Rising senior Amitabha Shatdal is one of 20 students selected from more than 800 applicants nationwide to receive the Phi Beta Kappa Key into Public Service (KIPS) award.
The Phi Beta Kappa Society was founded in 1776 and is the nation’s most prestigious academic honor society. Members of the society are held to rigorous academic standards. However, membership is not required to win the scholarship.
Being a KIPS scholar comes with a $5,000 scholarship and an invitation to a conference in Washington D.C. in late June that teaches KIPS scholars more about “active citizenship” through training and mentoring programs.
This is the first time that a UW-Madison student has been awarded the honor of being a KIPS scholar.
Shatdal is majoring in computer sciences, economics and applied mathematics, engineering, and physics (AMEP). He plans on using his degrees to further his commitment to public service as influenced by Phi Beta Kappa. Before coming to UW-Madison, Shatdal knew that he wanted to pursue economics.
“Economists have a lot of power to ... make people’s lives better,” Shatdal says.
Being a fellow with Phi Beta Kappa played a large role in shaping Shatdal’s interest in public service. He was able to plan exciting social events for Phi Beta Kappa members, prospective members, and even some events where anyone at UW was invited to join. This experience with planning allowed him to listen to the goals and needs of others and accommodate them.
An event focused on AI and the classroom that Shatdal along with the other Phi Beta Kappa fellows and staff put together demonstrates the contributions that Phi Beta Kappa can make to our campus. This past spring, he contacted several professors from various disciplines across UW, bringing them together to discuss the omnipresent idea of AI at UW and beyond. Shatdal says that putting that event together and watching students engage with the panelists and ask relevant questions was gratifying.
Each winner of the KIPS scholarship is a student in the liberal arts who has demonstrated a keen interest in pursuing a career in public service, whether that be in local, state or federal government.
“Now is a critical time to highlight both the value of arts and sciences education and its application in public service careers to the benefit of the common good,” Phi Beta Kappa Secretary and CEO Frederick M. Lawrence remarks. “The Society applauds the Class of 2025 Service Scholars for their intellectual curiosity, interdisciplinary depth, leadership, and service to others.”
The most exciting thing about the KIPS scholarship to Shatdal is that he gets to fly out to Washington, D.C. and meet esteemed public servants as well as fellow KIPS scholarship winners from across the country.
Shatdal is excited to be working on the East Coast this summer as a software engineering intern. In the future, he hopes that his degree will give him the expertise necessary to shape policy that will help people across the country.
One policy he would like to see implemented is stronger public employment offices to make finding work easier for the jobseeker and finding workers easier for the employer; his Economics Senior Thesis centered around this issue.
He believes that universities can play an important role by minimally matching students with interviews, and beyond that, matching students with internships and other work opportunities. Ensuring students have opportunities to put their learning to work ought to be a responsibility that universities once again take up.
Shatdal believes that his fellowship with Phi Beta Kappa has given him many opportunities that helped him learn more about public service and citizenship.
“Phi Beta Kappa believes in [exploring the] overlap between fields at UW and beyond,” Shatdal says. “They encourage students to pursue liberal arts by sharing its history and giving us motivation to continuously learn and push the boundaries of what humanity knows.”