Honor
Communication Honor Society Inducts Charter Members
The first members of the newest honor society for communication students have been inducted at Buffalo State. The Rho Psi chapter of Lamba Pi Eta is the newest of more than 400 chapters of this student organization associated with the National Communication Association.
Tom Dolan, a reporter with The Buffalo News, was the keynote speaker at the charter ceremony held Oct. 28, 2005. About 100 persons participated, including 30 of the new members, their family and friends, and department faculty.
Assistant Professor Joe Marren led the ceremony, assisted by Assistant Professor Janet Kaye and Professor and Chair Ron Smith. The ceremony was coordinated by the department's faculty committee on Advisement and Retention, which handle student issues.
The induction ceremony included the lighting of three candles. The candles symbolized the hallmarks of Lambda Pi Eta, based on what Aristotle described in Rhetoric as the three ingredients of effective public discourse and persuasive communication:
- Logos (symbolized by the Greek letter lambda) focusing on rational or head-directed messages.
- Pathos (symbolized by pi) related to emotional or heart-directed presentation of information.
- Ethos (symbolized by eta) represents the credibility and ethics of the message source.
The charter members will meet to identify a direction for the honor society, establish service projects, and elect student leaders. Associate Professor Kerran Sanger will serve as faculty moderator for the group.
Eligibility requirements are high: an overall GPA of 3.0 with at least 60 credit hours, and a major GPA of 3.25 with at least 12 Communication credits completed. The new members represent less than 26 percent of juniors and seniors in the Buffalo State Communication Department.
(Fall 2005)