Better late than never, the UF chapter of a national engineering honors society is holding an unveiling ceremony Friday for its monument a year after its installation.
Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honors society, will unveil the monument at about 4:45 p.m. next to Weil Hall on the southeast corner of Gale Lemerand Drive and Stadium Road.
Nicholas Bianco, the chapter president and a fifth-year UF mechanical engineering student, said the monument will serve to recognize the college’s accomplishments.
“We are a successful chapter that’s gone and done a lot of things, but at the same time not a lot of engineering students have heard of us,” Bianco, 23, said.
The monument was built last spring close to finals, so there were no plans to hold a ceremony, Bianco said.
Michael Griffis, Tau Beta Pi faculty adviser, said the society had a monument near the Reitz Union when he was a UF student.
He said he believes it was misplaced during the changes to campus.
Griffis said the honors society has been working to get a new monument since he became faculty adviser in 2011.
“(The monument) really represents who we are,” Griffis said. “It’s a solid foundation that we play a supporting role in society.”
The statue is a metal bent, the national organization’s symbol. Various versions are found at universities around the nation.
The UF chapter was the first in Florida, and it has won the R.C Mathews Outstanding Chapter Award nine times.
“In the way that a bent itself in its structure would support the load of a building,” Bianco said, “Tau Beta Pi uses it as a symbol supporting engineering as a duty and promoting engineering as a profession that is desirable and accessible.”
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 4/10/2015]
Pictured is the Tau Beta Phi monument titled “The Bent of Tau Beta Phi,” which will be officially unveiled today at 4:45 p.m. next to Weil Hall.
