Our story featured on the spring cover of Auburn Engineering, “Nerds in Engineering: Not on this Campus,” struck a chord (pun intended) with many of our readers, and some wrote to us to share their own stories.

Paul S. Green, ’61 chemical engineering, told of his days in the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (API) marching band. At the time, freshmen and sophomore men were required to take ROTC classes, but band members were allowed to get credit for weekly drills if they wore their ROTC uniform to band practice. When API was renamed Auburn University in 1960, the band got new uniforms. According to Green, the name change also signified that graduates received a well-rounded, rather than a “nerdy,” education.

We also heard from Judy Williams, who described her husband Charles E. Williams’, ’72 industrial engineering, “not-so-common path” as an engineer. As director of a boarding school for disadvantaged teenage boys in Central America, his engineering skills helped bring full-time electricity to the campus — taking two-and-a-half years to get power across the river.

And to that we say, as we did in our original story, “Nerds rule the world.”