Carnegie Iota
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Carnegie Iota Chapter was the result of activity of the local fraternity, Mu Epsilon, established in March 1930, whose ideals were essentially the same as Pi Tau Sigma. Under the leadership of William A. Anderson and guidance of Professor T. G. Estep, the petition was presented to Pi Tau Sigma. The formal installation ceremonies were conducted by members of Penn State Zeta Chapter on May 20, 1930.
Carnegie Iota Chapter sponsors a year-end picnic for the M.E. Dept. students and faculty, informative seminars on selection of options, and a seminar to introduce M.E. freshman to the M.E. department. Each pledge class publishes The Shaft, a semi-humorous newsletter for the M.E. Dept.
ANNUAL SUMMARY REPORTS
2023-2024, Sruti Bapatla, Chapter President
The Carnegie Iota chapter of Pi Tau Sigma continues to recognize outstanding mechanical engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), honoring their academic and leadership abilities, as well as their commitment to service. We strive to improve the networking and social experience of our members. This year, the chapter held two initiations - one in the Fall semester on December 3rd, 2023, and one in the Spring semester, on April 23, 2024, with 9 members and 3 members being initiated respectively. The rituals of Pi Tau Sigma were followed, and the benefits and expectations were explained.
During the 2023-2024 academic year, the Carnegie Iota chapter of Pi Tau Sigma at Carnegie Mellon University remained highly active in fostering academic excellence and community engagement. They conducted two initiations, welcoming new members who met academic criteria, and expanded their executive board with dedicated leadership. The chapter organized significant events such as the MechE Morning Mixer, facilitating networking opportunities between over 100 mechanical engineering students and recruiters during Carnegie Mellon’s STEM Career Fair. Collaborations with Lockheed Martin included a resume prep session, equipping members with essential skills for future career endeavors.
In addition to academic pursuits, Carnegie Iota members prioritized community outreach. They partnered with the Gelfand Center to teach computer logic to elementary school students and engaged in hands-on activities like rocketry and bridge building at local schools and libraries. These efforts extended to collaborative study sessions and trivia nights with Tau Beta Pi and IEEE Eta Kappa Nu, promoting interdisciplinary learning and camaraderie among engineering students. Participating in events like the Pi Tau Sigma National Convention and Carnegie Mellon’s Major Blast further enriched their experience, culminating in the distribution of graduation honors to deserving members. Looking forward, the chapter aimed to plan future initiatives during the summer months to sustain their impactful contributions to both academia and community service.
Sruti (President) and Ellen (Vice President) attended the PTS National Convention at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They connected with PTS members from across the country, and Ellen accepted the award for 3rd place in the conventions bumper car contest. The meeting on ‘How to Grow Your Chapter’ provided excellent tips on events and ways to improve our PTS chapter. This upcoming year, Carnegie Iota plans to implement more events to connect with recruiters, outreach events, and collaborations with other Carnegie Mellon engineering honor societies. We look forward to the next semester!
Fall Semester Initiates and Executive Board:
Spring Semester Initiates and Executive Board:
2022-2023, Tiara Rathi, Chapter President
The Carnegie Iota chapter of Pi Tau Sigma continues to recognize outstanding mechanical engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), honoring their academic and leadership abilities, as well as their commitment to service. We strive to improve the networking and social experience of our members. This year, the chapter held two initiations - one in the Fall semester on November 14th, 2022, and one in the Spring semester, on April 22, 2023, with 13 members and 2 members being initiated respectively. The rituals of Pi Tau Sigma were followed, and the benefits and expectations were explained.
Our chapter participated in several activities this year. Our members worked with Carnegie Mellon’s Technical Opportunities Conference, the largest career fair of the fall semester, to host a MechE Morning Mixer. This was a breakfast sponsored by PTS which hosted recruiters attending the conference and approximately 50 MechE juniors and seniors in a more informal setting than the career fair itself. Students could talk with recruiters at their leisure, and many walked away with solid contacts and interviews secured. PTS also held an industry tech talk event with Lockheed Martin in the Spring, allowing members to speak to engineers and learn about potential career paths.
Throughout the year, PTS members partnered with Carnegie Mellon Rocket Command to work with a total of 93 students, ranging from Preschool to High School, at the Crossroads and Mt. Ararat Pittsburgh community centers. The outreach activities introduced students to the field of rocketry and guided their building and design of model rockets. Students built miniature rockets from household items to test their engineering design skills and apply newly gained knowledge to design and test their own model rockets.
Tiara (President), Danny (Treasurer), and Jude (Secretary) attended the PTS National Convention at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. They connected with PTS members from across the country, and accepted the award for 2nd place of ‘Outstanding Chapter Award’ on behalf of Carnegie Iota. The meeting on ‘How to Grow Your Chapter’ provided excellent tips on events and ways to improve our PTS chapter. This upcoming year, Carnegie Iota plans to implement more events to connect with recruiters, outreach events, and collaborations with other Carnegie Mellon engineering honor societies. We look forward to the next semester!
Fall Semester Initiates and Executive Board:
Spring Semester Initiates and Executive Board:
2021-2022, Abirami Elangovan, Chapter President
The Carnegie Iota chapter of Pi Tau Sigma continues to recognize outstanding mechanical engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), honoring their academic and leadership abilities, as well as their commitment to service. We strive to improve the networking and social experience of our members. This year, the chapter held two initiations - one in the Fall semester on November 30th, 2021, with a makeup on December 2nd, 2021, and one in the Spring semester, on April 21, 2022, with 12 members and 1 member being initiated respectively. The rituals of Pi Tau Sigma were followed, and the benefits and expectations were explained.
Our chapter participated in several activities this year. Members partnered with Carnegie Mellon Rocket Command to work with 10 elementary school children at the Mt. Ararat Community Center, introducing them to the field of rocketry and guiding their building and design of model rockets. Students used household items to construct fins, nosecones, and body tubes of their own design. Throughout the semester, members have also participated in CMU-led STEM outreach events such as Everyday Engineering - a Zoom event focused on showing middle school students the engineering involved in everyday objects around us. Members led breakout rooms to showcase an object of their choice and describe the types of engineering behind them.
Abi, our chapter’s president, attended the PTS National Convention at the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC). They were able to network with fellow PTS members from across the country. The socials and National Meeting provided an excellent opportunity to learn of other chapter proceedings and events, as well as make suggestions for the improvement of PTS. As a result, some events that the Carnegie Iota chapter now plans to implement include networking dinners with mechanical engineering faculty, and activities such as trivia nights. Over the summer, the chapter’s board will begin planning for the Technical Opportunities Conference Breakfast, a networking event to allow for engineering students to connect with career recruiters. We look forward to the next semester!
Fall Semester Initiates/Makeup Initiates and Executive Board:
Spring Semester Initiates and Executive Board:
2020-2021, Carolyn Youstra, Chapter President
The Carnegie Iota chapter of Pi Tau Sigma continues to strive to enhance the academic, leadership, and social experience of Mechanical Engineering students at Carnegie Mellon.This year the Carnegie Iota chapter held one initiation in the fall semester on November 21st, 2021. During our virtual fall initiation, we inducted 15 new members into our chapter through the Zoom platform. Their initiation was performed using the rituals of Pi Tau Sigma, and gave inductees a reminder of the benefits and expectations of new inductees.
Our chapter was involved in several service activities over the past year. Before Carnegie Mellon’s Spring Course Registration, PTS hosted several Underclassmen Scheduling Office Hour sessions to assist freshman and sophomore mechanical engineering students in registering for Spring 2021 courses. Pi Tau Sigma members were asked to volunteer their time and expertise to support the Mechanical Engineering Community at Carnegie Mellon. In March, our PTS society designed a planned, continuous community service activity in partnership with Neighborhood Allies for LevelUp412, a local digital inclusion program funded by Verizon. Unfortunately, due to the restrictions on our school’s in-person community service policy, we were asked to postpone our service event to the summer to allow. Our first official volunteering service date, originally scheduled for April 30th, is now scheduled for July 23rd, 2021. Our planned service event is a spirited bridge building competition, in which we will engage middle school students in the surrounding Pittsburgh community in a structural design lesson, followed by a popsicle bridge-building competition. We hope to build this partnership to extend our efforts to inspire and connect with students throughout Pittsburgh.
In addition, as an ongoing service project to our Carnegie Mellon Mechanical Engineering Department, we as an organization are each contributing to our brand-new Mechanical Engineering Course Handbook. Current members have been asked to volunteer their expertise in writing personable course descriptions, tips, and suggestions for core and technical Mechanical Engineering courses within the department. This handbook will be a continuous project for the organization, and will help undergraduate mechanical engineering students navigate their first years in their degree with current and updated advice from Pi Tau Sigma members.
We look forward to an in-person fall semester as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted to continue out service, and to welcome our new members inducted during this school year!
2019-2020, Melissa Bryan, Chapter President
The Carnegie Iota chapter of Pi Tau Sigma continues to reward outstanding mechanical engineering students for their academic success, their leadership qualities, and their commitment to service. We extend a continued commitment towards improving these elements within our members, and within the larger Mechanical Engineering community at Carnegie Mellon. We have continued our tradition of offering mechanical engineering students the opportunity to network with recruiters before career fairs, and we have drawn in over 110 students this year, a remarkable improvement from last year, and we plan to continue this trajectory into coming years. We have had the wonderful opportunity to connect students with companies such as Microsoft, Nucor, Lutron, PwC, Honeywell, and many more. In addition to the networking opportunities we continue to provide to our community, we also are growing in our service to the surrounding community. This year, we have planted trees, and taught young students about rockets, among many other service events organized by our service chairs. Showing our ability to adapt, our service chair has created a “webinar” series where students can meet professors from across the mechanical engineering department, and learn such things as how to make a grilled cheese sandwich or to test students’ knowledge in trivia nights. We have also committed ourselves towards building a more impactful chapter by organizing the first graduate student initiates in recent Carnegie Iota history, which will be initiated in the Fall of 2020, following a rigorous selection process. We are excited about the years to come, and have been seeking to improve our chapter’s logistic setup by forming a roster so that an alumni network can be obtained in the near future. Overall, this year has been integral to the improvement of our chapter for future years, and we look forward to all that there is to come. We also welcome our new members, inducted during this school year!
2018-2019, Alexander Baikovitz, Chapter President
The Carnegie Iota chapter of Pi Tau Sigma strives to enhance the academic, leadership, and social experience of Mechanical Engineering students at Carnegie Mellon. Every year, we provide opportunities for students to expand their networks through job fair breakfasts and alumni panels. We hosted two job fair breakfasts, which included recruiters from Microsoft, Mars Inc., Honeywell, General Dynamics, Nucor, Daimler, and more. These events helped students not only find summer internship opportunities and full-time positions, but they allowed them to ask professionals about their experiences in their industries as well. In addition to our career development opportunities, we have been working to expand our outreach to the Pittsburgh community through community service. Throughout the past year, we have partnered with Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering to help host events aimed at young students by helping them learn more about science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We also helped strengthen the bonds among students and professors through social activities and gatherings which provided opportunities for students to interact with faculty outside of the classroom setting. Finally, we participated in the first ever “MechE Day” for students, faculty, and staff in the mechanical engineering department. Our organization continues to work on improving our ties with the students and faculty of our university and creating lasting connections with the overall Pi Tau Sigma community.
