BYU students and faculty were honored Wednesday night at the annual Phi Kappa Phi (PKP) initiation ceremony.

The society, which was described by president Susanne Johnson Davis as the largest and oldest interdisciplinary honor society in the country, hosted the banquet to welcome its new inductees as well as honor a few of its outstanding current members.

Students Jeffery Swift and Christine Gardner were each recognized as winners of the PKP National Love of Learning Award. Davis said she is proud of the BYU chapter for producing two of only fifty Love of Learning award winners nationwide.

BYU student Benjamin Rawsthorne was also one of only 40 students in the nation to win the PKP National Award of Excellence.

Several faculty and former faculty members were also honored, including Mary Bee Jensen, the founder of BYU's International Folk Dance Ensemble.

Brent Webb, Associate Academic Vice President, spoke after the awards and initiation ceremony. He shared a list of statistics about incoming BYU freshman, including GPA and ACT scores, to illustrate that as the top 10 percent of their senior class, the BYU Phi Kappa Phi inductees were a very select group.

He said Harvard admits approximately 1,700 freshmen per year, and the top 1,700 of BYU's incoming freshman class is comparable every year.

"You are already an outstanding group," he said in closing. "Let me urge you to distinguish yourselves further through your good works."

Susan Easton Black, professor of church history, was the banquet's featured speaker. Her remarks were titled "Enjoy the Journey."

She said her focus as a professor of church history has been studying the lives of the people who joined the LDS church in its first year. Through her studies she has seen that true joy and blessings come from keeping covenants. Those blessings include the aura of confidence that comes from knowing who you are.

She related an experience she had with her husband when they took a cruise. She was told they would not be able to board the ship until the VIPs had boarded first. Her husband, whom she describes as a great example of knowing who he is, told her to tell the man they were VIPs because they were children of God.

"The God?" the man asked.

When they told him that's exactly what they meant, he allowed them to board. She encouraged all the members of Phi Kappa Phi to have the same confidence in themselves.

"You've got the brains, you've got the talent, you're at the top of your class," she said. "With that comes great responsibility."



Copyright Brigham Young University 12 Feb 2009