Alpha Kappa Delta International Honor Society
In 1920, University of Southern California sociologist Dr. Emory S. Bogardus founded Alpha Kappa Delta for the purposes of stimulating scholarship and promoting the scientific study of society. Bogardus’ impetus in establishing this organization was to provide a forum for student and faculty interchange. His endeavor paved the way for what has become an international organization dedicated to promoting, facilitating, and recognizing academic scholarship. Alpha Kappa Delta is an integral part of many Sociology programs and is proud to acknowledge that in the past 100 years, over 130,000 scholars have been initiated into the Society across more than 680 chapters. The PI Chapter of Alpha Kappa Delta was established on March 12, 2000, at the University of Indianapolis.
The purpose of the honor society is to promote scholarship, but the focus has always been on fellowship for students, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Conferring a charter signifies that the institution meets high standards of program quality and scholarship. Individual students must also meet high standards. To become a member of AKD, a student:
- Must be an officially declared sociology major, minor, or graduate student, or demonstrate a serious interest in sociology within an official program at UIndy.
- Must be at least a junior (third year) by the standards of UIndy.
- Must have an overall GPA of 3.3 and/or rank in the top 35% of their class in general scholarship.
- Must have maintained the equivalent of a 3.0 GPA in sociology courses taken at UIndy prior to initiation.
- Must have completed at least four regular courses in sociology (12 hours) prior to initiation (exclusive of extension or courses graded pass/fail).
- Graduate students need to complete at least one-half year of course work in sociology while maintaining at least a 3.3 GPA.