For junior Erika Eisenman, making future plans for a month-long trip to work in a Jamaican orphanage will have to wait for another night.

On April 14, Eisenman, a social work major and member of the North Carolina A&T  State University swimming team, will be among the students inducted into the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi in the  Memorial Student Union - Stallings Ballroom.

Phi Kappa Phi is the nation’s oldest, largest and most selective academic honor society. Membership to the A&T chapter is only given by invitation to the top 7.5 percent of second-semester juniors and the top 10 percent of seniors and graduate students.

Eisenman, who posted a 3.83 GPA for the 2012 Fall semester and has a 3.55 cumulative GPA, is excited to have her discipline in balancing academics and her athletic career recognized on Sunday evening, even as she continues to work on her plans for pursuing a career in social work and adoption.

“I think it’s really exciting because I’ve never really been honored for grades or anything. I’ve never been a poor student, but I’ve never excelled to the point that I would get honored for something like this,” she said, adding that this has been a challenging school year with her course load. “Having this at the end, being honored, really helped to have that extra push to make sure that I maintain good grades.”

Being a student-athlete has its own unique challenges with balancing academic responsibilities. A&T head coach Shawn Hendrix has been impressed with the way that Eisenman has been able to succeed both in and out of the pool.

“Erika is a great example of being a remarkable student -athlete. Her organization skills and discipline in completing a task in a structured method is only a few examples of her strengths,” she said. “I believe she is among the small population that has learned how to embrace and balance competition in the pool and classroom. This is the framework of an Aggie leader.”

Eisenman credited her advisor, Dr. Mary Lewis, with helping her to succeed academically.

“I think she’s just been amazing. She has really helped me with classes and professors that have not been the easiest, and she’s really a motivator. I’m glad to have her in my life as my advisor,” she said.

Eisenman, who has competed for the A&T swimming team for three seasons, said that the time management skills she has developed from learning to balance class, practice, competition and a social life have helped her in pursuing academic excellence and preparing her for a career after A&T.

“I really  think it  makes me a more disciplined person, that I can say, yeah, I had to do this, and my work and I still had time to have fun,”  she said. “It really helped me learn how to balance what I need to do…I feel like that’s really going to help me especially when I get out in the real world.”

Eisenman, who is from Salt Lake City, Utah, also values her academic success because it helps prepare her for attending graduate school and for the demands of her chosen career field.

“I’ve always been really interested in helping people. At first I didn’t know if I wanted to be a social worker because when you think of social work, you think of the people that are coming into the house and taking the children. That’s not what I want to do,” she said. “ When I graduate from A&T and  grad school, I  want to work for a nonprofit or an international or national adoption agency and strictly with parents that are wanting to give up their children, and not forced. That’s one of my dreams.”