Christian Friends Engineering Scholarship Endowment
Former students and Christian Friends have established this endowment in honor of Professors Dr. Wallace S. Prescott and James Seay Brown. Their leadership, faith, example, and inspiration for hard work and academic excellence are legendary. Both have been active members of First Baptist Church, Cookeville for most of their lives. Prescott sang in the choir for several years. Brown was named Deacon Emeritus in September 2008 after serving as a Deacon since the fall of 1954. Prescott and Brown have served in many other capacities at First Baptist, including Sunday School Teachers, over many years and held leadership roles in planning, designing, and building the new church.
The TTU legacies of Wallace S. Prescott and James Seay Brown were honored at a reception at Tennessee Tech University on Thursday, October 5, 2000.
Prescott, who graduated from TTU in 1946 and joined the engineering faculty that same year, served Tennessee Tech for nearly 40 years as an educator, scholar, public servant and administrator. From 1962 to 1983, he was TTU's Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and two years after retiring, he came back to Tennessee Tech to serve as Interim President from 1985 to 1987.
Prescott received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Tennessee Tech in 1977, the Outstanding Civilian Service Award of the U.S. Army in 1983. He was selected as a Tennessee Tech Engineer of Distinction in 1984.
For more than 38 years, Brown, a 1941 alumnus of TTU, served Tennessee Tech and the engineering profession as an instructor, a public servant and administrator. He joined TTU's engineering faculty in 1941, and then served as chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department from 1950 to 1961. In 1961, he was named Dean of Engineering, a position he held until 1979.
As Dean of Engineering, Brown led the College of Engineering in receiving accreditation for its engineering curriculum and he also initiated the engineering graduate programs at both the master's and doctoral levels. He was selected as the Outstanding Professional Engineer for Middle Tennessee in 1972 and as a Tennessee Tech Engineer of Distinction in 1981.
Scholarships associated with Christian Friends Engineering Scholarship Endowment