter to the alumni secretary at that time, Emerson wrote, “The recollection of the student body being called into chapel and the fearful consequences promised the guilty parties still gives me a numb feeling all along my aging spine. It was even rumored that the cost would be taken from the ‘damage fees’ of the entire student body—unless the culprits confessed.”
According to the 1964 article, Emerson did end
point to Dean George C. Griffin, who was involved with Georgia Tech in some capacity for almost 50 years. Griffin was presented with a stolen whistle as a retirement gift in 1964 from an anonymous group of students who called themselves the Magnificent Seven. The group had snatched the whistle on Oct. 31, 1963, before having it engraved, mounted on a base, and sent to Griffin via a delivery boy in May 1964.
Griffin turned the whistle back over to Tech, and the whistlenapping continued in the fall of 1981. Georgia Tech personnel housed near the whistle had complained so much about the noise that the hourly signal was discontinued, leaving the student body outraged. Students held the whistle for ransom, promising to return it only if it could continue its hourly blasts. A compromise was reached, allowing the whistle to return with the duration of its sound reduced from 10 seconds to five seconds.
When G. Wayne Clough was inaugurated as Georgia Tech’s 10th president in 1994, the whistle was supposed to be blown 10 times to signify Clough as the 10th president. However, Kevin Morgan, EE 95, and Duane Horton, BC 97, had stolen the whistle the night before, leaving the facilities staff to find a replacement, the sound of which Morgan later described as an “air burst…raspberry…blubbery sound.” The whistle was returned to Clough at a meeting in his office.
STRANGE HAPPENINGS
In 2016 when Carl G. “Jere” Justus read the book Georgia Myths and Legends, one chapter especially piqued his interest. Chapter five was titled “Jimmy Carter and the UFO,” and it chronicled an interesting experience Carter had in 1969, when he was serving as a district governor of the Lion’s Club.
On January 6, while waiting for an event to start in Leary, Ga., a bright light attracted the attention of Carter and the dozen or so other men waiting with him. It was about 30 degrees above the horizon and approximately the size of the moon. The light appeared to come toward them and then move away, and Carter would later say the light sometimes appeared more blue, other times more red. The group watched the light for about 10 minutes before it disappeared.
What did Carter see?
When Justus read Carter’s description in 2016, his thought was, “That sounds like an upper atmosphere barium release.”
He would know. In the 1960s, both as a graduate student and in his early days on the faculty at Georgia Tech, Justus was part of Air Force and NASA studies of the upper atmosphere in preparation for the Apollo missions. He spent his time at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, launching various chemical tracers into the upper atmosphere with small to medium rockets and observing the
particle clouds. With barium, the clouds would initially glow bluish and then take on a reddish glow as some of the barium became ionized by sunlight. The rockets were launched at twilight, so the clouds would be sunlit at high altitude but it would be dark enough at ground level for researchers to observe the movement of the clouds against the dark sky.
Justus would go on to spend 18 years as a contractor at Marshall Space Flight Center and then worked as a consultant for Langley Research Center. He continues to read about science and study how the universe works. So when he read Carter’s report, curiosity got the better of him.
“It was the scientist in me,” he says. “I had to make sure what really happened.”
Justus dug up some records and discovered a rocket had in fact been launched from Eglin on January 6, around the time of Carter’s sighting. (Justus was back in Atlanta on January 6, so he was not involved with this particular launch.) The clouds would absolutely have been visible in Leary, about 150 miles away. They would have appeared 33 degrees above the horizon, and their increase in size and brightness followed by their subsequent decrease in size and brightness would have made it seem like the object was coming closer and then moving away, as Carter described.
Justus sent a letter to The Carter Center explaining his conclusions, which was then forwarded to the Carter family. In 2020, he completed an extensive study of these particular barium clouds and submitted the report to be archived at the Jimmy Carter Library.
“Able to leap bar
stools
in a single bound. Faster than an elephant with the trots…” And the last line has been censored by the editor due to inappropriateness. But if you want to know the rest, you can talk to Rett Addy, EE 78. In 1974, he attended some of the weekly football pep rallies that featured the duo of T-Man and his sidekick, T-Squared, and remembers the duo’s intro, modeled after Superman’s.
These Thursday night pep rallies were put on by the Ramblin’ Reck Club in the 1970s. Addy remembers flash pots igniting on Grant Field, the playing of the William Tell Overture, and skits that mocked the week’s opponent.
Another alumnus, Greg Ross, IE 78, had a frontrow seat to the spectacle a couple of times, when he was asked to fill in as T-Squared. It wasn’t a complicated gig—Ross’s instructions were to be goofy and run around.
“There wasn’t a heck of a lot to it,” Ross says. “It was all very simple. There was no inflatable
30-foot T-Squared somewhere. I had on tights, which I wasn’t used to wearing, a T-shirt with a ‘T’ on it, and a mask.”
T-Man and T-Squared were not as well-loved as Buzz turned out to be, and the duo only lasted a few years as Tech’s mascots. But for a little while, they delighted the hearts of Georgia Tech students.
“Tech is such a demanding, stressful place to be,” Addy says. “But these pep rallies were one of those things where you could go and just laugh for a bit.”
The superhero mascots impacted Addy so much that on gojackets.com, an unofficial Tech athletics website, his handle is T-Squared. Addy is also part of Tech’s Lunch Bunch, which gathers to hear coaches, ex-players, and administrators speak.
Ross also still bleeds gold. His house is painted yellow. There is a Georgia Tech corner in his home. And each year, he attends his fraternity’s reunion held at the property of a fellow brother. The group has been coming together for 40 years, and they now have three generations of Tech alumni in attendance.
“Attending Georgia Tech was one of the top two or three things I’m happiest about and proudest of in my entire life,” says Ross. “So to say that I was something at Georgia Tech, to say I was T-Squared a couple of times, that’s a thrill for me.”
LEGENDARY YELLOW JACKETS
While serving as Georgia Tech’s second president from 1896 to 1905, Lyman Hall added four new degrees to the academic roster: electrical engineering, chemical engineering, textile engineering, and general engineering. But perhaps what he was most known for was being a disciplinarian. It’s said that the West Point graduate was known as Captain Hall instead of President Hall. In 1901, he suspended the entire senior class of 18 students for returning to classes a day late after the Christ-
Hall became ill during his time at Georgia Tech and passed away in 1905. Although he didn’t die at Georgia Tech, some students have claimed run-ins with his ghost in and around his namesake building. Ever the disciplinarian, Hall is perhaps maintaining a presence to ensure students
when William Edgar “Ed” Smith accidentally received two enrollment forms for his admission into Georgia Tech, he got an idea. At the time, Smith was a student at the Richmond Academy in Augusta, Ga.; the president of the academy was George P. Butler, a former University of Georgia football captain. Smith decided to enroll the president to Georgia Tech, but lost his nerve and instead used the maiden name of his best friend’s mother, Burdell. But he didn’t stop there. Smith developed Burdell into an actual student, enrolling him in classes and turning in extra copies of homework assignments and exams, changing his handwriting style so profes- sors would be none the wiser.
Burdell went on to receive a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Tech. And still, the joke wasn’t over. He was listed on the flight crew of a B-17 bomber, flying 12 missions in Europe with the Eighth Air Force in England during World War II. In 1958, members of the senior class of Agnes Scott College announced the wedding engagement of Burdell and fictional Agnes Scott student Ramona Cartwright in the Atlanta Journal. In 1969, Georgia Tech computerized registration, but somehow Burdell managed to enroll in every course the Institute offered—over 3,000 credit hours. This happened again in 1975 and 1980.
Over the years, Burdell has fought in other wars, served on the board of directors of MAD magazine, and led in online polls for Time magazine’s Person of the Year. He has a Facebook and LinkedIn page, and apparently joined the faculty of Georgia Tech in 2005.
Burdell Sightings
We’ve collected a thick folder on GPB. Read about other Burdell sightings and tell us your own at gtalumni.org/Burdell.
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e MusicMan
Middlebrooks, pictured here in the 1980s, expanded his musical career into film and TV through the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Musician may not rank anywhere near the top job titles of Tech alumni, but Harry Middlebrooks has made his voice and songs heard over a seven-decade career in the music industry.
KRISTIN BAIRD RATTINI
TThe scene: A fall 1960 rush party at the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house at Tech. Harry Middlebrooks, TE 61, a senior ATO brother, was riffing rock ’n’ roll tunes on the piano when rush candidate Ronald Rich, IM 64, suddenly grabbed some pots and pans from the fraternity’s kitchen and joined in the jam on his makeshift drum set. “We were really kicking,” Middlebrooks shared. “I said, ‘Wait, there’s something going on here.’”
That “something” was the start of Middlebrooks’ first band, The Collegians, and the launch of his seven-decade musical career. Since that pivotal improv performance, the talented singer, songwriter, and pianist has toured with Elvis Presley, teamed up with artists from Glen Campbell to Liberace, hit the rock charts with the now-Halloween classic “Spooky,” written more than 300 songs, and woven a rich tapestry of cherished musical memories.
Talent Meets Opportunity
Middlebrooks’ musical roots already ran deep by the time he arrived at Georgia Tech on a textile engineering co-op scholarship from Thomaston Mills, where his father worked. He started taking classical piano lessons at age 6, recorded his first song at age 8, and performed with his family’s musical group for community groups and events. He sang in his high school choir and formed a barbershop quartet that won the state championship.
A Glee Club member at Tech, Middlebrooks recognized an opportunity for new bands to play the many fraternity parties that served as students’ main social outlet. And then out of the blue appeared Rich, a freshman from Memphis who had worked as a session drummer at Sun Records. Middlebrooks recruited Rich and three other players to form The Collegians, who quickly became the first-call band for events on campus and beyond.
“Playing on the weekends was the highlight of the week for Harry and most of us in the band,” Rich says. Not only was it a relief from the stress of classes but a joy to play with fellow musicians of such high caliber. “No one, I mean no one, could play piano better than Harry when it came to rock ’n’ roll,” Rich says. “He mastered the genre.”
Middlebrooks caught the attention
of Bill Lowery, a music publisher known as “Mr. Atlanta Music,” who became his manager. Soon after graduation, Middlebrooks and his new band Harry M. and the Marvels (which included Rich) recorded a song with Lowery for ABC-Paramount Records to go with a hot new dance trend, “The U-T,” which stands for the University of Tennessee, where the dance move originated.
The very next day, as he drove home to Thomaston, Middlebrooks heard the song played on WQXI-FM. “I had never heard myself on the radio,” he says. “My adrenaline was pumping so hard I had to stop the car and listen.”
“The U-T” reigned as the No. 1–requested song on WQXI-FM for five weeks. It received airplay as far away as Baltimore, where Middlebrooks performed the song on The Buddy Deane Show, the teen TV dance show that inspired the movie and musical Hairspray.
The Making of a Halloween Hit
After two years of Army service as a lieutenant—including six months of touring with the branch’s
TECH’S MUSICAL PAST
Today, Georgia Tech’s impressive School of Music and Center for Music Technology offer a unique blend of musical education fused with engineering and technology. While the School and Center were founded in 2006, Tech’s musical roots run even deeper. Georgia Tech’s Glee Club was founded in 1906, making it the oldest student organization on campus. Soon after, in 1908, the Georgia Tech Band was founded, and that same year the Ramblin’ Wreck fight song appeared in the Blueprint, Tech’s student yearbook.
Showmobile—Middlebrooks became a staple on the Atlanta club circuit. He connected with other musicians, including saxophonist Mike Shapiro (a.k.a. Mike Sharpe), and influential media executive Richard Dinsmore, vice president of Desilu Sales.
After a club show in Atlanta one night in 1965, Middlebrooks and Sharpe started riffing on the classic George Gershwin tune “Summertime.” “We knew we had something special,” Middlebrooks recalls. Sharpe picked a name for their new instrumental number at random: “Spooky.” When they recorded it, they added in strange high voices for
Middlebrooks appeared as a special guest on The Lawrence Welk TV show.
Middelbrooks formed his first band at Tech.
a spookier feel, and the Baldwin organ gave the song its signature sound.
The instrumental received nationwide airplay, peaking at No. 57 on the U.S. charts in January 1966. A year later, the band Classics IV added lyrics and their rendition reached No. 3 on the Billboard 100. “Mike and I were so excited, because we’d thought our little song was dead,” Middlebrooks says. “They added in one line that mentions Halloween, and that plus the title has made it a classic Halloween song that appears on Halloween compilation albums.”
The song has since been covered by
artists ranging from Andy Williams to the Drifters to Dusty Springfield, whose version has sold more than 60,000 copies and featured prominently in the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
In the meanwhile, Dinsmore helped Middlebrooks land a dream job: hosting his own variety show on KABC-TV in Los Angeles. The Middlebrooks Show debuted in October 1966. “Dick [Dinsmore] really believed in me like no one else,” Middlebrooks says. “I was ready for my moment.”
The 13 episodes featured such guest
stars as Della Reese, Michele Lee, and José Feliciano. Soon after the show ended, Lawrence Welk invited Middlebrooks to sing on his national TV show twice. For one performance, he paid tribute to his roots with the song “Georgia.” Welk was impressed and asked him to join his ensemble. Middlebrooks had other plans.
Singing Backup for the King Middlebrooks recorded several songs for Reprise and Capitol Records and established himself on the club scene in Southern California, eventually singing at over 80 clubs. He became an in-demand session and backup singer for numerous artists, including Neil Diamond, Anne Murray, and Marty Robbins. He relished his seven-year run backing Glen Campbell for his Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe concerts. He recalls a special shoutout that Campbell gave him one evening. “Glen told the audience, ‘This guy is
Point your smartphone at the QR code to see Harry Middlebrooks perform the Halloween hit “Spooky” on piano.
Middlebrooks (second from left) sang in a quartet that opened for and backed Elvis in his fall 1970 tour.
Middlebrooks has written over 300 songs and is still writing today.
Harry Middlebrooks. He’s got a great voice. One night, I’m going to come out here and just move my lips and let him sing for me.’”
In fall 1970, Middlebrooks got a call from a longtime Atlanta friend: Felton Jarvis, Elvis Presley’s musical producer, asking if Middlebrooks and his quartet could be ready in about two weeks to open for and back Presley on his highly anticipated first tour in 10 years. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Tell me what time to be there!’” Middlebrooks says.
He scrambled to arrange songs for his quartet, complete chord charts for the entire orchestra, and memorize Elvis’ set list. For the one-week tour, he crooned along with the King to such hits as “Suspicious Minds” and the nightly finale of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” before tens of thousands of fans.
“I spent every minute that I could with Elvis,” Middlebrooks says. “What gets lost in all the talk about Elvis was just how funny he was. His sense of humor was everywhere, and it made the tour a lot of fun.”
Keeping the Music Going
Middlebrooks has had fun expanding his repertoire beyond his singing performances over the decades. He landed more than a dozen roles in film and TV and scored music for several TV shows as well. He provided the voices for Shaker and Zeke, two characters in Walt Disney World’s Country Bear Jamboree beloved by generations of children. He recorded an album of comedy songs under the name Hank Roving and the Lintheads, a nod to his Tech textile roots.
He has focused most on his songwriting in recent years. He has penned more than 300 tunes over the years, with some of his songs recorded by such artists as Liberace, Eddy Arnold, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Tom Jones.
“Somehow Harry worked his way throughout all the roadblocks, gauntlets, slick moves, and challenges over his long career to become
Liberace performed Middlebrooks’ composition “Mixed Emotions.”
what I consider a highly successful musician and songwriter,” Rich says. One particular Middlebrooks tune best reflects his long musical career: “What Would I Do Without My Music,” with lyrics by Bruce Belland. Elvis was scheduled to record the song, but unfortunately he passed away before the session. The song has since been laid down by T.G. Sheppard, Roy Clark, and other artists and frequently picked up by choirs around the world, giving new voice to Middlebrooks’ music:
Sometimes I stumble home at night discouraged
Dragging my battered dreams behind
Wonderin’ if the battle’s worth the fighting
And why so many people’s eyes are blind
But as I disappear into my music
And a song grows deep inside my soul
I know if God wants me to use it
The striving’s more important than the goal
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ALUMNI HOUSE
SELFIES WITH BUZZ
Students explored mentorship, philanthropy, and engagement opportunities on Tech Green at the Alumni Association’s “Ramble on the Green” event in September.
MEET GEORGIA TECH’S “40 UNDER 40”
THESE IMPRESSIVE ALUMNI ARE WRITING THEIR OWN HISTORY ACROSS A VARIETY OF INDUSTRIES AND FIELDS.
THE 2024 CLASS of the Georgia Tech Alumni “40 Under 40” program is proof that Yellow Jackets are shaping the world for the better. They are designing the next generation of spacecraft for NASA. They are leading public health initiatives at the CDC. They are launching new businesses that solve real-world problems. Read about each honoree at gtalumni.org/40under40.
NFL PRODUCER & DIRECTOR
Osahon Tongo, Mgt 10, is an Emmy-winning filmmaker from Naperville, Illinois, known for his roles as a writer, director, and producer. He has earned acclaim for his work on NFL360 and Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone. Tongo also produced the VR series Greenwood Avenue VR, exploring the history of Black Wall Street, and his work with the “Question Bridge” installation debuted in the African American Smithsonian Museum. His dedication to storytelling is highlighted by prestigious fellowships, including the Ryan Murphy Directing Fellowship, the Annenberg Fellowship, and the NFL Films Fellowship. These honors underscore his commitment to innovative and impactful filmmaking. Tongo holds an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and a bachelor’s degree in Management from Tech, where he was a defensive end on the 2009 ACC Championship football team. Driven by a passion for diverse narratives, Tongo continues to push the boundaries of storytelling, inspiring audiences and fellow filmmakers alike.
FAVORITE TECH MEMORY: Beating Clemson on Thursday night and seeing all the students tear the goalposts down.
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR RESEARCHER
Emily Weigel, Bio 10, is a nationally recognized educator and senior academic professional (teaching and advising faculty) in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. She holds a bachelor’s in Biology from Georgia Tech and obtained dual doctorates in Zoology and in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior from Michigan State University. Weigel’s research revolves around what wild animals do around Atlanta and the world, and in understanding how student backgrounds, values, and responses to teaching methods impact their academic performance. Outside of Tech, she enjoys playing soccer, watching Netflix, and promoting STEM in the community.
FAVORITE TECH MEMORY: Convincing 10 other I-House residents to jam with me for an extra-credit cover of the song Wonderwall dedicated to biologist Barbara McClintock.
NASA ENGINEER
Leon Chen, MS AE 22, is the NASA ISS/Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) subsystem manager, with extensive experience at NASA, SpaceX, and the U.S. Air Force. Specializing in Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS), Chen led critical projects, including designing, supporting, and advancing ECLSS for ISS and commercial space stations. As an active researcher, Chen contributes to pioneering research projects at Georgia Tech, the Aerospace Corporation, and NASA. As Section 506 chair at the International Conference of Environmental Systems (ICES), Chen is dedicated to advancing human spaceflight and inspiring the next generation of aerospace engineers.
FAVORITE TECH MEMORY:
I loved studying on the 7th floor of Crosland Tower and the fantastic skyline view.
PUBLIC HEALTH CHAMPION
Laura Gravesen, ID 07, MBA 09, serves as legislative affairs lead for public health infrastructure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In this role, she moves policy forward to strengthen state, Tribal, local, and territorial public health. During the Covid-19 response, she led policy for the Data, Analytics, and Visualization Task Force and managed congressional relations with appropriators as CDC received $17 billion in supplemental appropriations. Gravesen worked to secure landmark capital investments, including a high-containment laboratory. She began her career at the CDC in sustainability and served on detail to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband and two children.
FAVORITE TECH MEMORY:
Speaking at Freshman Convocation alongside President Clough.
CYBERSECURITY EXPERT
Zinet Kemal, MS Cybersecurity 23, is an immigrant from Ethiopia, mother of four, career-changer from the legal field, award-winning cybersecurity advocate, TEDx speaker, LinkedIn Learning instructor, and four-time award-winning author. Kemal currently works for Best Buy as a cloud security engineer. Among her many awards, she is the recipient of the 2024 “Most Inspiring Women in Cyber” award organized by Eskenzi PR, the Cyber Security Hub Top 25 cybersecurity leaders for 2024 distinction, and the 2023 Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Award from Georgia Tech. Her book, See Yourself in Cybersecurity, won the 2023 SANS Difference Makers Award under Best Book of the Year. Her other published titles include Oh No...Hacked Again! and Proud in Her Hijab.
FAVORITE TECH MEMORY:
My graduation day with my four kids who came from Minnesota to Atlanta and watched me walk at commencement and speak as a member of the Ramblin’ Reck Club on stage. Proud mom moment!
TECH ENTREPRENEUR
Joshua Silver, CS 09, is a nationally recognized expert and serial entrepreneur in the payments processing industry. Currently, Silver is the founder and CEO of Rainforest, a payments-as-service company that helps software platforms monetize payments and create robust financial experiences without needing to take on the burden of risk and compliance. Previously, he co-founded Patientco, a venture-backed healthcare payments startup, which provides a comprehensive patient payments platform to health systems. For more than a decade, he was instrumental in scaling the company from idea to maturity. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, Aurora, and their two young children.
FAVORITE TECH MEMORY: During my first semester, I volunteered to help displaced Hurricane Katrina victims, who were temporarily staying on Georgia Tech’s campus.
ABDALLA ABOU-JAOUDE, PHD NRE 17
Deputy National Technical Director of the Systems Analysis & Integration Campaign | Idaho National Laboratory
GUL A. AMIR, CE 13
Traffic Engineer 3 Georgia Department of Transportation
JOSEPH BOETTCHER, EE 17, MS CS 21
Co-founder |SlateSafety
JONATHAN BLAKE
BRANNON, EE 06, MS ECE 07 Chief Product & Strategy Officer |OneTrust
WENDY BROWN, BME 11
Director of Regulatory and Clinical Affairs at Cartilage Inc., and Associate Research Specialist at DELTAi Cartilage Inc. | University of California, Irvine
LEON CHEN, MS AE 22
NASA ISS |Commercial Destination ECLS Subsystem Manager |The Aerospace Corporation
BETHANY DAVIS, MBA 11, MS AE 11 Head of Aircraft Systems JetZero
MELISSA EINWECHTER, IAML 06
Director, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC
AUSTIN FOOTE, EE 13, MS ECE 14
Senior Research Engineer, Branch Head |Georgia Tech Research Institute
LAURA GRAVESEN, ID 07, MBA 09
Legislative Affairs Lead for Public Health Infrastructure Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
KINSEY HERRIN, MS PO 10
Senior Research Scientist Georgia Institute of Technology
JAMES K. HOLDER II, ARCH 08, MS BC 10 Founder & Executive Director |Working to Expand Housing Access & Viability (WEHAV)
WILLIAM HUDSON, BME 09
Assistant Professor Baylor College of Medicine
GRÁINNE HUTTON, IAML 15 Senior Health Communications Advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ASRT, Inc.
JOSHUA INGERSOLL, AE 18, MS AE 19
Senior Manager, Regulatory Affairs | Astranis Space Technologies Corp. Advisor on Information Communication Technology Policy United Nations—International Telecommunication Union
AZRA ISMAIL, CMPE 17, PHD HCC 23
Assistant Professor Emory University
ADAM JAKUS, MSE 09, MS MSE 10
Founding CEO | BioThera3 Advising & Consulting
LINING “ARNOLD” JU, PHD BME 13
Associate Professor
The University of Sydney
OSAMA KASHLAN, CHBE 06
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery Weill Cornell Medicine
ZINET KEMAL, MS CYBERSECURITY 23
Cloud Security Engineer Best Buy
MIN-GU KIM, PHD ECE 19
Assistant Professor Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
KELLY KLOSTER HON, ME 11, MS ME 12 Sr. Manager, Product Development Engineering Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD)
DJ LEWIS, NRE 18 Director, Strategic Partnerships |Insight Global
HANNAH (HATCHELL) LIU, MS BI 17 Senior Manager, Data Analysis | Natera
KRISTYN LONG, BA 12
Executive Counsel Office of Georgia Governor Brian P. Kemp
ARIEL MARSHALL, PHD CHEM 14
Chief of Staff, Office of the Under Secretary for Science and Innovation U.S. Department of Energy
G. SPENCER MICKUM, MS NRE 13, PHD NRE 15 Principal Scientist STERIS AST
DAVID MONTES DE OCA
ZAPIAIN, ME 14, MS ME 15, PHD ME 19
Senior Member of Technical Staff | Sandia National Laboratories
NEHA NARKHEDE, MS CS 07 Founder & CEO | Oscilar Co-founder & Board Member | Confluent
DANIEL NATIC, MS CS 23 VP of Engineering FinQuery
KALINA PAUNOVSKA, PHD BME 20 Director, Co-founder Nava Therapeutics
KORIN REID, PHD CHE 15 CEO | Ellison Laboratories
MALIK RUSSELL, CMPE 17 Extravehicular Activity Flight Controller | NASA
EMILY SCHICKNER, M ARCH 13 Principal & Partner Harrison Design
JOSHUA SILVER, CS 09 Founder and CEO Rainforest
ARLYNE SIMON, CHBE 08
AI Systems Architect Intel Corporation
APOORV SINHA, CHBE 10 Co-founder & CEO Carbon Upcycling Technologies
BRIANA C. (SELL) STENARD, PHD MGT 15
Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship | Mercer University
OSAHON TONGO, MGT 10 Producer/Director | NFL
EMILY WEIGEL, BIO 10
Senior Academic Professional Georgia Institute of Technology
FIVE YEARS OF IMPACT
THE 40 UNDER 40 CLASSES HAVE BEEN BUSY ON CAMPUS AND BEYOND.
BY JENNIFER HERSEIM
THE GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI “40 Under 40” program is more than a list of outstanding Yellow Jackets. It’s a program to recognize exceptional alumni and grow their connection to Georgia Tech. After being selected, 40 Under 40 honorees go on to serve on leadership committees across the Institute, share advice with current Yellow Jackets, and champion the Tech spirit around the globe. Look back on five years of engagement activities from the 40 Under 40 classes.
EXPERT JACKETS: NASA Spacewalk Specialist Kavya Manyapu, AE 06, from the 40 Under 40 Class of 2022, speaks with students during an “Expert Jackets” session on human space exploration.
PROUD ALUMNI: 40 Under 40 honorees foster strong connections with fellow alumni through participation in Alumni Networks and events and by representing Tech alumni on committees and boards across the Institute.
ROLE MODELS: Entrepreneur Seth Radman, ME 17, was one of several past recipients who shared personal stories about failure in the Alumni Magazine’s Winter 2023 issue.
TECH CONNECTORS: The 40 Under 40 program provides opportunities for recipients to engage with Tech colleges and schools throughout the year. Here, honorees from the Class of 2023 tour the InVention Studio and meet with students and faculty members.
CAREER INSIDERS: Speaking on The Intersection Podcast produced by the Scheller College of Business, David Pham, Mgt 10, Casey Swails, Mgt 07, and Andrew Howard, CS 06, MS IS 08, MBA 13, reflected on their professional achievements and leadership lessons, and provided advice on how to advance your career.
2,218
households participated in Leadership Circle
1,161
donors gave for the first time during the 77th Roll Call
2,298
was the most common gi amount $100
15,326
donors are alumni
165
ambassadors volunteered their time to promote Roll Call
TIPS FOR STARTING OUT AFTER TECH
YELLOW JACKETS WHO HAVE BEEN THERE, DONE THAT OFFER THEIR ADVICE.
CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve graduated and started your career. Or, maybe you’re searching for the perfect job in a new city. Regardless of where you have landed, chances are you have questions about work, life, and even how to do your taxes. Yellow Jackets who have been there and done that can offer some advice to help you get settled and start the next chapter after Tech.
NAVIGATE A JOB SEARCH
Consider this insight from Priya Boyington, IE 11, to more effectively open new doors: “Be specific in your asks when you reach out to other [alumni]. If you say you’re interested in ‘any company,’ then they’ll have a hard time finding other introductions for you. If you give them a list of roles or companies, then they are more likely to make an introduction.”
HOW
TO DECIDE BETWEEN JOBS
“Approach interviewing as if you’re interviewing them, not them interviewing you,” says Madison Smith, IE 21. “You’re finding the best role for you and...finding out if the opportunity [you’re] pursuing is the best for your career and growth...that should be your priority, not just impressing the person interviewing you.”
RELOCATING TO A NEW CITY
Dane Witbeck, MSE 09, offers this advice for moving to a new city: “When you move to a new place, pretend you’re just visiting for a year and keep looking into all the things to do and see. So many people live in a city and have never experienced the things the visitors have experienced.”
PREPARING FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL
“I would suggest you make a plan. If you’re going for a MBA, work at least two years first, but start the application process at one year out,” says Brian Curtis Kinsey, BM 73. “Figure out how you are paying for it and whether the cost can be paid off in a reasonable time.”
MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Stay connected with the friends you made while at Tech. “Once you graduate, staying in touch has to be purposeful and intentional,” says Jacky Cheng, IE 17.
See the New Alumni Guide under Resources at connect.gtalumni.org
THE NEW ALUMNI GUIDE
The Georgia Tech Alumni Association is here for you with guidance for life, advice for your career, and a network of experts who are with you every step of the way. Now, the New Alumni Guide expands that support with useful tips and resources to help make your post-grad life successful.
AN EXCLUSIVE NETWORK
The guide is available on Georgia Tech Connect, Tech’s exclusive networking community. This online resource was developed specifically for recent graduates to help make the transition from Tech to the real world easier by providing work and life advice from alumni and other resources.
HELPFUL LINKS
The New Alumni Guide also includes quick links to other Tech resources that are available to alumni, such as the Career Center and CareerBuzz Job Board.
WEBINARS
Recent graduates also have access to advice from the Alumni Association’s network of experts through career and professional development webinars. Register for the next one, Oct. 23, “Interviewing Horror Stories” at gtalumni.org/horrorstories.
MENTORSHIP
As a recent graduate, you are in a great position to offer practical advice to brand-new Yellow Jackets because you were just where they are now a couple of years ago. Consider signing up to mentor through Mentor Jackets.
LET US WRECKSPLAIN
“What is the longest (calendar) time taken to acquire a Tech degree? The old ‘10-year rule’ mandated that time was up (vs. credits dropping off, as many thought). Yet dispensations were given for things like wars, the Olympics, etc.” MARY JOHNSON, MGTSCI 80
It’s hard to know for sure, but we found one instance of an alum taking 41 years to complete a bachelor’s degree! Did you take longer?
These Jackets enjoyed Tech so much that they returned for a fourth, fifth, or even sixth degree.
4 DEGREES: 119 (0.06%)
5 DEGREES: 9 (0.0044%)
6 DEGREES: 1 (0.0005%)
Got a campus-related question you’re dying to ask? Submit it at gtalumni.org/ Wrecksplain and we’ll find the answer.
Reasons why you might never want to leave Tech: TRADITIONS FRIENDS
RETA PIKOWSKY, Georgia Tech’s associate vice provost and registrar, helped us answer Mary Johnson’s question about dispensations. The “10-year” rule states that coursework from 10 years prior to the date of the student’s graduation must be reviewed by the student’s major school(s) to determine if it’s still viable. Last year, the rule was revised to give the academic unit more leeway in determining which coursework has “aged out.”
A few years ago, Tech also put in place a Leave of Absence
GEORGIA ON MY MIND
policy. A student may be eligible for an approved leave of absence for circumstances outside their control—for example, required military service. Under the policy, their records remain active, they avoid the need for readmission, and they continue some ongoing connections to Tech to facilitate a return.
Thanks for the question! And, if you or a classmate took longer than 41 years, tell us so we can declare a more definitive answer! Email editor@alumni.gatech.edu
THE PRESIDENT’S SUMMER TOUR COVERED 540 MILES AND INCLUDED 20 EVENTS IN 13 TOWNS ACROSS THE STATE.
IN A WHIRLWIND THREE-DAY TOUR, President Ángel Cabrera, MS Psy 93, PhD Psy 95, and Dr. Beth Cabrera, MS Psy 93, PhD Psy 95, met alumni, prospective students, and industry partners across the state and across the border in Chattanooga, Tennessee, this summer. This year, the Cabreras and Buzz also made a quick stop at Buc-ees along the way!
REDISCOVER TECH THIS HOMECOMING
CELEBRATE TRADITIONS
AND VISIT THE BEST OF THE BEST THIS HOMECOMING
Mto join fellow alumni at Homecoming 2024 and rediscover why Jackets everywhere know Tech is the best of the best. Celebrate traditions like the Ramblin’ Wreck Parade and Buzz Bash and visit places on our “best of” list to reveal new reasons why Tech continues to be on top. Take a tour, witness a demonstration of the famous Drownproofing method, and explore hidden gems across campus. Homecoming weekend is Nov. 7–9, with a full slate of activities to help you “Rediscover Tech: the Best of the Best.” Check out the event schedule and visit gtalumni.org/ homecoming for up-to-date information. It’s going to be the best Tech Homecoming yet!
OLD GOLD SOCIETY REUNION: The classes of 1973 and earlier are invited to celebrate more than 50 years of being a Yellow Jacket. Reconnect with classmates while rediscovering the best parts of Tech. In addition to a buffet luncheon, enjoy a performance by the Glee Club and remarks by President Ángel Cabrera.
Location: Georgia Tech Hotel Ballroom
Time: 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
50TH REUNION–CLASS OF 1974: The Class of 1974 is invited to return to campus for a special 50th reunion celebration. Learn about the current state of Georgia Tech while enjoying a special dinner where you can connect with former classmates and make new friends.
Location: Georgia Tech Hotel Ballroom
Time: 6:30 – 10:30 p.m.
NOV. 8
TOUR OF THE CAMPUS RECREATION CENTER (WALKING) & DROWNPROOFING PRESENTATION: Join the Alumni Association’s Student Ambassadors for a tour of campus and the world-class facilities in the Campus Recreation Center. While at the CRC, witness a demonstration of Tech’s legendary Drownproofing course, developed by Fred Lanoue and taught at Tech until 1986.
Location: Meet at the CRC Start Time: Noon – 2:00 p.m.
CAMPUS WALKING TOURS: Discover hidden gems tucked in and around campus with a walking tour led by one of the Alumni Association’s Student Ambassadors. The tour will last approximately 90 minutes.
Location: Alumni House
Time: 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
CAMPUS BUS TOURS: Join the Student Ambassadors for a bus tour of campus. Stops include the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons, The Kendeda Building, the John Lewis Student Center, and the Reck Garage.
Location: Georgia Tech Hotel
Time: 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
TOUR OF CODA (WALKING): Boasting one of the tallest freestanding spiral staircases in the world, the Coda Building at Tech Square is not to be missed!
Location: Meet at Coda Start Time: 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
BUZZ BASH: Join us at the Alumni Association’s premiere homecoming event, Buzz Bash! The party includes photo ops, pep rally performances, food and beverages, and remarks by President Cabrera.
Location: Georgia Tech Hotel Ballroom
Time: 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
BUZZ BASH AFTERPARTY HOSTED BY GTBAO: Continue the celebration from Buzz Bash with the Georgia Tech Black Alumni Organization’s homecoming and afterparty!
Location: Global Learning Center
Time: 8:00 – 11:00 p.m.
NOV. 9
THE RAMBLIN’ WRECK PARADE: The Ramblin’ Reck Club presents one of Tech’s most beloved traditions. Join Jackets along the parade route to see vehicles in the classic, fixedbody, and contraptions categories roll through campus on Game Day.
Location: Fowler Street & Ferst Drive
Time: 9:00 a.m. (Time subject to change)
HELLUVA BLOCK PARTY: Join Yellow Jackets in the pedestrian zone to cheer on the team before kickoff. Enjoy music, food, and festivities along North Ave.
Location: North Ave.
Time: 3 hours before kickoff
GEORGIA TECH VS. MIAMI (FLA.): Shout “Go Jackets!” as the Yellow Jackets face off against the Miami Hurricanes.
Location: Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field
Time: Kickoff TBD
Buzz at Buzz Bash last year with Judy McNair, who designed the original Yellow Jacket costume in 1972.
ALUMNI HOUSE
WINNING SHOTS
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS OF THE 2024 GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI TRAVEL PHOTO CONTEST.
PEOPLE
WHEN DOVES FLY
Martha Bunn
Portrait of Italy
Odysseys Unlimited
ANIMALS
BULL ELEPHANT ON THE MOVE
Anne DiFilippo, IM 84
Classic Safari: Kenya & Tanzania
Odysseys Unlimited
THESE STUNNING PHOTOS offer a glimpse of the incredible places, people, animals, and culture that await you on a tour with Georgia Tech Alumni Travel. Travelers who took a trip with the program in the last year were invited to submit their best photos for the competition. See this year’s winning shots and then learn more about the 2025 schedule at gtalumni.org/ travel. Don’t forget to pack your camera!
PLACES
WELCOME TO EGYPT Cindy Petersen, Math 92
Egypt & the Eternal Nile Odysseys Unlimited
CULTURE
MAASAI SCHOOL CHILDREN
SHOW THEIR SKILLS Cindy Pugh
Classic Safari: Kenya & Tanzania
Odysseys Unlimited
Antarctica Discovery • 1/18 - 1/29 Egypt & the Eternal Nile • 3/7 - 3/21
Pristine wilderness abundant with wildlife. Ancient lands with stories to behold. Exotic culture. Enticing culinary wonders. This is why you travel. Why your adventurous spirit yearns for the next bold excursion. Why you want to experience history, not just read about it. Embrace the journey and book a trip with Georgia Tech Alumni Travel. We handle the details so you can enjoy the expedition. Or taste the wine. Or climb the mountain.
Landing Beaches to Liberation • 10/25 - 11/3
RAMBLIN’ ROLL
CLASS NOTES & ALUMNI UPDATES
SWINGING INTO GAME DAY
(L–R) MATT CAUSEY, BIO 08, MBA 14, CALVIN JOHNSON, CLS 08, AJ SMITH, MGT 08, TAYLOR BENNETT, IA 08, and ANDREW SMITH, MGT 08, hit the fairway in Ireland before cheering for the Yellow Jackets against Florida State University.
CLASS NOTES
JEFF BEYERSDORFER, CHE 84, was appointed to the Fiesta Bowl Board of Directors. He serves as managing director at Scottsdale, Arizona–based Franklin Mountain Capital.
M. SCOTT BRYANT, PSY 90, has been named vice chancellor for Development and CEO of the University System of Georgia (USG) Foundation. Bryant will lead the system’s philanthropic foundation in raising private funds to help to reduce the cost of attendance for USG students.
JACKY CHENG, IE 17, became one of the 25 most influential Asian American and Pacific Islanders in Georgia in 2024. Georgia Asian Times recognized his work at Bridge Logistics Properties in Atlanta, as well as his many leadership roles within academic and professional fronts, including as president of the Georgia Tech Atlanta Intown Network, president of the GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Advisory Council, and member of the Board of Trustees of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association.
ALL IN: ANOTHER YELLOW JACKET DOMINATES IN THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER.
EVERY YEAR, SAM PORTA, CLS 21, makes his annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas to compete alongside the best poker players in the world. This past June, he sealed his invitation to the final table at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) with a pair of eights, winning the main pot in the lead-up game. Porta beat out thousands of competitors to place 10th overall.
SUZANNE FULCHER
OLDWEILER, MGT 03, has been named Editor-inChief of Volume 18 (2024–’25) of the John Marshall Law Journal.
Porta is the second recent Yellow Jacket to take a top spot in the WSOP. Last year, Daniel Weinman, ME 09, won the whole competition and took home a record-breaking $12.1 million in winnings.
Poker players can be dealt a lucky hand, Porta explains, but to be consistently at the top requires skills like being able to sort through large amounts of data—something that Georgia Tech helped him learn.
“In poker, there are so many things to keep track of,” he says. “At Georgia Tech we learn how to efficiently filter large amounts of data and categorize them so that we can make the best decisions in the moment and take things just ‘one hand at a time,’” he says.
Porta might also have an edge in poker from his experience dealing with other high-stakes situations. While at Tech, he competed three
times for the InVenture Prize and won the competition in 2020 with his Queues teammates.
Porta came up with the idea for Queues while studying in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons. The smell of coffee from the ground level wafted up to his study spot on the fifth floor. He went to buy a cup, but the line at the coffee shop took 30 minutes and he lost his study spot. He thought, We are Georgia Tech. How do we not have a solution for knowing how long the lines are across campus for food?
Porta pitched his idea for an app that provides real-time wait times to CREATE-X. “That summer at CREATE-X was one of the best summers of my life and kick-started my entrepreneurial journey,” he says.
While running Queues is Porta’s main priority, he says poker provides balance. The two are more similar than people might think, he adds. “At its core poker is about reading people and being able to quickly understand how they tick and what strategies they employ. This is beyond invaluable for helping assess and support my team as well as in sales and negotiation to help get the best outcomes for our investors, customers, and Queues as a whole.”
CLASS NOTES
YELLOW JACKETS LEAD 13 OF ATLANTA’S FASTEST-GROWING PRIVATE COMPANIES
WITH GEORGIA TECH’S INNOVATIVE startup culture, fostered by programs such as CREATE-X, it’s no surprise that Yellow Jackets are driving growth in Atlanta. The Atlanta Business
Chronicle named 13 companies led by Georgia Tech alumni in its “Pacesetters” list of the 100 fastest-growing private companies, released in April 2024.
The following companies on the list are run by Georgia Tech alumni:
AdvizorPro, Co-founder & CTO HESOM PARHIZKAR, EE 02
Barnsley Construction Group, President SELINA SCHULTEN, BA 99
Flock Safety, Founder & CTO MATT FEURY, CS 11, and Founder & CEO GARRETT LANGLEY, EE 09
Fusus, CEO CHRIS LINDENAU, MBA 11
Galerie Living, CEO TIM GARY, BC 96
Grayscale, Co-founder & CTO HUBERT LIU, CS 10
Keystone Management, CEO KOFI SMITH, IE 99, MBA 09
MAREN Construction, Founder ELLIOT HUNT, CE 08
PlayOn! Sports, CEO DAVID RUDOLPH, IE 96
Popmenu, CEO & Co-founder BRENDAN SWEENEY, MBA 08, and CTO & Co-founder JUSTIS BLASCO, CLS 14
Ratings.MD, CEO ANDREW IBBOTSON, IE 98, and CTO TIM COLLINS, ME 98
Roam, CEO PEYTON DAY, IM 83
Wahsega, CEO & Founder GREG COONLEY, EE 89
DETROIT LIONS HONOR CALVIN JOHNSON
HALL-OF-FAMER Calvin “Megatron” Johnson, Cls 08, will join the “Pride of the Lions” and have his jersey placed in the rafters as part of the Detroit Lions’ ring of honor this fall. He joins 20 other all-time Lions players selected for the prestigious
recognition. Johnson was chosen as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2007 draft and played for nine seasons with the Detroit Lions. In 2016, he was inducted into the Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame and, in 2021, into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
PAULINA GUZMAN, MS IA 21, has been named the director of the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of International and Immigrant Affairs by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, ChE 98.
ALLISON HICKMAN, MGT 89, celebrated 30 years with the Georgia Tech Alumni Association. Hickman, vice president of Administration, celebrated with a special ride to lunch in the Ramblin’ Wreck.
CATHERINE JORDAN, CHE 03, has been promoted to manager of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Central Regional Crime Lab in Decatur, Ga.
PATRICIA L. LEE, MS HPHYS 92, PHD NE 98, has been confirmed as a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Lee has over three decades of experience working at the Savannah River National Laboratory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CHRIS McGARTY, CS 04, is CEO of Omnisight, which is now being used by the New Mexico Department of Transportation to advance their truck parking management system through Omnisight’s Fusion Sensor.
CHRISTOPHER PACKARD, IA 08, an active-duty commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Cyber Corps, was recently promoted to the rank of major.
One-third of the Georgia Tech experience is funded by donors like you. That’s 33% of the graduates from each school. 33% of the campus footprint. 33% of time spent in the classroom. 33% of the impact on the world. Last year, there were 19,509 undergraduate students enrolled at Georgia Tech. Without your support, it would have been 33% fewer. Your gift starts the school year strong, expands access through scholarships, creates world leaders.
The Student Experience. Scholarships. The Future of Tech. Funded by you.
MAVRIS RECEIVES TOP FACULTY HONOR
DIMITRI MAVRIS, MS AE 85, PHD AE 88, professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech, is the recipient of the Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor given to a Tech professor. Mavris first came to the Institute in 1980 from his hometown of Athens, Greece, to pursue a master’s degree, then a PhD, before starting a 44-year career at Georgia Tech. Mavris is the director of the
Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory at Georgia Tech.
ABDALLAH NAMED PRESIDENT OF LEBANESE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
CHAOUKI ABDALLAH, MS
ECE 82, PHD ECE 88, Tech’s executive vice president for Research, will become the new president of the Lebanese American University in Beirut. Abdallah has overseen extraordinary growth in Tech’s research enterprise since
he became executive vice president in 2018. Georgia Tech is now No. 1 in research expenditures among institutions without a medical school. Prior to joining Tech, Abdallah served as president of the University of New Mexico.
ALUMNUS COMPETES FOR “MR. HEALTH & FITNESS”
BILL DOUGLAS, ME 87, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) 26 years ago. He used fitness and a healthy lifestyle to take back control of his life, and his MS has now been inactive for 10 years. He credits Georgia Tech with teaching him to never give up. This summer, the Yellow Jacket ran for the title of “Mr. Health & Fitness 2024,” sponsored by Health & Fitness magazine. He stays busy running companies, volunteering, sharing
time with family and friends, and reminding others that “life is meant to be pursued, shared, and savored.”
CLASS NOTES
PELIN PEKGUN, MS IE 05, PHD IE 07, and AMOL JOSHI, EE 92, have each been named a Thomas H. Davis Professor in Business in the School of Business at Wake Forest University. This endowed professorship honors the legacy of Thomas H. Davis, the founder and leader of Piedmont Airlines.
GREG REICH, AE 92, was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) “for contributions to adaptive structures and morphing aircraft and for transitioning basic research results to numerous Air Force experimental unmanned aircraft and their flight tests.” Reich is also a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (awarded 2019) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (awarded 2022), where he has worked for 32 years.
ROBERT E. UNGER, MBA 25, a former Marine Corps captain, spoke at a Comcast press release event that was awarding a $100,000 grant to Inspiredu Atlanta to help bridge the digital divide in low-income areas. Unger is a digital navigator volunteer for Inspiredu Atlanta.
ANNICA WAYMAN, MS ME 03, PHD ME 06, was selected as the new deputy director for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).
WRECKS AT WORK
BIRTHS
ERIC KAPLAN, ME 95, is responsible for potable water systems in railyards—one of his many tasks as manager of Mechanical Systems in Facility Design at Union Pacific Railroad. He’s assisted with overnight water stops when UP’s Big Boy 4014 Steam Engine heads out on an excursion. Not only did he help support the largest and most powerful operating steam
engine in the world, but in 2023, Kaplan enlisted the Grand Island (Neb.) Fire Department Engine #1 to help fill the tenders. This engineering marvel of fire and steam would make any mechanical engineer proud!
WRECKS AT WORK
The Alumni Association is celebrating the amazing work of our alumni. Send us your on-the-job selfies featuring cool views at gtalumni.org/wrecksatwork
1 2
1. ROBIN SNYDER, IE 09, and her husband, Darragh, welcomed a daughter on March 3. The family lives in the United Kingdom.
2. NICOLE BARCORI, EE 17, and her husband, Brian Crabtree, welcomed their son Henry on August 17. The family lives in Fort Collins, Colo. They hope he continues the Yellow Jacket legacy started by his grandfather, Richard Barcori, ME 81(pictured with Nicole and Henry).
OUT & ABOUT
HELLUVA PACK
KEN BYERS, EE 66, MS EE 68, celebrated a milestone birthday in 2023 with his family on an African safari in Botswana. The trip took the family deep into the Okavango Delta. Mr. Byers is surrounded by his son, BRYN BYERS, ARCH 94, ALEXANDER WEIR, IE 15, APRIL (HSIEH) WEIR, IE 15, OLIVER WEIR, BA 19, and LAUREN (ALEXANDER) WEIR, BA 21.
ON TOUR
ASHLEY ALMON, MGT 08, and ADAM ALMON, IE 08, MBA 15, had the pleasure of meeting Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera and Dr. Beth Cabrera during the President’s Summer Tour in Carrollton, Ga. The Almons both were amazed by the wonderful statistics provided about Tech, as well as by spotting the Ramblin’ Wreck!
TAHOE CONTENDERS
Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera’s team finished sixth in the “Just for Fun” category of the 2024 Trans Tahoe Relay in the Sierra Nevada mountains on July 13. The annual open-water race features teams of six swimmers completing the 11.4-mile relay race. PRESIDENT CABRERA, MS PSY 93, PHD PSY 95, joined at the invitation of alumnus and former Yellow Jackets swimmer DICK BERGMARK, IM 75, HON PHD 22. Other team members included Tech’s swimming and diving head coach and two-time Olympic gold medalist Courtney Shealy Hart and former Yellow Jacket swimmers MIKE WISE, IE 87, JING LI, IE 10, and RODRIGO CORREIA, BA 20. Three other teams with Tech affiliations (GTSC, GT S’Women, and GT Swarm) finished in the top 10. A solo 15.5-kilometer race is held concurrently and former Yellow Jacket swimmer and Olympian VESNA SHELNUTT, AE 07, took first place.
WEDDINGS
1. SARAH (HERRINGTON) DURRENCE, BA 13, and ZACH DURRENCE, ME 18, were married on January 13. Having first met at CCF in 2013, the couple reconnected when Sarah returned in 2022, following four years of service as a campus missionary in Santiago, Chile. Sarah is the daughter of Tommy Herrington, IM 82, and Tammy Herrington.
2. ISABELLE MUSMANNO, ENVE 21, and KATHLEEN WEIL, ENVE 20, were married April 14. After first meeting on Georgia Tech’s campus, it was only fitting that they were driven off to their new life together in the Ramblin’ Wreck!
3. ANU PARVATIYAR, BME 08, celebrated her wedding to Rishi Vemaganti in a private ceremony on May 17, 2023. The couple followed a small family affair with an Indian wedding at Lake Lanier in May 2024.
IN MEMORIAM
WE REMEMBER & HONOR THE FOLLOWING
WALT EHMER: WAFFLE HOUSE CHAIRMAN & DEDICATED YELLOW JACKET
WALT EHMER, IE 89, of Norcross, Ga., on Sept. 6. Ehmer will be remembered for a lifetime of service, both through his career at Waffle House and to the community at large.
Ehmer graduated from Georgia Tech in 1989 with a bachelor’s in industrial engineering. While at Tech, he served as president of his fraternity Alpha Tau Omega. Ehmer cherished the relationships he made as a student, and after graduation, as an active alumnus in the Yellow Jacket community.
“My life has one common thread to it and that is Georgia Tech,” Ehmer said on stage at the 2024 Gold & White Honors Gala, where he received the Joseph Mayo Pettit Alumni Distinguished Service Award.
In addition to meeting his wife, Kara, through Georgia Tech, all three of his children attended Tech: Gregory Ehmer, BA 15; Anna Ehmer, BA 17; and Lesley Ehmer, IE 20.
Ehmer joined Waffle House in 1992 and quickly rose to senior leadership. He became president of Waffle House in 2006, CEO in 2012, and chairman in 2022. In the community, he served on several charitable and civic boards, including Aaron’s, the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation, the Atlanta Police Foundation, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
A proud alumnus, Ehmer gave back
to his alma mater in numerous ways. He helped shape the Institute for future generations by serving on the Georgia Tech Foundation Board of Trustees, the Georgia Tech Advisory Board, ISyE Advisory Board, and the steering committee for Transforming Tomorrow. He was chair of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board from 2012 to 2013, as well as chair of his class 25th Reunion Committee.
In 2006, the Georgia Tech College of Engineering recognized him as a Distinguished Alumnus.
Ehmer was one of several alumni connected to Waffle House, including Joe Rogers, Jr., IM 68, the chairman and son of the co-founder.
Ehmer was admired for embodying Waffle House’s unique down-to-earth style of leadership and for his commitment to the community. Rather than lead from an office, he preferred to visit Waffle House restaurants— greeting patrons and associates with a handshake and smile—to learn first-hand what issues were happening on the ground.
1940 s
Wilbur E. Harkness Jr., EE 49, of Midland, Texas, on March 21.
Fletcher B. “Brooks” Moore, MS EE 49, of Huntsville, Ala., on April 9.
George M. Nottingham Jr., EE 47, of Macon, Ga., on April 24.
William E. Tackabery, IM 49, of Winston-Salem, N.C., on April 15, 2020.
James M. “Jim” Tucker Jr., ChE 47, of Stone Mountain, Ga., on May 14.
1950 s
Charles H. Aitken Jr., IE 54, of Saint Augustine, Fla., on April 28.
Larry L. “Loppy” Apperson Jr., IM 53, of Skillman, N.J., on May 28.
Clarence V. “Victor” Beadles III, IM 59, of Moultrie, Ga., on March 28.
Walter H. Berg Jr., ME 55, of Hiawassee, Ga., on April 26.
Joseph E. Bondurant, EE 57, of Lake Charles, La., on May 18.
Owen V. Braun, IE 53, of Atlanta, on Oct. 22, 2022.
William H. “Bill” Broach, ME 57, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., on June 20.
Jerry L. Brown, IM 59, of Winder, Ga., on March 9.
HOMER RICE: LEGENDARY ATHLETICS DIRECTOR
HOMER RICE, OF ATLANTA, ON JUNE 10. As Georgia Tech athletics director from 1980 to 1997, Homer Rice revitalized Tech’s athletics program, highlighted by its fourth national football championship in 1990. Under his leadership, Tech’s men’s basketball team won its first Atlantic Coast Conference championship in 1985 and made its first NCAA Final Four appearance in 1990, and its baseball team advanced to the College World Series for the first time in 1994.
Rice hired some of Tech’s most legendary head coaches, including basketball’s Bobby Cremins, football’s Bobby Ross and George O’Leary, baseball’s Jim Morris and Danny Hall, and golf’s Bruce Heppler. The Yellow Jackets won 16 ACC championships across five sports during his tenure.
Rice’s biggest legacy is the Total Person Program, which he developed and implemented at Tech. It became the model for the NCAA
Life Skills Program that is practiced across college athletics. He taught a leadership class at Tech and wrote several books on leadership success, including Leadership for Leaders, Lessons for Leaders , and Leadership Fitness.
Among his distinctions and honors, the Homer Rice Award is presented annually to an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision athletics director who has made significant contributions to intercollegiate athletics.
Rice began his career as a high school head football coach in Tennessee and Kentucky before becoming an assistant coach at Kentucky (1962–’65) and Oklahoma (1966). He was named head coach at Cincinnati (1967–’68) and athletics director at North Carolina in 1969. In 1975, he went to Rice University, where he served as A.D. and head football coach. He moved to the National Football League as head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals (1978–’79), before becoming Tech’s A.D. in 1980.
Born on Feb. 20, 1927, in Bellevue, Ky., Rice attended Centre College in Danville, Ky., where he was a football all-American in 1948 and lettered in baseball. He was inducted into Centre’s Athletics Hall of Fame, and the Colonels’ football MVP award is still named the Homer Rice Award.
Rice was preceded in death by his wife of 64 years, Phyllis, in 2013. He is survived by their daughters, Nancy Hetherington, Phyllis Ingle, and Angela Miller, and his wife Karen, whom he married in 2015.
—Georgia Tech Athletics
JOSEPH
R.
BANKOFF: LEGAL EXPERT & FORMER SCHOOL CHAIR
JOSEPH R. BANKOFF, OF ATLANTA, ON JUNE 10. Born on Dec. 22, 1945, Bankoff received his bachelor’s in industrial management from Purdue University. After graduating from the University of Illinois College of Law and serving a clerkship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Bankoff joined King & Spalding, focusing on media and First Amendment law. He represented networks, national newspapers, and other media, and made a successful trip to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1975 in a landmark First Amendment case.
In 1992, Bankoff relocated his family to Europe while on a sabbatical from the law firm. As a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property & Competition Law in Munich, Germany, he worked on developing the European Union’s Satellite and Cable Directive.
Returning to Atlanta, Bankoff founded King & Spalding’s Intellectual Property practice. He provided counsel to Atlanta’s 1996 Olympic Committee, negotiating television and other media contracts. For his work revising media rights to anticipate the growth of the Internet, he received the International Olympic Committee’s Centennial Medal for Distinguished Service.
In 2006, Bankoff became president and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center. In 2012, he was named chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. Previously, he held leadership roles with the College of Computing, Georgia Tech Research Institute, and Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications
Technologies. Bankoff received the Honorary Alumni distinction from the Georgia Tech Alumni Association during the 2020 Gold & White Honors Gala.
Bankoff’s leadership for other organizations included: National CASA Board (chair), Midtown Alliance (chair), Georgia Foreign Trade Zone, Fulton County Arts Council, First Amendment Foundation, United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, and Atlanta Legal Aid Society (president). Accolades included the Justice Robert Benham Award for Lifetime Service by the State Bar of Georgia, AntiDefamation League Award for Lifetime Public Service, City of Atlanta Phoenix Award, Emory University Public Interest Committee Award, State Bar of Georgia Intellectual Property Section Lifetime Achievement Award, and Atlanta Regional Commission’s Harry West Visionary Leadership Award.
Bankoff is survived by his wife of nearly 50 years, Lisa Herron Bankoff, son Christopher Ford Bankoff (Ananda) of Los Angeles, and daughter Margaret Ann Bankoff Arreola (Juan Enrique) of Denver, Colo.
Albert Calderon, Cls 51, of Bowling Green, Ohio, on May 9.
John C. Cattaneo, EE 57, MS IM 61, of Satellite Beach, Fla., on April 19.
Donald L. Champion, IE 56, of Raleigh, N.C., on May 21.
Gary M. Clark, IM 57, of Naples, Fla., on May 16.
Ralph G. Coker, IE 56, of Corpus Christi, Texas, on April 29.
Joseph Costanza Jr., Arch 52, of Palm Springs, Calif., on April 9.
Howard D. Cutter, IE 55, of Wildwood, Fla., on Jan. 15.
James C. “Jim” Fanning Jr., MS Chem 56, PhD Chem 60, of Clemson, S.C., on June 22.
James S. Fincher, IE 58, of Loganville, Ga., on Nov. 18, 2023.
Donald E. “Don” Fletchall, ME 55, MS ME 57, of Riverview, Fla., on April 20.
Russell V. Fraleigh, EE 54, of Marlborough, Mass., on Sept. 1, 2023.
William C. “Campbell” Graeub, CE 55, of Chevy Chase, Md., on Feb. 8.
James C. “Jim” Handly Jr., ChE 58, of Tampa, Fla., on March 30.
Robert L. “Bob” Hanlin, ME 55, of Charleston, S.C., on April 20.
Gabriel C. “Gabe” Hill III, Text 57, of Greenwood, S.C., on April 13.
William E. Holland, ME 57, of Brandon, Miss., on April 29.
Richard L. Hotaling, CE 51, of Atlanta, on April 23.
Ernest C. Hulsey Jr., ChE 52, of Brentwood, Calif., on April 7.
Robert A. Kinsley, IM 59, of Franklin, Tenn., on May 19.
Chandos E. Langston, ME 56, of Chandler, Ariz., on May 25.
Paul B. Lansing II, ME 57, of New Orleans, La., on April 11.
Thomas D. Mahone, IM 57, of Williamsburg, Va., on May 2.
Oliver W. “Mac” McGowan, TE 59, of LaGrange, Ga., on May 29.
Homan R. “Rees” Phenix Jr., IM 55, of Decatur, Ga., on June 1.
Cecil R. Phillips Jr., IE 55, MS IE 60, of Baton Rouge, La., on April 4.
William L. Purcell, CE 54, of Decatur, Ga., on May 16.
Wayne P. “Phil” Reece, IM 55, of Winter Park, Fla., on March 22.
Ronald W. Ridgway, CE 58, of Atlanta, on Sept. 12, 2021.
Oscar F. “Franklin” Rogers, IE 55, of Atlanta, on March 20.
ROBERTA (ROSEN) SCHELLER: CHAMPION FOR EDUCATION
ROBERTA (ROSEN) SCHELLER, OF NAPLES, FLA., ON MAY 3. Roberta Scheller was born on May 23, 1932, in Greenwich, Conn. After a short time at the University of Connecticut, she pursued her interest in fashion design at Parson’s School of Design. Upon graduation, she joined Vogue magazine as an editor of pattern design. She met the love of her life, Ernest Scheller, Jr., IM 52, HON PhD 13, at a square dance in Norwalk, Conn. They married later that year, and she baked and sold cookies and cakes at her mother’s grocery store to supplement their income.
After the birth of their first child, Ernest Scheller, III, Scheller left Vogue to become a fulltime homemaker and mother. They welcomed their second child, Lisa Jane Scheller, and settled down in Tamaqua, Pa., where her husband took over his father’s metallic pigment manufacturing company, Silberline.
When her children left for college, Scheller returned to her own education in 1975, attending classes at Drexel University, but leaving before graduating. Her dream of getting her diploma became reality in 2012 when a friend heard about her Drexel education and found that Scheller had actually earned enough credits to graduate. She was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree from the Media & Arts school at Drexel. Rather than walk with her graduating class, Scheller was presented with her diploma at a special luncheon hosted by the university president.
The Scheller family spent many winters in Vail, Colo., where she loved snow-shoeing and skiing. She and her husband were active members of B’nai Vail and were committed to strengthening their Jewish roots and the interfaith community there. Passionate about education and healthcare, Scheller endowed a Chair of Urologic Oncology at the Fox Chase Cancer Center at Temple University in 2019. The couple exemplified the Jewish ideology of “Tikkun Olam,” and their impact and contributions can be seen across the world, from the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech to Ben Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, Israel.
Scheller is survived by her husband, Ernest, her daughter, Lisa, and her two grandchildren, Zary Peretz, IE 17, BA 17, and Leo.
EDITOR’S NOTE
For the In Memoriam section of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, we will include an abbreviated version of each obituary in print. Full obituaries can be found at gtalumni.org/InMemoriam. To report a death, please email updates@gtf.gatech.edu
James R. “Jim” Sanders Jr., IE 55, of Duluth, Ga., on May 25.
Charles E. Schwing, Arch 54, of Baton Rouge, La., on May 9.
Wilson F. Smith, IM 53, of Birmingham, Ala., on April 25.
Alex M. Strozier, Cls 53, of Macon, Ga., on May 20.
John C. “Jack” Thompson Jr., IE 58, of Woodstock, Ga., on April 19.
Clement J. Vicari, Text 53, of Riverhead, N.Y., on Nov. 15, 2023.
Ulrich E. Voetter, ME 52, of Houston, Texas, on Dec. 27, 2023.
Charles D. “David” Watson, ME
51, of Reseda, Calif., on May 2.
Gerard W. Wicklin, IE 51, of Maitland, Fla., on June 23.
Howard L. Wolfe, IM 55, of Salisbury, N.C., on April 22.
1960 s
William D. Adamson, Cls 60, of McCormick, S.C., on April 7.
Charles W. “Charlie” Ammons, ME 68, of Cumming, Ga., on April 9.
Paul T. Barber Sr., CE 60, of Baton Rouge, La., on May 23.
Miles L. Brubaker, Cls 69, of Dacula, Ga., on May 17.
Stanley W. Butler, EE 60, of Dunwoody, Ga., on March 25.
Thomas L. Carter, ME 60, of McDonald, Tenn., on May 3.
Frederick J. “Joel” Chasteen, Text 68, MS IM 73, MS IA 06, of Brookhaven, Ga., on April 17.
Michael E. Cochran, ME 63, of Gainesville, Fla., on Dec. 15, 2023.
James A. Curry, BC 66, of Tampa, Fla., on May 17.
Albert L. “Leroy” Davis, CE 66, of Cumming, Ga., on Aug. 2, 2020.
Douglas M. “Doug” Dunn, Phys 64, MS IM 66, of Las Vegas, Nev., on April 11.
MORGAN QUARLES PAYNE: SUCCESSFUL CORPORATE ADVISOR
MORGAN QUARLES PAYNE, EE 65, OF ATLANTA, ON JUNE 18 . Morgan Payne was born in Rome, Ga., on April 4, 1943. He graduated from Georgia Tech in 1965 with a degree in Electrical Engineering and had an unwavering support for the Yellow Jackets, becoming an Alexander-Tharpe Fund Life Member in reflecting his love for all things down at “The Flats.” As president of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, he developed his leadership and negotiating skills to keep the “House” on campus more than once.
Payne worked for IBM in sales from 1965 to 1968, earning the prestigious 100% Club designation. He joined the Robinson-Humphrey Company in 1968. He became the president of two
publicly traded companies (The Cyprus Corporation and Byers Communications) before creating Broadland Capital Partners in 1990. There, he provided corporate advisory services to companies in the technology, communications, and infrastructure industries.
As an active 11-year-old boy, Payne was afflicted with the polio virus that swept America in 1954. He and his mother overheard doctors saying that “the boy in the wheelchair will probably never walk again.” Three years later, sustained by his Christian faith and the love and devotion of his parents and his physical therapist, he
walked again and did so unencumbered for most of the next 65 years. This temporary challenge became his greatest personal life motivation.
Payne’s love for golf and travel took him and his wife, Cindy, on trips with friends, from Pebble Beach, Calif., to the vineyards of France, the villas of Tuscany to the glaciers of New Zealand. They enjoyed Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., Highlands, N.C., and numerous golf courses in between.
He is survived by his wife of 37 years, Cynthia Webb Payne, sons Christopher (Christy), Andrew (Stacy), and Matthew (Clare), and daughter Jennifer Duffy (Joe).
Joe B. Foster, ChE 63, of Ohatchee, Ala., on April 16.
Joseph T. Frandolig, EE 66, of Little Rock, Ark., on April 2.
Gerald W. Gill, MS InfoSci 69, of Roswell, Ga., on April 2.
Charles G. “Gil” Glenn Sr., CE 60, of Cumming, Ga., on Nov. 7, 2022.
Larry Eugene Glenn, IM 68, of Lilburn, Ga., on Jan. 5, 2023.
Orville T. “Tom” Guffin, AE 62, of Huntsville, Ala., on May 30.
Thomas Q. Haydon, IE 62, of Guaynabo, P.R., on April 24, 2023.
Ralph L. “Lenton” Hill Jr., Phys 60, of Shalimar, Fla., on March 23.
McBride W. Hodges, Cls 60, of Sandersville, Ga., on April 2.
Kenneth M. Irish Jr., MS EE 67, of Kalamazoo, Mich., on March 30.
George D. “Doug” Isbell, IM 65, of Wilmington, N.C., on June 20.
Daniel J. “Dan” Jacobs, EE 67, of Asheville, N.C., on Aug. 1, 2023.
Terry W. Johnson, ME 65, of Hoover, Ala., on April 13.
James W. “Wallace” Keeble, TE 60, of Atlanta, on May 17.
Jesse J. “Jack” Killingsworth, EE 61, of Tallahassee, Fla., on April 14.
WILLIAM ASTARY: 1978 TRACK TEAM CAPTAIN & FORMER GTPE LEADER
WILLIAM ASTARY, IM 78, OF TYBEE ISLAND, GA., ON JUNE 5. A native of Sterling, Ill., Astary was born on May 26, 1956. He excelled in high school sports, earning varsity letters in football, basketball, and track while setting the Sterling High School record in discus that still stands. After graduating high school, he attended Georgia Tech on a track and field scholarship. While at Tech, Astary met the love of his life and future wife, Marile, earned four varsity letters, was captain of the 1978 track team, qualified for Nationals his junior and senior years, and graduated with a degree in Industrial Management. Astary went on to have a successful, 33-year career at Acuity Brands Lighting before stepping down as senior vice president. He worked for Lumenergi for three years as senior vice president before joining Georgia Tech Professional Education as the director for Industry Strategic Partnerships, where he worked until his retirement in 2021. Throughout his career, he championed lifelong learning, earning an MBA in International Business from Mercer University and completing an Advanced Management Program at
Harvard University.
Astary enjoyed spending time with friends and family, exercising, volunteering, coaching, and traveling. He loved playing basketball and competed on church league and industrial league basketball teams in addition to winning a Hoop It Up national championship. He also loved weightlifting and running, completing multiple 5Ks and half-marathons.
More recently, Astary reignited his love for discus and shotput, competing in the National Senior Games.
A devout Catholic and passionate about volunteering, he devoted time to the Boys and Girls Club of Savannah, served on the Tybee Island YMCA Board of Directors, and coached discus and shotput at Benedictine Military School.
Astary is survived by his wife, Marile; his son, Garrett Astary (Susan) of Silver Spring, Md.; his daughter, Allison Taylor (Chad) of Raleigh, N.C.; his sisters, Diane Sherman of Medford, Wis., and Donna Adams (Larry) of Rock Falls, Ill.; and his granddaughters, Alexandria Astary, Audra Astary, Monroe Taylor, and Harper Taylor.
John D. Lewallen, Cls 68, of Conyers, Ga., on April 29.
Philip L. “Phil” Martin, IE 64, of Brookhaven, Ga., on June 12.
John J. McHugh III, Text 64, of
Savannah, Ga., on March 24.
Charles D. Menser Jr., IM 64, MS IM 66, of Atlanta, on June 13.
Michael B. “Brad” Mitchell, Text 69, of Land O’ Lakes, Fla., on April 9.
FRANK M. BACON: HOT AIR BALLOON PILOT
FRANK M. BACON, EE 62, ME EE 64, PHD EE 68, ON MAY 30. Frank M. Bacon passed away surrounded by his family at the age of 84 after a courageous battle with Alzheimer’s. Bacon completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Tech in 1968. His degree took him to Albuquerque to work at Sandia National Laboratories. This fortuitous move also introduced Bacon to the loves of his life: his first wife, Peggy Pick Bacon, his second wife, Cynthia Howard Bacon, hot air ballooning, and the mountains. Bacon loved the outdoors and soaring in the air in his hot air balloon. Shortly after moving to New Mexico, he learned the joy of hiking and backpacking, a sport he enjoyed all his adult life. In 1972, Bacon and his best friend, Bill Douglas, attended the First World Hot Air Balloon Championship at Coronado Mall. There they met and were embraced by the Dublin Balloon Team. Upon earning their balloon licenses shortly after, Bacon and Douglas created
a new branch of the Dublin Balloon Team: the Buffalo Chip Chapter. Bacon flew in every Balloon Fiesta from 1973 to 2023. Along the way, he gave many people their first flight. After retirement, he and his wife Cindy enjoyed traveling around the world. They also enjoyed regular Friday night margaritas at Casa de Benavidez. Bacon relished attending Atlanta Braves baseball games with his children or rooting for his team with family and friends from the comfort of his New Mexico home. Bacon was preceded in death by his first wife, Peggy Pick Bacon, his parents, and siblings. He is survived by his wife, Cynthia Bacon; his two children, Shannon Bacon (Twila Firmature) and Josh Bacon (Ana Ontiveroz Bacon); his two stepdaughters, Carrie Merner (Mark Merner) and Cristy Culpepper (Will Culpepper); and six grandsons, Tristan, RJ, Grant, Aidan, William, and Masun.
HELEN G. DAVIS: PROUD YELLOW JACKET
HELEN G. DAVIS, OF NEW PORT RICHEY, FLA., ON MARCH 9. Helen Davis was married to John R. Davis, a Georgia Tech civil engineering graduate, for 72 years, and they had three children, who are now grown. Active in Florida and New Mexico businesses, she brought positive changes to the Pasco County Florida Ethics Committee
of the Board of Realtors as their chairperson. Her husband, John, recalls that then Georgia Tech President Blake R. Van Leer gave her a special diploma for her support and patience while her husband completed his degree. She proudly hung her diploma next to his on the wall of their home.
Paul M. O’Neal Jr., CE 65, of Piedmont, S.C., on Oct. 21, 2023.
Patrick W. Peavy, IM 61, of Shreveport, La., on June 4.
John M. Perryman, IE 64, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., on March 31.
Ronald A. Pierson, Cls 62, of Peachtree Corners, Ga., on May 16.
Arthur F. Priep, ME 69, of Micco, Fla., on April 5.
Benjamin C. Puckett Jr., AE 61, of Macon, Ga., on May 23.
Rogers W. Redding, Chem 65, of Helena, Ala., on April 7.
Grady L. Rhoden, ME 60, of Hixson, Tenn., on April 3.
William A. Robison, IE 61, of Anniston, Ala., on May 10.
Eduardo Schonborn Jr., EE 63, of Milton, Ga., on May 20.
William J. “John” Scripps, IM 68, of Vestavia Hills, Ala., on May 12.
Robert W. Smith, ME 67, of Albany, Ga., on Dec. 6, 2023.
James L. “Larry” Taylor, IM 63, of Brooks, Ga., on May 27.
William B. Teneyck, Cls 60, of Beaufort, S.C., on April 17.
William H. Vaughan Jr., Cls 63, of Flora, Miss., on April 19.
Steven M. Wallace, EE 66, of Richmond Hill, Ga., on March 27.
Lawrence A. “Ladd” Willis, AE 67, of Southampton, N.Y., on March 21.
Jimmy L. “Jim” Woods, CE 66, of Gatlinburg, Tenn., on May 13.
1970 s
Daniel E. Anderson, IM 70, of Portland, Ore., on May 11, 2023.
George F. Ball Jr., IM 71, of Atlanta, on April 21.
William A. “Bill” Bowman, IE 75, MS IM 76, of Asheville, N.C., on June 25.
Francis “Frank” Cervoni, Arch 79, M Arch 81, of Bakersville, N.C., on April 12.
Robert T. Coker, EE 71, of New Market, Tenn., on Oct. 16, 2023.
Willard M. “Mickey” Dorsey, ME 72, of Taylors, S.C., on March 26.
George E. Flowers, IM 75, of Fairburn, Ga., on April 7.
Lance S. Galvin, Arch 79, of Atlanta, on March 21.
Michael G. Gold, CE 74, of Manchester, Tenn., on April 1.
James J. “Jim” Griffin, IM 70, of Americus, Ga., on April 4.
John C. Hammel, ME 71, of Columbia, Ill., on April 18.
Charles M. Herbst, ChE 72, MS NE 73, of Aiken, S.C., on Dec. 29, 2023.
Meredith L. Mason, CE 71, MS CE 93, of Cumming, Ga., on May 15.
Birl B. Miller Jr., IM 74, of Calhoun City, Miss., on March 28.
Eric J. “Jock” Ochiltree, EE 70, of Reno, Nev., on May 20.
James A. O’Gorman, IE 71, of Prescott, Ariz., on March 23, 2023.
Robert W. Olson, CE 73, MS CE 78, of Augusta, Ga., on May 23.
Thomas E. “Tom” Rawe Sr., CE 79, of Cold Spring, Ky., on April 19.
Thompson T. “Tom” Rawls II, Mgt 73, of Atlanta, on June 9.
Gerald T. “Tim” Smith, CE 70, MS SanE 71, MS IM 80, of Tucker, Ga., on May 27.
Robert W. Smith, Phys 73, of Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 4.
James R. Thomas, IM 72, of Sharpsburg, Ga., on April 10.
1980 s
Steven M. “Steve” Anderson, MS HPhys 88, of Lenoir City, Tenn., on May 23.
Brent L. Bowers, Cls 86, of Indianapolis, Ind., on April 6.
Rebecca R. (Ramage) Cantrell, MS HPhys 88, of Evans, Ga., on May 23.
Edward M. “Pete” Culver Jr., IM 83, of Brunswick, Ga., on April 15.
David M. Early, IE 84, of Gambrills, Md., on April 10.
James F. Flewellen, Cls 82, of Wheaton, Ill., on May 5.
William L. Gunn Jr., EE 89, of Birmingham, Ala., on March 20.
James M. “Michael” Gurnee, M CRP 81, of Dodge City, Kan., on Aug. 30, 2023.
Walter K. Krauth III, IM 81, of Newnan, Ga., on March 30.
Carlos M. Martinez, EE 88, MS EE 89, of Houston, Texas, on May 16.
Vann B. Reynolds, Mgt 88, of Euharlee, Ga., on March 16.
David R. Rhodes, EE 88, of Marietta, Ga., on May 12.
Brian L. Shirley, EE 85, MS EE 88, of Marietta, Ga., on June 12.
James A. Smith, IM 81, of Conyers, Ga., on March 29.
Juan P. Spoerer, MS IE 83, of Atlanta, on March 27.
Kenneth M. “Ken” Spratlin, AE 85, of Boulder, Colo., on May 22.
Johnny L. Terry, ChE 84, of Americus, Ga., on April 8.
Barney W. Walker, ChE 85, of Augusta, Ga., on March 26.
Christopher E. “Chris” Westbrook, ME 82, of Gordon, Ga., on June 20.
1990 s
Thomas J. Belina, EE 91, of Daphne, Ala., on May 19.
Robert J. Bruno, MS EE 93, of Flanders, N.J., on June 13, 2022.
Shannon M. Dodd, CE 94, of Lawrenceville, Ga., on May 23.
2000 s
Chess D. Gay, Mgt 01, of Cordele, Ga., on May 27.
Franklin L. Moon II, PhD CE 04, of Niskayuna, N.Y., on May 27, 2023.
Thomas D. Perrie Jr., CS 05, of Cumming, Ga., on March 17.
2010 s
Phoebe C. Edalatpour, CE 18, of Philadelphia, Pa., on May 5.
Dan Y. Zhang, MS ME 14, PhD BioE 23, of Boston, Mass., on April 15.
2020 s
Christopher “Will” Klaus Jr., Cls 23, of Atlanta, on April 28.
FRIENDS
Dorothy M. (Martel) Brown, of Marietta, Ga., on May 12.
Randall S. Couch, of Atlanta, on July 5.
John E. Endicott, of Marietta, Ga., on June 22.
Allen K. Garrison, of Decatur, Ga., on April 19.
Margaret Guthman, of Hiawassee, Ga., on May 31.
Lila S. Loewy, of Philadelphia, Pa., on Feb. 23, 2021.
George L. Petherick, of Marietta, Ga., on Dec. 23, 2023.
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ME 1962
MS EM 1964
TECH ENGINEERS: IS THIS WORD MISSING FROM YOUR DEGREE?
IN 1945, GEORGIA TECH DROPPED THE WORD “SCIENCE” FROM THE NAME OF ITS UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING DEGREES. HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED.
BY JENNIFER HERSEIM
BBLAKE VAN LEER might be best known for serving as Georgia Tech’s president during a momentous chapter of Tech’s history from 1944 to 1956. A lesser-known piece of his legacy is a decision he spearheaded in his first year as president that changed the name of Tech’s undergraduate engineering degrees for more than 54 years.
If you “got out” between 1945 and 1999 with an undergraduate degree in engineering, check your diploma. We’ll wait… Chances are high that you received a “Bachelor” rather than a “Bachelor of Science” degree.
In his first year at Tech, Van Leer dropped “science” from the name of Tech’s engineering degrees. This lasted until 1999, when the word was added back to diplomas. During that time, there were 45,806 “Bachelor of” degrees given at Georgia Tech. There have been only four since 1999 when the decision was reversed.
While nothing points to a difference in curriculum between the two degree types, if you’re a Tech engineer whose diploma reads “Bachelor of,” you might be wondering, why?
ENGINEER TURNED INVESTIGATOR
The questions started in the U.S. Air Force, says Al Clary.
“My local unit’s training office was confused about my record,” he remembers. “It said BAE, and they weren’t sure what it meant.”
Clary received his Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering at Tech in 1970 with highest honors, was sworn into the Air Force Reserve, and got married to his wife, Judy (a graduate of nearby Grady Memorial Hospital School of Nursing), all within the same week. He stayed at Tech and obtained his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering a year later and then entered active duty in the Air Force.
Is it a Business of Administration degree? A Bachelor of Arts degree?
When he left active duty in the Air Force, the confusion about his BAE degree followed. Clary retired after 24 years at Eastman Chemical Company and nine years at EBASCO Services, Inc. Along the way, he earned an MBA degree, became a licensed Professional Engineer, and worked with all types of engineers throughout the South. He also retired from the Air Force Reserve as a lieutenant colonel.
He never crossed paths with any engineer—aside from fellow Georgia Tech alumni—who did not have at least a Bachelor of Science degree. Even though the BAE degree never created any professional obstacles, the question still nagged at him from time to time. When his youngest son David graduated from Georgia Tech in 1997 with a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering, the mystery resurfaced.
“I never understood why it wasn’t a bachelor of science, and I dealt with engineers all over the South who all had their B.S. degrees,” Clary says.
In 2024, he searched for an answer.
Clary pored over course catalogs, contacted university archives, called the offices of the major national engineering professional organizations, and started to piece together why “science” was missing from his diploma—and 45,805 others.
CRACKING THE CASE
Clary’s search zeroed in on a central figure—another proud engineer and veteran—Col. Blake Van Leer. Two other institutions where Van Leer had served as dean of Engineering also dropped “science” from some of their engineering degree names: North Carolina State and the University of Florida.
When Van Leer returned to Tech following World War II, his attention went to the Institute’s engineering programs. In his first year, he established the School of Industrial Engineering, now named the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
That same year, Van Leer made the case to the Board of Regents to drop “science” from Tech’s engineering degree names. In the 1944–1945 University System of Georgia annual report, Van Leer called it a “progressive step” that aligned Tech with standards recommended by the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education (SPEE) and the Engineers’ Council for Professional Development. He added
“I NEVER UNDERSTOOD WHY IT WASN’T A BACHELOR OF SCIENCE DEGREE,” CLARY SAYS.
that “the word ‘science’ has been dropped from the designation of all accredited professional engineering curricula.”
Clary was able to locate an earlier report from SPEE in 1918 that recommended naming undergraduate degrees a “Bachelor of Science” in engineering, a recommendation that was reaffirmed by SPEE in 1930. It’s still not clear why or when the recommendation changed. “That part remains a mystery,” Clary says. “We don’t know for certain, but I imagine it had to do with elevating the engineering degree.”
Between 1926 and 1960, the number of schools offering “Bachelor of Engineering” degrees increased from eight to 33, SPEE records show. Georgia Tech was among those schools.
“There was clearly something influencing this shift,” Clary says. “By 1940, 45 states had taken over certification of engineers, likely driven in part because some engineering schools as early as 1900 had begun to issue professional degrees. These degrees that confer the title of engineer would simply say, ‘Civil Engineer’ or ‘Mechanical Engineer.’” While these degrees were different from Tech’s “Bachelor of” engineering degrees, the emphasis at the time was clearly to focus on the professional title, Clary says.
The other piece of the puzzle is why Tech didn’t add “science” back until 1999, Clary says. By comparison, NC State added the word back in 1959. Interestingly, a few universities still offer a “Bachelor of” degree in engineering disciplines, such as Vanderbilt University, but it’s rare compared to its peak in the 1960s.
One possible reason why Tech reversed the decision in 1999 is the switch from quarters to the semester system.
Early in his investigation, Clary reached out to Joseph Oefelein, professor and associate chair for Undergraduate
FAREWELL, FORMER DEGREES
“MISTRESS OF PATIENCE”
Van Leer was the first president to sign a “Mistress of Patience” diploma, which started around 1946. These were a recognition of the support and sacrifice that spouses made while their husbands earned their Tech degrees. Women weren’t officially admitted to the Institute until 1952. Interest for the Mistress of Patience diplomas waned soon after.
Programs in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. Oefelein inquired with senior faculty, who pointed out that many of the degree programs received a slightly different name during the switch to the semester system, including the BAE becoming a BSAE.
Oefelein also confirmed that Tech’s BAE and BSAE are equivalent. “Aside from differences associated with advances in the state of the art over time, the required courses were essentially the same,” Oefelein replied.
As technology advances and needs change, Tech’s programs have adapted with them. Here are a few of the degree names that are no longer offered at Tech:
Polymer and Fiber Engineering
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (as of Spring 2025)
Applied Nuclear Science
Behavioral Management
Ceramic Engineering
Engineering Economic Systems
Metallurgy
Paper Science and Engineering
Sanitary Engineering
Textiles
NEW DEGREES ON THE BLOCK:
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
Environmental Science
Solid Earth and Planetary Sciences
PhD in Neuroscience and Neurotechnology (Launching Fall 2025)
Master of Science in Cybersecurity
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WAR, SPUTNIK, & ENGINEERING
“I realized this mystery is a story about the growing pains of the engineering profession in the first half of the 20th century,” Clary says. “Today, we think of engineering and Georgia Tech with so many students enrolled as being well established, but it hasn’t always been that way.”
One way to understand the “Bachelor of” trend is to look at the history of engineering education.
In the 1920s and ’30s, engineering struggled to gain a foothold. It lacked the prestige of more established professions of the time, like medicine and law. As World War II accelerated the need for progress in science and technology, engineers were often passed over for key wartime jobs in favor of scientists. Even well into the 1950s and ’60s, engineering educators debated how to draw more students into the profession and grow the reputation of an engineering degree.
In a talk delivered in 1982, L.E. Grinter, who had served previously as president of the American Society for Engineering Education, discussed how these trends didn’t shift until after Russia’s launch of Sputnik and the dawn of the space race. “It was a watershed moment,” Clary says. “It was a shock to the country that all of a sudden caused a need to push forward, to drive growth, and to drive the need for engineers,” he says.
In the end, Clary believes Van Leer and the other engineering educators who pushed for the “Bachelor of” degree name did so to elevate engineering at a time when it was less well regarded. And while Clary is searching for more answers, he’s coming to terms with how this story might end.
“I’m realizing we may never find out exactly what happened,” he says. Still, he’s satisfied knowing his BAE degree isn’t missing anything.
CAPTION THIS
SEND US YOUR BEST CAPTION FOR THIS IMAGE FROM TECH’S PAST.
It’s a mystery what’s happening with this “contraption” from the archives. Send in your best caption for the photo and we may feature your submission in the next issue. And if you know more about this contraption, we want to know, too!
Find our Oct. 2 Facebook post @gtalumni and drop your caption in the comments.
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