History

The Zeta Chapter of Beta Alpha Psi was installed at the University of North Dakota on June 1, 1923. Local faculty member Jacob B. Taylor contacted Hiram Scovill at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) on November 13, 1922 to inquire about the process of chapter formation. Scovill was a contemporary colleague of a member of the Beta Alpha Psi executive committee.

Taylor's timing was favorable and just three days later he received a response from the Grand President. The only record available for the period between November 16 and the installation of the Zeta Chapter in Grand Forks the following June is a skeptical comment by Delta's F.W. Woodbridge that nearly every local accounting student would have to be inducted to obtain adequate size.

Taylor and twenty-one other men were initiated as the charter members of Zeta Chapter in a ceremony conducted by A. C. Littleton, who later joined Woodbridge and Taylor as national officers of Beta Alpha Psi. Taylor, as a member of the Grand Council six years later, was the guiding force in formation of the Omicron Chapter at Ohio State University. To this day he remains the only national president of Beta Alpha Psi to have been the catalyst in establishment of two local chapters.


The 22 charter members were:
Ener O. Anderson William Wittkoff Allan B. Hunt Palmer C. Bakken
Emerson C. Church Edward W. Brady Roy A. Janz Ernest J. Paulson
Lester S. Dichl Walter B. Burkman Iver H. Iverson Ezra T. Towne
Leon Ebenhahn Alfa E. Bye Andrew Simonson Jacob B. Taylor
Kaffon Hanson Dewey D. Fischer Thomas B. Wiper James W. Wilkerson
Arthur J. Houl     Mark E. Ferguson

Reference:
Sheldon, T. K. (1982). Beta Alpha Psi, from Alpha to Omega. New York & London: Grandland Publishing Inc.