Opened in 1950, the Electrical Engineering Building was renamed in 1969 in honor of Mervin Sylvester Coover, the head of the Electrical Engineering Department from 1935 to 1954. He also served as Associate Dean of the Division of Engineering from 1935 to 1954 and Acting Dean of the College of Engineering from 1957 to 1959. He was advisor to Iowa Alpha from 1936 to 1940. (Mervin S. Coover was a 1914 graduate of the University of Colorado and initiated into Tau Beta Pi by Colorado Beta on May 21, 1929)