Pi Alpha Xi (PAX), the national honor society for horticulture and plant sciences, inducted 22 new members during an October 29, 2020 online ceremony. “We were scheduled to do our annual induction ceremony last spring when campus shut down,” says Mark Bridgen, Professor in the Horticulture Section and Pi Alpha Xi advisor. “Our group is too large to do an in-person ceremony. So we opted to go ahead with the virtual induction.”
Only the best students in the plant sciences are invited to join Pi Alpha Xi. The society was founded in 1923 at Cornell University and Cornell is the Alpha Chapter. Originally, it was the national honor society for floriculture, landscape horticulture and ornamental horticulture. In recent years it has expanded and now honors excellence in all aspects of horticulture and plant science.
Since its founding, PAX has grown to 39 chapters at baccalaureate-granting institutions. Its mission is to promote scholarship, fellowship, professional leadership, and the enrichment of human life through plants. PAX was very active at Cornell University for many years, peaking in the 1970s. But the chapter went dormant for several years until its revival in 2013. Now, the students hold activities such as offering sessions to build free mini-gardens during finals week, a cut flower sale during St. Valentine’s Day week, and field trips to the Philadelphia Flower Show, New York Botanical Garden, and other locations (as pandemic conditions allow).
The 2020 Alpha Chapter undergraduate inductees are: Isabelle Amlicke, Ren-Huang Paul Chong, Emily Courson, Ruby D’Aluisio Trabka, Danielle DelConte, Alice Gevorgyan, Shelby Haley, Jacob Herrup, Ileana Katzman, Erica Kirchhof, Lucas Kirshenbaum, Vanessa Lau, Eric Liu, Elliot Meyers, Lauren Owens, Catherine Spolarich, Ellie Wright, and Victoria Zeng. Four graduate students were also inducted: Nathan Eylands, Andrei Galic, Shanthanu Krishna Kumar, and Victor Zayas.