LOCAL PHI BETA KAPPA CHAPTERS

 PBKACA teams with local universities where students and special honorees are inducted into Phi Beta Kappa to ensure these persons can readily participate in our group as alumni. Like the National Society based in Washington, DC, these campus chapters are freestanding entities independent of PBKACA. We are aligned as allied groups supporting Phi Beta Kappa’s mission.

With over 270 chapters nationally, there are currently 6 chapters in the region adjacent to Chicago of Northern Illinois and Indiana, our service territory. New chapters can be approved by the National Society at its Triennial conventions following a rigorous evaluation by Phi Beta Kappa visiting committees of scholars. Further details on that process are available at the national Phi Beta Kappa website, www.pbk.org.

Throughout the year, PBKACA and the chapters take advantage of opportunities to work together, such as by co-sponsoring programs featuring noted speakers at the campuses and by hosting social events for faculty and staff to visit with non-academic PBKACA members off campus. PBKACA also has a representative present at each of the chapters’ spring ceremonies at which the latest annual classes of undergraduates join Phi Beta Kappa.

As an example of the workings of a local chapter, the following summarizes an annual cycle of activities (and a biennial extra) contributed by Professor Herb Bronstein of Lake Forest College:

 

1.       Each fall the LFC President sends a letter to all sophomore students who were elected to the Dean’s List during their freshman year.  The letter congratulates them and informs them about PBK and that it is a goal for which they should strive.

2.       Committees are selected for the year.  These are:

1. Nominating Committee (de facto the executive committee)
2. Membership/Selection Committee (selects new initiates each spring)
3. Alumni Committee (to reconsider outstanding graduates for honorary membership)
4. Senior Thesis Committee (selects the winner of the PBK Senior Thesis Prize, given each year at the Senior Honors Convocation)

3.       A representative to PBKACA is chosen.

4.       Annual selection meeting is held, usually in March, to hear the selection committee’s recommendations for new initiates and vote on them.

5.       Initiation ceremony and dinner are held in April.  The LFC President hosts this.

6.       Senior Thesis Award meeting is held in May to approve the recommendation of the Senior Thesis Committee for the prize.

7.       Phi Beta Kappa initiates are recognized at the Senior Honors Convocation, along with the Senior Thesis Award winner.  The Senior Thesis prize is a book chosen by the student’s thesis advisor and presented by the current President of the chapter.

8.       Phi Beta Kappa membership is also announced as the student’s name is read at commencement, and it is listed in the program.

 Biennial Lake Forest College activities:

1.       Every other year we host a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar from the national PBK. 

In 2002 we had Dr. Arlene Saxonhouse, Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies and the University of Michigan.  She was on campus for 2 days.  She spoke to classes, met with faculty and students and gave a public lecture entitled:  Machiavelli’s Women”.  The lecture followed the initiation ceremony for that year. 

PBKACA enthusiastically supported the nomination at the 2003 Triennial of a new chapter at Valparaiso University and after the successful vote was delighted to participate in the subsequent chapter installation ceremonies in the spring of 2004. Greg Gocek, representing PBKACA as its president, attended the event and prepared the following report on this singular occasion:

All of us were undoubtedly thrilled to join Phi Beta Kappa, seeing the offer as the culmination of years of sustained effort to master diverse disciplines of thought. Some of us, in the capacity of chapter officers and members, draw the added dual pleasure of sustaining a true meritocracy and recreating pure personal satisfaction by offering Phi Beta Kappa membership to successor generations of new initiates. Only a relative few of us can savor a special collective dimension of our society’s rewards, establishing a campus chapter to serve a hopefully unlimited posterity.

This spring, I enjoyed the privilege of witnessing that singular occasion within our region. From the experience, I can report encouragingly that enthusiastic additional supporters of Phi Beta Kappa have joined your ranks, enhancing its vitality and prospects.

As president of the Chicago-area association (and a district officer thanks to your vote at the last Triennial), I was graciously invited by Professor Sarah DeMaris of Valparaiso University to participate in the April 1 installation of its Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Truly an offer I could never refuse! This new entity falls within our assigned geographic territory. So I definitely wanted to be faithful to the lessons of success instilled by my executive training via the MBWA, “Managing By Walking Around” (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).

I also had never seen this type of event and must acknowledge a bit of nostalgia for the academic pomp and circumstance. That feeling, perhaps best described as an acquired taste, was derived from my graduation experiences at the University of Chicago. Between my duties as a collegiate student marshal and the several academic degrees I received there, it could be appropriate for a pew to have my name on it in Rockefeller Chapel – a good thing I never took up wood carving as a hobby. I thus headed to Indiana totally confident I could handle any unique associated rituals and sufficiently agile to avoid tripping on a gown or sundry academic regalia.

 Alas, no gowns were required for we visitors. I warrant if the one I wore from my college graduation is still extant, I could still fit into it. Other articles of apparel from those years that would be similarly comfortable, let’s leave that for another discussion. And my expectations for what transpired on April 1 were otherwise fully satisfied.

Thus, on a beautifully crisp and sunny early spring morning it takes the trials of enduring a number of Midwestern winters to totally appreciate, we convened at an appropriately ceremonial campus venue, Valparaiso’s Chapel of the Resurrection. This architecturally significant structure has soaring stained glass windows described as “sermons in color” and a freestanding 140-foot campanile that filled a space seating over 2,000 with the tintinnabulation that is the hallmark resonance of a university. Though nearly 50 years have passed since the building’s dedication, it appeared strikingly modern to these eyes accustomed to the forms of campus gothic and definitely worth the visit.

Professor DeMaris is the incoming president of the new chapter, Eta of Indiana. She was accompanied in procession by her four fellow officers (Vice President Carter Hanson, Secretary Patrick Sullivan, Treasurer James Caristi and Historian J. Michael Yohe) and 23 peers from the university faculty and staff who constitute the members of this academic body. As the other members of the university community and visitors settled into the chapel for the convocation, we were treated to an organ recital, trumpet processional, and choral introductory pieces, enough to transform even Voltaire into a medievalist.

Greetings were extended to the audience from every quarter, first by the top university leader, President Alan Harre and then followed by key persons representing the national Phi Beta Kappa Society. These included Secretary John Churchill, current President Niall Slater and former President Frederick Crosson, distinguished academics all.

Dr. Slater presided over the formal installation duties, encompassing the election of both the chapter’s Foundation Members and its first group of officers. This was followed by the conferral of the chapter’s charter. The Foundation Members are individuals whom the charter chapter members can honor at the time of installation for commitment to the study of the liberal arts and sciences and in recognition of long term achievements in keeping with Phi Beta Kappa’s standards. The individuals so honored, all Valparaiso U. graduates, were: Richard Baepler (a former Valparaiso U. faculty member and administrator), Richard Duesenberg (former senior vice president and general counsel of the Monsanto Corporation), Heather Mitchell Johnson (physician in OB/GYN practice), Lillian Peters Mullin (retired U.S. Foreign Service officer) and Andrew Rodovich (US District Court Magistrate Judge).

Professor Crosson, making the short trip from another noted Hoosier institution of higher education, the University of Notre Dame, delivered the keynote address. In addition to locales, both Valaparaiso and Notre Dame have origins and continuing connections to religious denominations (Lutheran and Roman Catholic, respectively). So it was fitting that a special theme of the address interpreting Phi Beta Kappa’s significance was its emphasis on morality as a core founding value of the society. We were reminded that wisdom, reinforced by the allied virtues of integrity and tolerance, can make real the society’s founding motto, “Love of learning is the guide of life”, a goal that is always in season.

President DeMaris then officially accepted the charter. University Provost Roy Austensen offered his encouragement. With hymns, blessings and a recessional featuring Handel’s Royal Fireworks music, the assemblage adjourned after approximately 1 hour with the assessment, undoubtedly unanimous, that the chapter got off to a great start.

My conclusion is that this Valparaiso U. event was like a well turned phrase at a lifetime milestone occasion such as a wedding or retirement, a seemly addition to an honored tradition which illustrates why the longest memories are invariably positive.