Iowa State History | National History

Phi Beta Kappa at Iowa State University, Zeta of Iowa
For over 200 years, election to Phi Beta Kappa has been a recognition of intellectual capacities well employed, especially in the acquiring of an education in the liberal arts. Phi Beta Kappa was founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and this prestigious honorary now has more than 240 chapters in institutions of higher leaming. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (then Sciences and Humanities) at Iowa State University was granted its chapter charter in 1973. The ISU Charter, complete with the names of our foundiong faculty members, can be found in the 3rd floor conference room in Catt Hall.

Election to Phi Beta Kappa is by invitation. The United Chapters recognizes three classes of members: members in course, alumni, and honorary members. However, Zeta Chapter of Iowa (ISU) elects members in course (undergraduates) and honorary members only. In February each year, eligible students are invited to membership, based on their records at the end of Fall semester. The number who may be invited is limited by national bylaws, so not all students who meet the minimum requirements outlined below can be invited. Initiation is held in April or May. Students who meet the criteria for membership by graduation, but not earlier, are included in the following year's invitation.

Membership Requirements at Zeta of Iowa
To be eligible for an invitation to membership, an undergraduate must be enrolled in the curriculum in Liberal Arts and Sciences. To be qualified for election as a junior, a student must have completed at least 75 credits toward graduation with a cumulative GPA of 3.80 or higher. Seniors must have completed at least 100 credits toward graduation with a cumulative GPA of 3.60 or higher. For students who transfer to ISU, at least half of these credits must be earned at Iowa State, and both the ISU and adjusted GPA (ISU + transfer) must meet the minimum GPA requirement. Selection also depends on the breadth and difficulty of the program, so students with lower GPAs but more challenging courses will be selected ahead of students who have attained higher GPAs in part by avoiding challenges.

The program of study must include at least 93 credits in liberal arts courses (although they may appear on the degree program in the groups, the major(s), minor(s) or electives). Other requirements for eligibility are (a) six semester credits of collegiate study in the mathematical disciplines in courses acceptable for Group III in the General Education Requirements (or one year of geometry and two years of algebra and/or trigonometry in high school plus three semester credits of collegiate study in the mathematical disciplines), and (b) at least two semesters of collegiate study in one foreign language (or six semesters of high school study in one foreign language).

The following comes directly from our National Website at www.pbk.org

National History

Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious undergraduate honors organization, was founded on December 5, 1776, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was the first society to have a Greek letter name, and in its initial period at William and Mary it introduced the essential characteristics of such societies - an oath of secrecy (discarded in 1831), a badge, mottoes in Latin and Greek, a code of laws, and an elaborate form of initiation.
Regular meetings were held at which chief attention was given to literary exercises, especially to composition and debating. Fraternal sentiments were fostered, occasional meetings were held for social purposes, and anniversaries were celebrated in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern, as they are again now that the College of William and Mary has recreated the Apollo Room in the Phi Beta Kappa Hall on the Williamsburg campus.

The original Phi Beta Kappa Society had an active life of only four years, ending when the approach of the British army under Cornwallis forced the college to close its doors. But the faith of those youthful scholars in the permanence and future greatness of their Society is shown by their preparation of charters for branches in other colleges. The two charters voted upon and granted during that period went to Harvard, December 4, 1779, and to Yale, four days later. The charters were delivered to groups in New Haven and Cambridge the following year and subsequently the Alpha of Connecticut was established at Yale (November, 1780) and the Alpha of Massachusetts came into being at Harvard (September, 1781).

While the Alpha of Virginia at the College of William and Mary was inactive between 1780 and 1851 and again from early in the Civil War until 1893, the Alpha at Harvard has had an uninterrupted existence and the Alpha at Yale has been inactive only from 1871 to 1884. These two chapters largely determined the permanent character of Phi Beta Kappa and shaped its policy in the establishment of other new chapters.

The two New England branches preserved the essential qualities of the Virginia experience, adopting some changes in procedure to suit local conditions. Shortly before the close of the college year, the members selected from the junior class a small group of leading students who in the following year constituted the "immediate society." The continuing custom of annual anniversary celebrations led to many significant contributions to American prose and poetry. Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered an oration at Harvard’s 1837 celebration entitled "The American Scholar," later adopted as the name of Phi Beta Kappa’s quarterly journal.

Fifty years after the Society’s extension into New England, only four additional chapters had been founded: Alpha of New Hampshire at Dartmouth in 1787; Alpha of New York at Union in 1817; Alpha of Maine at Bowdoin in 1825; and Alpha of Rhode Island at Brown in 1830. In each case, the new charters were granted by the concurrent action of the Alphas already chartered.
Fifteen additional chapters were established in the succeeding 30 years. By 1883 at the time of the founding of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, which provided a unified organization for the Society, 25 chapters had been chartered, although not all were active, and about 14,000 persons had been elected to membership.

Three important changes marked the first century of Phi Beta Kappa’s history. The anti-Masonic agitation of the 1820s led to much discussion at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale of the Phi Beta Kappa oath. In 1831, the Alpha at Harvard was the first chapter to remove the requirement of secrecy. By the time the United Chapters were organized in 1883, the last vestiges of secrecy disappeared.

A second change was more fundamental. Originally Phi Beta Kappa had been a society of congenial spirits, similar in its basis of membership to the present-day fraternity, and in the character of its meetings to a debating or literary club. As time passed, it tended more and more to become an "honor" society, existing to recognize and to foster excellence in liberal learning at the undergraduate level.

Another necessary development was the admission of women. The Alpha at the University of Vermont, finding in 1875 that two women had met the scholastic requirements, admitted them to membership. The following year, four women were elected by the Gamma of Connecticut at Wesleyan. This step, regarded in some quarters as revolutionary, aroused no formal protest. A few years later, when a general constitution and bylaws were adopted, the right of women to membership was accepted without question.

In 1881 there were only 20 active chapters - with the exception of three in Ohio, all were situated east of the Alleghenies and north of the Mason-Dixon line. At the centennial celebration of the Alpha of Massachusetts on June 30 of that year, to which the other chapters had been invited to send representatives, a proposal was made by the delegate from Hobart to effect a closer union. After consideration then and in later meetings, a constitution was prepared, adopted, and ratified and on September 5,1883 the first National Council of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa began its sessions. A revision to the constitution in 1937 strengthened this union, at the same time safeguarding the rights and liberties of the individual chapters.

In the years since the organization of the United Chapters, the number of chapters has increased from 25 to 255, and the membership has grown accordingly. In 1900, when the first general catalogue was published, the living membership was about 10,500. Today it is more than 500,000.

As the organization acquired a truly national character and some of its members created off-campus Phi Beta Kappa associations to foster the Society’s educational mission, it became increasingly clear that the term "United Chapters" no longer described the scope of Phi Beta Kappa’s programs. In 1988 the delegates assembled at the 35th Council voted to change the organization’s name to "The Phi Beta Kappa Society." This more inclusive designation, also the historic name of the Society, now appears on all of the organization’s legal documents and publications