Tau Beta Pi is the only engineering honor society representing the entire engineering profession. It is the nation's second-oldest honor society, founded at Lehigh University in 1885 to recognize students of distinguished scholarship and exemplary character. There are now collegiate chapters at 221 US colleges and universities, active alumnus chapters in 16 regions across the United States and a total initiated membership of 429,000.

The New York Alpha Chapter at Columbia is the ninth oldest chapter as well as the first chapter in New York state. It was founded in 1902, years before chapters were founded at any comparable universities such as MIT, Caltech, and Princeton. You have studied in buildings named for some of our more prominent chapter alums: Charles Fredrick Chandler, Michael Idvorsky Pupin, Augustus Schermerhorn, and, of course, Harvey Seeley Mudd.