Excelsior College Launches Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship Program

Excelsior College Launches Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship Program

Albany, New York (March 5, 2013) – Excelsior College today announced a new scholarship program for Phi Theta Kappa members transferring from a college academic partner.

Two scholarships will be awarded annually under the new program. A regional scholarship will be awarded to an enrolling student residing within New York State, and a second to a national recipient residing outside state boundaries.

Each recipient will be awarded $1,000, which may be applied to Excelsior College tuition and fees only. This scholarship is in addition to our preferential partnership pricing.

“This scholarship provides another unique opportunity to our community college transfer students,” said Lisa LaVigna, executive director for Outreach and Access at Excelsior College. “We recognize the outstanding academic achievement of Phi Theta Kappa students, and we want to acknowledge and reward them for their commitment to their education. Phi Theta Kappa is widely known and respected. By partnering with them, we are able to increase educational opportunities for students transferring from our community college partner institutions.”

Established in 1918, the mission of Phi Theta Kappa is to recognize and encourage scholarship among two-year college students.

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Excelsior College Launches Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship Program

Excelsior College Launches Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship Program

Albany, New York (March 5, 2013) – Excelsior College today announced a new scholarship program for Phi Theta Kappa members transferring from a college academic partner.

Two scholarships will be awarded annually under the new program. A regional scholarship will be awarded to an enrolling student residing within New York State, and a second to a national recipient residing outside state boundaries.

Each recipient will be awarded $1,000, which may be applied to Excelsior College tuition and fees only. This scholarship is in addition to our preferential partnership pricing.

“This scholarship provides another unique opportunity to our community college transfer students,” said Lisa LaVigna, executive director for Outreach and Access at Excelsior College. “We recognize the outstanding academic achievement of Phi Theta Kappa students, and we want to acknowledge and reward them for their commitment to their education. Phi Theta Kappa is widely known and respected. By partnering with them, we are able to increase educational opportunities for students transferring from our community college partner institutions.”

Established in 1918, the mission of Phi Theta Kappa is to recognize and encourage scholarship among two-year college students.

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Fairfield University Professor Paul Lakeland, an internationally recognized Catholic theologian, to be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa

Fairfield University's Zeta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest academic honor society, is pleased to announce that the 2013 honorary inductee will be Paul Lakeland, Ph.D., the Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies and founding director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield. A Trumbull, Conn., resident, he is an internationally recognized Catholic theologian, whose scholarly work on the nature of the Roman Catholic Church continues to generate study and debate among the major scholars in his field. Dr. Lakeland, who called the honor "one of the high points of my academic career," will be formally inducted at the chapter's April 20, 2013 ceremony.

Aaron Perkus, Ph.D., associate dean for Fairfield's College of Arts and Sciences and interim president of the Zeta Chapter, said, "An invitation to membership in Phi Beta Kappa is a reflection of outstanding achievement. Dr. Lakeland was the obvious and unanimous choice to receive our honorary membership. Since PBK is only offered through American colleges and universities, the London and Oxford educated Dr. Lakeland never had the opportunity early in his prestigious career. However, in our opinion, through his vast and exceptional scholarly achievements, he is the perfect exemplar of the PBK motto: 'Love of learning is the guide of life.' "

In 2004, Dr. Lakeland was named the inaugural Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies and founding director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the Jesuit institution. He has taught at Fairfield since 1981, serving as chair of the Department of Religious Studies for ten years and six years as director of the Honors Program. He teaches courses in liberation theology, Catholic ecclesiology and religion and literature.

Currently completing a book to appear in October on Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, to be called "A Council That Will Never End: Lumen Gentium and the Church Today," Dr. Lakeland is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the American Theological Society, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Workgroup for Constructive Theology, a Nashville-based ecumenical association of systematic and constructive theologians.

Among his more recent books are "The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of An Accountable Church" (2003), which won the Catholic Press Association Award for the best book in theology in 2004; "Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church" (2008); "Church: Living Communion" (2009), and "Yves Congar: Essential Writings" (2010). He writes on literature and modern culture for the Commonweal magazine blog, "Verdicts."

He holds a Licentiate in Philosophy from Heythrop Pontifical Athenaeum, an M.A. in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, a Bachelor of Divinity Degree from the University of London, and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, where he wrote a dissertation on the later religious and political writings of G.W.F. Hegel, later published as "The Politics of Salvation: Hegel's Idea of the State." He is the author of eight books and dozens of articles, and editor or co-editor of two others.

Among his honors are the 1990 Fairfield University AHANA Students Professor of the Year Award, Fairfield University's 2004-5 Teacher of the Year Award, and the 2010 Alan Richardson Fellowship at Durham University in the United Kingdom. He and his pianist wife, Beth Palmer, are parents of a son, also a professional pianist.

Media Contact: Meg McCaffrey, (203) 254-4000, ext. 2726, mmccaffrey@fairfield.edu

Posted on March 08, 2013

Vol. 45, No. 216

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Phi Beta Kappa sponsors visit by historian and essayist

Jill Lepore, a professor at Harvard University and staff writer for The New Yorker, will give a public lecture at Elon March 7.

Lepore will speak on “The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death” at 4:15 p.m. in Whitley Auditorium.

As a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, Lepore will attend several classes and meet with professors during her two-day stay at Elon March 7 and 8.

Lepore’s visit is sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program, which selects top scholars in the liberal arts and sciences to travel to universities and colleges where Phi Beta Kappa Chapters are located. Visiting scholars spend two days on each campus and give one major address open to the entire academic community. Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program has been offering undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars and enriching the intellectual life on campuses across the country.

In her lecture, Lepore will examine how recent debates about life and death before the cradle to beyond the grave have influenced the course of U.S. politics. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life – from board games to breast pumps – Lepore argues that the era of discovery, Darwin and the Space Age turns ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Lepore is a David Woods Kemper Professor of American History at Harvard and also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The American Scholar and many scholarly journals. She has written about issues such as gun control, military spending and religion in public life. She received the Bancroft Prize in American History for her first book, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. Her book, New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Lepore co-wrote with Jane Kamensky a novel, Blindspot, and probed the uses and misuse of history in politics with The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History. Her latest work, The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death and The Story of America: Essays on Origins were published in 2012. Her next book, a landmark biography of Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane Franklin Mecom, is expected to be released in September.

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by Roselee Papandrea Taylor, Staff Last Updated - 3/4/2013

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