Pi Kappa Phi is an all-male groups focused on leadership and brotherhood.
Pi Kappa Phi is a national fraternity with chapters in colleges and universities across the nation. The mission of Pi Kappa Phi is short, simple and bold: "We will lead." The leadership quality is one main focus of the fraternity's efforts, as well as maintaining exemplary characteristics in academics, athletics, the community and campus politics.
Founding Members
College of Charleston students Andrew Alexander Kroeg Jr., Lawrence Harry Mixson and James Fogarty were the founding members of the now-national fraternity Pi Kappa Phi. In December 1904, the fraternity was born with an attempt to share the trio's ideas in a "non-fraternity" with the college's literary society. Later, finding through the literacy society elections that a "non-fraternity" was not effective, the then-group of 15 developed what is Pi Kappa Phi.
Bergstrom Leadership Center
The Pi Kappa Phi headquarters, originally located in Charleston, South Carolina, had many locations including Richmond, Virginia, Sumter, South Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina. A large fundraising effort helped to erect a $1.5-million dollar headquarter facility in Charlotte called the Kelley A. Bergstrom Leadership Center. The headquarters doubles as a museum that displays the "90 Broad Street" home of Simon Fogarty, where the three College of Charleston students founded Pi Kappa Phi. The facility also contains a education and seminar room which doubles as a Pi Kappa Phi event center.
Values and Programs
The fraternity of Pi Kappa Phi was founded on leadership and friendship, and those values have not changed. Pi Kappa Phi works diligently to enhance the leadership potential of its members through education and the integration of a fraternity-developed service organization: Push America. Push America is an organization founded in 1976 by fraternity members to provide leadership opportunities, educate, and inform others to encourage an understanding of those with developmental disabilities.
Notable Members in History
U.S. Congressmen Howard Coble and Phillip Crane, as well as Henry H. Fowler who was the Secretary to the Treasurer, are a few of the Pi Kappa Phi members who made significant contributions to politics. St. Louis Cardinals' outfielder Jim Edmonds and head football coach at the University of Georgia, Wally Butts, are also Pi Kappa Phi brothers. Other reputable members in Pi Kappa Phi history include journalist Rich Eisen, Pulitzer prize winner Malcolm Johnson and author Bob Inman.
Tags: Bergstrom Leadership, Bergstrom Leadership Center, Charleston students, College Charleston, College Charleston students, fraternity Kappa, Leadership Center