MONMOUTH, Ill. — Four students at Monmouth College were recently inducted into the newly-established Nu Lambda chapter of Pi Delta Phi, the national French honor society.

The new initiates are: Emily Bouchard, a junior from LaGrange Park; Christine Del Re, a junior from Cary; Katherine Neilson, a junior from Wellington, Colo.; and Anne Suda, a senior at Monmouth High School and special student at MC.

The ceremony, held at the college’s Boone House, doubled as an installation ceremony for the chapter. Also in attendance were MC’s Heather Brady, visiting assistant professor of modern foreign languages and the president of Nu Lambda, and Scott Fish, a member of the modern foreign languages department at Augustana College and vice president of the North Central region of Pi Delta Phi.

Members are selected from a group of students who have taken at least one upper-division French course at Monmouth College and who have maintained a 3.0 average or better in French. At the ceremony, each initiate recited a literary passage, and the initiates were also pinned.

Founded as a departmental honor society at the University of California-Berkeley in 1906, Pi Delta Phi declared itself the national French honor society in 1925. It now has more than 275 chapters, including two in France.

The purpose of Pi Delta Phi is to recognize outstanding scholarship in the French language and its literatures; to increase the knowledge and appreciation of Americans for the cultural contributions of the French-speaking world; and to stimulate and encourage French and francophone cultural activities.