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The Phi Beta Kappa Key bears, on the obverse, the Greek letters, Phi Beta Kappa, the initials of the words Philosophia Biou Kubernetes, meaning ``The love of wisdom is the helmsman of life.'' In the upper left corner, three stars symbolize the aims of the society; Friendship, Morality and Literature. A pointing hand symbolizes aspiration. On the reverse, the letters S P represent the second name of the society, Societas Philosophiae, the society of the love of knowledge. Below them is the historic date of the society's founding, December 5, 1776.

Chapter Activities

Election of new members

Each Fall and Spring term, the Chapter reviews the transcripts of hundreds of students whose overall GPA is in the top 15% or so of their class. The distribution and diversity of coursework within and outside of their major discipline is evaluated, and those with sufficient “spread” of coursework in the liberal arts and sciences are invited to become members of the Society. The specific criteria and the evaluation process can be found under The Selection Process: Qualifying for PBK. Somewhere between half and two-thirds of students with qualifying GPA’s have sufficient spread to earn invitations, so an outstanding GPA is only part of the selection process. The chapter has been averaging about 200 invitations per term. For more information on selection procedure, please click here.  For a list of the most recently elected members, please click here.

Creative Achievement Awards

Each Spring at the initiation ceremony, one undergraduate student is honored for work in a creative field, with an award and scholarship. Disciplines that have been recognized in recent years include musical compositions, sculpture and painting, poetry, photography, and drama.

Visiting Scholar Program

The National Society each year sponsors a Visiting Scholars Program. More than a dozen outstanding scholars, in areas ranging across the liberal arts and sciences, visit over 100 colleges and universities, spending two days at each one, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions, and giving a public lecture open to the entire academic community. The visits are designed primarily for undergraduate participation. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students. More than 4,347 visits have been made by 518 Visiting Scholars who have taken part in the program during the past 49 years. The UF Chapter has succeeded in hosting a Visiting Scholar almost every year.

Spring 2007 Visiting Scholar

Eric Heller, Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Harvard University, will be visiting UF on January 29-30, 2007.  Prof. Hiller has been a member of the physics faculty at Harvard since 1993 and, during 1993-1998, was director of the Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.  Since 1998 he has also been a member of the chemistry faculty.  He previously taught at UCLA and the University of Washington, and was a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the AAAS, and the American Physical Society, he is the recipient of the 2005 American Chemical Society Award in Theoretical Chemistry.  Professor Heller’s current research involves theoretical investigation of wave behavior, chaos and quantum mechanics, and collision theory.  He is also interested in science based art as a way to convey insights about complex subject matter.

UF Phi Beta Kappa Lecture Series

In addition to the Visiting Scholar Program, the UF Chapter has sponsored occasional public talks by outstanding local scholars. For upcoming talks, visit our lecture series page. 

• A few years ago, Bertram Wyatt-Brown of the History Department presented a lecture on the life and writing of Walker Percy, drawing from his book, House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family (1994). Professor Wyatt-Brown is Richard J. Milbauer Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Florida. His books include The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War and Hearts of Darkness: Wellsprings of a Southern Literary Tradition. He served as President of the St. George Tucker Society, the Society for Historians of the Early Republic, and the Southern Historical Association.
• In February 2006, Frederick Gregory, also of the History Department,  presented a public lecture entitled, The Intriguing Story of Neptune's Discovery.  Frederick Gregory is professor of history of science at the University of Florida. He is a past chair of Florida's Department of History and a past president of the History of Science Society of North America. A specialist in the history of science and religion, his writings focus on the post-Newtonian era.
• In March, 2007, Dr. Stephanie Evans presented a public lecture entitled, African American Women and Greek Culture: Black Women in Classics, Honor Societies, and Sororities.  Dr. Evans is an assistant professor in African American Studies and The Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research. She is author of the recently published book, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual History (University of Florida Press, 2007). Dr. Evans received her Ph.D. in African American Studies with a concentration in history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interest is Black women’s intellectual and educational history.

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