Welcome

Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society is a general scholarship honor society open to junior and senior men and women in all academic areas who meet the requirements of the society.

Our purpose is to promote high scholarship; to encourage sincere and zealous endeavor in all fields of knowledge and service; to cultivate a high order of personal living; and to develop an appreciation for scholarship and scholarly endeavor in others.

A message from our President.

Striving for Educational, Social and Political Consciousness and Clarity

I consider it a privilege to have been asked to address some of my thoughts to you present and future Alpha Kappa Mu honorees. It is an especial honor for me who was inducted into Alpha Kappa Mu in 1974 when I was a student at Morgan State University.  This induction made a deep imprint on my scholastic as well as my professional career at Kent State University.  Indeed, that impression was so deeply imprinted that I was forced, just seven years later, to join with my department chair in petitioning the university’s administration to join our request to establish an AKM chapter. In 1981 the Mu Mu chapter was installed at Kent State.. And not too long afterwards, additional chapters, following our lead were established at Ohio State and other predominantly white universities in Ohio. It is with this background that I offer the following words.

Ever since the Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society was founded in 1937, almost 75 years ago, African American educators have striven to support our member institutions’ efforts to imbue in students academic excellence.  Moreover, the attainment of excellence was to be combined with at least two other responsibilities that in recent years, it appears, have been lost or at least overlooked. This problem is a direct result of the Zeitgeist, the temper of the times that currently controls how we, young and old unfortunately respond to impulses that have altered our perspectives.

Beginning in the 1950s and throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, students demonstrated there was something more important than their pure exhibition of educational prowess. They came to realize that their education should do more than prepare them for a profession and enable them to acquire employment.  They had seen how others in their communities had struggled to get an education, prepare themselves for the professional world, and in spite of their success in college been shut out, been forced as it were to the “back of the bus.” It was these young people who decided to make use of their educational attainments, their ability to think for themselves, and to apply what they had learned in efforts to change the communities, the states, yes, even the homes they were preparing themselves to participate in. In short, they added other dimensions, other active aspects to the meaning of academic success.

Many years ago, in 1878, Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832 –1912) , an Americo-Liberian educator, scholar, diplomat, and linguist, warned the learning many of our students have received and are now receiving at HCBUs and predominantly white colleges and universities is certainly a matter for congratulations considering the odds we have faced to accomplish this achievement. But, as Blyden admonished then as we must do now, “we must not lose sight of the important fact to be gathered from the very etymology of the word education. . . .You do not educate . . . when you merely fill a man’s mind; but you do educate him when you lead out his powers. You do not educate a man when you merely tell him what he knew not; but you do educate him when you make him feel what he ought to feel; the one is mental, the other affective. The one teaches him to lean upon others, the other teaches him to ‘retire upon himself.’" It is this lesson I want to address in this message. For we have experienced, and, indeed, will continue to experience difficult times. Times more difficult than we have ever experienced; times that call for all our stored up energies -- physical, spiritual, and mental. The physical and spiritual energies I will leave for others to expand upon.

Our mental energies must now, before and after graduation, be given greater clarity. I know Alpha Kappa Muans have not been irresolute in pursuing their studies. And upon graduation, Lord willing, you will achieve your goal to become productive members of the American society. There are, however, some aspects of a “correct” education that must be universally strengthened throughout your progress through higher educational institutions in the United States. Here I am referring to the need to quicken your educational, social and political consciousness and uphold the principles as stipulated in our charge to membership:

     To continue your pursuit of knowledge
     To develop a trained intellect
     To strive to realize your fullest intellectual potential
     To provide leadership and service to others

As our nation forges ahead and we prepare for our 75th Anniversary as an organization, there is a need to recognize that we must be contributing citizens to help make this a better nation and reawaken and redirect young minds as we contribute to preserving the efficacy of the ideals and principles of Alpha Kappa Mu.

Dr. Francis E. Dorsey
National President, AKM

Associate Professor
Department of Pan-African Studies
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio

Latest AKM Newsletter

  Alpha Kappa Mu Newsletter Vol. 32, No.1 - March, 2012

Alpha Kappa Mu is a Member of the
Association of College Honor Societies