William Towne ’09 Awarded Scholarship from Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society

William (Ben) Towne ’09 (Litchfield, N.H.) was awarded an undergraduate scholarship from Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society. Lafayette is the only exclusively undergraduate liberal arts and engineering college among the 85 institutions whose students were honored.

• Towne is also one of 80 students nationally to be awarded a 2008 Morris K. Udall Scholarship. The awards go to future leaders in environmental fields. Lafayette is the only exclusively undergraduate liberal arts and engineering college among the 64 institutions whose students were honored with Udall Scholarships.
• He also won a scholarship from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Pennsylvania (ACEC/PA) in 2007 for his academic achievement and involvement in the community.

Tau Beta Pi scholarships are awarded on the competitive criteria of high scholarship, campus leadership and service, and promise of future contributions to the engineering profession. Awards consist of $2,000 to be used during the senior year of full-time engineering study.

An electrical and computer engineering major, Towne has taken advantage of Lafayette’s distinctive combination of liberal arts and engineering through numerous projects.

He is involved with the College’s new Economic Empowerment and Global Learning Project (EEGLP), which was saluted by President Bill Clinton at the recent Global Initiative University Conference in New Orleans. An offshoot of work begun by the College’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), the project helped villagers in Lagunitas, Honduras, to create a sustainable economy by growing coffee. EEGLP will continue its work in Honduras and undertake a new initiative in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

In the spring 2007 semester, Towne studied engineering and German language and culture in the Lafayette faculty-led program at Jacobs University Bremen. He also spent the 2008 winter break in South Africa as part of an interim-session course. Towne is involved with campus sustainability groups such as Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection and the TREEhouse living group. He is also a member of the Arts Society and has served as an editor of The Marquis literary magazine.

After graduation, Towne, who is also a Marquis Scholar, plans to attend graduate school and continue his work with environmental sustainability.