March/April 2019

NSPE Today
In Memory: Clyde Tipton Jr., P.E., F.NSPE

Clyde Tipton Jr., P.E., F.NSPE, who served as NSPE president in 1995–96, passed away on January 23 in Troy, Ohio.

During his term as president, the Society was actively involved in legislative and legal issues, such as an effort to remove four transportation trust funds from the unified federal budget and to change the name of the National Science Foundation to a more accurately named National Science and Engineering Foundation. In California, NSPE took a strong stand against a ballot initiative that would have severely restricted the state government’s ability to contract with private engineering firms. The state’s voter defeated the initiative in 1998.

NSPE also was in the midst of a multiyear reorganization effort during Tipton’s tenure and took a big technological leap when the Society launched its first “home page for the World-Wide Web.”

The standing of the profession and the pursuit of professionalism were at the heart of his dedication to NSPE. He encouraged members to pledge to “Routinely Emphasize Professionalism, Ethics, and Trust,” which he dubbed Project REPEAT.

In addition to leadership roles in NSPE, he volunteered much time to the Ohio Society of Professional Engineers and served as OSPE president in 1990–91.

Tipton grew up in Danville, Kentucky, and served with the US Army Air Corps during WWII before entering the University of Kentucky. Upon graduation in 1947 with BS and MS degrees in metallurgical engineering, he joined the Battelle Memorial Institute as a research engineer. After a move to Los Alamos Laboratory, where he researched the metallurgy of plutonium, he returned to Battelle.

During his career, he built a reputation for expertise in atomic energy. The University of Kentucky Engineering Hall of Distinction, to which he was inducted in 1997, noted that he was a member of the US Secretariat for the 2nd United Nations Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy and served as a consultant to the US Atomic Energy Commission in the Atoms for Peace program in Japan, Brazil, and India.

He retired in 1986 from Battelle Memorial Institute, where he was vice president and corporate director of communications.