“I have nothing to do with it. You’ll have to ask Mary.” That was Sarah McCrae’s response in 1916 when a caller asked if her daughter would serve as the first Queen of Love and Beauty elected by the junior class at MSM. (Technically, the first queen, Helen Baysinger, the daughter of a Board of Curators member, was crowned in 1915, but had not been elected.)

Get on your green and join UMR for an event 100 years in the making at this year's Best Ever St. Pat's, starting Monday, March 3.

On Lance Haynes’ first day as an assistant professor of speech and media studies back in 1984, his colleagues took him to lunch in the old University Center-East cafeteria. As they walked across campus, Haynes noticed students walking around in green jackets, which seemed unusual in such warm weather.

Every year at dawn on this special day, a procession of figures wearing green jackets (some of them showing quite a bit of wear) makes its way toward Pine Street.

For more than four decades, students chosen to become knights of St. Patrick underwent a baptism into a pool of soupy, slimy concoction that came to be known as “Alice.”

Bob Fitzsimmons was a high school freshman when he started working part time for the Rolla Daily News in 1956.

The cover image of the Winter 2007 issue is a Photomosaic (R) of the shamrock that adorns the jacket worn for decades by St. Pat’s Committee members. It features 1,150 unique images of St. Pat’s through the years. The Photomosaic was created by artist Robert Silvers. See more of Silvers’ work at www.photomosaic.com.

Even in war time, UMR alumni will find a way to celebrate the Best Ever. For an article that appeared in
a 1991 issue of the magazine, MSM-UMR Alumnus staff interviewed Gene Boyt, ME’41, about his experiences meeting up with two MSM alumni as prisoners of war in the Philippines during World War II.

While stationed in Africa during World War II, Thomas W. Kelly Jr., MetE'40, wrote a will establishing an MSM scholarship fund with money he inherited from his uncle.

The UMR Magazine staff asked alumni to share their fondest memories of UMR"s grand tradition.

St. Pat's Crossword Puzzle

UMR Magazine

Here are the 98 St. Pats that have been selected at MSM and UMR.

Here are the 91 women who have been named a Queen of Love and Beauty at MSM and UMR.

Honorary Knights of St. Patrick, chosen each year by the St. Pat’s Committee and the UMR chancellor, are chosen for the service they’ve performed for the campus, the Rolla community, the state of Missouri, the nation and/or the St. Pat’s tradition.

Fred Bueler Jr., CE’79, got hooked on the home-remodeling business at age 14 when he began working summers for a contractor in his St. Louis hometown. Back in those days, he was digging footings and foundations by hand.

It takes several big trucks and a fair amount of logistical planning to ship a house to Washington, D.C.

Representatives of General Motors Corp. came to UMR Sept. 19 to discuss career opportunities with students and accept resumes for full-time, intern and cooperative positions.

Human-powered vehicle racer Jerrod Bouchard, a senior in mechanical engineering, recorded the third-fastest time ever by a college student this fall during the World Human-Powered Speed Challenge in Battle Mountain, Nev.

Garmin, designer and manufacturer of navigation and communication equipment, visits UMR.

Last summer, Boeing opened its doors to students in UMR’s Minority Engineering and Science Program, a scholarship program supported in part by Boeing since 2003.

Aerospace engineering graduate students Mike Dancer and Jason Searcy took first place in the Student Scholarship Competition session at the 21st Annual Conference on Small Satellites for their paper about the UMR SAT mission.

Cleaner transportation is coming to rural Missouri, thanks to a joint effort by UMR and several federal agencies.

Armed with a GPS unit, Michelle Marincel, NucE’06, and Brian Payne, a senior in civil and environmental engineering, bushwacked and backtracked their way through the Medicine Bow National Forest near the Wyoming border with Colorado last summer in an effort to blaze a better trail along the Continental Divide.

Thomas Weigert, Motorola Fellow and vice president of the company’s Global Software Group, became UMR’s first Daniel C. St. Clair Chair of Computer Science on Sept. 1.

Thulasi Kumar, former director of institutional research at the University of Northern Iowa, started work as director of institutional research and assessment at UMR on July 1.

The 2006-2007 school year was a record-breaker for the UMR Career Opportunities Center.

Making a balloon out of glass might not seem like such a great idea on the surface – but Hank Rawlins, MetE’91, MS MetE’92, a graduate student in metallurgical engineering, thinks glass balloons might turn out to be the best way to put monitoring equipment in the upper atmosphere.

A team of UMR researchers found concentrations of leachable arsenic and lead above drinking water standards in sediment and soil samples collected from New Orleans’ parishes following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

A group of UMR researchers led by Genda Chen has developed a way to retrofit bridges to help them withstand everything from blasts to earthquakes to old age.

A UMR mechanical engineer and two of his colleagues have received a patent for a system that could improve the performance of electric motors.

While the chrome in your car’s bumper isn’t hazardous to your health, producing that chrome can be.

Members of the UMR chapter of Engineers Without Borders are working to design sustainable solutions to problems ranging from waste management to energy generation for residents of Bolivia, Guatemala and Honduras.

If the Missouri Department of Transportation improved its sources of biodiesel, the department would be able to meet a legislative mandate requiring 75 percent of its diesel vehicle fleet and heavy equipment be fueled with B-20 – biodiesel.

Increasing demands on an aging U.S. power infrastructure made headlines last summer as temperatures in the Midwest and South topped 100 degrees.

Mike McNamee, a senior in civil and architectural engineering, has soccer in his blood.

The Miner cross country team’s strong start to the 2007 season earned the team a spot in the Top 25 for NCAA Division II in the poll released by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.

UMR’s athletics program ranks 13th among NCAA Division II institutions in the 2007 National Collegiate Scouting Association rankings.

UMR has been selected as a host institution for the 2008 NCAA Division II Swimming and Diving Championships, which will take place March 12-15 at the Mizzou Aquatics Center on the campus of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Three UMR athletes who finished their careers at the top of the charts in their respective sports and the only UMR track
and field team to win a conference championship were inducted into the MSM-UMR Athletic Hall of Fame on Oct. 27.