Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), the international honor society for the computing and information discipline, is the newest honor organization on campus.The Eta Chapter at Rhodes was established in 2018 with the induction of charter members. New members will be inducted in March.
Dr. Brian Larkins, assistant professor of computer science, serves as faculty advisor, but he says Kathleen Blanck ’18 was instrumental in filing the petition for the establishment of a chapter and spending a year of gathering the appropriate documents, information, and funding as part of the application process.
“Mostly I wanted a way for computer science students to be recognized for their academic achievements,” says Blanck. “We have a new building, more faculty, and now a chapter of UPE to help us with the demands of such a quickly growing major at Rhodes, but being academically competitive with our peer institutions means we have to continue growing our resources. With a UPE chapter, I saw a way that I could make a lasting, positive change for Rhodes and for computer sciences, and I realized it was the least I could do to give back to a community that had given me so much.”
UPE was first organized at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, in 1967. The organization now consists of chapters in various colleges and universities in North America and overseas. Only schools that offer a degree in a computing science-related discipline may be chartered.