Chartering a Chapter

Thank you for your interest in chartering an Alpha Chi chapter on your campus. To be eligible for consideration for a chapter of Alpha Chi, an institution must offer, at a minimum, the baccalaureate degree and must be a member in good standing of the regional accrediting association of the territory in which it is located. As of 2017, only petitions from not-for-profit institutions are being considered. By chartering a chapter of Alpha Chi, you’d join more than 300 institutions across the country in offering your students access to one of the nation’s most prestigious, student-centered honored societies.

Why Alpha Chi?

Keeping your best and brightest students challenged and engaged—both in the classroom and in the wider scholarly community—is the greatest challenge facing faculty mentors and honors directors. We can help. Alpha Chi is more than just another honors organization. We are distinctive in the value we offer your students, faculty, and campus communities. Here are just a few things our chapter advisors say they most appreciate about Alpha Chi.

Alpha Chi gives your most gifted students a place to thrive. Are we doing enough to engage and challenge our best and brightest students? An Alpha Chi chapter helps to fuel a robust intellectual life both inside and outside the classroom, offering high-achieving students opportunities to engage with a community of peers on campus and across the country.

Invigorates your campus’ intellectual life. Our chapters celebrate and cultivate the life of the scholar. Chapters often sponsor lectures, forums, debates, workshops, and publication opportunities—events that cultivate the scholarly community and benefit both members and non-members alike.

Offers leadership and service opportunities. Alpha Chi offers our students resume-building opportunities, most directly in leadership roles in an active chapter. Project planning, public speaking, organizational development, and effective fundraising are all valuable skills fostered in healthy chapters. Each year, many students explore local, regional, and national leadership experiences, a transformative opportunity.

Works hand in hand with your Honors community. The highest-achieving students need extra fuel for their minds. Alpha Chi chapters encourage scholarly and civic programming to help bolster an honors climate across campus. This includes our three-day annual National Convention, an opportunity for students to prepare and present original scholarly and creative work, often for the first time. In addition, members may apply annually for Chapter Activity Grant for student-organized activities aligning with Alpha Chi's tenets of Truth and Character and its mission of making scholarship effective for good.

Fosters collaboration among your best and brightest. Invariably, institutions tend to form silos—freestanding colleges, departments, and divisions—with little interchange. Alpha Chi breaks down those walls. Multidisciplinary in membership, Alpha Chi facilitates interaction and friendships among your most high-achieving students. We even host an annual competition that brings together a team of Alpha Chi members across the disciplines to create and conduct a research project designed to solve a real-world problem.

Offers a rich source for scholarships and financial awards. Alpha Chi offers a number of grants, scholarships, fellowships, awards, and convention attendance stipends to support undergraduate and graduate scholarship. For institutions without robust endowments to fund new scholarships and grants for upperclassmen and graduate students, these scholarship sources offer excellent incentive for top-performing students.

To learn more and to review the chapter petition process:  Alpha Chi Chapters—Effective for Good