The Iron Ring and the Ritual
Information about the iron ring and the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer can be difficult to find. None of the following links include a complete description of the Ritual, but they all discuss elements of the ceremony.
Official description from the Corporation of the Seven Wardens
2019 ASEE Prism article containing a description of the Ritual
Canadian University Press article, describing a 2012 ceremony at Concordia University
Camp 1 PDF Slides from a Student Information Session (we believe this is from 2012). This includes the text of the Obligation.
Historical and practical details fairly well summarized in this 2018 Medium article.
“The Sons of Martha” is a poem that is typically read during the iron ring ceremony and was written by Kipling in 1907. It is Published online by the Kipling Society. This poem can also be found on the official Iron Ring website
The poem the "Hymn of Breaking Strain" and the poem "If" can now be found on the ironring.ca website in their calls expression of interest.
2019 New Yorker review of a Kipling biography
Postcolonial Studies @ Emory website 2014 profile of Rudyard Kipling
2021 newspaper article from The Guardian on the acknowledgement of Kipling’s racism and imperialism by the organization English Heritage
2018 BBC News article on Manchester University students’ protest and defacement of a Kipling poem painted on the wall of a renovated university building
Contextualizing Kipling
The official materials provided by the Camps and the Corporation of the Seven Wardens present Rudyard Kipling in a purely positive light: as a well-regarded poet, a Nobel Prize winner, and a friend and ally of engineers. This is both true, and incomplete. Kipling’s imperialist and racist views went beyond the norms of his time, and were deeply embedded in his work.