Common Theme of Sessions: Celebrate Those who Care.

             Today started off with a keynote speaker who left a lasting impact on me. President Dr. Kimbrough spoke upon many different topics, including hazing. In his presentation he showed images from different articles with images speaking about different hazing incidents. This opened my eyes to how many hazing situations there are world wide. Although we are lucky enough to have such an anti-hazing community, I believe that our Greek community should be more informed on what is going on in the world.

         The first session I attended today was, The Apathy Myth, presented by T.J. Sullivan. This session was focused on the fact that 'people will always find time for things that they care about'. He lead the conversation with the Big 5 that marketing agencies use to attract students [money, food, fun, sex, and alcohol] and then talked about five other topics that can attract students [competition, friends, cool experiences - with two "negative attractions" guilt or duty, and penalty]. He then used this to compare a trip to a chapter meeting. He made us realize that the only attraction to chapter was friends and the two negative attractions. This made me realize that maybe our chapters at BSU could start changing the format of how they run meetings.
           - For example: Instead of having weekly chapter meetings, have biweekly chapters and on the off weeks do bonding activities or service events. Instead of giving reports at chapters, you could have the chairs send the secretary their reports and have him or her email / print and hand out to the members. In the time that is now saved - the chapter can grow and strengthen their connections by talking about current events, or even just personal issues going on in their life.
        Another point that he touched upon was events and his opinion on whether or not "mandatory" events should be a thing. In the presenter's opinion he believes that all mandatory events are burning out members and should not be enforced by chapters. He believes, AND I AGREE, that we should be celebrating those who show up to events and put in effort. Although it may be disappointing to see how many sisters/ brothers show up to an event it is important to remember that attendance DOES NOT equal success, but what is gained and learned by the members that attend get is what matters. One last point that he made on this topic was how mandatory events are lazy. He stated that "in life you will never be able to mandate". With this idea, he stated that in this case it would be smarter for chapters to have multiple smaller events compared to one larger event because that way you could pertain to more members. It is not possible to always please ninety percent of a chapter by forcing them to go to a large mandatory event, but if you have smaller events you can find what different interests members have and have a stronger attendance of members who actually want to be there.
        This session also focused on how each chapter has thirds - the top third who is the rocket fuel of the chapter, the middle third, and the bottom third of the chapter whose members are disengaged. We need to focus on the middle third members. T.J. Sullivan referred to this selection of members as the "good enough" members. He recommended making the middle third a selection of events they need to go to. To the people who make the list of events - they will be disappointed, but if they allow their members to live the "good enough" mentality. once they have time and effort they will come back and hopefully try harder to be more active within the chapter.


      The second session I attended was called Happy Hour 24/7 presented by Matt Glowacki. I first met Matt at the NACA conference I attended last semester. Matt is extremely motivational - he was born with no legs, but is the happiest man I have ever met. The biggest lesson I learned from this session is to always remember what makes you happy. In sad moments of time, this can be the one thing that cheers you up. Matt also gave a cute quote that "being uncertain increases pleasure". This is an important quote to bring back to your chapter, especially when discussing new ideas that cause questions and concerns. When going into an event with an open mind and not having high expectations, you will learn and be willing to try more. He also gave us chocolate and bubbles :)
He also gave us a bag of "defective" jelly beans with a note. The note explained that these jelly beans were discarded from Jelly Belly because of the way they looked. Matt told us that he gave us these jelly beans because they represented how we should view people - not by what is on the outside, but what is on the inside.

     The last and final session I went to today was titled "Moving Scholarship Programs - Boring to Beneficial" hosted by Tim Mousseau. This session was about the current truths about scholarship programs on the chapter, council, and community level  and how + I QUOTE THIS "they all suck". This session was more direct and upfront than the other two sessions I attended today, but it was also the most real. One thing that stood out to me was how much Tim felt that GPA should not be what we focus our scholarship programs around. One reason for this is because "people who always do well will always get rewarded and the people who do poorly will always get punished."
      Tim spoke about how we need to make scholarship programs about individualized goals. We, as chapters, need to remember that everyone has a cause of why their GPA is what it is at. To support his claim on why study hours suck, Tim talked about how everyone has different learning styles and forcing members to study together cause conflicts due to these styles. To learn about our own learning styles he recommended that we as Greek leaders should sponsor quizzes (either free through school resources or pay a small fee) to find out how we can make a system that works best for our members and organizations.

He gave us ten ideas to improve Scholarship Programs, here you go:
1. Individualized study plans
2. Scholarship based mentor programs (star sisters, major moms)
    - He also mentioned that we could utilize big little relationships for this
3. Accountability for all - no matter what program you choose, make all members do it.
4. Professor office hours!
    - Each organization should suggest that members go to office hours (IN LETTERS) to make connections between academics and Greek Life and to show that we are passionate about our academics.
5. Recognition and scholarship. - reward people who work the hardest (not always GPA based)
6. Use learning styles*
7. Remove limiting practices - study hours, study sessions
8. Scholarship based recruitment
9 + 10. Use/ become campus tutors and use campus resources.

Overall, the sessions that I attended today were super informative and I enjoyed all of them. I believe that I have a great ideas that I will bring back to BSU and specifically my chapter. I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings!