By JENNIFER JONES
President of the Association of College Honor Societies John W. Sagabiel will re-charter the BYU chapter of Phi Eta Sigma on March 30. The re-charter will be officiated at an initiation banquet, sponsored by BYU’s Phi Kappa Phi at 6 p.m. in the WSC ballroom.
Phi Eta Sigma is the little sister organization of Phi Kappa Phi and was founded at BYU on May 21, 1947, said Howard Gray, vice president of Phi Kappa Phi and chair of Phi Eta Sigma.
The BYU chapter of Phi Eta Sigma was considered a less-active chapter for a number of years, Gray said. The organization will now be re-chartered to its original founding date with an active chapter status by Sagabiel, he said.
Phi Eta Sigma is the oldest and largest freshman honor society, as it was founded in 1923 and now has more than 300 chapters throughout the United States with more than 600,000 members, Gray said.
“This is the year of the freshman at BYU, with the new freshman academy and so we feel the re-charter is timely. We want to create rites of passage along the way for freshman,” Gray said.
“This will improve the quality of the freshman experience here at BYU. It will help us to recognize academic excellence and encourage freshman to pursue that excellence in all areas of their life,” Sally Todd, president of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi at BYU, said.
BYU President Merrill J. Bateman will be the keynote speaker at the banquet. He will speak on the “Three Pillars of Phi Eta Sigma” which are the well-cared-for body, the vigorous and disciplined mind and excellence in character based upon truth, courage and charity.
“The delightful miracle is how this program has come together with President Bateman’s support. He was inducted into Phi Eta Sigma at the U of U when he was a freshman,” said Gray, who has been involved with Phi Kappa Phi for more than 20 years now.
The president of Phi Eta Sigma is Andrea Zimmerman, a BYU student from Orem, and the senior advisor is Jennifer Lehman, who was a member of Phi Eta Sigma at the University of South Dakota, Todd said. Students on the committee were very helpful in getting the re-charter, she said, especially Teresa Liu, Albert Jarvi and Stephen Svedi.
Students are invited to be members of Phi Eta Sigma if they have a 3.86 GPA or higher, Gray said. This represents the top five percent of the freshman class, he said. Invitations have been sent out to 282 freshman for the academic banquet, Gray said.
The Phi Eta Sigma has also sponsored a freshman paper competition. The university winner of the paper competition is Amy Kern, who addressed the topic of post-feminist attitudes. The college winner is student Janni Power, who wrote a paper entitled, “The Seal Cries”.
The winners read their papers for the public on Friday, said Donovan Fleming, the Phi Kappa Phi public relations officer.
