Orientation/ Member recruitment

Our Orientation days went relatively well. However, we still need to make more attempts at membership recruitment in order to achieve our goal of inducting at least one hundred members at our Official Induction ceremony on November 6.

We hosted New Member Orientation on four consecutive days from Monday, Sept. 21 through Thursday, Sept. 25, entertaining an average of over thirty prospective members per day. We have already received several applications from numerous Orientation attendees, so hopefully many more will be submitted prior to the application deadline of October 16. Several attendees went as far as signing up for future events, especially our first Second Harvest Food Bank volunteer effort scheduled for October 9.

In an attempt to lure more members into Phi Theta Kappa (in a good way), we will also be setting up a table in the breezeway on campus with information, brochures, and applications... placing particular emphasis on scholarships.
We are pretty much going to utilize as many recruitment methods as possible in order to get more members, not only for official induction, but to also get them involved with our chapter and inevitably their future.

The Chi Epsilon officers attended a Phi Theta Kappa Leadership Conference at the University of South Florida in Tampa on September 25 and 26. We had a blast, and i will be blogging about the experience in a later post, so stay tuned. :)

Families R.O.C.K Weekend

Families R.O.C.K. (Reaching out to Cancer Kids) was an absolutely amazing and heartwarming success. Several of our Phi Theta Kappa officers volunteered for this event along with a couple of people from our Student Government Association (SGA). It is a safe assumption that I can speak for our entire team when I say it was worth every time spent and every mile driven to experience this event.


For those of you who don't know what Families R.O.C.K. weekend is; according to the America Cancer Society's website (www.cancer.org)... it is a fun, educational retreat for children with cancer and their families. Parents have an opportunity to learn more about the disease from medical professionals in a casual setting, while their children participate in fun, educational programs and activities. Anticipated Families R.O.C.K. Weekend outcomes range from increased compliance with treatment methods to enhancements to their quality of life.

As volunteers, our job during the afternoon hours was to meet and greet families, help them with directions and registration, while giving them a warm welcome to the beginning of a fun, relaxing yet informative weekend. After the registration process, dinner commenced at 6:30pm and after that we proceeded to the fun section of the night for the kids. It was just awesome seeing the warm smiles on the faces of the little ones as we interacted with them through fun activities such as T-shirt decorating. It was especially pleasing due to the fact that our chapter provided all the shirts to be decorated for the entire event.

The kids had so much fun at the T-shirt decorating session designing shirts for themselves and their families; throwing away all their cares in the world and just bringing out the little fashion designer in all of them. Watching these kids and how they were enthused and full of life, irrespective of the fact that they are stricken with a disease should show us how minute our problems really are. We are talking about children here, some of whom don't know the extent of what they are suffering from, children who probably won't get a chance to enjoy life as most of us are. Yet they are still living life to the fullest, way more than some of us who get so caught up with the cares and worries of our little worlds that we never stop to think how blessed and fortunate we are.

The organizers and parents alike were so grateful to us for our contributions because we went there as unselfish as possible and served - hence the term service. This is what the Phi Theta Kappa spirit is all about and I am happy we had an opportunity to impart that on others, making a difference in each and every one of their lives. Thank you American Cancer Society for giving us this opportunity... we look forward to doing this yet again.



GIVE A LITTLE LOVE AND IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOU!!!!

Welcome Back Week

The first week of school, although being a hectic one, turned out to be rather successful for Phi Theta Kappa. "Welcome Back Week" gave us an opportunity to reach out to both existing and prospective members alike; we got a chance to do this especially at the "Welcome Back Cookout" hosted by the Student Government Association (SGA). Phi Theta Kappa had a table set up with brochures and information about the organization while the officers who were manning the table answered any questions and concerns students had. It turned out pretty well as a means of promoting our chapter, we received interest from numerous students with varying familiarity levels with the organization. Hopefully that student curiosity will become a huge member pull and inevitably result in more student involvement throughout the school year.

It was also rather pleasing to see the interest in our chapter by members with their constant replies and queries to my mass emails. Most members let me know they couldn't be in attendance, asked about updates, recap meetings, etc. This shows that we have a lot of people who want to actually be a part of our organization, ones who are not here to be mere "seat-fillers".

More great news... We have secured our meeting room for General and Recap Meetings for the remaining of the semester. All our meetings shall be held in Bldg 9-228 at 2pm; General Meetings will be every other Tuesday, while the Recaps shall be held the Wednesday following. Our next meeting shall be on Tuesday, September 15, followed by the Recap on September 16.

Families R.O.C.K weekend was an absolute success! (find info and pics in a subsequent post)

The year is off to a promising start.