21 students initiated
into Phi Kappa Phi

Twenty-one of the 134 Elon University students initiated April 18 into Phi Kappa Phi, the nation's oldest and largest academic honor society, are communications and/or journalism majors. Students must be in the top 5 percent of the junior class or the top 10 percent of the senior class to qualify to be invited to Elon's chapter of the honor's group.

Phi Kappa Phi was founded in 1897 at the University of Maine. Elon's chapter was installed in 1995 as Chapter 275. The chapter's members participate in national conferences, work on literacy projects and sponsor winners of graduate fellowships.

Among the honorees from the School of Communications were Jessica Patchett, Lindsay Porter and Colin Donohue, former senior editors of The Pendulum, and Matt Belanger, recipient of the D'Angelo Scholarship in Broadcast Communications.

The keynote speaker at the initiation was Elon President Leo Lambert. Internationally known education innovator and consultant John N. Gardner was installed as an honorary member of Elon's Phi Kappa Phi chapter at the event. Gardner's research inspired Elon 101 and other similar programs for first-year students at institutions of higher education around the world.