An adjustment in the admission requirements to Phi Beta Kappa, the national collegiate academic honor society, will require students to complete a minimum of one mathematics course and demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language, first taking effect with the Class of 2015.

Brandeis' own foreign language requirement satisfies the latter guideline, but there is a much more narrow scope of math courses that will qualify a student for Phi Beta Kappa consideration.

The new selection criteria was adopted this summer, according to the president of Brandeis' chapter of Phi Beta Kappa Prof. Kathryn Graddy (ECON). It specifies that, in order to be eligible, students must take "at least one course in college-level mathematics, logic, or statistics, with content appropriate to a liberal arts and sciences curriculum" and complete an "intermediate college level in a second, or non-native, language, or its equivalent."

"It was sort of interesting that Phi Beta Kappa did this," said Graddy in an interview with the Justice. "They felt foreign language was really important, and they wanted to support university departments of foreign languages, that is one of the reasons."

According to the Phi Beta Kappa page on Brandeis' website, a limited selection of courses from the Biology, Economics, Computer Science, Linguistics, Math, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Physics and Psychology departments may be taken to fulfill the Phi Beta Kappa math requirement.

All courses from the Math department count toward eligibility, including credit for Calculus AB or BC but excluding MATH 1a, MATH 3a and MATH 5a. Many popular introductory courses such as ECON 2a do not count.

"The wording is really quite strict" in the stipulation for the math courses, said Graddy. She added that she had reached out to the faculty to make sure to include all courses that may satisfy the newly implemented requirement.

"That is going to affect students, because ... it's not the same as the quantitative reasoning requirement," she said.

Of 77 new members elected into the honor society last year, Graddy proposed that between five and 20 students would not meet the new math requirement.