Contact: Allison Matthews
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State’s Phi Kappa Phi chapter once again is being nationally honored with a Circle of Excellence Platinum Award from the nation’s oldest and most selective multidisciplinary collegiate honor society. This is the second year in a row the organization has achieved the Platinum Award, the highest PKP national honor given to a chapter.
MSU’s chapter has been a Circle of Excellence winner for six consecutive years since the awards program’s inception in 2018 and has been considered a national model by other universities across the country. The 2023-2024 award honors MSU’s group as an excellent organization based on several criteria, including its yearly initiation efforts and other activities. MSU is among only 11 universities in PKP’s Division 1 to be recognized with a Circle of Excellence Award.
Peter Ryan, executive vice provost and dean of the MSU Graduate School, serves as current MSU chapter president. He said the university’s PKP chapter is a point of pride, and MSU is in “good company” with other institutions receiving awards this year.
“We are thrilled, yet humbled, to receive this recognition. We are indeed grateful to all the membership, faculty, staff and students who have enabled the MSU chapter to achieve this distinction, and there are too many to thank,” he said.
Ryan did, however, recognize some who have been instrumental in the MSU chapter’s success, including staff member Angela Hill and faculty Joshua Granger and Krishna Poudel in the Forest and Wildlife Research Center, Bagley College of Engineering Dean Jason Keith, and Jaymar Jackson, student officer and biological sciences/pre-medicine senior from Laurel.
Ryan added PKP is “one of the longest-standing academic honor societies in the country” and has “fostered the growth and development of young minds for many generations.”
The international honor society currently consists of approximately 25,000 members annually across 325 college campuses around the country, its territories and in the Philippines.
Founded in 1897 at the University of Maine, PKP awards $1.3 million each year to outstanding students and members through graduate fellowships, study abroad grants, member and chapter awards, and grants for local, national and international literacy initiatives.
Membership is by invitation only to the top 10 percent of seniors and graduate students and 7.5 percent of juniors. Faculty, professional staff and alumni who have achieved scholarly distinction also qualify. The honor organization draws members from all higher education academic disciplines, and the society’s mission is “to recognize and promote academic excellence in all fields of higher education and engage the community of scholars in service to others.”
For more information, visit www.phikappaphi.org.
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