UPE Honours Society DePaul Chapter’s Initiation ceremony 2025
-xoTani
To be invited, undergraduates need to have a GPA of at least 3.5, and the invitation email will be sent to students only once throughout the student’s time at DePaul University.
In the previous year, they have set up incredible events such as Women in Tech Social, a Research Symposium, Data Visualisation workshop and more! As a result of the chapter’s hard work, the DePaul Chapter won this year’s best chapter award over 300 other chapters established internationally.
Knowing about the Chapters’ and the Honour Society’s impressive legacy and history allowed me to understand the depth of the honour it was to have been accepted into the chapter. With enthusiasm, I was ready for the initiation ceremony, which took place in DePaul LPC’s Church.
To begin the event, we heard brilliant and motivating speeches by Dr. Ljubomir Perkovic (Director of the School of Cinematic Arts), Dr. Daniela Raicu and Marija Stojanoska (President of UPE’s DePaul Chapter). This followed by all the 2025 initiates being recognised. We took the oath to help us understand the purpose and end goal of joining this society, and even wrote our names and signed the UPE book to solidify our commitment to both UPE and the oath we just took.
After the main event, we were told about an after-event which took place in DePaul’s Student Centre. The board had organised some refreshments to help the initiates connect with each other. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend for a long time as I had somewhere else to be, but I was able to stop by and enjoy some of the delicious vegetarian cone quesadillas, and even made a friend along the way!
Overall, this was a great event which helped us understand the basic expectations UPE has of us and what we should expect from UPE. I am excited to build on these experiences and see where UPE takes me!
– xoTani
As a current Data Science Undergraduate student at DePaul University, I have always tried my best to apply myself to the fullest academically in hopes of gaining technical skills which can help me find the answer to “What Must be Done?”. It is while continuing on this goal of mine, I got an invitation email from UPE’s DePaul Chapter after Winter quarter 2025.
UPE stands for Upsilon Pi Epsilon and is an honour society which recognises academic excellence in the information and computing disciplines since 2003. At DePaul University, they celebrate and provide rich resources to the Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media’s scholars. With a fee of $95, I had obtained a lifetime membership and access to incredible connections. As mentioned on UPE DePaul’s website, $60 of the fee goes to the official membership, $15 goes towards honour cord regalia for the graduation ceremony, and the remaining $20 is utilised by the chapter for organising events.
The dress code for the event was semi-formal, and the event was scheduled to run for approximately two hours. A soon as I entered the church, I had to sign in, where they also gave me the packet for the event. It included a folder which had a letter addressed to me from Dr. Daniela Raicu, the founder of DePaul’s UPE Chapter, alongside an official certification solidifying my acceptance into the Honour Society. The other was a pamphlet with the ceremony’s rundown and the UPE’s Oath that each member has to take.
We were also given a pin with UPE’s symbol on it, followed by an explanation of what it signifies. The symbol forms a key which represents how amazing opportunities have just opened to all the new members. The 1 and 0 represent two of the most important symbols in computing: the digits that encompass binary code. And the Greek characters printed on the Key stand for “Upsilon Pi Epsilon”.
