PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS AT 1999 TRIENNIAL CONVENTION.

• Position: Pi Gamma Mu, International Honor Society in Social Science - Transcript

We live on a moving line between past and present.(1) Tonight Pi Gamma Mu stands at a crossroads on its own lifeline. We can gaze back 75 years to our beginning, we can examine our present state and we can anticipate the future. Our gaze into the past reminds us that Pi Gamma Mu was founded, in 1924, by Dean Leroy Allen from Southwestern College in Kansas and Dean William A. Hamilton of the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Seventeen founding chapters were organized simultaneously. The Society was incorporated as a non-profit corporation under the name "The National Social Science Honor Society, Pi Gamma Mu, Inc." on April 5, 1929. To acknowledge its chapters outside the U.S., the Board of Trustees took action in 1980 to change the name of the Society to Pi Gamma Mu, International Honor Society in Social Science. The official journal, Social Science, was established in 1925. In 1982, the name of the journal was changed to International Social Science Review.

While dates and titles are significant, they do not explain our 75 years of continued growth and enhanced stature. To explain these we must look to the human factor. We recall presidential names such as Allen, Patterson, James, Miller and, more recently Bailey, Johnston and Menard. We remember the many trustees who through the years gave, and continue to give, of their time to direct the Society. We praise our past Executive Directors, Urquhart and Gray, for keeping order on the home front. And we cite Bardis and others for making our journal a quality publication. Particularly tonight, we salute the sponsors who, through the years, have formed chapters and kept them going-often through sacrificial giving of their own limited time and means. Finally, without leadership, an organization does not function; without members, it cannot exist. We are here today because of the 200,000 plus students who recognized the value of honor society membership.

While it is tempting to linger in our illustrious past, it is equally important that we examine the present and, in so doing, fulfill the constitutional mandate that a president provide a report of the previous triennial period. Three years ago in a campaign position statement, I suggested that our Society needed a period of peace and quiet-a time to complete the transitions in the central office staff and an opportunity to move constructively into the electronic age with its many demands. Fortunately, this has been possible. When I...