Cal State San Bernardino’s Phi Beta Delta Gamma Lambda Chapter inducted 24 new members — faculty, staff, administrators and students — at its annual winter banquet, held on Feb. 1 at the university.

The banquet also included a talk by David Kaplan, professor of geography at Kent State University, on “Multiculturalism on the Ground: How Ethnic Diversity Operates at the Neighborhood Scale.”

Faculty, staff and administrators who were inducted are: Anneli Adams, Stephen C. Bronack, Michael Chen, Xin Chen, Guillermo Escalante, Yeon Kim, Younglee Kim and  Hyun-Kyoung Oh.

Students inducted were Ala Abedrabbo, Drew Allensworth, Ariana Cano, Bianca Castro, Jeong Eunbi, Tong Fen, Christopher Grable, Isela Iniguez Gonzalez, Thu Nguyen Ho, Jesse Leach, Yutong Liu, Gabriela Resendiz, Valerie Salazar, Yu-Tsan Shih, Jayme Ung and José Velasco.

Phi Beta Delta, founded at California State University, Long Beach in 1986, was established as an organization in 1987 with 38 chartered chapters, many of which had existed for a considerable time previously at the local level. It is the first honor society dedicated to recognizing scholarly achievement in international education. As of December 2012, 192 chapters have been chartered.

Its goals are to recognize scholarly achievement of international students and scholars who have studied abroad, and staff who are involved in international activities, according to the Phi Beta Delta website. It also serves as a vehicle for the development of academic-based international programming, as well as providing a network for faculty, staff and students involved in international endeavors.

Phi Beta Delta traces its background to the eighteenth-century founding of Phi Beta Kappa. In the nineteenth century, Greek fraternities divided into the social, professional, and academic Greeks. Phi Beta Delta is an academic and professional society, unique because it is resolutely interdisciplinary and international. Its formal organization brought together numerous pre-existing, internally oriented campus groups.

For more information on Phi Beta Delta, Gamma Lambda Chapter, call (909) 537-5913, or visit the Phi Beta Delta Honor Society website.