Pi Gamma Mu

• 1. Introduction

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  Pi Gamma Mu, written ΠΓΜ in Greek letters, is an international honor society for students of the social sciences. By 2012 it counted 148 active chapters and 4,221 active members. Its roll of total initiates had reached 246,901. Those figures raise a handful of questions. Who started the society, and what do its three Greek letters actually stand for? How did it spread beyond the campuses where it began? What does a student have to achieve to be elected? And which famous names ended up on its membership rolls?

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• 2. Two Deans

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  On the 1st of December 1924, two college deans established Pi Gamma Mu. Leroy Allen was dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. William Angus Hamilton was dean of both the Law School and the School of Business Administration at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Together they wanted a single honor society that would bring together anthropology, economics, history, international relations, political science, and sociology.

  The two men brought different strengths. Allen was remembered as a creative visionary. Hamilton was a highly respected leader, described as "an authority on fraternal organizations and a leader in fraternal circles." That experience mattered, because the work moved quickly.

  By November 1924, the founding members led by the two deans had drafted a constitution. They had also issued charters to the first seventeen chapters, most of them at private liberal arts colleges and universities. The next year, the first issue of the society's journal went out to members under the title Social Science, with the subtitle "For the scientific study of social problems."

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• 3. Early Leadership

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  Leroy Allen served as the society's first national president from 1924 to 1931. When Hamilton died in 1929, much of the groundwork for the young society fell to Allen. In that same year, Pi Gamma Mu was formally incorporated as a non-profit organization in the state of Colorado, under the name The National Social Science Honor Society, Pi Gamma Mu, Inc. After his presidency, Allen stayed on as national secretary from 1931 to 1947.

  Grace Raymond Hebard, one of the founders, was elected the first national vice-president and held the post from 1924 to 1931. At a time when few women held leadership positions anywhere, the society gave her that role.

  The next presidents came from several disciplines. Charles A. Ellwood, a sociologist at Duke University and a co-founder, led the society from 1931 to 1937. S. Howard Patterson, a microeconomist and professor of economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, served from 1937 to 1951. Political scientist Wilson Leon Godshall of Lehigh University then took over in 1951 and held the office until he died in 1956. Godshall is credited with the initiative under which the founding of foreign chapters was authorized.

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• 4. Crossing Borders

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  Columbia University in New York City chartered a chapter in 1925, making it the first large university to join the society. The late 1920s and 1930s became a period of heightened growth for Pi Gamma Mu. The University of Hawaii chapter was the first organized outside the continental United States.

  In 1932, the first foreign chapter was chartered at the University of Toronto in Canada. Later that same year, a chapter was installed at the University of the Philippines. In 1955, Pi Gamma Mu chartered a chapter at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico.

  Outside recognition followed. The society affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1947. In 1953 it became a member of the Association of College Honor Societies. To acknowledge its chapters abroad, the board of trustees changed the society's name in 1980 to Pi Gamma Mu, International Honor Society in Social Sciences. Two years later, the journal became the International Social Science Review. Today the society has active chapters at over 92 colleges and universities.

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• 5. Letters and Symbols

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  The three Greek words Politixes Gnōseōs Mathetai, or Πολιτικές Γνώσεως Μάθεται, give the society its name. Their initials spell Pi Gamma Mu, and the phrase describes the study of political and social science. The word Politixes, meaning political science or phenomena, covered economics, which was then commonly called political economy.

  The present motto is Cognoscetis veritatem et veritas vos liberabit, an epigram of the Master Teacher. It is translated as "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." New members traditionally hear it recited at their initiation. The original motto was "Let there be light."

  Initiation and installation rituals also include the declaration of seven ideals, or pillars. They are Scholarship, Science, Social Science, Social Idealism, Sociability, Social Service, and Sacrifice.

  The society's gold key carries a wreath, which suggests that social science grows out of natural science and fulfills it. A running figure recalls the ancient Greek torch race. It stands for humanity bringing knowledge to the solution of its own problems and passing the light from generation to generation. The letters ΠΓΜ and the year 1924 are engraved on the key.

  Royal blue and white are the society's colors, representing truth and light. The same colors appear in the candles used at initiations and in the honor cords or stoles worn at graduation. Its flower is the cineraria. The blue flag shows a man and a woman holding the torch of knowledge together inside the gold key and a wreath.

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• 6. Who Can Join

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  A 3.0 grade point average is one of the requirements for joining Pi Gamma Mu. Membership comes only through election by a college-based or university-based chapter. A junior, senior, or graduate student may be invited, or may petition, once ranked in the upper 35 percent of the class. The candidate also needs at least twenty semester hours in social science courses. Faculty and administrators may join collegiate chapters too.

  The society's constitution defines the social sciences broadly. The list covers history, political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, international relations, criminal justice, social work, social philosophy, history of education, and human geography.

  Membership also reaches interdisciplinary fields that build on those core subjects. Examples include business administration, education, cultural and area studies, public administration, and organizational behavior. Those rules produced a membership list that runs from presidents and Nobel laureates to a professional football player.

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• 7. Notable Members

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  Former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson is among the society's prominent members. So is Lester B. Pearson, the former Canadian prime minister who won the Nobel Prize in 1956. Philippine presidents José P. Laurel and Ferdinand Marcos also belong, as does Ricardo Joaquín Alfaro Jované, the former Panama president who negotiated the Panama Canal Treaty.

  Scholars appear throughout the rolls. Margaret Mead was a leading anthropologist. Pitirim Sorokin founded the sociology department at Harvard University and served as the society's national vice-president from 1937 to 1941. Edward A. Ross was a major figure in early criminology. Ernst Philip Boas was a cardiologist who invented the cardiotachometer and was an original proponent of national health insurance. Jane Addams, a pioneer community worker, won the Nobel Prize in 1931.

  Charles P. Kindleberger of MIT was an architect of the Marshall Plan. Simon Kuznets won the Economics Nobel Prize in 1971, and historian Roy Franklin Nichols won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949. Public figures include U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, and FCC commissioner Michael Copps. Philippine senators Edgardo Angara, Miriam Defensor Santiago, and Juan Ponce Enrile are members as well. So are North Carolina Supreme Court senior justice Mark Martin, former Attorney General William French Smith, and David M. Kennedy, who served as Treasury Secretary and Ambassador to NATO. Football player Lem Burnham is on the list too.

  William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr., later U.S. Transportation Secretary, was inducted into the University of Pennsylvania chapter in 1941. He wrote the legal brief that won the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public education.

  U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, the polar explorer, served as honorary national president from 1931 to 1935. In 1928, Byrd carried the society's flag on a historic expedition to the Antarctic.

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• 8. Work and Governance

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  A scholarship program for members began in 1951. Each year it provides five scholarships with stipends of $2,000 or $1,000, plus six more of $1,000 each. They help with the costs of the first or second year of graduate study. A Guest Lectureship Program also gives chapters funds to cover the honoraria of visiting lecturers. The society holds international conventions and regional meetings, and it first published the Pi Gamma Mu Newsletter in 1978. Its journal, the International Social Science Review, is juried and indexed and covers the social sciences across disciplines.

  The constitution calls for a convention every three years, and each chapter may send a delegation. The convention holds the supreme authority of the society. Delegates elect two student representatives to the board of trustees, which exercises administrative power between conventions. The executive director sits on the board ex officio and oversees day-to-day operations.

  The international headquarters have always been in Winfield, Kansas, the same town where Leroy Allen taught. Today they occupy the Carnegie Building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings.

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