The Rho Chi Society Alpha Lambda Chapter
Welcome to Rho Chi
Mission
The Rho Chi Society, Pharmacy’s academic honor society, encourages and recognizes excellence in intellectual achievement and fosters fellowship among its members. Further, the Society encourages high standards of conduct and character, and advocates critical inquiry in all aspects of pharmacy.
The Rho Chi Society will achieve universal recognition of its members as lifelong intellectual leaders in pharmacy. As a community of scholars, the Society will instill the desire to pursue intellectual excellence and critical inquiry to advance the profession.
Objectives
The fundamental objective of Rho Chi has always been to promote the advancement of the pharmaceutical sciences through the encouragement and recognition of sound scholarship. High standards of intellectual and scholarly attainments have been demanded for election to membership; and such election, symbolized by the award of the Rho Chi key, supplies a unique scholarship incentive.
Rho Chi seeks to promote scholarly fellowship in pharmacy by bringing professional students, graduate students, and faculty members together in fraternal and helpful association. Regular chapter meetings, and other activities, emphasize the professional aspects of pharmacy and point the way to instructive study and research. By such means, Rho Chi, like its sister honor societies, seeks to increase the awareness of the ethical and social responsibilities of the profession, and thereby, to enhance the prestige of the profession.
Insignia
The Greek letters, “Rho” and “Chi,” were originally selected because, placed in the relative position in which they are found on the Key, they are emblematic of the prescription sign. The colors attached to the seal of membership were chosen to indicate the royalty of purple and the loyalty of white. The eight sides of the Key, although they have had different meanings in the past, now represent chemistry, biology, physiology, pharmaceutics, pharmacology, and the biomedical, social/administrative, and clinical sciences.
History
The Rho Chi Society has its origin in the merger of two movements, both commencing in 1917, to create a national honor society for pharmacy. One had started on the campus of the University of Michigan where there had been a local honor society (known as the “Aristolochite Society") in existence at the Pharmaceutical Department since 1908. The other movement, originally independent of the Michigan movement, was initiated even earlier in 1917 by Rufus A. Lyman in his presidential address to the American Conference of Pharmaceutical Faculties. Under the stimulus of his suggestion, and the conscientious efforts of Professor Zada M. Cooper, it was decided to take advantage of the activity in progress at Michigan. The “Aristolochite Society” had in the meantime become the “Rho Chi Society,” and had been granted a charter by the State of Michigan on May 19, 1922. The Conference of Pharmaceutical Faculties, finding that the group met the standards which the Conference had determined upon, extended its recognition to Rho Chi, as “the Honor Society of Pharmacy.” Rho Chi, in turn, provided that chapters could be established only at colleges that were members of the Conference (now the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.) The UCSF Alpha Lambda Chapter was chartered in 1949, the 35th member of the Rho Chi Society.