Dr. Steve E. Watkins, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Missouri S&T, has been selected to receive the 2024 Tau Beta Pi-McDonald Mentor award. 
 
Tau Beta Pi is a national engineering honor society with over 250 chapters throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. 
 
The McDonald Mentor award is presented annually to one recipient to celebrate excellence among those who serve as mentors or advisors for the organization and support the personal and professional development of students and colleagues. Watkins will accept his award in October at Tau Beta Pi’s annual convention in Rapid City, South Dakota. 
 
“As a long-time engineer and educator, it is a privilege to support the talented student members of Tau Beta Pi,” Watkins says. “To be recognized for contributing to careers of these and other S&T students is very fulfilling. Providing professional development and networking opportunities is central to the role of our honor society chapter.”  
 
Watkins has served as advisor of Missouri S&T’s Missouri Beta Chapter of Tau Beta Pi since 2014. This is one of the oldest groups on the Missouri S&T campus, having received its charter in 1906. 
 
He has been a member of the Missouri S&T faculty since 1989. From 2020-2022, he served as interim chair of electrical and computer engineering at S&T and was previously associate chair of undergraduate studies for electrical engineering for over a decade.  
 
Watkins is also a co-advisor of Missouri S&T’s chapter of the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) electrical and computer engineering honor society, a past editor of the IEEE-HKN magazine, and a past president of the IEEE-HKN international organization, which has over 200,000 members. 
 
He has previously served as a visiting distinguished professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and a Faculty-Member-in-Residence for the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) Program in Washington, D.C. 
 
Other roles Watkins has held include a legislative staff position in the U.S. House of Representatives through the IEEE-USA Congressional Fellow program and visiting researcher roles at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. in Tokyo, Japan. 
 
Watkins is also a member of the Phi Kappa Phi and Sigma Xi honor societies and is a Fellow of SPIE – The International Society for Optical Engineering. 
 
He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering at Missouri S&T. 
 
His research areas include smart sensor systems, fiber optics, unmanned-aerial vehicle instrumentation and engineering and pre-college education. 
 
To learn more about Tau Beta Pi, visit tbp.org, and to learn more about S&T’s electrical and computer engineering programs, visit ece.mst.edu.

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.