May 14, 1999
"We were so excited to have two (winners) at one school," said Strauder C. Patton IV, one of the recipients. Patton is a graduating senior in civil engineering from Junction City and KU NSBE chapter president.
Patton and Jerrell Herod, chapter treasurer and a sophomore in chemical engineering from Lawrence, each received a Fellow award and a $1,500 scholarship. Award recipients are chosen from NSBE's 10,000 members. They must have high academic standards, give dedicated service to NSBE and other organizations and possess high professional promise. The awards were presented at the NSBE national conference in late March in Kansas City, Mo.
Florence Boldridge, director of the KU Minority Engineering Program, said Patton and Herod set examples for other students in the program.
"One of the goals of the Minority Engineering Program is fostering leadership in academics among students," Boldridge said. "These two students epitomize that goal."
Herod served as NSBE telecommunications chair for the past year. His responsibilities included encouraging interaction between members through the Internet, running HTML workshops and updating the NSBE homepage. Herod is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, has a 3.99 grade-point average, and received the Torch Bearer Award for high academic achievement from NSBE. He participates in KU scholarship hall activities and in campus politics. He is the son of Johnny Wayne and Cyndi Herod of Lawrence. Herod says he will attend either medical school or graduate school to study biomedical engineering.
Patton is a newly elected member of NSBE's regional executive board. He is also on the board of the KU chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers and is a member of Chi Epsilon, the civil engineering honor society. He has a GPA of 3.17 and a 3.31 GPA in civil engineering. Patton will attend graduate school at KU to study structural engineering. He is the son of Strauder Patton III of Junction City.