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Mission

Founded in 1921, Sigma Pi Sigma is a member honor society of the Association of College Honor Societies. Our society has some 75,000 historical members. Election to Sigma Pi Sigma is a lifetime membership.

The Society of Physics Students (SPS) was formed in 1968 with the union of Sigma Pi Sigma and the AIP Student Sections. Today Sigma Pi Sigma is housed within the SPS.

Sigma Pi Sigma exists to honor outstanding scholarship in physics; to encourage interest in physics among students at all levels; to promote an attitude of service of its members towards their fellow students, colleagues, and the public; to provide a fellowship of persons who have excelled in physics. Sigma Pi Sigma’s mission is not completed in the induction ceremony with the recognition of academic accomplishment. In the four dimensions of Honor, Encouragement, Service, and Fellowship, the mission of Sigma Pi Sigma takes a longer view.

Honor
Sigma Pi Sigma is the Physics Honor Society. Through election to Sigma Pi Sigma, distinctive achievement and high scholarship in physics are recognized and celebrated.

Encouragement
By honoring high achievement in physics and upholding high standards for election into Sigma Pi Sigma, the Society provides an incentive for all physics students to rise to excellence. Sigma Pi Sigma is a source of encouragement to all students who study physics, whatever the ultimate level of performance achieved by the individual. Such encouragement ranges from promoting physics interest and science literacy in the general public, to challenging those who are pondering their potential for earning higher degrees. Sigma Pi Sigma urges its members to demonstrate this encouragement through personal service.

Service
With the recognition of accomplishment comes a responsibility to service at all levels. Nationally, Sigma Pi Sigma members can serve by helping to work for sound national science policies. Locally, Sigma Pi Sigma members can serve in community science education projects and liaisons, and in mentoring individual students. Such personal initiative provides opportunities for all members of the local community to learn more about physics, and provides visible testimony to the high standards of Sigma Pi Sigma membership. Our colleges, universities, and our Society know that when we become alumni, because we respect the personal struggle for excellence, we will support the generations of students that follow us. When the experience of Sigma Pi Sigma members is placed at the service of others at any level, then Sigma Pi Sigma touches more lives than may be counted by the number of its members.

Service towards others is an offering of fellowship. This is another mission that our honor society fulfills through its members.

Fellowship
The criterion of Sigma Pi Sigma membership is proven excellence in physics. There are no generational boundaries. The first members were inducted in 1921 and new members are added every year. Sigma Pi Sigma members represent many generations of experience and wisdom that can be focused on the matters that unite us.

In Sigma Pi Sigma there are no professional boundaries. One finds all professions represented in the Sigma Pi Sigma membership. There are many practicing physicists among Sigma Pi Sigma members, but excellence in physics has opened many career options to our members. Through their lives, physics has enriched the world beyond the narrow scope of the physics community. Sigma Pi Sigma reaches beyond specific disciplines, uniting a diverse group of exceptional people who have shared in the culture and traditions of physics. With the common thread of this shared background in physics running through so rich a diversity of generations and professions, Sigma Pi Sigma promotes a spirit of community among its members and encourages them to offer their collective wisdom and perspectives in the service of the larger society.