Academics
Past Events
We have hosted several events since the establishment of our chapter in August 2003. Event descriptions are listed below.
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Friday, April 11, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
Induction of our new Phi Beta Kappa class and lecture by Professor Donna Bozzone.
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Thursday, March 6, 2008, 4:00 p.m.
A lecture by Sandra Harding, University of California, Los Angeles, and the 2007-2008 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar
Sciences From Below: An Introduction to Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies
Sandra Harding is professor of education and women’s studies, and from 1996 to 2000 was director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. A philosopher of science, she taught at the University of Delaware, 1976-1996, prior to joining the faculty at UCLA. She co-edited the journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005 and is the author or editor of fifteen books and special journal issues. Among them are Science and Social Inequality; Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms and Epistemologies; Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?; The Science Question in Feminism; and Sciences from Below: Gender, Imperialism, and Modernity (forthcoming, spring 2008).
She has been a consultant to several United Nations organizations, including the Pan American Health Organization, UNESCO, the U.N. Development Fund for Women, and the U.N. Commission on Science and Technology for Development. She was a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Costa Rica, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the Asian Institute of Technology.
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March 30, 2007
Spring Induction for Seniors and Juniors
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March 6-7, 2006
Visit from Ronald L. Graham, University of California, San Diego,
and the 2005-2006 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar
Mathematics in the 21st Century: Problems and Prospects
During his two-day visit, Professor Graham delivered one public lecture and met with students in classes and seminars.
Ronald Graham spent thirty-seven years at Bell Labs as a researcher, leaving in 1999 as chief scientist. During that time he also held visiting positions at Princeton, Stanford, Caltech, and UCLA, and was a part-time University Professor at Rutgers. He currently holds the Irwin
and Joan Jacobs Chair of Computer and Information Science at California, San Diego. His research within the field of discrete mathematics includes Ramsey theory, the development of the theory of quasirandomness, as well as contributions to the number theory, approximation algorithms, and computational geometry.
Professor Graham has received numerous awards, including the Pólya Prize in Combinatorics, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Steele Prize for lifetime achievement, American Mathematical Society. Past president of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as of the AAAS.
Degrees: 
University of Chicago, 1951-54 (Ford Foundation Scholar)
B.S. University of Alaska
M.A. University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
The Visiting Scholar Program
The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program makes available each year twelve or more distinguished scholars who visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. They spend two days on each campus, meeting informally with students and faculty members, taking part in classroom discussions, and giving a public lecture open to the entire academic community. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students. Now entering its 50th year, the Visiting Scholar Program has sent 518 Scholars on some 4,500 two-day visits since the 1956-57 academic year.
Participating Visiting Scholars for 2007-2008 are: Michael J. B. Allen, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles; Roger S. Bagnall, Director, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University; Lori F. Damrosch, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization, Columbia University; Morris P. Fiorina, Wendt Family Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Alejandro García-Rivera, Professor of Systematic Theology, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley; Sandra Harding, Professor of Education and Women’s Studies, University of California, Los Angeles; Daniel Huttenlocher, Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science and Business, Cornell University; Lawrence M. Krauss, Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Case Western Reserve University; Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Harvard University; Saskia Sassen, Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University; James J. Sheehan, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University and 2007-2008 Phi Beta Kappa/Frank M. Updike Memorial Scholar; Pamela S. Soltis, Curator, Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics, Florida Museum of Natural History; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University.
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Friday April 15, 2005 (Family weekend)
Induction of our new PBK class and
Lecture by Dean John Kenney on “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life”
4:00 PM in McCarthy Recital Hall
Reception to follow afterwards in McCarthy Lobby
Abstract: Fifty years ago Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, a distinguished scholar of American history, published a celebrated and controversial essay by this title in the Catholic journal Thought. Fr. Ellis decried what he regarded as “the impoverishment of Catholic scholarship in this country.” And he insisted that Catholic colleges should “maintain a strong emphasis on the cultivation of intellectual excellence.”
Only two Catholic colleges had been admitted to Phi Beta Kappa by the year 1955 when Fr. Ellis wrote his essay. Now that Saint Michael’s has become the twentieth Catholic Phi Beta Kappa college, it is time to take stock of Fr. Ellis’ argument and to reassess the question of intellectual excellence and American Catholicism.
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Thursday February 3, 2005
Lecture by Gamma Chapter Vice President George Dameron on "A Hallowed Sense of Place: Buildings, History and the Virtuous Dead"
4:00 PM in the Hoehl Presentation Room
Abstract: Focusing on thirteenth and fourteenth century Florence as a case study, this presentation will explore a tradition of devotion to the dead that is rooted in a sense of place. More specifically, it will argue that attention to, veneration of, and concern for the souls of those Florentines who had died in the past helped shape and transform the city into one of the most prosperous and culturally creative centers of the world. Drawing on a wide variety of disciplines in the liberal arts ranging from mathematics and architecture to history and literature, this lecture will demonstrate how the commitment of Florentines to their ancestors and their saints helped them cope with dramatic change. In the devotion of twenty-first century Americans for the site of the former World Trade Center, we can see how this tradition of veneration for the virtuous dead continues to help the living cope with the difficult challenges of the present.
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Friday, April 16, 2004
Chapter Installation and First Induction Ceremony for Students
4:00 PM in McCarthy Recital Hall